Why we Grieve?
Anyone who has had to manage the impact of grief understands how profound it can be. As a society, we don’t always make room for grief, and this can be especially true in our workplaces. After bereavement leave (a time often swamped by administrative tasks and funeral planning), we are expected to return to work and carry on - but this is easier said than done.
In fact, managing our emotions in the weeks and months after bereavement can be so difficult that dealing with our everyday responsibilities seems nearly impossible, leading many to wonder why we feel loss so acutely.
Grief: An “Evolutionary Mystery”
From biologists, to psychologists, to philosophers, thinkers across the centuries have attempted to understand why we grieve. The question is not a straightforward one, and despite every human culture on the planet having developed rituals to process the emotions associated with death, the answer can be elusive.
The experience of grief is so profound for humans that it has been described as an "evolutionary mystery". For scientists, the fact that grief can be so incapacitating, and last so long, makes little sense given that its impact of it could have impeded our survival throughout our long evolutionary history. In Darwin's survival of the fittest (or more accurately, most well-adapted), why would we develop an emotional response that can affect how we function so dramatically?
The Mechanics of Grief
While no two people will grieve in exactly the same way, if we take a step back, we can observe several physical and emotional "symptoms" that define the experience of grief for the majority of people. For example, the psychological effects of grief tend to fall into broad "stages" (which may or may not be linear) and include experiences such as shock, numbness, denial, anger, bargaining, guilt, depression and, finally, acceptance. It is also not uncommon for people to feel relief when a loved one dies, especially if that person has been suffering.
There is a strong physical aspect to grief, and the impact of our feelings can play out within our bodies. Even if we are mainly experiencing a numb absence of emotion, grief can show itself in loss of appetite, difficulty sleeping (or sleeping too much), exhaustion, nausea and susceptibility to illness. Grief has been shown to increase inflammation, affect the immune system and even increase blood pressure - with intense grief in some cases affecting the heart muscles so drastically it causes " broken hearted syndrome".
Understanding Why We Grieve
In an effort to comprehend our experiences around grief, people have considered whether grief has a purpose, and is a process we have to go through after a disorientating loss. In "assumptive world theory", it is posited that feeling secure and stable in the world is important to our survival, because if we were continually and acutely aware of the dangers and uncertainties of life we wouldn't be able to function. Loss upends this sense of security and is extremely unsettling, separating us not only from our loved one but the "assumptive world" they were a pillar of.
Grief is thought, according to this theory, to be a necessary readjustment to the world without our loved one, and learning to accept life as it is rather than yearn for what was lost. What this doesn't answer, however, is that if grief is so antithetical to our ability to thrive throughout its duration, then why have we as a species evolved to be so profoundly impacted by it? Couldn't this period of adjustment be less painful?
Another explanation is that grief is the heart-wrenching flipside of our ability to form deep and meaningful attachments. "You can't have love without loss" is a lesson we all learn in life, and there could be an evolutionary reason behind this.
Humans need to lean on each other
Just like how our larger brains represent an advantage (our intelligence aiding our survival) and disadvantage (our babies having to be born at a far earlier, more vulnerable stage than other mammals), grief may be an evolutionary trade-off for our enhanced capacity to collaborate and form bonds. Humans need community to survive, and caring about each other has been one of the reasons for our success as a species; with our networks of reciprocal relationships blossoming from something as simple as sharing food over a fire to forming the basis of our modern societies.
In this explanation, grief, as it has evolved, may well be a disadvantage, but it has been eclipsed in the human story by the vast advantages conferred by love, teamwork and mutual support. Without those kinds of attachments (and the grief we feel at their loss), we may never have developed physically and culturally into the evolutionary success story we are today.
This kind of hyper-rational reasoning, however, can seem bloodless to some, and fail to encompass the full richness, variation and depth of the human experience. To them, the answer may well be that humans have evolved past biological programming, and the way we think has little in the way of evolutionary explanation or purpose. Here, the loss of another human represents a psychological injury - born from our highly developed consciousness - that we have to learn to live with. For others, the answer may lie somewhere in our soul and spirituality, with death and grief forming part of God's (or other spiritual entities) plan.
The truth is when it comes to solving the puzzle of grief, there is no conclusive answer. All we can say for certain is that grief is the outcome of love - and for most of us, it is a price we are willing to pay
If you are currently working through your own struggles with grief, therapy can be a good option for you. Being able to process your feelings, celebrate your loves ones life, while honoring them and moving forward. If you’d like to start your healing journey or you a preparing for the upcoming passing of a loved one, feel free to reach out for a free 15 minute consultation to find a therapist that fits your needs now.
