There is a dumb part of me that wants to believe, "Oh, he probably faked his death to get out of debt." He was such a schemer, if anyone would, he would. It was an open casket funeral. I know he is dead.
It's not a disorder. I just have mental pathways built that lead to a person who was integral to my life for many years, a person who does not exist on this plane anymore. I want him back in my life. Death is just difficult.
He was a genuine source of both encouragement and constructive criticism the likes I have had not had before or since. I miss you, Meka.
I was very young, only 7, but my cousin, who was 15 at the time, spent years searching for him, convinced the body had been misidentified. Later, when I grew older, I also went through the phase of thinking, "He was too smart and strong for that. Maybe he ran away somehow."
I still miss that guy, though.
I don’t believe, completely in the narrative of American men not taking stuff out, but it is a factor. The underlying issue for not talking stuff out is ensuring you feel understood. That you are not alone in this experience. That grief is okay, normal. That you have been taught a life philosophy that encompasses grief. That it can exist without consuming all. It helps anchor these powerful emotions. There are other ways to achieve this, everyone will have their own strategies. I do think you have to have a philosophy and process to handle grief however you do it.
I believe in acknowledging grief and practicing Stoic style thinking to stay present. It really helps me to acknowledge the moment is precious. Wrenching on a car with a buddy. Sitting at the dinner table with your family. Acknowledge how special that is. That it won’t last forever. Cannot. Tell them and yourself how special it is. Visualize life without that moment anymore. Bring a little grief to the every day and present as a part of our human condition. It is okay! It is not spoiling the moment if you are using that emotion to fully experience the present.
Grief as many people experience and process it is almost always the past. Even simply acknowledging it as the powerful force in our mind can help tame it. Observe the grief so to speak, see it as an observer. I am glad you found your way. Everyone should think about grief and talk about it. Just part of us.
I suppose the principle still holds: the "love" I have for those versions of those people cannot go anywhere, but that feels dissonant with not wanting to know these people as they are, or knowing the relationship I'm wishing for is otherwise ill-fated. In either case, the relationship cannot continue, and that drive the sense of grief anyway, so maybe I'm just splitting hairs.
Such is the complex nature of grief and of human relationships, I suppose.
They never fought at all. There was zero conflict. It wasn't that they just "hid it from the kids"—there was simply nothing to fight about. They were truly each other's very best friend, and intensely so. My dad tried dating again a few years after her death, but I think he soon realized there was no way anyone could capture the kind of companionship he had with my mom. Some people are able to love more than one partner over the course of their life; I think he decided he could not.
He's a very private person, but I know he constantly thinks about her every day, and I suspect he's pushing off retirement because he doesn't want to be at home without her. They would have just hit their 40th anniversary if she were still alive.
I would guess her grief is not "disordered" though. As she says she functions - she works, she looks after her child, she looks after herself.
> We medicalize grief because we fear it.
Absolutely right. There is a certain cowardice in how we deal with death in the contemporary west.
>> Absolutely right. There is a certain cowardice in how we deal with death in the contemporary west.
I never thought about it but it likely stems from loss of religion, like many other problems. If I see my life as insignificant in the chain of generations - as a conduit between ancestors and descendants - and believe in the soul at least as a metaphor - then personal death or that of others is sad, but is in the context of a deeply meaningful existence.
On the other hand, if I am closer to atheistic hedonism/nihilism - there's nothing else but me and my thoughts and experiences, then my existence or non-existence takes on a very heavy weight - and we project that onto others.
Not having "answers" to what comes next has never been a weight for me - at least not since I was a child. Death being a completion, or a finality, is freeing; The end of what has been and what I hope continues to be a wonderful journey. The only weight I carry in regards to death are for those closest to me, and especially those for whom I'm responsible.
I think the way we deal with death nowadays has more to do with arrogance or hubris, coupled with wishful thinking. We're used to thinking we control things, and can get anything we want. One thing useful from the religions was having a healthy sense of your own limitations, or you could say a sense of wonder or mystery or perspective. A reminder that you're not the most powerful thing in the universe. Which is true, and healthy to be aware of, whether any god exists or not.
Edit to add: There are few places where that hubris and certainty tend to be more pronounced than among doctors. Part of what this woman is grieving is probably the loss of certainty, of control or the illusion thereof.
If anything, I find religious people are the ones who believe humans are special.
