This month we are going to focus our emotional microscope on the possible consequences of using FEAR to guide our recovery from significant emotional loss. Retained FEAR is cumulative and cumulatively negative. If the griever does not feel safe enough to communicate about their fears, then the fears themselves appear to be real and begin to define and limit the griever. Fear is one of the most normal emotional responses to loss. The fear of the unknown, the fear of the unfamiliar, the fear of adapting to a dramatic change in all of our familiar habits, behaviors, and feelings.
Fear is one of the most common emotional responses to loss.
Those fears are normal and natural responses to the end of long-term relationships. If acknowledged and allowed, those fears and the thoughts and feelings they generate, can be completed and diminish without serious aftermath. As we learn to acknowledge and complete our relationship to our fear, we can then move on to the more important task of grieving and completing the relationship that ended or changed. But, if we have been socialized to believe fear is unnatural or bad, then we tend to bury our fears to avoid feeling judged by our fellows who seem to want us to feel better very quickly after a loss. There is also danger in that we have been socialized to express fear indirectly as anger.