Grief, Yes, It Hurts Not to Talk About It

By Gabrielle Guz

Just to put it out there: Yes, I’m an orphan. My parents died when I was sixteen. Yes, it has been very hard. Yes, it is alright that you’ve broached this subject. Yes, hold on, I do want to talk about it.

That’s how the social scene of my freshman year in college felt like. I spent it in a limbo state between “I’ll make a friend, it takes time” and “I’ve made a friend, but how can I be so sure?” Part of the reason being was that I didn’t know how to go through the process of truly getting to know someone without laying my own pieces on the table, vulnerably. That meant that mostly everyone I conversed with knew that I had lost my parents; it was something I didn’t conceal, nor did I want to. But it was something that made my peers uncomfortable. As soon as I’d mention it, they’d look away (or continue to stare, at a loss for words), apologetically. Then, an awkward silence would ensue, an attempt to change the subject. At times, one of us would decide to make a polite excuse and run for the nearest exit, never to make eye contact with each other again. Other times, we would become the best of “friends” only because we’d see each other every day, in a classroom, and we’d talk about, well, classwork.

From so many of those interactions, I’ve come to realize how discomfiting it is for my peers to try to respond to the gravity of my grief without finding the need to apologize and to change the subject. It’s as if they assume that by turning away from the pain, they’re somehow saving me from returning to it, even if I haven’t once been able to escape from it anyway. Of course, I don’t blame them; it’s hard enough to meet a new person, then to take on that person’s burdens, and even harder to know what kind of response that person expects when deciding to open up about grief. But grieving peers are not looking for a well-assembled, perfect response; instead, they are in a desperate need to have someone to listen to them. As much as it seems that grieving peers prefer to circumvent their pain, shrug it off and consider a positive outlook, usually all they want is to talk it out. Talking about their grief actually makes them feel better, and to know that their friends can accept their outbursts of vulnerability is the greatest gift they can ask for.

But, oftentimes this is one of the responses that I get from my peers, and I recoil from it every time: “Have you ever considered speaking with a therapist? It can help you put a lot in perspective.” Well, I don’t know, what if talking with you is a part of my therapy? How do you know that I am not already seeing a therapist, how do you know that I am not just trying to step out of my comfort zone to speak to you? Why must opening up about something that we all are destined to endure - grief - be so immensely difficult?

Studies have shown that when students find themselves speaking with their grieving peers, they sense a “requirement” to provide the most comfortable environment, a “requirement” to sit with these peers for the longest time, and a “requirement” to already have had their own personal encounters with grief. And these are legitimate concerns. It is difficult to talk about grief if it has only ever been a concept understood from a distance, though it is easy to make an excuse that all you can do is to offer sympathy, because taking it a step further into empathy is much more trying. In fact, for not all yet many who might lack it, developing empathy is a possibility, according to psychologists who say that it is a matter of working with your brain’s neuroplasticity. If you focus your thoughts and efforts on becoming more empathetic, regions and neurons in your brain associated with empathy - like the supra-marginal gyrus in the cerebral cortex and mirror neurons - can be retrained. Too often we hear the notion that empathy for someone else’s pain comes with the accumulation of wisdom over time, that empathy is something we grow into. But I’d venture to say that empathy is a choice. Growing into a certain positive trait seems almost mechanical, whereas choosing to embrace it is much more proactive. Ultimately, you have the potential to be empathetic, so you should reach out and try to make a grieving friend’s world a little less lonely.

In fact, one in five adolescents will experience the death of a loved before they turn eighteen. And every year, some of these adolescents will graduate from high school and start college. Every year, adults around them will say that they are onto the “best four years of their life” and that they should put themselves out there, join clubs, make new friends. But every year, too, behind closed doors, these same adolescents will be thinking to themselves: “How can I make myself feel less like a misfit in a world that seems to not understand the complexity of my grief? How can I make new friends without telling them about my grief, if it is such a big part of me?” Every year, these adolescents might come to the conclusion that they want to open up and be a part of something bigger, but to do that, they rely on their peers to help them unthread the knots of their grief as they listen to them. Most adolescents search for understanding among their friends, rather than among the adults in their lives who, because of generational differences, have a greater chance of misunderstanding their emotions.

No, I am not saying that the peers of a grieving adolescent should take upon themselves the role of a mental health therapist. I am not saying that they don’t have the right to decide to detach themselves from their peers’ grief. I am not saying that it’s their job to help a friend rummage out of major depression without asking for an adult’s help. I am only saying that an attempt at empathy never hurts. Anyone can turn away, but it is a gift to know how to listen, even if for a little bit.

One day, I was standing in a long dining hall line on campus and I was scrolling through photos of my parents on my phone, like I usually do, except that this time when my eyes welled up, I couldn’t withhold my tears. Someone walking past the line must have seen me in distress and asked, “Are you okay?” I said, “No. My Mom’s death anniversary is coming up and my Dad’s too. I wish they were here.” To which that someone responded, “Would it make you feel better if we sat down to talk about it? I am here to listen.”

To this day, I’m still friends with that person. That conversation saved my life.