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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThat Discomfort You're Feeling Is Grief
That Discomfort Youre Feeling Is Grief
by Scott Berinato
March 23, 2020
Some of the HBR edit staff met virtually the other day a screen full of faces in a scene becoming more common everywhere. We talked about the content were commissioning in this harrowing time of a pandemic and how we can help people. But we also talked about how we were feeling. One colleague mentioned that what she felt was grief. Heads nodded in all the panes.
If we can name it, perhaps we can manage it. We turned to David Kessler for ideas on how to do that. Kessler is the worlds foremost expert on grief. He co-wrote with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief through the Five Stages of Loss. His new book adds another stage to the process, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. Kessler also has worked for a decade in a three-hospital system in Los Angeles. He served on their biohazards team. His volunteer work includes being an LAPD Specialist Reserve for traumatic events as well as having served on the Red Crosss disaster services team. He is the founder of www.grief.com, which has over 5 million visits yearly from 167 countries.
Kessler shared his thoughts on why its important to acknowledge the grief you may be feeling, how to manage it, and how he believes we will find meaning in it. The conversation is lightly edited for clarity.
Kessler: Yes, and were feeling a number of different griefs. We feel the world has changed, and it has. We know this is temporary, but it doesnt feel that way, and we realize things will be different. Just as going to the airport is forever different from how it was before 9/11, things will change and this is the point at which they changed. The loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection. This is hitting us and were grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air.
Yes, were also feeling anticipatory grief. Anticipatory grief is that feeling we get about what the future holds when were uncertain. Usually it centers on death. We feel it when someone gets a dire diagnosis or when we have the normal thought that well lose a parent someday. Anticipatory grief is also more broadly imagined futures. There is a storm coming. Theres something bad out there. With a virus, this kind of grief is so confusing for people. Our primitive mind knows something bad is happening, but you cant see it. This breaks our sense of safety. Were feeling that loss of safety. I dont think weve collectively lost our sense of general safety like this. Individually or as smaller groups, people have felt this. But all together, this is new. We are grieving on a micro and a macro level.
Understanding the stages of grief is a start. But whenever I talk about the stages of grief, I have to remind people that the stages arent linear and may not happen in this order. Its not a map but it provides some scaffolding for this unknown world. Theres denial, which we say a lot of early on: This virus wont affect us. Theres anger: Youre making me stay home and taking away my activities. Theres bargaining: Okay, if I social distance for two weeks everything will be better, right? Theres sadness: I dont know when this will end. And finally theres acceptance. This is happening; I have to figure out how to proceed.
Acceptance, as you might imagine, is where the power lies. We find control in acceptance. I can wash my hands. I can keep a safe distance. I can learn how to work virtually.
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