Someone always rocks up to say this in these threads, and then never actually offers any suggestions of what they think an alternative should look like.
It's in the same vein as people who complain no one ever talks about serious subjects, and I'm just wondering why they think I want to get into discussing the meaning of life in the workplace cafeteria.
Seriously, what is the alternative meant to be? A celebration of death? Constantly reminding people that everyone will die and you'll be forgotten completely in about 3 generations? Why focus on the inevitable rather then actually living?
It's a broad observation about culture - there's no "alternative" to a well-established culture, no single forum comment will change society.
> Seriously, what is the alternative meant to be? ... Constantly reminding people that everyone will die and you'll be forgotten completely in about 3 generations?
I think you're on to something here; there's an inherent conflict between ruthless individualism that tells people they can do anything they put their mind to, and the stark, limiting reality of mortality. That's a bummer, so don't think or talk about it, or it'll mess with your grindset.
Collectivist cultures already embraces the idea that one's life is more than just about the individual, so grief and talking about death are far less radioactive. Religions that embrace ancestral spirits being presence offer comfort in continuity; her husband isn't really gone, and he may even watch ober their daughter, and even help her in math exams. In that light, dying is less of a big deal - more of a transition really - compared to oblivion, which is super heavy. I'm not saying these are better
+ Yes, allowing people to have a celebration goodbye party before they go
+ Allowing for medically assisted dying on a person's own terms
+ More open conversations about: directives, how people would like to be treated when they near death, wills, inheritances, funerals. These are all taboo topics
+ A natural part of life
In a less morbid area, I feel the same way about ADHD - "attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder". For some people this is problematic, but others can function fine and happily with this.
In those cases, why is it a "disorder"? Why can't it just be "how some people are"?
We didn't have much of a relationship. He had friends, but never close ones. He was weirdly mean or weirdly seclusive or weirdly awkward at times - and also incredibly intelligent and occasionally gracious and hilarious.
After he passed, I wondered if he might have been somewhere on the spectrum - but his peculiarities were simply ignored. A poor boy, in a poor urban neighborhood, with a dead father, being raised by an immigrant mother and immigrant siblings doesn't get diagnosed with much of anything - if they see doctors at all. And hey, he had a near photographic memory, and did great in school, so what's there to worry about?
It's always been "how he was", and that's probably ok, but I do wonder if he would have had a better or somehow different life if he knew more about _why_ he was the way he was.
It often is:
> It can be helpful to think of ADHD not just as a deficit or disorder but as a ‘difference’.
Especially as it seems to come with positive traits! It goes on to list focus, responding well in a crisis and creativity as common ADHD traits.
https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/mental-illnesses-and...
I guess your point is why does it require a label at all but science abhors a taxonomic vacuum, everything must be classified and if so I'd rather it be a disorder than a disease or illness.
Of course this opinion is just mine, I have no idea how other autistic or adhd people see this as I don't keep up with the neurodiverse community and what words are considered good or bad.
In that case I would say it’s not ADHD, which as its name suggests is disordered. If the ADH part isn’t negatively impacting your life why would it require a diagnosis?
This isn’t really your point, but this person lost their husband at 40. By some definitions, that is middle aged. In the general view of things, not young. That doesn’t really change much, but I was thinking of a mid-twenties before I realized who it was.
> Absolutely right. There is a certain cowardice in how we deal with death in the contemporary west.
This is one of my favourite topics.
I had forgotten to bring "cowardice" to the table when thinking about death (etc) I've mostly thought of it as some kind if vague unspecified fear, thank you for injecting this word and concept into my jumble of thoughts.
I've been using "dignity" to try and make my thoughts more clear, but cowardice clearly has a place at the table too.
When thinking about suicide I have thought of that way to die as potentially needing bravery (as in being able to do something you fear).
The topic of death is dear to me me not only for personal reasons but I also think this relates to quite a few aspects of our societies and not only the obvious ones like how (if we can afford it) seem to overtreat people medically rather than give them proper palliative care and their close ones time and space to be there at this grand moment in life, that death ultimately is :)
It feels weird to use words like: bravery, cowardice, dignity and fear, they feel like from another era, possibly only a fictional era of knights, damsels and dragons.
And somehow I sense that that feeling of weirdness somehow is connected to the medicalisation of "everything" and also our longer work hours and expected increased efficiency. As if we hide and disallow the big important things in life only then will we agree to work the way we do.
