Why Some People Don't Grieve (cont'd)
By Carolyn Campbell
Q: Why do certain people not exhibit any grief patterns?
A: Up until recently, it hasn't really been known. Most investigators in the field, I think, would say that people who don't show grief have something wrong with them — they either are defensive, or cold, or they never cared about the person to begin with, or they weren't attached. I had argued no, maybe they're just healthy people. We followed a group of people in Michigan over six years in a bereavement study where we knew a lot about the people before the loss occurred. We showed that about half the sample showed no symptoms at any point in the study. They just were not depressed before or after the loss, and we found that they were healthy people. They had fine relationships. The interviewers did not find them cold or aloof, and they did not score high on a measure we had of avoidant attachment. That doesn't mean that a healthy person won't grief also, but it seemed that they [a person who feels no grief] might feel sad, they might miss the person, but they keep functioning. We know that the people who don't show grief, it's fair to say, are healthy people.
Q: What signs may indicate that someone is not coping, more or less, normally?
A: There are some signs. One we found in our research is that there is acute grief — people who are grieving so severely initially. Ten years ago we may have thought that they're grieving terribly, but they'll get over it. We know now that when people grieve very acutely that does not bode well for their getting better, because it's really hard to recover from that. I've been arguing recently that people who cannot get it off their minds at all, those are the people who are not likely to do well. We find that the people who do well over time are able to regulate themselves a little bit, they're able to put it out of their minds at least for some of the time. We have chores in life, historically, for the last couple of hundred years; the two main chores in life are to work and to love — to accomplish things and to be close to other people. So regardless of one's roles, whether they're a housewife or a business executive, we have one of those two tasks to do. We have to be close to people, take care of people, or produce and be able to concentrate and be productive. If people can't do those things, that's a bad sign. What happens is this kind of cascading loss. People often feel like they've lost a part of themselves. If they can work, if they can be close to their children or friends or parents, they can still have other parts of themselves. When people really struggle, they're unable to concentrate, they become distant and do not find much pleasure in the people that they are close to. This means that they are not doing well, and it tends to expand the loss in a way because it comes to be more than the loss of loved one. It becomes a loss of your life in a sense.
Q: What characteristics define acute grief?
A: There are two sets of things — depression and trauma symptoms. Trauma symptoms only seem to occur when people have lost a loved one through violent death. Trauma symptoms include also having thoughts about the death and about the person that are constantly dominating your mind — you can't get them off your mind, you can't control it. Anxiety doesn't seem as common.
Q: What do you suggest to those coping with a loss?
A: I would suggest three different sets of things. People who are not showing grief symptoms, don't do anything — they're fine. In fact, they can be harmed by intruding on their lives. They don't need to talk about it, but I think in this culture we have this sense that people need to talk about it — if they don't talk about it, something is wrong — no, leave those people alone. In people who are showing moderate levels of grief symptoms, it is sometimes a matter of getting used to the pain, which passes with time. What I've noticed is that people who show the common grief pattern sort of gradually regain their life by getting involved in new activities and rethinking who they are and what their life means. Rather than focusing on the loss, focus on who they are and where they're going to go next — more concrete goals. Focusing on what the change has meant in their life, rather than focusing on how they feel about it. They're developing a new identity to some extent, so they would appreciate support from their friends, and if they're seeing a therapist or any kind of mental health professional, they might benefit from help in that end of their life. Also, in cases when people lose a spouse, they often have to start thinking about getting involved with another person. Now, men do that more quickly than women. There's a lot of evidence for that.
