What makes a person afraid when a loved one dies? I have pondered over this question for years and I would love to get the chance to research further on it.
According to Schwiebert in his article fear and grief, “Grief looks backwards, and fear looks forward”. But both are connected because in looking back you acknowledge the role and the space your loved one held in your life and when you look forward you are faced with the uncertainty of those gaps and what life would look like without that person. And so, there is the fear of change, fear of not being able to move on, fear of not getting it right, fear of even not grieving correctly.
Fear comes from anxiety and Brene Brown would describe it as the ‘unknown’ the reason why you would scream while watching a horror movie is because you don’t know if the evil person is going to discover the victim hiding in the closet. Overcoming such anxiety requires us to train the brain to become more tolerant of uncertainties, we learn to control what we can, set daily schedules and not let fear win. I will talk more about dealing with anxiety in grief in our next blog.
Another form of fear that comes with grief which I feel heightens the emotional state of a grieving person is fear of what the loved one may know, discover, or think. it is like there is a silent belief that the loved can see all things, know all things, and do all things because they are no longer alive
Sometimes when I watch a movie and see a burial scene where the corpse supposedly comes to live, the reactions are always predictable, people run away in fear. I assume the thoughts in such minds are, is he/she coming to take me, am I going to be punished,etc.
In this regard fear could be connected to guilt. But guilt makes the heart heavy, a person can feel guilt and still navigate through life. Fear on the other hand, freezes a person, it takes away the trust in oneself, makes a person unable to make decisions or trust others to make those decisions for them. It demoralizes and can induce both physical and mental health problems.
I read a paper where the author said, the human brain is trained to believe that a corpse means danger, in other words, when we see a dead body, the brain only sees the danger of us becoming dead too and this arouses fear. There is also a psychological disorder known as Necrophobia, it is described as the irrational fear of dead organisms, or things associated with death.
I believe what I would want to do at this point is draw attention to the word ‘irrational’. The dead go on to a place of rest, at least most religions believe this and even if that were not so, if they loved us, would they want to hurt us?
“Fear is not a bad thing”, says Schwiebert, just like all other emotions, fear has the potential of teaching us something. Fear is just the teacher. But are we willing to let it teach us? What drives this fear, why do we carry these irrational beliefs, what is the real story?
When grief gets complicated, it leads to further psychological and even physical distress. And one thing I hear when talking to a grieving person, is “my loved one wouldn’t have wanted me to be this way or live this way”.
Therapy provides that space to explore the fear in grief. Sometimes, all it takes is just being able to share your truth in a safe space where there is no judgement or statements. A listening ear, a warm and willing heart sharing the moments as you explore and find the lessons of fear is what you could find in a grief therapist.