Disenfranchised Grief

Hey there everybody, and welcome to this presentation on disenfranchised grief. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. In this presentation, we'll define disenfranchised grief, explore what causes it, the effects of it, and what people need in order to cope with grief. So the first question is, what is disenfranchised grief? Well, disenfranchised grief is when your grieving doesn't fit in with the larger society's attitude or community's attitude about dealing with death or loss. You may hear things like aren't you over it yet? Or toxically positive statements like this will go on. Or you have so many other things going for you. You may hear things, things like, you're not grieving correctly, or grieve on your own time, you're supposed to be doing work right now, or toughen up, suck it up. These things happen. None of those things permit a person to grieve in their way, in their time. It's important to remember that sometimes people are permitted by culture to grieve a primary loss, like the death of someone, somebody, but they are not allowed to grieve secondary losses, such as a loss of community or a loss of connection with certain people. For example, after a divorce, people may grieve the loss of the marriage, but they also may grieve the loss of the connections with their former in laws. They may also have a lot of other secondary losses, grant grieving, the loss of financial security and the increase in stress. So there are a lot of things that sometimes we assign other labels to that actually do represent a loss that may need to be grieved. So what is the difference between grief and trauma? Well, trauma is an event when something happens that threatens your safety and security, it can be perceived as a trauma. And now not everybody is traumatized by the same events. You know, some things that somebody one person perceives as traumatic may not be perceived as traumatic by other people. But it's important to recognize that if the person feels like it represented a significant threat to their safety or well being or the safety or well being of their loved ones, it can, it may be a trauma, it may be traumatic for them and cause traumatic injury. Now, we process trauma in a lot of different ways, but one thing that goes along with virtually every trauma is grief. Because when we experience trauma, we experience a loss of safety, we experience a loss of control, a loss of power. And at the heart of trauma is the loss of safety and empowerment. So those are things that we need to get back. And then depending on what the trauma was and what the effects of the trauma were. There may be a lot of other losses that need to be grieved that include death or physical abilities or those sorts of things. But ultimately grief is a feeling and trauma is an experience, if you want to differentiate them. So what are some causes of disenfranchised grief? And I don't want to disenfranchise anybody. So if your thing is not listed on here, I am not discounting it. I could go on for days about different things that people may grieve. These are some of the more common ones. These are some of the ones that I have seen in friends, family, in clients that I've worked with, in practice and in myself. So I'm speaking from a something of a place of personal experience. Let's talk first. And we're going to go through the pacer dimensions like everything else, physical, affective, cognitive, environmental and relational. So let's first look at physical losses or physical causes of disenfranchised grief. Some people may have invisible disabilities and these can be cognitive disabilities or neurological disabilities like pots or fibromyalgia or diabetes that cause them to have to make changes in their life that may alter the way they function. They may alter the things that the person can do, which is going to often have a cascade effect on not only their self esteem but, but potentially their relationships because they may not be able to engage with other people in the same way anymore. We do want to recognize that invisible disabilities, even if it doesn't look like the person is struggling, chronic pain, for example, even if it doesn't look on the outside like the person is struggling, they may be struggling on the inside, they may be feeling pain, they may be struggling with self esteem issues, grief, anxiety, a lot of other things that come up when we experience a loss. People can experience a loss of functioning due to illness, accident or age. And this is a lot of times where people can become toxically optimistic. You know, you'll get over this, this is fine. This is just a blip on your radar screen. Those things are invalidating. If somebody has a stroke and loses the functioning on one side of their body or even in any part of their body, there are a lot of consequences. They may grieve the fact, especially if it's visible, such as paralysis in their face. They may grieve the loss of their appearance. They may grieve and be angry about the fact that they've got to go through rehab. There are a lot of things that can come up and Just simple age. As we age, we can't do the things when we're 50 that we were able to do when we were 25. For most of us, that is just not happening. And for a lot of us, that is a big wake up call. And that is one of those things that may contribute for some to that proverbial midlife crisis, because we want to prove that we've still got it. And I know I fell victim to it, you know, trying to keep up with the 20 somethings at the gym. And I was getting hurt a lot more and it took me