Unprocessed Grief

From conflict management research and practice, I learned unprocessed grief plays a major role in interpersonal conflict. Frequent interaction with, listening to, and observing people struggling with anger, denial, depression, perfectionism, and workaholism also helped me to connect many, if not most, of their struggles to unprocessed grief. Therefore, we might benefit greatly from learning how to grieve completely, healthily, and properly. Unfortunately, our culture does not accommodate grief well. Chaplain Ray Giunta (God at Ground Zero. 2002) supports the notion that our culture holds a distorted view of grief when he states:

"Our modern culture has acquired an unhealthy view of grief, thinking it can be controlled, that it’s a thing that we can and should get over quickly: We’ve got to get rid of the body, get past the funeral, get over it all, and get back to work. But if survivors and victims’ families aren’t given permission to grieve, they’ll develop what we call ‘chronic grief.’ They’ll be stuck in the first part of the process and never move forward. The result will be a group of people who will be alive physically but dead emotionally and spiritually" (pp. 162-163)

He continues,
"We are made to grieve our losses. In whatever form it takes, grieving is a normal, natural part of the healing process—the body’s protection system, its way of coping. It must be given its due. To talk about grief, though, is to talk about death. And usually, those who have trouble talking to others in crisis situations, worrying about what to say and how to say it, haven’t dealt with their personal feelings about death. Yet death is the topic that never goes away during a disaster.” (169-170)