Grief – The Secret Power of Resilient People
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“I can cope. I’m strong.”
“I’ll deal with it later. No time to cry.”
“It’ll pass. I just need to keep going.”
Really?
Is that what you tell yourself?
If you tend to lock grief away somewhere out of sight, here is a small spoiler:
it is not terribly clever.
Grief is not a fault in the emotional system.
It is one of its essential functions.
A sort of service station where depleted vital energy can begin to return.
People who know how to acknowledge grief and express it gradually build resilience.
Those who never do risk becoming emotionally anaesthetised.
So shall we have a proper look at grief and what it is actually for?
I promise not to make the whole thing unbearably gloomy.
First, a distinction.
Grief is not a vague emotional state.
It is not simply melancholy or “feeling a bit low”.
Grief is a fundamental emotion, every bit as useful as fear, joy, disgust or anger.
It is at once an alarm signal, a physiological process and an invitation to respond.
Its function?
To alert us to the pain of loss, allow that pain to be expressed and, in time, help us resume the course of our lives.
The limbic brain releases the hormones needed to support that process.
If nothing is done with them, the emotional response can become stuck.
That is when an emotion starts turning into a mood.
- When grief is expressed, vital energy can gradually return.
- When it is blocked, it may become a persistent mood: melancholy, pessimism, withdrawal, sometimes even frustrated anger.
In other words, by refusing to feel what hurts, we may end up spreading the consequences rather widely.
My rather well-read grandmother used to call that “making yourself ill with worry”.
And so, by refusing to cry or acknowledge pain, we eventually find ourselves watching Netflix without really watching it, wearing the expression of a damp sock and breathing like a tired marmot.
We seem to have forgotten how to cry — and we are not much better at shouting
There was a time when we were rather good at both.
Look at a child.
A child cries when something hurts, shouts when angry and, ten minutes later, laughs as though nothing happened.
Why?
Because children allow emotion to move through them.
They do not store it away like an unpaid tax demand.
Then adulthood arrives and we become “sensible”.
- We hold back tears in case someone mistakes them for weakness.
- We put sadness away because it might make other people uncomfortable.
- We carry on until the whole system eventually refuses to co-operate.
Emotional question #1
Can you recognise when pain has become too intense for clear thinking?
If your answer is:
“I think I’m all right…”
it may be worth looking again.
One of the clearest signs is that thinking itself becomes more difficult.
Do you wake at night?
Do you struggle to fall asleep because some inner blues singer has decided to begin a residency at three in the morning?
The danger with grief is not sadness.
The danger is no longer realising that you are sad, while carrying on mechanically, with little energy and even less desire.
If you struggle to recognise when pain has become too heavy, here are three useful signs.
Quick guide
Learn to recognise when something needs to be released
1. Brain fog: when thinking itself becomes hard work
When the brain is saturated with sadness, it slows.
You forget things.
Concentration becomes difficult.
Straightforward decisions suddenly require a committee meeting.
Try this
Write down how you feel each morning.
If words such as “tired”, “flat”, “weary” or “can’t be bothered” keep appearing, pay attention.
You can also try automatic writing.
Ask one simple question:
“How am I?”
Then write without editing.
Sometimes the answer appears before the conscious mind has had time to interfere.
“
It was seven years ago. I had just come out of a painful relationship and initially felt relieved.
I thought I was simply tired and overworked.
A few days later, I noticed that I was forgetting appointments.
Reading an email felt like an enormous effort.
I kept postponing things, telling myself I only needed to recover my energy.
In reality, I no longer wanted to do anything.
A friend asked whether it might be connected to the break-up and said, ‘A break-up is emotionally exhausting.’
That was when I realised it wasn’t laziness.
It was grief — grief I had blocked because I didn’t fully understand why it was there.
— Philippe, a friend of mine
2. When the body starts speaking on your behalf
If the mind ignores sadness, the body often becomes less discreet.
Muscular pain.
Tightness in the chest.
Headaches.
A sense of physical heaviness.
Try this
Close your eyes and scan the body.
Ask:
“Where am I holding tension?”
Then do something gentle and physical — walking, stretching, dancing, yoga — and notice whether emotion begins to surface.
“
I lost my job six months ago and had constant back pain.
One evening, during an improvised dancing session, I suddenly burst into tears.
My body had understood before I had that I was carrying grief.
— Florence, a friend
3. Loss of pleasure: when everything becomes rather beige
When grief becomes too heavy, pleasure often fades.
Things that normally matter stop producing much response.
Music.
Food.
Walking.
Seeing friends.
Even small pleasures lose colour.
Try this
Return deliberately to something you usually enjoy.
If you feel absolutely nothing, take note.
It may not mean you have changed.
You may simply be carrying grief that has not yet found a way out.
Try to identify even the smallest source of pleasure.
If nothing produces even a flicker of interest, it is time to pay attention.
“
I realised something was wrong when music stopped doing anything to me.
I would suddenly notice that a song had finished and I hadn’t heard any of it.
Eventually even listening to music became uncomfortable, as though some part of me wanted my attention elsewhere.
I had become disconnected from myself.
— Guy, HR Director in a major luxury company
In short
If thinking exhausts you, sadness may be occupying more space than you realise.