longer to recover and it made me so angry because my body was not 25 anymore. Miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion. When people lose a baby, it can be traumatic. Now, some people, for stillbirth, they may hear things like, you know, it was a God thing, you know, again, that toxic optimism or invalidation. However, a lot of times the community may allow people to grieve a little bit. If the child is born with significant birth defects. The parents may hear something like, it's such a blessing that the child, you know, didn't make it because they would have had such a hard life. Oh my gosh, how invalidating is that to the parents who were just waiting to cherish this life? Abortion. When people have abortions a lot, lot of times they go through a grieving process, sometimes right after the abortion, sometimes many years later, and sometimes both. It's important that we don't dismiss people's feelings of grief about having an abortion. Even if it's something that they chose to do, that they weren't forced to do, it is still a loss. Sometimes we have to make choices between two bad scenarios, and people can still grieve. The loss of that child and miscarriage. It doesn't matter whether the person was 10 weeks pregnant or 39 weeks pregnant. If they see it as a life, if they see it as a baby, it is still, still a loss. Now, the losses at 39 weeks after you've been carrying the baby for, you know, months may be different. You know, the feelings, the thoughts that you have may be different. But we need to not invalidate people's experience of loss when they lose their baby in the first trimester. And so many obstetricians do this, it's like they tell you that the miscarriage rate is super high in the first trimester, and if it happens, it's like, well, you know, those were the odds. No, it's important to help the parents, help the family grieve. If they had acknowledged the pregnancy, then they need to be able to acknowledge the loss. Premature delivery, this is another one and I experienced this twice. One with a micro preemie and one with just a preemie. Preemie. But when you have to leave the hospital without your baby, it is traumatic. When you have a delivery like a C section that doesn't go with your birth plan, when you have a difficult delivery or when you can't carry to term and you end up having a child that is for fragile. A lot of times there is blaming and shaming that goes around instead of support through the grief process. And it's really important to recognize with premature delivery, the majority of the cases, they're not sure why it happens. There is no cause, it's just idiopathic, as they say. They're learning more as we do more research. But for something like childbirth that is supposed to be so natural that, quote, women have been doing since the beginning of time to not be able to do it, and I use quotes again correctly, can be devastating. You can feel very guilty that the child's first experiences in life are going to be challenging because your body couldn't carry it to term. So there's a lot of guilt and grief that goes along with premature deliveries. Even if the baby is healthy, even if the baby just has to stay there and put on some weight, there's a lot of guilt. Now if you give birth and you have a child with a disability, this is another time where a lot of times well meaning people respond with denying the loss, denying the parents feelings and grief and say things like, well, at least the child is healthy, or at least they can do this, or instead of acknowledging that the parent may be grieving, the fact that that's not what they intended. You know, they love the child and they have, you know, no desire to not have the child. It's not that they don't love the child, but there is a need to grieve the loss. The anger that comes with, well, why didn't I get to have a perfectly healthy child when there were eight other women that delivered that day that had healthy children? So there's that grief process, hysterectomy, infertility, and I put these two together because once you have a hysterectomy, you're infertile. But not being able to get pregnant is an. It's another one of those issues that is something that is supposed to be very natural. Everybody, quote, unquote, is supposed to do it. And this is true for, you know, a Lot of these are true for men and women that when you're infertile, when you can't have a child, society may judge you in some ways for not being able to have a child. And they don't allow you to grieve the fact that you're not able to do something. So it's a double whammy. They're telling you you should be able to do this and, and you can't grieve the fact that you can't. So it's a double whammy there. So I want to go back up for a second because I feel like I forgot to really fully flesh it out for both genders here. And when we're talking about miscarriage, stillbirth, abortion, premature delivery, children with a disability, this is for all caregivers, not just necessarily the birth parent. And when I say caregivers, sometimes in really close knit families, you're also going to have grandparents and siblings and aunts and uncles that are grieving. And it's important that we give them permission or we support them, I guess is a better word. We don't want to give them permission because they have the right to grieve. They shouldn't need permission. But we support them in their grief process. Grieving what they feel they lost, grieving what they feel the child lost. For example, with a premature delivery or a child with a disability, they may grieve the fact that