Coping With Anticipatory Grief

We are dealing with the feeling of uncertainty, and we don't know when our feeling of uncertainty will end.

We dream about when we can safely leave our homes, see our loved ones, and go back to normal. We wonder if our businesses will reopen or when we will stop feeling so paralyzed with fear.

We have lost so much, and many elements missing from our normal lives are intangible and can hardly be identified. Because it is ambiguous, we find it difficult to know what we are mourning.

It is a loss of the way we have lived, the boundaries between work, home, school. Our plans, weddings, birthday parties, loss of safety and trust in our leadership. The loss of connection, the fear of economic toll.

The stages of coming in terms with grief are:

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

These widely accepted stages are considered rigid and obsolete as modern psychologists update the understanding of grief.

It focuses on the psychological connectedness of grief, looking at the quality of bondings that are made during the course of our lives.

Grief, and even the behaviour of babies in the absence of parents suggests it is not just a mental experience, but has physiological effects, like raising the level of the stress hormone cortisol in our bodies.

The five stages of grief are: 

• denial (inability to accept reality), 
• anger (physical tension, frustration, resentment), 
• bargaining (magical thinking, pleading to God), 
• depression (sadness, emptiness, guilt, sleeplessness, loss of appetite, hopelessness),
• acceptance. 

Nothing good can come from looking at your ex’s Instagram stories or Facebook timeline. When it comes to social media, just say no.

Anticipatory grief is feeling unsure of what the future holds. It is that same feeling when someone gets a grave diagnosis. 

We know there is a storm brewing, and it breaks our sense of safety on a micro and a macro level.

Understand the stages of grief and realize that the stages are not linear.

Denial: The virus won't affect us.
Anger: You're taking away my freedom.
Bargaining: So, if I social distance for two weeks, will everything will be better?
Sadness: I don't know how this will end.
Acceptance: This is happening, and I have to figure out how to move forward.

Acceptance is where power lies. We find control in acceptance. "I can..."

Grief can very easily lead to depression. And depression is nothing to be joking around with: it can put your health at risk in no time.

Among the symptoms that can be identified with depression there are: extreme hopelessness, insomnia, loss of appetite, suicidal thoughts, persistent feelings of worthlessness, and marked mental and physical sluggishness.

In order to better handle a difficult period of grief, one has the possibility to choose from two alternatives: see a counselor or join a support group.

While the first option provides you with professional, specialized help, the second one emphasizes the importance of sharing your experiences with people who have already experienced the same kind of pain.

We are genuinely invested in the outcome of a story and the state of the various characters.

These connections to fictional stories and characters are why many people share their opinions about the plots and characters’ actions. People feel so connected, and in some cases, they feel like they have ownership over something.

For many people, watching a show regularly can be a form of temporarily checking out of what’s going on in the real world.

It’s a way we detach from our own issues, our own problems. And the thought of giving that up and coming back to our own world is a little frightening for people.

The key is to choose life, and not lose the ones we have, to what we have already lost.

Accepting the good and deciding to shift towards life during matters of death is an effective psychological technique, which is referred to as 'benefit finding'.

Studies after the 9/11 terror attacks showed that experiencing positive emotions created a buffer against depression. Resilient people can work out ways to include hope, love, humor, pride, inspiration, serenity into their lives.

We all can use nature therapy, inspirational movies, and books, music, and sports to fuel our positive beliefs and emotions.

While going through difficult times, we are all losing, more or less, the shared rituals we used to have with others. But that is not actually such a bad thing.

Instead of thinking about what was lost, we could think about what we still have and figure out ways to make the most of the time spent at home, like staying more with our family or getting in touch again with old friends by calling them.

It’s not that difficult to create rituals online. Focus on:

• Asking people to bring to their online gathering something symbolic to share, to create a sense of connectedness.
• Marking the moment as something special by having someone provide an opening statement.
• Creating emotional highs by using music or something else with high emotional resonance to augment the experience.
• Having a distinct ending that includes an emotional peak, because people tend to remember an event better that way.

It happens when other people's bad experience is reimagined by you, sparking memories of your own similar experience, triggering strong reactions.

Deeply buried events that were supposedly forgotten are resurfaced, leading to traumatic feelings that can be hard to understand by others, like grief, frustration, helplessness and agitation.

Anger, surprisingly, can be constructive, an active ingredient to energize and motivate a person. It can be useful and powerful if channelled in the right way. The adrenalin that flows during a fit of anger can blind a person if not handled appropriately.

If left unchecked, anger can lead to nightmares, chronic anxiety, and panic attacks.

Lockdown poses unique problems for couples who are isolating together.
People who are used to seeing their partner at the end of the day now are now living with the new reality of not only being full-time with their significant other but also working alongside them. This situation, together with the uncertainty of the whole pandemic crisis can create tension.

There is a polarization going on around the way that people deal with fear, with anger, with the preparations in the face of disaster. You can find:

• People that become clear organizers because order for them means making sense of the chaos of the external world and the one that is rising inside of them.
• People wanting to talk all the time with other people and have a sense of what’s going on with everyone.
• People thinking that their partner is not cautious enough.