Grief and Suffering
Grief: is the emotional, cognitive, physical, relational, and sometimes spiritual response to a significant loss. It may include sadness, longing, anger, guilt, numbness, confusion, loneliness, or a sense that life has changed fundamentally.
Suffering: is the distress associated with that experience. Grief may therefore involve suffering, but the two may not be identical.
For example:
Loss…grief…pain/distress…adaptation and meaning making
Is grief a choice?
The initial experience of grief may generally not be voluntary. You may not simply choose to miss someone, feel sadness, or experience the shock of a loss.
However, there may be choices within the grieving process:
- whether to seek support or isolate
- whether to acknowledge or avoid painful emotions
- how to remember and honor the person
- how to care for yourself while grieving
- whether to gradually reconnect with life
- what meaning, if any, you eventually make from the loss
- how you incorporate the loss into your continuing life
This distinction is important:
You may not choose the pain of grief, but you may have some choice in how you respond to the pain.
That may not mean someone should be told to “choose happiness” or “choose to stop suffering.” Such statements can become invalidating, particularly during acute bereavement.
A useful psychological distinction
Pain is often unavoidable; suffering may sometimes be influenced.
This may be related to the idea of secondary suffering:
The additional distress that may arise from fighting, judging, catastrophizing, or becoming trapped in thoughts about the original pain.
For example:
“I miss her terribly. “Primary grief/pain.
versus:
“I shouldn’t still feel this way. Something is wrong with me. I’ll never be okay again.
“Additional psychological suffering.”
The second layer may be more amenable to psychological intervention.
And importantly, healthy grieving may not necessarily mean eliminating grief. Sometimes adaptation means learning to carry the loss while gradually rebuilding a meaningful life.
In one sentence:
Grief may not be a choice; how a person eventually relates to, processes, and lives with their grief could involve choices and psychological capacities that may develop over time.
Shervan K Shahhian
LIBERTY PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 