This and hundreds of other cliches about dealing with sad feelings taught us to lie about how we felt. Of course no one says yes. If this were a physical illness it would be an epidemic and the Center for Disease Control would be granted billions of dollars to find a cure. Every time we lie to others we lie to ourselves. Our subconscious mind hears the lie and continues to bury the feelings generated by the initial event.
Unresolved losses are cumulative, and cumulatively negative.
Time does not heal the pain caused by loss and neither does lying about our feelings. It would be impossible to cure such a massive problem in a single column, but let's try for a little bit of recovery. Allow yourself to believe that the subconscious will take actions based on conscious commands. When we lied and said we were fine we told it that there was no problem so it need not search out a solution. The net effect is to allow the cause of the problem to go unattended and re-bury itself.