that child may have a harder life than they had hoped. We can grieve the loss of our appearance and that can be due to injury or it can be due to simple aging. Some people really struggle with that aging process and it's something that needs to. We need to be allowed to grieve it and not be seen as vain or narcissistic. Because our society does put an amazing amount of pressure on people of, you know, all people to maintain a certain appearance. And when we can't do that, it impacts employability, it impacts relationships, it impacts self esteem significantly. So we do want to allow people to grieve that if it isn't, if it's an issue for them. Now some people are not going to grieve every one of these things and that's okay. They may be able to work through it really quick and it isn't a huge issue for them, but for other people it cuts to their very core and we want to recognize that everybody's experiences are their own and stigmatized losses. I put this under physical because it could have gone in a lot of places, but for example, when somebody gets hepatitis or HIV that, you know, viruses that are often seen to be the result of a person's own behaviors, they may be condemned because of, or ostracized or stigmatized because of their condition, their disease, and not allowed to grieve the fact that they have it. And they may not receive the support they need to be able to grieve that loss because. Because they are being challenged and condemned by society. Affective and cognitive causes of disenfranchised grief Cognitive slowing. This kind of goes along with loss of appearance and loss of functioning due to age. As we get older, it takes our brains longer to process. There is. It's not dementia, it's not Alzheimer's. We just cognitively slow down a little bit. And for some people, this can be extremely frustrating because they are used to being very smart and very intellectual. And when it takes them longer to think and find words, they feel ashamed. And they may grieve the loss of their sharpness, loss of dreams and purpose. Now, that's kind of ambiguous, but we need to recognize that not all losses are tangible. And for some, and we see this a lot in behavioral health and healthcare professionals, where they may start experiencing burnout and a loss of purpose because they don't feel effective in what they do. And they are in this profession now and not feeling like they're making a difference, and they thought that they would get in and they would, you know, change the world, and they have to be able to grieve that loss. Some people have losses of other dreams. They. They dreamed of, you know, being a movie star, and that doesn't pan out for them. You know, very few people become the next Brad Pitt. So being able to grieve the loss of their dreams, they may have not been able to have the career they wanted because they couldn't get the grades that they needed. So they may have to grieve that. We see that a lot in adolescence when they are in, you know, second, third year college and they realize that, hey, this ain't gonna work. And they have a significant crisis at that point because they had always envisioned one thing, and that dream is now crumbling right before their eyes. Disrupted schema or loss of understanding, and that's another one of those ambiguous things. But in the medical community, for example, when or anywhere, when bad things happen to good people, when people experience trauma, a lot of times it disrupts their understanding of the world. It's like, why is this happening to this person at this time? It doesn't make any sense. And they have to sometimes restructure the way they view the world and the way they view other people. And there's a grieving process. If they had always viewed the world as benevolent and people as, you know, benevolent and good, and then they start to realize that, you know, maybe everybody ain't great, it may require a change in the way they think about things and giving up their prior vision or understanding of the world. Failure is another thing that can cause disenfranchised grief. Some people will look at you and go, well, failure is an opportunity to learn. Well, that's true, and that's a great cognitive restructure for later on. But it's important initially to allow the person to grieve the loss. If they didn't make the football team, if they didn't get the job they wanted, if whatever they failed at, it was something that they wanted, something that was important to them, and they failed. And it's important to allow people to grieve for a moment that failure. Yes, they can learn from it later down the road. But one of the things that's important to recognize is our feelings are important. And you may not be one of those feeling focused people. So say our reactions are important and they're valid when we feel them. It's important to acknowledge them, to validate them, to figure out what they mean, to process them, and then to move on. We don't just feel something and go, okay, this is uncomfortable. I'm going to put this on a shelf over here. That is the fastest way to fill up that closet in the back of your head that eventually overflows. We need to be allowed and supported in processing our disappointment, our frustration, our grief. Another cause of affective or cognitive grief is being told we're not grieving correctly. Not everybody cries. Not everybody goes into a deep depression. Some people avoid the issue. Some people. You know, there are a lot of different ways of grieving. And I don't tend to grieve. I personally don't tend to grieve in ways that are traditional. You