But then in the other hand we can cure a lot of disease and I can type this on a tiny screen keyboard and post this to the internet, so...
I don't know, I only know that there is something wrong with death.
We also stigmatize mental health care in the west, telling people to “suck it up” or “get over it”. So our money spending usually doesn’t direct us to a more helpful path.
I often wonder how dealing with death compares to the east where ancestors are commonly remembered, contemplated, and revered.
I think this idea is ~10 years out of date. If anything, we now seem pathologize every behavior and personality quirk into a mental health issue. At least on social media, it's also trendy to have a mental health issue to the point that people will claim to have ADHD because they're easily distracted by their phones. I've also lost count of the number of big "content creators" who casually mention their therapist or going to therapy. If there is a stigma, it's not found among the younger generations.
I also think its not a simple east-west divide. Different cultures have many different ways of dealing with death. The contemporary west does have a problem, although i doubt it is the only culture for which that is true.
My family follows a mix of Christian tradition (e.g. memorial masses) and Sri Lankan (e.g. donations of food in memory of the dead).
In what way is this not western as well? Implying that western culture does not remember, contemplate, and revere those that have gone before us is a bad take.
I think that's backwards. I think the problem is that we, the general populace, fear medicalization. The medicalization of grief specifically or other emotional issues generally is unrelated.
These sorts of diagnosis criteria are created for a reason. I highly doubt psychiatric medical practitioners are developing them to pack people up into bins so that they can be marginalized. They create these criteria to be able to have a shared language to speak about issues and try to develop treatment regimens.
And it's not their fault that the lay population takes it out of context and screams, "NO NO NO! I'M NOT BROKEN!" It's that reaction that is the problem. That reaction that, "someone who fits this criteria is by-definition broken", with "and broken people are irredemable" followed closely behind. It belies a belief that they feel this way about other people, too.
The truth is, everyone deals with issues that would fit some criteria in the DSM-5. It's just part of the human condition. Some people are able to manage these issues on their own and some people are not, and that doesn't make them broken anymore than the fact that some people can dunk a basketball and some cannot. But, if you're 5'9" and had a job to put a ball in a basket 10 feet off the ground, wouldn't you want to focus on learning to shoot rather than try techniques you've observed 6'9" people use with ease?
It's because we have a dearth of true elders right now.
Not in age, but in temperament and learning.
I got interested in story telling during COVID and managed to find a great author (K.M. Weiland) that went in deep on the archetypes of story.
Her hook was essentially: "What happens after the Hero's Journey/happily ever after?" And then she got real deep on her idea of the 6 phases of life. Her work is properly about how to write a plot, but man does it apply more broadly.
The pertinent one here is the 'Crone' stage of life [0]. You're no longer the 'King' of your little fief, you had to give up the power and make way for the next generation. But now what?
The journey of the Crone is essentially learning that Death is a part of Life, that Death is not Evil, Death is a Friend.
K.M. Weiland admits that less and less people ever make it through the stages as you go along.
But, I think right now in the West, we have a lot of boomers that never really progressed past the Hero stage, let alone the Queen or King stages. There should be more Crone and Mage people around, but the boomers were retarded in their development. Just look at RBG, Feinstein and Pelosi (to name but a few), grappling on to power like the Tyrants or Sorceresses (strong shadow archetypes of the Queen and King) and never letting go, to the classical harm of the kingdom/hearth that such stories tell.
Facing Death is hard, very hard. But is something that we all must do. Realizing that Death is not Evil, but a part of life, and one to be welcomed at times, that is something that very few of us can do.
[0] https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/archetypal-chara...
I think we tend to react to being told there’s a diagnosis name for the thing we’re currently doing, but there are situations in which it is both absolutely normal, understandable, and expected that we behave in a way with the hallmarks of a particular pathology and also we are still behaving in that way and could probably use some support.
(On a more bureaucratic note, the other reason to have an actual DSM-recognized diagnosis is because the ghouls running insurance companies won’t cover counseling without it. Giving your therapist a DSM approved name to apply to your deep, life-impacting, and completely understandable grief means they have a better shot at convincing the claims department you actually do need help right now.)
The author is extremely talented at isolating certain feelings and making you feel them with her. I wouldn't use this article as a diagnosis of anything but her writing talent.
Again, my point is that that statement is absolutely true and also does not preclude the notion that additional professional help may be warranted.
