Using Curiosity to Navigate Grief
Using Curiosity to Navigate Grief
You’re crying again. It’s been months since your loss. Why do you still feel this way? Shouldn’t you be able to get through a week without losing hours and even days to this spiraling sadness?
Frustrated, you pull up “Stages of Grief” on your phone. There they are: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Denial and Bargaining went pretty fast. Depression seemed to go on forever. You’ve mostly been too tired to feel Anger, and you’ve blocked it when it has come up here and there. You shouldn’t be angry; it was for the best for everyone involved. There’s no reason to be angry. You thought you’d hit Acceptance and could mostly be done.
Don’t they say “time heals all wounds?” How much time? Why do you keep going back to Depression if you’ve already hit Acceptance? What’s wrong with you, and how do you fix it?
Death, a universal and inevitable part of the human experience, prompts a complex range of emotions and challenges. There are many ways people deal with loss, but sometimes navigating the grief itself is overwhelming and confusing. What if, instead of seeing our continued struggle with grief as a failing, or an inability to move on, we just observed and explored it?
If we’re curious about something, we wonder, we ask questions, and we’re open to a whole range of answers. Whether facing the loss of a loved one or dealing with the death of a challenging relationship, curiosity becomes a guiding light. It can help us navigate relationships, seek support that is uniquely helpful for us, foster self-discovery, and, ultimately, embrace healing and closure.
In my last blog we explored the complexity and unpredictability of grief. It can affect us in so many different ways, and is seldom linear. Grief (in all its famous stages) can hit us at the most unexpected moments, which can be disconcerting if we’re not expecting it. Approaching our healing with curiosity invites us to explore our grief without judgment and appreciate the uniqueness of our own journey.
Navigating relationships
Last week we talked about the stress death can put on relationships. It can have a ripple effect on families and communities which can lead to conflict and divisions. How can we approach these relationships from a curiosity perspective? Mostly, we need a genuine desire to understand and learn from the experiences of others. This non-judgment encourages open and honest communication, which lets individuals express their unique experiences with their emotions in these difficult times.
By practicing empathy, using active listening techniques, and being open-minded to others’ experiences, we can create a supportive environment. Being curious about how grief is affecting individuals and our interactions with them can help us be compassionate and connected instead of divided. This can lead to more complete healing and a stronger community to lean on.
Seeking Support
There are so many ways we can seek support to help us navigate our loss. Leaning on family or social support networks, therapy and counseling, or attending support groups focused on grief are very helpful for some people. Others find more purpose and healing in things like physical activity, volunteer work, creative expression, or establishing meaningful rituals. Some people may even need to establish more social and emotional boundaries to give themselves more quiet and space to prioritize self-care. None of these approaches are wrong. Since everyone’s grief is unique, everyone’s healing is also unique.
Being curious about our healing journey can help us identify the tools that will be most effective for our individual needs. Sometimes we might need to try a few things before we find something that feels like it fits in the empty spaces of loss and provides even a small sense of relief and healing. These small blessings can bring back and even enhance the enjoyment of life.
We may even find redemption and meaning in healing our past wounds—and discover that as we move forward, life is a much richer experience.
Fostering Self-Discovery
In the aftermath of death, we often find ourselves grappling with an array of emotions, questioning our own responses and seeking meaning in the face of loss. Curiosity becomes a valuable tool for self-discovery, prompting us to ask questions about our emotions, thoughts, and reactions. Making sense of what we’re feeling should help us understand our reactions and process things better.
If we’re struggling with grief more than we expected, here are some questions we might try asking ourselves:
Are there situations or things that are triggering these reactions? Why?
Do I have beliefs challenged by this experience?
What aspects of this loss resonate most deeply with me?
How has this experience changed my perspective on life and death?
If our loss involves someone with whom we had a challenging relationship, there may also be conflicting emotions. We may feel relief, guilt, or a mixture of both. Curiosity invites us to explore these emotions without judgment, asking ourselves probing questions about the nature of the relationship and the impact of the loss. Curiosity becomes a tool for unpacking the layers of a complicated relationship, allowing us to see why our emotions might be so complex.
We might ask:
What aspects of the relationship were most challenging?
How did this person shape my identity and experiences?
What can we do to explore the answers to these questions, and give them the attention or processing they might need? The process of self-discovery can uncover so many clues and pathways for us to explore, and can help us understand our grief better.
Embracing Healing and Closure
Our overall goal here is to be able to understand ourselves and our reactions better, and to help the process be more gentle. Curiosity about our grief can help us navigate it. Removing judgment and expectations from our experience can help soften our reactions and help us be more patient with ourselves. Being able to offer the same open-mindedness to others’ grief can help us understand them better and ease resentment or frustration. In embracing curiosity, we can find a path towards self-discovery, understanding, and, ultimately, peace.
Remember, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with death or loss, and we can all find a combination of strategies that work best for us. It's crucial to allow ourselves the time and space needed to navigate the grieving process at a pace that feels right. Just because we’re not “over it yet” doesn’t mean anything is wrong, but using some of these strategies can help.
If you’d like to talk more about how curiosity can help you be more prepared for grief, or you need support dealing with unhealed grief, please come chat with me during my free office hours on Facebook every 2nd and 4th Saturday at 11 AM MST.