If your body is sending signals, listen.
If pleasure disappears, do not dismiss it.
Sadness is not simply something unpleasant to endure.
It is information.
Knowing when to listen to it can make the difference between grief that moves through us and grief that gradually flattens us.
Emotional question #2
Do you know how to cry or shout when pain needs somewhere to go?
If the answer is never, there may be something worth exploring.
Blocked grief does not simply vanish.
It accumulates.
Rather like an overfilled hard drive, except with fewer useful folders.
Crying is not weakness.
It is one of the ways in which the nervous system releases emotional load.
Athletes recover through rest, stretching and massage.
Humans also recover through tears, sound and physical expression.
It is worth noting that the English verb to cry once carried both senses: to weep and to call out.
Quick guide
Choose a method that helps release what is stuck
1. The sad film and tissues method
If you never cry, perhaps you have simply become very good at stopping yourself.
Sometimes the pump needs priming.
Try this
Watch a film.
Listen to a piece of music.
Return to a memory.
Allow the emotion to come without immediately interrupting it because “this is ridiculous” or “now is not the time”.
“
I had a friend who never cried.
One day he watched Pixar’s Coco and cried like a child.
At first he felt embarrassed.
Afterwards he felt enormously relieved.
I admitted that I held back my own tears and, privately, envied him for allowing himself to do it.
— Personal testimony
2. The shout-into-the-wind method
Sometimes pain needs sound.
That does not mean shouting at another human being.
It can simply mean allowing the body to make some noise.
Try this
Shout into a pillow.
Sing very loudly in the car.
Go somewhere empty and let the sound out.
Forests, beaches and mountains tend not to take offence.
“
In Bob Fosse’s wonderful film Cabaret, Sally Bowles — whose life rarely gets properly started and whose relationships repeatedly collapse — has her own method.
She stands beneath a railway bridge, waits for a train and screams as it passes.
Afterwards, she laughs.
There is something rather wise in that.
— A fictional example, admittedly
3. The letter nobody will read
Sometimes writing opens the door before tears do.
Try this
Write a letter you will never send.
Do not make it elegant.
Do not make it reasonable.
Write what is there.
If tears appear, leave them alone.
“
I wrote a letter to someone who would never read it — someone I had never told everything to while they were alive.
As I wrote, my eyes began to burn.
Then I started crying.
I had no grand revelation.
It simply needed to come out.
— Personal testimony
Emotional question #3
Do you know who you can turn to for compassionate support?
Take note:
if your only answer is:
“My therapist.”
that is not quite what I mean.
Professional support has an important place.
The question here is different:
Is there someone in your ordinary life who can listen because they care about you?
Someone who can stay with what you are feeling without immediately correcting, fixing or minimising it?
Quick guide
Do not carry everything alone
1. The natural ally
Look for someone who can simply listen.
A friend.
A colleague.
A relative.
The important quality is not wisdom.
It is presence.
Try this
Say:
“I need to talk. I don’t need advice. I just need you to listen.”
Then observe what happens.
Can they listen?
Or do they immediately reassure you, fix the problem or tell you what happened to their cousin in 2014?
“
When my grandmother died, I discovered that the colleague I had coffee with every morning was better at listening than several people in my own family.
He didn’t try to cheer me up.
He didn’t say much.
He was simply there.
That was enough.
— A coaching client
2. The informal tribe
Sometimes support is easier among people who share an activity or experience.
A walking group.
A circle of friends.
A peer group.
An association.
Conversations often become deeper when they are not forced.
Try this
Find a place where real conversation is possible without it being anyone’s official job.
“
I once spoke about my grief while walking with a group of hikers.
I was surprised by how much easier the conversation felt on a path than around a family table.
— Juliette, my cousin
3. The emotional emergency list
Make a list now.
Two or three people.
People you can ring when things are difficult.
When grief arrives, executive functioning is not always at its best.
Having already decided who is safe can help.
Try this
Write down two or three names.
If it feels right, send them a message:
“I’m going through a difficult time at the moment. Would it be all right if I rang you one day just to talk?”
“
I wrote three names on a Post-it and left it on my desk.
When something difficult happened, I rang the first person instead of disappearing into silence.
It felt awkward for about five minutes.
Then I realised I was not alone.
— Mathilde, my daughter
The aim is not to spend your life unloading yourself onto everyone else.
It is simply to have somewhere human to put part of the weight when it becomes too much to carry alone.
People who know how to grieve tend to become more resilient
Resilience does not come from never being affected.
It comes from being able to go through loss without pretending it did not happen.
Knowing when to cry.
Knowing when to ask for support.
Knowing that recovery takes energy.
People who understand grief tend to:
- confuse sadness with weakness less often;
- allow themselves to feel before reaching breaking point;
- seek support from real people rather than trying to become emotionally self-sufficient;
- recover access to energy and desire more readily.
They are not stronger because nothing affects them.
They are stronger because they know what to do when something does.
In short
- Can you recognise when grief is taking up too much space?
- Can you cry, shout or otherwise release what hurts?
- Do you know who you can turn to?
If the answer is no to any of these, there may be something useful to learn.
Not how to become less sad.
How to let grief do its work.
The cycle of emotions
Five fundamental emotions, five articles. Which one next?
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