I went on Prozac earlier this year after a conversation with my doctor that went, roughly: “I think you’ve got anxiety” “well yeah, look at the fucking world!” “…right.” Just because there’s a good reason for what you’re going through doesn’t mean you’re not going through it.
Put another way, if the author had been shot a year ago and was saying things like “most days I’m fine, but some days I literally cannot walk or feel my left arm,” the notion that they should be talking to professionals would not be controversial, even though their symptoms are absolutely utterly explicable given what they’ve been through.
And we cannot predict all of these future changes, either in our interests and/or the law.
"We don't want pilots with depression or anxiety, because duh obvious reasons" and there goes a career option for you. (something very like this happened to my cousin)
That seems more like an argument against corporate overreach than anything else.
I think this is just incorrect. You are not obligated to seek treatment for most medical problems[1]. The point of medicalizing something is to draw a line between situations where it would be too soon for medical professionals to step in and when people enter a situation where they may need external help. One of the diagnostic criteria, which this article mentions, is that your grief is disrupting your life - but despite what this article claims they have misunderstood that criteria. Of course grief changes your routines and life. That change only becomes "disruptive" if you feel the change has somehow gone too far or you are struggling to undo it. This writer is doing neither and therefor does not meet the diagnostic criteria for disordered grief. They are grieving normally and the medical literate supports that understanding.
There are of course medical professionals who use diagnostic criteria as cudgels. Trying to force people to become patients in order to enforce their idea of what someone "should" want. This is a problem but it is a problem that the official diagnostic guidelines try to avoid. For those who are interested in this kind of problem with our medical system might look into the professional philosophy of doctors (generally arrayed around identifying and curing disease) and nursing (generally arrayed around making the patient comfortable as possible). I tend to think the nursing model is the more useful and sensible of the two - even though, of course, if one wants to cure a disease a doctor is helpful.
[1] There are very few diseases, such as tuberculosis, where you can be forced to treat the disease.
The problem is that medical diagnoses and therapy speak have spilled over into common language where they’re so diluted that they’re not accurate any more. For many there is no line drawn anywhere because they are self-diagnosing based on flawed understandings as soon as any feeling or symptom arrives.
This is scarily obvious when I’ve worked with college students and early 20s juniors lately: A subset of them speak of everything human nature in medical and therapy speak. Common human experiences like being sad about something or having a tough day are immediately amplified into full-blown medical terms like “I’m having a depressive episode today” (which is gone by tomorrow). Being a little nervous about something is “I’m having a panic attack”. Remembering an unpleasant disagreement at work “gives me PTSD”. When they’re procrastinating a task that is fun “my ADHD is flaring up today”.
This is only a subset of people, but it’s a rapidly growing percentage of younger people I work with. When someone falls into this mindset it only grows: The same people using these terms usually accumulate a lot of different self-diagnoses to cover every element of common human experience: They will claim ADHD, social anxiety, often some variation of Autism despite showing none of the signs, PTSD due to a previous relationship/boss/professor they didn’t get along with, and insomnia or delayed sleep phase syndrome. Many will have no formal diagnosis at all or even proudly claim that they don’t trust the medical system, they’re just diagnosing themselves.
I’ve been offered helpful links to TikTok ADHD influencers to help me understand them, because that’s where they think the best information comes from. 20-something engineers confidently tell me they know more than their doctors about ADHD and how to treat it (usually after their doctor refuses to increase their dose of Adderall again or denies them some other controlled substance they think they need like ketamine or perpetual daily Xanax). There’s also a growing culture of casual drug abuse and misuse that gets justified as self-medication, but that’s a topic for another post.
Similar to how some people look at raw stats of autism diagnoses and think hugely more people are becoming autistic when in reality it's that we've got better at diagnosing autism; I think we (society, in at least some countries) have got better at being honest about mental health conditions. Meaning that more people, especially younger people who've grown up around less mental health stigma, will talk about having an actual genuine problem even without more diagnoses or more exaggeration. I think studies would be needed (that I'm not aware of) to figure out how many more people are using labels that don't really fit, vs how many more people are being honest about actual serious conditions.
When I was in my 20s, if I needed a day off work because of depression I would always use a bullshit excuse to avoid mentioning the actual reason. I don't any more, most of my colleagues know what issues I do or don't have. And the younger generations are starting from that place, rather than having to grow into it.
I guess we'll know when they turn 40 and are still saying things like "I had a panic attack" and "I'm literally shaking rn".
