A neighbor said to me last week: “You’ve been in this for a long time now. You need to flip a switch. If you don’t snap out of this sadness, you’re not going to have any friends.”

This person has a profound misunderstanding of the grief process. Divorce equals loss. There’s the loss of the marriage, the loss of the dream, and the loss of the spouse, which means we’re losing the primary “loved one” in our lives.

When there are profound losses like this in our lives, we suffer grief. Unlike an actual death where there is a prescribed ritual to mourn the loss, with divorce there is no such ritual in our culture, which means your family and friends may not acknowledge your grief process.

The important thing for the person going through the grief to know, and for family and friends to know, is that grief lasts as long as it lasts. The grief process is normal and necessary. How long it lasts is different for everyone and NO ONE SHOULD PASS JUDGMENT ON HOW WELL YOU ARE COPING OR HOW LONG YOU ARE TAKING TO GO THROUGH THE GRIEF PROCESS!!!

I am trying to do my divorce right by trying my best to go through the stages, to not skirt around the anger, the grief, the fear, the mourning. As part of my attempts to do this, I am taking the Fisher Divorce Rebuilding program. I am finding it worth while and the things I am learning from it are what I am sharing in this post.

In this program we are told over and over again that we must GO THROUGH each stage if we truly want to heal and truly move on in the most healthy way possible. After my neighbor passed judgment on how long I had been feeling grief/sadness/depression, I asked the facilitator of this program Jeannine Lee, whether there was “something wrong with me” because I have been experiencing these feelings for the past year. She said: “It is clear that your neighbor doesn’t understand the grief process. You don’t tell grief when to stop. It tells you.”

So no, you cannot “just flip a switch” and if you forcibly try to stop the anger or grief stages, you are doing yourself a disservice because those feelings will bite you in the butt later if you’ve not properly processed them.

Along those lines, what is the difference between grief and depression? Before I took the Fisher Divorce Rebuilding program I couldn’t tell the difference. I mentioned to my doctor last winter that I might be depressed. She had me take a test which actually showed that I wasn’t technically “depressed.” She felt though, that I had some anxiety. She wrote me a prescription for an anxiety medication. I filled it but I never took it. I am glad now that I didn’t take it. I have subsequently learned that anti-anxiety meds are very addicting and particularly hard to come off of. I have also learned that grief is a healthy response to a loss and that going through it serves a purpose and that it’s best NOT to mask the symptoms with anti-depressants.

A few people in my life encouraged me to take anti-depressants at various times in the past year. They, like me, were not informed about the differences between grief and depression. I chose not to take any meds because I am afraid of them. Bottom line for me is that I just cannot find it in myself to trust that type of medication.

And now, as I look into the grief process I read things like this:

“If you are grieving, you may experience a number of depressive symptoms, such as frequent crying, profound sadness, and depressed mood. However, while major depression is categorized as a psychological disorder, grief is not. Grief is a normal and healthy response to bereavement, not an illness. Its symptoms are painful, but they serve an adaptive purpose.

The American Psychiatric Association states that, as a general rule, normal grief does not warrant the use of antidepressants. While medication may alleviate some of the symptoms of grief, it cannot treat the cause, which is the loss itself. Furthermore, by numbing the pain that must be worked through eventually, antidepressants delay the mourning process.”
Taken from:
http://www.helpguide.org/mental/grief_loss.htm

In conclusion, I understand that I have been in the grief process for the past year and I understand that I will not remain in this stage. I know I have a bright future where I’ll feel strong and whole and grounded and positive. I know I am not there yet but I am OK with my process. In fact I am proud of myself. I appreciate that I am doing it without anti-depressants, I appreciate that I am not jumping right into another relationship which would only serve as a band-aide in order to not feel the grief. I appreciate that I joined the Fisher Divorce Rebuilding program and that I am approaching the divorce as a personal growth process.

And with regards to the neighbor’s judgmental approach, which sparked this post, I’d like to acknowledge that I have a lot of friends who know how to be truly supportive. Particularly friends who have been through divorce and who didn’t jump into the “band-aide solution”, understand and completely accept my process. Additionally, other friends who have done a lot of personal growth work and who believe in experiencing emotions have also been very supportive.

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