know, sometimes depending on the loss, sometimes, a lot of times I'll cry. I do a lot of crying, but I don't necessarily continue to react the way people might expect because I internalize a lot. But that is. And I cope with it in my own way. And my point here is that we can't take it on face value, so to speak, that somebody is grieving or not grieving. They may be grieving in their own way. Some people stay busy. That way they only feel A little bit of the grief at a time. There are some people make jokes or tell happy stories about whatever the loss was in order to try to embrace the dialectics. There are a lot of different ways people grieve, and it's important to allow them to do that. Environmentally, people can lose housing, they can become homeless, and it can be because of finances. It can become, and we'll talk about it under possessions, especially because of fire, or they can lose their home country if they immigrate. And even if they're intentionally immigrating to start a better life, they are also leaving behind something that is dear to them. They are immigrating to a country where there's probably different culture. So they're also leaving their culture behind. And it's important to allow them to grieve that. Not to say, well, you chose to come over here. Well, that is not supportive. It's important to recognize that every decision, every choice we make has a yin and a yang. And, you know, they may have chosen the best option, but it doesn't mean there weren't good things. It doesn't mean that there's not things that they're going to miss that they need to grieve. We can lose possessions can be a car, it can be stuff in a house if it is tragically destroyed in some way. And this is another one where we often hear, well, they're just things. They can be replaced. Well, a lot of those things are associated with memories. And when we can't connect with those memories in a tangible way, it feels like those memories are being ripped away from us. Possessions also give us a sense of security and not having necessarily tons of possessions. But a lot of times people have certain things, things that are in their life that are really important, and when they lose those, it can be devastating to them. I still have some things that my father gave me and some things that my mother gave me and some things that my grandmother passed down. And those possessions are very important to me, and I would be very upset if anything happened to them. Loss of safety. This is a key loss that we experience during trauma. And it's important to look at all the ways that we have experienced a loss of safety, whether it's, you know, after a tornado or after a victimization or after a divorce. In what ways did you. Do you feel like you became less safe physically, emotionally, mentally? Loss of freedom? This came up a lot. And there's actually a lot of research in PubMed on disenfranchised grief and the pandemic. I Won't say the other word because YouTube really doesn't like it when I say that word. But during the pandemic, people lost their freedom and they lost their routine. One of the things that we know, research has shown that after a trauma, the quicker you can get back to your routine and some semblance of normalcy, the greater the chance is of having a healthy recovery from it. The longer it takes to resume normalcy, the greater the chances of ptsd, the longer the grieving process. And some people are expecting that certain freedoms may be lost forever, and they need to grieve those. And loss of control. Some people need to grieve when they lose control of something, when something's taken out of their hands. Now, many times this makes somebody anxious or angry, but sometimes it can also represent a loss. And relationally, this one got its own slide because there are so many different things that can happen in relationships that are minimized and disenfranchised when they really cut to our core. Breakups or rejection can cause a grieving process. And it's important to acknowledge that if you had been with somebody, even if it was for a month or if you had hoped to go to prom with somebody or, you know, whatever, and that doesn't happen, or you break up, there's a grieving process because the hopes that you had, the vision that you had revolving around that person is gone now, and you have no control over it. So you're losing control, and you're also experiencing rejection. And that can create, in and of itself, a loss of a sense of safety. Emotional abandonment is often minimized. Physical abandonment, breakups, rejection, divorce, that's more observable. So it may be more tangible and. And sometimes is more socially sanctioned for grieving, at least for a period of time. But emotional abandonment is one of those hidden wounds. And people often have a hard time identifying when they've been emotionally abandoned. They may not be aware of it, and then they're not allowed to grieve it because other people tell them, well, if you know, all these other people loved you, well, that doesn't replace the fact that I was emotionally abandoned by this other person. So emotional abandonment is also a loss that needs to be grieved. Empty nest. When your kids move out, you're so grateful that they have grown up to be, you know, happy, healthy adult human beings, and, you know, they've emerged into the people that they are. But there's also a part of you that may feel not needed, that may feel empty inside a part of you, a role that you had held for 18, 20, 25 years is no longer in play in the same way. And people often grieve this. And as your