The thing is, many people have valid reasons not to trust the medical system. Not so long ago:
1. Homosexuality was considered a mental disease
2. Forced sterilization of minorities was good medical practice
3. FDA ignored warnings about pesticides being potentially harmful because that would be bad for business
4. FDA ignored warnings about pesticides being potentially harmful because that would be bad for international politics
5. Entire field of psychiatry was just basically random shit, it's not until very recently that we have any actual scientific knowledge
6. Pregnant women were presribed medicine that fucked up their fetuses
Not to mention that most likely when you go to a doctor you're not getting state-of-the-art diasgnosis, most likely the doctor is just a random guy doing his job, sometimes better sometimes worse. Personally I don't trust medical system with my mental health because medical system is a product of a society that made me have mental problems in the first place.
I guess my thoughts on the trend you're critiquing is that it happens almost entirely outside of the medical community. As you describe the people who are most impacted by this often find actual medical treatment unhelpful and un-validating and turn to self-medication or other "medically inspired" coping techniques. I think the people who actually don't have these conditions and are applying medicalized treatments and explanations are opportunistically drawing on medical language because people often respect it socially. But also there are lots of people who engage in self-deception (or just normal deception) for social advantage and I don't know that people who use medical language are better or worse? A word is just a word and unless that word is actually on a medical record somewhere it only has the power you give it.
The flip side of this is of course that the medical establishment has many well-studied and documented biases. They offer poor treatment to overweight people, black people, people with mental health diagnoses, basically every vulnerable population that's been studied gets worse service from medical professionals. That very reasonably leads to people distrusting "the system" and searching for coping mechanism outside of it. I think that is generally pretty harmless and helpful - as long as it doesn't get into the realm of serious self-medication like you describe. Basically if you like using a medical term to describe your experience ("I'm being really OCD today") I don't think there's much harm in it and you may find coping mechanisms for people with ODC helpful as a bonus.
I'm deaf. When I tell people this, one of the most common response is "Oh, don't worry. I'm a little bit deaf too." Now not to go policing people on their identities but -- no you're not.
Like what do I need to say? Clinically deaf. Severe-profoundly deaf. Cannot hear a fire alarm without hearing aids?
It's one thing when it's an elderly person. Yes maybe they are in fact a bit deaf too. But for all the people in their 30s or 40s who have said it to me -- the odds they all have moderate or worse hearing loss is nil! Most of the people who are saying it presumably have normal hearing. I understand that they're trying to identify with and not alienate me. But it's such a strange dynamic.
To be fair, giving you an example of someone else who performatively pretends to have a mental illness is a great way to understand them.
I mean, our industry is filled with people of all ages with ADHD (arguably because it’s one of the few industries where you can succeed while having severe ADHD), GenZ folks are just more likely to admit it in public where older millennials are more likely to either be quiet about it or ignore the fact that they are subject to it.
apparently, any time that you need to politely smile when you dont feel like it is "masking"
Somewhat unrelated, but I complain about the same thing in software parlance. Our work gets divided up into "sprints". A SPRINT is traditionally something you do a handful of times in your life, like when you're fleeing for your life, pursued by a bear. And then when you're a safe distance away and the adrenaline wears off, you collapse from exhaustion and rest. The idea that your employer would use that term to describe how they envision their employees structuring every day of the rest of their lives is either painfully tone-deaf, or even worse, is a brutally honest view of how they regard employee burnout.
"Truth hurts, don't it" is a very true phrase. It's a very sick trend affecting Millennials and Gen Z alike, and contributes to other worse mental health and criminal outcomes.
It's not even new.
That said, the writing really resonated with me and i wish Bess well.
We are always at risk of medicalizing discomfort. Allowing oneself to be miserable for a while can be therapeutic alongside patience, forgiveness, and compassion.
Edit: after a re-read I noticed that she says she feels most of the symptoms daily a year later. That does feel pretty disruptive on its own but the definition is a bit tautological in that case.
Regardless, what she's going through sounds really hard.
Edit: I specifically think it's wrong to say we medicalize grief because we fear it. We medicalize it because some people would like a medical intervention with their grief. It's great and right that the author does not want that - but also they shouldn't write in a way that suggest that medical interventions in grief are wrongheaded.
By making the criteria reasonably loose and readily met, such a definition also minimises the number of individuals who would benefit from treatment who are excluded from being able to do so. This would include those who are very much unable to function or face larger grief-related risks.
