Why is Grief so Hard?
Grief is our emotional reaction to trauma, loss, or any sort of emotional injury. The grief process is a multi-step process we go through as we heal from that injury. The process is much like what we experience with a physical injury, in which we move through the symptoms as our body recovers and layers of new tissue cover up what was damaged. The severity of the injury influences the time and energy it takes to heal. Similarly, emotional pain requires a variety of systems in the body and brain to work together to find a new mode of health around what was broken. The bigger the loss, the longer and more complicated the recovery.
How we heal emotionally really is much more like how we heal physically. Take a wrist injury, for example. If an impact breaks the skin and results in a bone fracture or break, there is also other tissue damage, torn tendons, and nerve damage. It will require the work of several systems in the body to respond, from fighting a bacterial infection and healing the skin tissue to rebuilding bone, to nerves healing, and tendons stretching again. A lot goes into injury recovery! There are phases we can use to identify our progress, from having an immobilizing cast to healing enough for different braces, to finally using our wrist fully. Then we begin working through the pain and weakness for weeks and even years. Because there is a complicated web of healing happening, from a variety of systems each with their own timeline and tools, it is hard to draw a line around each phase. Some things improve quickly, others not.
This is how grief (and any emotional or cognitive change or growth) works.
Our emotional patterns, our homeostasis of mood, affect, and behavior, are all results of our surroundings and day to day life and resources. After a loss or trauma, all of these aspects of our personality go through realignment with a new normal. When we lose things we used to rely on, such as daily dopamine increase from our closest loved one who passed, a sense of safety or security we got from the presence of our parents, a daily habit of running, a view we’ve come to know, a new homeostasis has to be created in its place. Our mood has to change, our behavior has to change, in order to reflect new expectations from the world around us as we find new opportunities to get what we need. After a breakup, we mourn losing the person but more deeply and subconsciously we miss having coffee already made or we miss the lunchtime conversation. Our bodies crave the endorphins of daily physical touch. To further complicate things, our physical bodies, our thought patterns, our social structures of others around us, are all impacted. We lose friends, our errands change, our bedtime habits become ours alone again. It’s very overwhelming! So of course, the phases of grief may come and go as we grapple with different parts of realigning our life. The more integrated we were with whatever has gone away, the longer it may take and the harder it may be to come out the other side. And no matter what, a scar remains that we see from time to time that reminds us of what was.
Climate grief is all of this, and it is a collective process every being is going through. Our literal home is burning, being torn down, replaced with concrete, heating up, drying out, or flooding. I have no doubt non-humans experience this too. As we learn how to function in a new norm, and how to alleviate what we can, we come up against the grief in everybody else, who may not be in the phase we are in or have the level of understanding that we have.
Of course it is difficult. There is nothing we can do to make it significantly easier or take it away, but knowing why may help alleviate our frustration. The healing in me sees and appreciates the healing in you; we are all in this together.