children move out, it also can remind you of your own aging and your own progress in life. Deployment can cause grief in people. And yes, you knew what you were signing up for when you married somebody in the military or when you joined the military. It doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt when you have to be deployed. It doesn't mean that there's not a grieving process when, when that person is physically removed from your presence. Deployment can cause a grieving process. Deployment also upsets routine. When people are in their stateside routine, you know, it's one thing, and then all of a sudden, when the soldier gets deployed, that routine, not only is the person gone, but that routine is gone. The help is gone. So there are a lot of things that may need to be grieved. Immigration, we already talked about that. Moving to an entirely new country. There are going to be significant changes and maybe a sense of distancing from things that are important that need to be grieved. Now, I could do an entire class on grief issues associated with failed adoption, termination of parental rights, and foster care. But suffice it to say, when an adoption fails or when children who are in foster care get moved to a different placement or reunited with their birth family, there is a grieving process. And a lot of times, just like with, you know, miscarriages and things like that, these, the emotions, the grief associated with not having that child in your life anymore is minimized. So it's important to recognize your feelings that surround that and remember grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. There are a lot of freaking feelings that go along with grief, and it's important to acknowledge those. And termination of parental rights is something that sometimes happens when a parent is perceived to be incapable of parenting their children. A lot of times it happens as a result of abuse or severe neglect. Those are the only reasons I can think it happens. But in these cases, the parent is going to grieve. The parent loves that child. They may not be able to take care of themselves very well right now. They may not be able have the ability to be good parents right now. But it doesn't mean they don't love their child. It may mean that they've got too much mental health or addiction stuff or other things going on and their ability to function is completely overwhelmed, but they still love their child and it still hurts when their child is put in foster Care or their parental rights are permanently terminated. Graduation and life changes. Youth who graduate high school and move on to college grieve. And I know you're thinking, well, that is the most exciting time of your life. Well, yeah, but it's also terrifying to leave all of the people that you've grown up with, all of the friends that you've made, because a lot of times you don't go to the same university and start fresh. So there's going to be a grief process. Your routine, that routine is disrupted again. You don't have mom doing your laundry and cooking your dinner anymore. So those things can be very overwhelming. You're closing a chapter on a part of your life and that has to be grieved or allowed to be grieved. Life changes. Even a life change that's a good change, like getting married or having a baby, they may be things that you really want, but that means you're also sacrificing other aspects of your life, if nothing else, your time. So some people may have to grieve the loss that goes along with the blessing. Retirement can also often needs to be grieved. You may think, oh, I can't wait till I retire. Well, yeah, that might be something you're looking forward to, but you'll lose your routine and you lose interaction with all of those people you used to work with. So a lot of people find that retirement. There is a grieving process that they go through afterwards. And sometimes if you're working at a place, I remember there was one place I worked at for 14 years. And as people moved on, some died, some retired. Each time they were lost from our work family, there was a grieving process that had to take place. And it's important to recognize that retirement, again, although we're happy for the person, we also will miss them and we may grieve the loss of their presence. Friends moving away, same sort of thing. Even though we can stay in contact through, you know, Zoom or FaceTime or whatever they're using. Whenever you're watching this video, when people are not able to meet up for coffee or go hiking or do things that you used to do together, there is loss. And it's important to recognize that virtual connection is not the same as in person connection, especially if you used to do stuff with the person. If you used to just sit on the couch and talk, it may be less impactful. But if it was somebody you used to go shopping with or take your kids to the park or do whatever, you can't do that in the same way. And that can be something that needs to be grieved because your relationship is going to change. So you're grieving the metamorphosis. You're grieving the change in that relationship. When a loved one has Alzheimer's, you may grieve that. The person with Alzheimer's may grieve the loss of functioning and have anticipatory grief related to what they expect to happen because of the Alzheimer's or the Parkinson's or whatever neurodegenerative disorder they may have. But it's also something that is grieved by the loved ones because we want our elders, we want our family to be happy and healthy. Well, once the Alzheimer's starts setting in, there are going