Coping with Non-Death Losses
Acknowledging our feelings when confronted by non-death losses or setbacks is crucial to eventually rebuilding a meaningful life.
Image by Rosy / Bad Homburg / Germany from Pixabay
I’ll never forget my sense of dread as I approached the interim provost’s office for a meeting that had no announced agenda. That kind of meeting is never good news, and this one lived up to my expectation.
“I’m sorry,” the interim provost began, “but this isn’t working out any longer. We need you to resign. If you decide not to do so, you will be terminated involuntarily and immediately.”
As dean of graduate studies, I had my differences with the new senior administration, including the president. I had worked hard with colleagues to propose new programs and revisions of existing programs that would continue to increase enrollment, improve quality, and produce more revenue for the college.
They wanted none of that. They wanted me to drop all such plans and cut the amount of compensation that we were paying to attract well-qualified adjunct faculty to teach at the graduate level. They had also changed the internal accounting rules to assign new expenses to my budget, thereby making it look like my division was operating in the red.
To be sure, I had four more years to go on a five-year letter of appointment and positive performance reviews in my file. All that meant nothing to the new administrators.
So, I accepted their severance offer and resigned. I also set myself up for several years of regret, anger, depression, and loss of self-esteem. In other words, I was grieving – deeply – although no one had died.
As I mentioned in my post on Grieving Death, we normally recognize grief as an appropriate response to someone’s dying. It is a process through which we all must go, some more gracefully than others. Grief for the death of a loved one – parent, spouse, child, friend, colleague – usually involves an emotional process, often with the help of ritual and support from others, intended to repair the disruption of our worldview and reestablish some degree of meaning or purpose in our lives.
Non-death losses often lead to anxiety, depression, and reduced self-esteem. They include loss of job or career, relationship disruptions, health issues, loss of home or property due to traumatic events, and unfulfilled dreams or goals. You name it, and I’ve experienced it.
Relationship Disruption
I suppose everyone has lost friends over major or minor disputes. Divorce, however, is much more serious.
I’ll spare you the details of my divorces (out of respect for others involved), but I can describe my sense of profound sadness and disappointment in myself accompanied by flashes of anger.
You see, people in my family did not get divorced. Every one of my close relatives – parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents – stayed with their respective spouses until death parted them. My parents and others remained married more than 50 years.
So, right off the bat, I branded myself as a failure at being unable to succeed at the most basic relationship that I ever had. I also failed to maintain a stable home and environment for my daughter. I told myself that she was better off than she would have been if her mother and I had stayed together. But I’m not at all sure of that.
Not realizing the personal toll emotionally, I made things worse by withdrawing from friends and not seeking my family’s support. Living alone, I slid into profound depression. Moving to a new job in a different state helped a little. But I was bereft of familiar surroundings and people. I no longer trusted my own judgment about even casual relationships.
Recommendation: if you undergo a divorce or disruption of a significant relationship, seek help. Let other close friends or family know what is going on with you emotionally. If you don’t tell them, they might not realize what’s happening to you. If you don’t want to burden family or friends, seek help through therapy. Above all, do not rely just on your own emotional resources.
Loss of Good Health
Losing good health can happen gradually or suddenly. Think chronic cardiovascular disease vs. heart attack.
Physiological changes can reduce mobility, increase pain or discomfort, and disrupt daily activities. These changes can also produce feelings of frustration, sadness, or fear of the future – all markers of significant grief.
Fortunately, my own health issues have involved chronic conditions rather than sudden, traumatic events. (I have written extensively about these issues in other posts on Elder Vibes). In general, my health was endangered as I got older by a diet that contained gluten, too much sugar, and inflammatory-inducing lectins. My wife has helped me to reverse these negative trends so that I am now in reasonably better health than I was 20 years ago.
During the past few years, I have learned from experience and the research of others how closely our mental and emotional well-being is connected to our physical health. Indeed, the two interact and influence one another more than I ever considered possible.
Recommendation: be sure to monitor indicators of chronic medical conditions closely. Pay attention to blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and overall strength, energy, and balance. If problems begin to emerge, address them sooner rather than later. And don’t fool yourself into thinking that your mental state is utterly separate from your physical health. If you experience chronic or acute health challenges, be sure to address your emotional and psychological situation. Tell others what you are feeling. Get professional help for these problems.
Loss of Home or Possessions
Recently, in western North Carolina, the beautiful area surrounding Asheville and the Smokey Mountains was devastated by Hurricane Helene. Because of the hilly terrain, flooding and mudslides destroyed entire towns and thousands of homes. It has taken months to begin restoring basic services and helping survivors rebuild.
Those who watched their homes float away or be destroyed lost everything of physical value: shelter, furniture, vehicles, photographs, memories. Billions of dollars have already been spent, and billions more will be needed to restore life to resemble what it once was.
And then, during the past few weeks, people who had just built new homes and had begun to live normally again were devastated by wildfires that overran the region. For many, it amounted to a double trauma.
My experience of such a loss was not as sudden or completely traumatic as that. Nevertheless, I deeply miss our home in Connecticut where we lived for 16 years. Even though it made some sense to eliminate the financial drain that owning our home had caused, my wife and I still grieve (there’s no other word!) over the loss of control, the larger living space, and the general ambiance that we had established. We often remark that we’ll never get that back.
In my earlier post on Downsizing, I have already described the effects of having to discard books, mementoes, and other sentimentally important items. No matter how well my wife decorates our current quarters (and she is truly wonderful at that), we will never overcome this particular void.
Recommendation: coping with this kind of loss must be done in a way that is appropriate to individual circumstances. Nevertheless, it is very important to acknowledge your grief and to express it to friends, family, and anyone else who will listen.
Loss of Dreams or Expectations
This kind of loss occurs when dreams (vocational or personal) go unfulfilled. Simply, we find it impossible to become the person we want to be or to achieve what we intended.
When I lost my college administrative job, I actually experienced severe grief. Although I had achieved the goal of becoming an administrator and at succeeding at the job, I was unable to achieve the ambitious dreams that I had for my program. I felt that I had let down my colleagues, our students, and myself all at once.
I have had other experiences of this kind of loss, but this was the most significant and severe. I still have dreams about it at night, none of them good.
Psychologists often point out that this kind of loss results in what they call cognitive dissonance – the gap between what one dreams as a goal and the level of achievement (or lack of achievement) of that goal. If that is your situation, they say, you have two basic options: (1) try harder to achieve your goal, or (2) adjust your expectations to bring them into line with what you can realistically achieve.
However logical such advice is, I find that it does not touch the reality of grief. While I agree that you must sometimes change course and pursue different goals, you should not overlook or ignore your feelings about doing so.
When I determined that I would never be able to work in higher education again (no institution will hire someone my age), I pursued other activities, including this newsletter. (If you are moved to do so, please upgrade to a paid subscription!) The point is to find something that provides some meaning and purpose for living even if that does not include the same meaning or status that you previously enjoyed.
Recommendation: when you can’t fulfill your dreams, find a purpose that you can fulfill. And remember to acknowledge your grief – to yourself and others. That’s why writing this has been cathartic.
A Final Observation
As people try to cope with the material and social dislocations caused by the current national regime, we should expect the number of persons who grieve over non-death losses to increase drastically.
The disruptions that affect us all will produce all the feelings commonly associated with grief. Along with family, friends, colleagues, and strangers, we must find ways to support one another to rebuild meaning and purpose in our lives, both individually and collectively.
Normally, this kind of political observation would be inappropriate here. But these are exceptional times that call for exceptional, courageous, empathetic responses from all.