Gaslighting the Grieving Part 2
“Why are you so angry?”
That same person who attempted to invalidate the truth about grief by pinning it on “my journey” attempted to gaslight me by labeling me as angry.
I am a direct, tell-it-like-it-is, blunt kind of guy. I don’t try to sugarcoat what I’m saying, especially when it’s vital to understand what I’m expressing.
It is essential to dispel the widespread fallacies surrounding the grieving process.
These myths are everywhere, from the card you get in the grocery store to the diagnostic criteria promoted by the APA (and the drug manufacturers who want to dope you up after you are diagnosed with “prolonged grief disorder”).
People aren’t aware of certain realities of grieving, and I want everyone to hear those realities as clearly as possible.
There are ways to respond to grief that people don’t do, and I want people to hear them loud and clear.
These individuals, who have a responsibility to know better and have a responsibility to act better, appear to lack the self-awareness necessary to self-correct. Their ways of thinking about grief are entrenched. Their ways of responding to grief are habituated.
The unhelpful, assumption-based, and erroneous model that they use to negotiate the grief and loss of others is the last thing that should be considered helpful. In point of fact, it is harmful.
I simply want people to wake the fuck up.
It’s urgent. It’s critical.
If you are grieving, you will no doubt encounter those who will ignore your directions about responding to and supporting your grief.
You may need to embolden your communication with the people. When you are grieving and someone around you isn’t listening to what you have to say, it takes a lot of guts to turn up the volume of your communication.
If you are going through a difficult time, you will undoubtedly run into people who will try to manipulate your emotions by telling you things that aren’t true rather than reflecting on their own experiences.
You may need to walk away from these people. It takes courage to find different support when you are grieving and when the people who are supporting you dismiss you as angry.
It’s the last thing you need to deal with on top of everything else. You think, “do I simply shut up and tolerate their bullshit?” “What happens if I say something and they ditch me?” “Isn’t shit support better than no support?”
I am aware of how difficult it is. I wrote in my book about how I ditched a so-called therapist in mid-session because she couldn’t or wouldn’t get her head out of her ass and evolve from her outdated, erroneous grief and therapy model. In another article here on Medium, I wrote about a “friend” who refused to ask me how my grief was because she was uncomfortable.
God forbid we ask people to fucking evolve or be uncomfortable.
I can recall a time when the friend who flippantly described me as “angry” rather than looking at her own actions and issues was similarly gaslighted in her work. She is a strong, assertive woman, and — as often happens in our society when a woman asserts herself (even slightly), men dismiss her as an angry bitch. Think about why that happens. This is due to the fact that for some men, playing psychological games with a woman is simpler than having to grow and adapt to new situations.
Despite the fact that she had firsthand knowledge of this, she continued to act in the same manner toward me.
This is exactly why being polite doesn’t work.
A lot of individuals have their heads so far up their asses that they are incapable of responding to grief in a way that is emotionally intelligent. Sometimes you need to raise your voice to get their attention. Not because you are currently feeling angry. Not because you have issues. But because you have something important to say and people aren’t listening.
Wake the fuck up!
These articles, as well as my book, “Come As You Are: Meditation & Grief,” expose the truth about grief. I am blunt. I don’t sugar-coat what I have discovered about grief and how we deal (and don’t deal) with it. Grief is too important of a topic for me to beat around the bush.
I want you to know that until Brian died and I directly experienced powerful personal grief and loss on a level that completely rocked my world, I had my head up my ass just like some of you reading this article probably do. And I was a therapist. I hurt a lot of people because I didn’t have enough self-awareness and I didn’t have enough empathy. I thoughtlessly bought into the lie that we are told about grieving.
When I wrote the book “Come As You Are: Meditation & Grief,” I thought that my understanding was complete. I was wrong. That is why I continue to share my insights in these articles. Thank you for reading this, and I invite you to learn more about what grief truly is. You can read other posts right here on Medium, and you can get my book in digital, audio, and print versions.