to be significant changes. We also know that when dementia sets in, regardless of what's causing it, the person with dementia starts losing some of their memories. And we can feel the loved ones may grieve the fact that we don't have the same connection with that person anymore because they don't recognize us or they don't remember us. And that can be devastating to people, even though intellectually you know what's going on and it's not the person's fault. It's not that they didn't love you, yada yada, but the fact remains, when you go to see your aunt or your mom or your grandma or father or whomever and they don't recognize you, it is devastating. And people need to be able to acknowledge that hurt and process it. Again, we understand why. Logically, we understand why, but we still need to be able to acknowledge and process the emotions. We've already talked about lockdowns and normalcy. The inability to say goodbye or get closure is something that needs to be grieved. For a lot of people, not only, especially during the pandemic, did they lose loved ones, but they weren't able to say goodbye. They weren't able to go to the funeral, they weren't able to be in the hospital room with them those last days. And that has caused immense amounts of guilt and grief and lingering grief and disenfranchised grief for a lot of people who are. And their feelings are minimized. And a lot of times they're told, well, you did the best that you could do, or, you know, there was nothing else you could do. You need to get over it. That person understood, blah, blah, blah. Well, maybe all those things are true, but it doesn't change what I feel. It still hurts and I still feel guilty. So it's Important that I'm able to process that. Sometimes we have disenfranchised grief because there's a death that is not grieved per cultural standards. Somebody that you shouldn't care about, like a classmate, a mentor, a patient. I remember one time in my first job out of grad school, there was a patient that I had and, you know, long story short, he didn't show up for two weeks. And, you know, I did a follow up to find out, you know, what was going on. And turns out he had suddenly died of stomach cancer. And I felt like somebody had punched me in the gut. And nobody in my office could really understand why. That hit me out of the clear blue. But it felt to me like a failure. I felt like I failed him in some way. And that was something that, you know, eventually I learned to process. But it's important to not be confined by who society says you should grieve the loss of. And sometimes, you know, unfortunately, the bass player for ZZ Top just died today. And we've had other deaths in. You know, celebrities die all the time, just like regular people do. But a lot of times celebrity deaths are tied to memories of other people who have died. You know, my mom used to love ZZ Top, and my mother is no longer with us. So when I hear that ZZ Topp died, it reminds me of my mother's death. Kind of opens that wound again. So it's important to recognize transference grief as well and acknowledge it and validate it. There were a couple other people that died of the same thing that my mother did. And those hit me really hard. Not because, you know, I even knew those people, the celebrities that died of it, but because it reminded me again of my mother's death. So it's important to recognize that sometimes we may feel this overwhelming wave of grief and we're not sure where it's coming from, look back and say, is this opening up an old wound? That maybe I'm still grieving because grief, in my perception, is always with us. You know, I will always miss my parents, but each day, you know, I'm able to do things and, you know, I go through the initial grieving process, but there will be times probably for the rest of my life that I will have moments of melancholy or grief bursts when I reflect on them not being here. And that is normal. And we need to acknowledge for people that sometimes grief doesn't ever completely go away. We miss those people. We miss whatever it is we're grieving. Patient relapse. Now, obviously this is one that's more pertinent for people in health or behavioral health fields, but it also can be pertinent for people who are in support groups and addiction programs like 12 Steps. When someone relapses, it can be devastating because we see their sober self going away and their addicted self reemerging. For the professionals, we might also see it as a failure because we were not able to help the person find sustained recovery. And we may have to grieve our failure in that however much of a part of it or not a part of it we had. It's important to acknowledge the feelings and you know, you will see this in I'm watching Chicago Med right now. I just started watching that series and I see this in the doctors on Chicago Med repeatedly, where their past failures, their past traumas, inability to save people, results in a disenfranchised grief process and finally loss of culture. And it could be because of immigration or it could be as society changes, our culture changes. And people who are baby boomers, the world is very different today than it was then. And they often lament, they often grieve. You know what, the loss of the culture that they grew up in, the culture that they felt comfortable in. And it's important to allow them to work through that grief process. What are the effects of disenfranchised grief? Well, as with any stressor HPA axis activation, the activation of that fight or flight mode that anger, anxiety, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Anger