Feelings and Emotional Responses to Loss

No, the title is not a misprint; it’s just the Grief Recovery variation on that famous Jack Webb line from Dragnet.

We’ve spent the better part of the last 25 years helping people move about 14 inches from their heads to their hearts. We have written of the six major myths that we believe limit people in making that shift. We have lectured, we have pontificated, we have preached. We have even resorted to begging and pleading in an attempt to get folks to see the error of their ways, at least as it relates to using their heads rather than their hearts to deal with their emotional responses to loss.

All along we thought the six major myths were the cause of the problem. In case you don’t recall them, here are those myths:

• Don’t feel bad
• Replace the loss
• Grieve alone
• Time heals all wounds
• Be strong – Be strong for others
• Keep busy

Each of those mythological ideas, which have been passed from generation to generation, limit and restrict people’s ability to deal effectively with their normal and natural reactions to the death of a loved one, to divorce, or to any of the 40 other loss events that cause feelings of grief.

Lo and behold, it now appears that those myths, as pernicious as they seem, may not be at the root of the problem. It may just be that as a nation we were lured into Webb’s web. We may have bought the phrase, “Just the facts, ma’am,” as gospel. Maybe we’ve been fighting an uphill battle with the wrong weapons. Maybe we need our own TV series to counterbalance the long term impact of that famous line.

I can see it now. John W. James, Grief Recovery Founder Man, strides purposefully yet gently to the side of the new weeping widow. Though an ex-Marine, John speaks softly and with great compassion. He prompts her to “Talk while you cry,” and to tell him about her relationship with her husband who has just died. At one point, John asks her if she can remember the first time she ever saw the man who was to become her husband. Her face lights up through her tears as her mind’s eye casts back sixteen years to the exact moment she first saw him in the bowling alley. It is a sweet moment. “Just the feelings, ma’am.”

Meantime, in another room in the same house, Russell P. Friedman, Sidekick Man, is talking to the 12-year-old girl and 9-year-old boy whose lives have been torn asunder by the sudden death of their dad. The kids are a little more reticent at first, unwilling to just start talking about how they feel. Russell tells them about his reaction to the news of his own mom’s sudden death many years ago. Released from fear by Russell’s willingness to go first, the kids start to talk. Soon Russell has them each talking about their unique relationship with dad and the emotions they attach to the events they remember. “Just the feelings, kids.”

“Just the feelings, folks, just the feelings.”