We medicalise grief not because we fear it, but because there are genuinely useful therapies which may be of use to some, and denying them that merely compounds suffering.
And yes, absolutely, grief ultimately is a lifelong experience. You never stop missing that which you've lost, so long as you have the capacities of memory, reason, and feeling. That is not what the clinical definition is about.
What they're saying is that as a culture, we reason about grief using the tools and concepts of the medical industry. Because it's part of our culture, this is so automatic that it's almost hard to conceive of any other way. But it is indeed a choice to describe grief as a sort of labeled pain which can be explored using falsifiable scientific experiments, is amenable to treatment by medical professionals, is a problem representing a delta between a "normal healthy human" and their current state, etc.
We could just as well have a culture that treats grief as a normal part of the human experience. We could consider a person currently grieving as exactly as healthy and normal as someone playing the saxophone. We could (and some do) consider that the most appropriate people to offer help for grief be spiritual counsellors.
I'm not saying we should handle grief differently. I'm just trying to point out that what the author's saying is that it's a cultural choice the way we present and work through it socially. (But, for what it's worth, I do think we should handle it in a less medical way.)
That said, if that's what the author was trying to talk about, I think they are doing so in a way that unfairly indicts the medical system for assertions it doesn't make. They say "Apparently, that’s a disease", but as I said I do not think it is. I think they've misunderstood what makes a disease under the diagnostic criteria they list.
> We could just as well have a culture that treats grief as a normal part of the human experience.
That culture does exist. Even in this article there is an experience of grief that's considered normative in the medical community. Including, I would argue, the authors' grief. I would argue that the medical approach to grief is actually better than other western treatments of grief.
I agree that western cultures (and US culture in particular) is horrible about grief. We want people to be robotic and predictable and not make us think about loss and be sad in private and a whole mess of awful, inhuman things. But I don't think that pressure either comes from the medical community or is furthered by how the medical community talks about grief.
Closing your Jira tickets on time is the order. Therefore grief by preventing the closure creates disorder.
Stop reading HN and work on your next Jira.
It is common for the first full year to be more in numbness and survival than in strong emotions. The psyche does not want to accept the loss so it pretends it is not real. Anniversaries and such serve as a slow and painful reminder that the person is in fact not there and will never return.
Swinging between emotional denial and waves of anger and intense pain over many years is totally normal, and should be encouraged and supported. Go with your friends into the intensity of their pain. Ask about their loss. Sit with it. Don’t say stuff like “it will pass“. They will love you for it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43020983 949 points | 7 months ago | 266 comments
Even if you grief a lot, if you're dealing with it yourself you will not get a diagnosis.
If grief makes you isolate yourself, stop working, start abusing alcohol or drugs, stop you from caring for you children, etc. Then there's a very real chance that this behavior could lead to more problems, making it in turn harder to regain positive mental health. In that case the person should get a diagnosis, which would then unlock treatment and therapy for them.
> The American Psychiatric Association describes “disordered grief,” also known as “prolonged grief,” as a loss that occurred at least one measly year ago for adults
Even though that might be true, it's an excellent example of why you can't just take the written word at face value if you're not well versed in the subject. In the mental health profession it's understood that everybody is going to be different from the norm. Only the treating psychologist can put the clients problem in the proper context to determine if a year is enough or not.
My dad died of cancer when I was 26, and I had very frequent dreams where it felt like he was real and present, though never speaking or interacting directly with me. The grief persisted for years.
Nearly 25 years later, my mom passed away this summer, and it's been a totally different experience. The grief was just as intense as when my dad passed, but contained to a few weeks.
Our bodies and brains are complicated.
I wish I was half as articulate as they are and could say something that might provide even a modicum of comfort to her or others struggling with their grief.
Indeed. We used to have religion to help us deal with it. In our modern world driven by science, death is just the absence of life. Since all (physical, chemical) reactions have ceased, science has nothing more to say about it. In trying to deal with the ills of organized religion, we may have also disposed of its benefits.
Very sorry for your loss.
Science has also given us time machine surrogates - photos and videos. I understand this doesn’t work for everyone and can sometimes make things harder, but for me, seeing our common past brings back the smile to my face.
"This is so unlike them! They've never just DIED before. They've always gotten through everything." But that is a thing about death. You only do it once.
I'm still sad sometimes, but I have much more to look forward to now.
