The supposed benefits of grieving -- just another form of denial

Carolyn Baker and others (such as Rob Hopkins) reckon that a crucial point is that transition needs to concern itself with not just the hand and the head but also with the heart. In a recent article she reveals(?) that grieving is (supposedly) a necessary, beneficial, part of adaption to traumatic change. (PS: In her pages you always have to scroll down past the introductory blurb to get to the article.)

Unlike these nice, pleasant, successful people, I don't just write and theorise about coping with extreme adversity. I have survived many years of adversity such as would have wiped out these others several times over. In the real world, not all problems have solutions. Not all victims of injustice come out as survivors.

Consider for instance my situation in recent years. I had at last discovered the cause of my chronic invalidity, as due to the dental mercury poisoning by the NHS which still pretends that no such illness exists, and I do not have the ~£10,000 to remove this mercury from my teeth. Due to decades of chronic fatigue I had few friends to speak of and none close and nearby to lean on.

Then in 2005 I was plunged into a horrendous harassment crisis. I found myself sharing my house with a violent deceitful lifestyle alcoholic lifestyle criminal in the adjacent flat. Plus all the like alco-criminals drawn magnet-like from all around. Simultaneously with being threatened on the violence front, I was also threatened by the housing "cooperative" continuing with conspiring and attacking me on a more institutional front. I struggled to write the reports on their criminality and thereafter the book linked on that website.

Then they started their corrupt legal action for my eviction. Then in 2007 the evil liar judges Truman, MacDuff and McKenna told a huge pile of lies with the result that I was suddenly forced out of my home of 17 years, just about immediately. Even though I had nowhere to go. As it happened, Mohammed my neighbour of 15 years had a barely inhabitable hovel nearly unoccupied at the time, which I was able to move some of my things to. Else I doubt I'd be alive and writing this now.

Let's look at the situation when that falsely-granted eviction was enforced. I had been working flat out for the past 50 months to try to challenge the institutional abuses, while also trying to manage relations with the criminals making an uninhibited reign of terror in my house. I really was looking forward to defeating the legal case and then at last having a bit of a rest.

But instead I had to immediately continue even faster. I had to sort out and try to remove the tons of my possessions such as this computer I'm typing on now. I was soon physically clapped out by the impossible overwork involved. I had to walk long distances to and from the new address. Many times I was close to collapsing with exhaustion in the street. I had to do a huge amount of thinking and difficult deciding of what to do about the numerous problems that had arisen. I no longer had a phone or internet or knew my local area, or where most of my things had ended up or not.

In this context there was no shortage of things to get incandescently angry about. Such as a supposed justice system that assaults the victim and gives victory to callous evil criminals. No shortage of things to grieve about. But did the nice judges say I could really do with a week or two to grieve about anything? No. Just in their deceitful pretence, the law (supposedly) could not give any extra time before the corruptly-granted eviction must take place.

I just had to get on with doing and deciding. Similarly, consider the situation of these survivors of Stalingrad, living in a hole in the ground.
Don't you think they could do with a year or two of grieving over the numerous friends and associates they have lost? And the disappearance of the whole world they have lived in all these years? But instead, they just have to get on with things. Likewise the millions of soldiers caught up in the conflict, constantly experiencing the unpleasant deaths of their team-mates, and yet having to just get on with things.

The composer Felix Mendelssohn died within months of the death of his sister. In the intervening he wrote his absolutely uncharacteristically harsh F# minor quartet. It's clear he died of a broken heart.
And not long after the Tay bridge collapsed while a train was passing over it, the designer of the bridge died, and again it seems clear that he also died of a sort of grief or shame. Queen Victoria, after the death of her husband, wore mourning black for the rest of her life.

I am not here saying that these grief-engulfed persons were unworthy or second rate. I am saying that there are some people we may not be able to help, who may not be able to be part of the future.

I question whether there is any evidence that grieving improves anything. Rather what is needed is coming to terms with that which we cannot change. Some people are better at this than others. Different people have different strengths and weaknesses. Some inflexibly carry on as if nothing has changed (low Neuroticism), some just crack up and fail that way instead (high Neuroticism), others become insane (high Psychoticism).

In my experience, emotions are only rarely useful. They are a primitive system serving as a failsafe for when more sophisticated thinking and theorising are short of useful ideas of what to do. The proper thing to do is to be in control of one's emotions and to set out on the work of rational analysis of one's predicament. And where necessary coming to terms, with resignation to that which cannot be changed anyway.

To a great extent, a person's response to adverse changes can be improved by skilled use of nutrition and other techniques. I believe that my own expertise in this has been crucial for enabling me to survive so far. If you are interested in further information or discussion on this and or other matters, send full contact details and personal information to my email address. That's r [at] energyark[dot]net