and depression are both indications that that HPA axis is activated. Sleep changes well, when you're in fight or flight mode, you're not going to sleep as well. When your mind is racing and you've got grief thoughts and emotions flooding your brain, you're not going to sleep well. The poorer your sleep, the more activated that HPA axis becomes, the higher your levels of anxiety and tendency to emotionally dysregulate. Appetite changes and increased pain also result from neurochemical alterations as a result of that HPA axis activation and circadian rhythm disruption. When you're not sleeping well, your circadian rhythms get disrupted and the secretion of major hormones gets out of whack. And as cortisol stays up, pain becomes more of a problem. So the longer you're stressed, the more pain you feel affectively and cognitively, you may be angry, depressed. Remember, the core feature of depression is hopeless and hopeless. When we're grieving, a lot of times we've experienced a loss of something we can't get back, and there's A sense of hopelessness and helplessness. It makes sense. Invalidation is another feeling in disenfranchised grief because people are telling you to look at the bright side or buck up or get over it instead of acknowledging the importance and the validity of your emotions. Some people will just numb right up because it's not safe. They don't feel safe to experience their feelings. Some people will question themselves or feel guilty for grieving. They'll feel guilty that they're devoting energy to grieving. This because people tell them they shouldn't be bothered by it. They may deprive themselves of the ability to process their grief. They tell themselves they shouldn't be bothered by it, they shouldn't grieve it. This is, you know, you're making a big deal out of nothing. So instead of mindfully acknowledging that grief and processing it, they just package it up and shove it back somewhere and hope it never emerges again. Which can lead to concentration difficulties, sleep changes, HPA axis activation, emotional dysregulation, anger, anxiety, all. All of those contribute to concentration difficulties and memory problems. Environmentally, people often feel a lack of a sense of safety. Now, maybe they don't feel physically unsafe. It depends on the loss. But they may feel emotionally unsafe because it's not safe to tell anybody what they're feeling, because every time they do, they get judged or their feelings get minimized. They may develop sensory hypervigilance. When we don't process our grief, then those triggers that remind us of whatever we're grieving become so much more potent and so much more poignant. So smells, sights, sounds can become a lot more intense for people and can trigger a strong grief wave. For example, somebody who's had a miscarriage, if they hear a baby crying or see a baby on tv, that can trigger a grief reaction because they are acutely aware of that, where for other people, they just kind of half notice it. But the person who is still dealing with this grief that they haven't been able to process, it just opens that wound right up. And relationally, when people feel disenfranchised, they tend to isolate or withdraw and stop trusting people because they've made themselves vulnerable and they've been hurt, they've been invalidated, they've been disenfranchised. So they decide, you know what? Okay, fine, nobody gets me, nobody understands me. So they tend to withdraw and not be willing to even try to process it with others. People need to grieve, but what conditions do they need to grieve? And, you know, I make this analogy. A larva is an organism that needs to create a cocoon of safety while it transforms in order to enter the next phase of its life. That's really what we need for grief. We need to create a safe cocoon where we can transform that grief and emerge a butterfly. So what does larvas stand for? Love. Unconditional love. We need people in our life who love us for who we are and they're there for us. We need awareness. We need to be mindfully aware of how we feel and the things that we are grieving. We need. R stands for reflective guidance. We need people we can talk to. They're not going to tell us how to feel, but they're going to reflect our feelings. So we hear back. You know, they're a sounding board that we can use to process our emotions. We need validation. They don't have to agree with us. They may feel like we're overreacting, but that doesn't matter. They say, I can see how much this hurts you right now. Validation of those emotions. We need acceptance of our authenticity, which kind of goes along with validation. But authenticity is more than just saying, I can see how much you, you're hurting. It is allowing people to be authentic in their experience. So when they're grieving, if they want to cry, we accept it. If they want to laugh, we accept it. We are accepting of their authentic presentation of how they feel and they need support while they embrace the pain of the loss and the search for meaning. So we need to continue to be there, being loving, helping them remain mindful, providing reflective guidance and validation and acceptance of them as they are disenfranchised. Grief mantras My feelings are valid. Death is not the only loss to be grieved. My loss is valid and only I can determine how important or unimportant this loss is for me. Disenfranchised grief denies people the ability to grieve by minimizing their loss or criticizing their grief process. Unprocessed grief causes psychological, trauma and stress related physiological symptoms.