I should not cry at work but damn, I want to.
Waking up from those is so painful but I am grateful I still get to see and hug him once in a while.
It took a couple of years after a good friend of mine died before I stopped texting him on occasion.
Look up DiMiTri ladder protocol, or even without a protocol. The thing is that DMT enthusiasts have advanced quite a bit. Now you don't need to smoke DMT to get a "breakthrough". The entire "breakthrough" moment is somewhat overhyped.
But you can extract the molecule by yourself, and create your own vape, and experience the safest way known so far to overcome years of grief in weeks, sometimes days.
The idea is inhaling every minute relatively small dose to keep yourself here in this world without any breakthroughs, and maintaining this control for the next 60 minutes, while healing the trauma. So in total 60 relatively easy inhales. And it works.
It's definitely underestimated in HN community.
PS and "breakthrough" moments might allow you to see the person and talk to them
Grief still occasionally hits me. Not so often these days, it’s a long time in the past, but after some reminders of that time of life on social media a couple of years ago, I felt the unfairness of it all like a knife twisting in my gut again.
All of which is to say I can’t imagine what it must be like to lose a spouse who you had a life and a child and plans with, and I don’t believe that everyone grieves the same, or that it should just be over when someone tells you that’s ‘normal’ or expected of you.
And also, as said in the blog post, if you’re functioning, if your grief isn’t actually stopping you from living your life, then who is to say it is disordered?
In the former, those terms do lose some of their specificity and should be considered shorthands for "what feels like [ADHD, autism, depression...]".
In other words, language is a flexible, living thing, and interpretation can obly be done in context.
This is why some of these statements sound so much worse when typed out on the internet, as they are missing any and all emotional cues coming from visual and audio communication.
It happens in other areas as well ("cloud" in IT or "space" in math).
If you like your grief, you can keep your grief. But if you need help, the criteria need to be there for you, for insurance companies, employers, and such to systematically do all their accounting and such.
It's a bit similar to a lot of controversies around the autism spectrum. If it's just a personality quirk and you're a functional adult then it doesn't really matter if you meet the this or that criteria. If you like your autism, you can keep your autism.
I don't really have anything to add but that this is chilling. It really makes me want to take care of myself better even though this man's death had nothing to do with that.
I feel like this kind of ancestor worship is a pretty natural and normal way to deal with things. I'm not an expert but I believe many European religions had practices like this before we adopted Middle Eastern practices.
"Time heals all wounds" is the biggest trap I think these thoughts are driven from. The simple and difficult truth at this stage of grief is accepting that yes, things are probably always going to feel like this. Yes, when other people have moved on you won't have. Yes, it makes people uncomfortable and you're going to have to learn to navigate those situations gracefully. The hopeful message though is that you adapt to it and it becomes less distressful over time. If it doesn't, and significantly impacts your life years later, is where I think diagnoses come into play.
Correct, secularism can't deal with death, it doesn't work.
/s
It's like how some criminals describe feeling a sense of relief once they got caught. Some part of them is glad that they get punished.
Being a bad person is a win-win in this world; you win by cheating and then if you get caught, you can at least rejoice in knowing that there is justice in the world.
Being a good person is hard because everyone close to you is also good, so their death is unbearable and unjust.
The only thing which sucks about being a bad person is love... Because if you're good and you fall in love with someone and they don't love you back, it's much easier to fall out of love. "Maybe they're a psychopath" or "They're too superficial" you subconsciously tell yourself...
But if you're a bad person and you fall in love with someone and they don't love you back, you think to yourself "They must be a good person; they can see straight through me into my dark heart" and this sign of virtue makes you even more attracted to them. Hating you is proof that the person is sane, wholesome and perceptive... Which is very attractive to someone who is none of these things!
No, it doesn't work like this.
https://orphanwisdom.com/die-wise/
Dying is a skill, both for the person doing it and the people around them.
FWIW, it's back on front for now.
At least kids depend on her.
Previous title “Oh fuck, you’re still sad”.
"Alright, here goes. I'm old. What that means is that I've survived (so far) and a lot of people I've known and loved did not. I've lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can't imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents.
I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can't see.
As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.
In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.
Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out.
Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks."
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://np.reddit.com/r/Assist... | https://archive.today/CkLxT
But yeah, I read this when it was initially posted and it has stuck with me ever since. It's a really great expression of the struggle with grief.
