Ray led DPX last Sunday with a silent meditation and a talk on ambiguous loss as defined by Pauline Boss in her book “Loss, Trauma and Resilience, Therapeutic Work with Ambiguous Loss. https://www.ambiguousloss.com
Unlike regular grief, with ambiguous loss, there’s really no possibility of closure or resolution. It is a complicated grief caused by an illogical, chaotic, and unbelievably painful situation. With ambiguous loss people have missing loved ones, either physically or psychologically. For example, for the caregiver of an Alzheimer’s patient, the patient is here, but not here. They’re present and but absent at the same time. Or a person who has lost someone by divorce, but they’re still co-parenting children with that person. Divorce is a human relationship that is ruptured but not gone. Work-a-holism, alcoholism, depression and trauma are other examples of the person being physically there but not there psychologically.Ambiguous loss is common for the parent of a missing child, or loved ones of soldiers missing in action or any situation where the body is not found. Living in the new reality of Covid 19 has created many different types of ambiguous loss. Loss of a job, career, or a passion that might come back, or might never come back. Loss of time due to the quarantinecauses feelings of panic and being frozen in time.
People suffering from ambiguous loss grieve along the way for the various things that they are missing. For example, if a child is kidnapped, they may have an extra grief when this child’s friends are graduating or when they are marrying, getting their first job or going away for college. The grief is long term. It is chronic grief. It can last for five or ten years.
Culturally it is important for human beings to bury their dead. it’s important for us to know where the body is, or to be able to come back to the memorials like the 9/11 memorial, the Japanese tsunami memorials, or Holocaust memorials. With ambiguous loss there isn’t this type of closure or memorial.
The cultural vocabulary of grief, it was very much formed by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and her delineating the five stages of grief in 1969: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We think of it as a prescription for what people go through, and that there is an end. This is not always true. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross found those five stages to be relevant for people who are dying, or fading into death. She did not mean it for the surviving family members. Mistakenly, we apply the 5 stages to loved ones of the deceased. The new research on grief and loss does not recommend linear stages. We like linear stages, because there is a finite end. Our idea of suffering is that it’s something you should cure, fix or find some solution for. But ambiguous grief is different. It is a problem that has no solution or perfect fix.
People can’t cope with the problem until they know what the problem is. Once you have a name for it, and an understanding of it, the stress level goes down. In order to live with ambiguous loss, you must hold two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time. For example, with the physically missing, people might say, “He’s gone, he’s probably dead, and maybe not,” or “He may be coming back, but maybe not.” “I’ve lost my job due to Covid, but they might hire me back, but I’m looking for a new job, but hoping I’ll get my old job back.” Coming to terms with the 2 polarities simultaneously is the only way that people can lower the stress of living with the ambiguity. If something is nonsensical, totally without logic or meaning, as many of these terrible events are, we have to label it as “It is meaningless.” One can live with something that is meaningless, as long as they have something else in their life that is meaningful. For example, the mother of a kidnapped child may devote her life to helping prevent other children from going missing. People heal from the terrible things that happened to them when they transform it into something that can help others. It’s a way of finding meaning in meaninglessness. But you don’t have to necessarily locate the meaning in that terrible thing that happened to you. You might have to find the meaning elsewhere in your life and let that be “good enough.” Finding meaning, usually requires you to be work towards something, work with something, participate, experimenting with feelings and situations. It’s active participating, which might be impossible if you are holding, envisioning or hoping for two completely opposing cinereous simultaneously. In this case, we can practice acceptance, or trying to be comfortable with what we cannot solve. Letting go somewhat or loosening the grip at least, and looking in a different direction for the meaning. The meaning may be found outside of the traumatic situation. Remembering the paradox, “Without hope there is no meaning and without meaning there is no hope.”
We now know that people live with grief. They don’t always get over it and it’s perfectly fine. Complete closure is a myth. People still care about the ones they have lost. It’s not obsession, it’s just remembering. Knowing there are other people holding various griefs over a live time can be helpful.
When our group discussed the topic, one person spoke of complete disintegration of the sense self as a result of his trauma. He talked of feeling like a ghost of his former self. He has learned that holding the reality of incredible loss of self while pretending it didn’t happen, was a failing. He now is living with the paradox of being well and unwell at the same time. Mentioning Peter Levin’s book “Waking the Tiger, Healing Trauma”, he talked about articulation, discharge and renegotiation. Peter Levin talks about trauma here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCs0xM0do14.
One person spoke about learning to tell her personal story to others without retraumatizing herself or the others listening. Acknowledging that this story might be a different story than the one she tells herself. Another person in the group spoke of childhood traumas that manifested for a lifetime until therapy helped identify them.
One person reflected that “loss as just another part of the grand illusion. Suffering is a misunderstanding. It is our ego trying to find a rationalization of the good and bad, manufacturing how things relate to us. We interact with the situation, but in actually it is not centered around us. It is our thinking that creates the most suffering.”
Another person reminded us that “Things are tenuous with Covid 19, and life’s small misfortunes are still happening, compounding the situation.” She is trying not to put big expectations on things. Holding things lightly and learning to navigate things with flexibility.