Understanding Grief and Loss

Throughout the years, the Five stages of Loss and Grief have been well written about and discussed. In this essay, I elaborate my personal views that extend on the Bargaining stage of grief. Bargaining is the normal reaction to feelings of helplessness and vulnerability after a death of a loved one that is often associated with the need to regain control. Some common thoughts associated with bargaining can be "if only we had sought medical attention sooner," "If only we had gotten a second opinion from another doctor," "If only I had tried to be a there more."

I believe that the amount someone grieves is directly proportional to the type of relationship the person had towards the deceased. Seems like a basic concept, yet, it is filled with a load of emotional baggage that may be at times hard to gauge and even harder to understand. Often, the person grieving is drowned by a sea of guilt and hopelessness. This is one way our mind deals with coping through loss. This happens because our mind wants to get back to a state of "normalcy" as quickly and efficiently as possible and uses control as its vehicle. When something bad happens, such as dealing with the loss of a loved one, the first thing the mind seeks to find is some form of control.

This is usually done through seeking some form of participation in order to fix the situation. But how can someone "fix the situation" when the person is dead? It's not like we have the powers to bring them back to life. This defeat can crumble us, make us more hopeless, angry, and depressed. The mind goes into panic mode and is desperately seeking a way to gain back some control. Therefore, the mind develops feelings of guilt as a mode of participation. It is almost the only thing it can do, as a default, because it has nothing else. Looking at it closer, it makes a lot of sense; guilt gives the person a senses of participation, a sense of doing something (though its counterintuitive since the guilt is a form of self punishment, it's still doing something and that is better than nothing at all), it's the only way the psyche knows how to gain back a sense of control. This guilt, is the psyche's way of self-medicating itself through the pain of losing someone.

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