To think grief is sometimes self-centred, more about identity than loss?

I agree and know exactly what you mean.

I joined an online support group once for a medical issue i used to have and had to leave in the end because it became a competition about who had it worse. People made it their entire identity and far from being supportive it became quite toxic

I think when you've been through something like that though, there's always the fear it could come back or a sense of not knowing what is around the corner for you. Obviously she was severely sick and that does leave you with a loss of trust in your body and what might happen in future.

I definitely think people can get stuck in the grief process which then becomes unhealthy. Grief that isn’t processed healthily becomes unhealthy. But I don’t think it’s necessarily to do with attention. I think it’s people getting stuck in specific grief stages and needing help/support to deal with it.

I say that as someone who has lost both parents.

Honestly I have never ever experienced this nor had an inkling that anyone else's grief was performative.

I can imagine a situation where people express or perform grief where in reality the situation is more complicated, and can see why someone would want to keep their true feelings to themselves.

Grief to me is one of the most raw, vulnerable, all encompassing experiences one can have, and the other is love so obviously they are closely entwined.

I'm always curious though, the window other people's ideas provide into their own thought processes and personalities.

Grief is personal and isn't really for anyone else to police or control.

I was going to say ‘no’.

But then I think I know what you’re getting at, because I know somebody who was a bit like this about a very serious illness she had as a teen.

Her life was touch-and-go for about three years in her later teens. Months and months in hospital, over a year out of school, lots of fundraising to get treatment for her, everyone at school and wider community knew who she was and what she was going through.

I met her for the first time in our mid 30s and she would quite often act a bit like she was ill or allude to the fact she had to look after herself, but then she also ran marathons and had a very active and stressful job, so was also clearly quite physically and mentally robust. I assumed she had a chronic condition of some sort. I eventually asked her, and she told me all about her teenage experience (which she totally recovered from, she had been well for 15 years at this point). She was perfectly well, but I think that being a high-profile invalid had quite a profound impact on her and it became part of her identity, how she saw herself and how she presented herself to others.

Hopefully you'll never experience a dramatic loss then and find out about it.

No, but some people are dramatic

Are they caring for them? That's a whole different stress again.

I do understand the sentiment you express. Losing someone in their 90s is not the same as losing someone in their teens, thirties, etc. That's the natural order and how it should be. I'm careful not to minimise the grief of someone who loses someone at that age though. It's still a loss of the person and painful for them.

If someone tells me they understand the grief I feel for my child loss because they lost their GF in their 90s, I will think they're a bit of a dick though.

Interesting post …two close friends are struggling with the poor health of their elderly parents, to the point that they are not coping with the stress very well at all. I can’t help but think how lucky they are that they still have them in their lives..my dad was killed at 43 and my mum died in her 60’s. Their parents are in their 90’s FOR GOD SAKE!

I think you only have to look at the public outpouring of responses to a celebrity death to see that sometimes displays (being the operative word) of "grief" can be performative.

That is not a comment on the reactions of people who have lost, for example, a child, which are the result of an altogether more complex and profound set of emotions.

I totally identify with this. I never cried by I lost a child and my mum within 6 months and I’m not the same person now. I can’t and won’t delete her number. I also do genealogy and even though she died 8 years ago, I’m unable to mark her as deceased in my tree. I Co-research with distant cousins who have all kept her ‘alive’ in their trees along with me .

You should read about resilience. People react differently to the same trauma or grief, because they have different resilience. Resilience is something that is build in childhood. Sometimes when some people can't seem to get over a loss, it could be that it echoes deeper traumas or previous losses. Sometimes also it can be that they had a conflictual relationship with the deceased and the loss ends the possibility of every healing that relationship. Unless you know the full story I wouldn't judge

I wonder if you’re referring to the “cult miserables” people who seem to thrive on misery, negativity, and learned helplessness, rather than those who’ve experienced genuine grief. I haven’t lost anyone close to me yet, but I can’t imagine grief ever having an end date when I do. Nor can I imagine being able to put on a smile and pretend everything’s fine.

I do think the “cult miserables” exist. But I also believe they struggle to move beyond that state of unhappiness because what they consume traps them there. They gravitate toward sadness because it feels familiar, yet it only keeps them stuck. In turn, they attract others in the same pattern of learned helplessness, reinforcing the cycle that holds them down.

This is a conversation OP started with Chat GPT. That's why it doesn't make any sense.

Is it not part of your identity though?

When my child died, someone told me that in time I'd come to see the gifts the situation gave me. I wanted to slap the person that said that at the time, but they were right in that, in finding ways to survive, I have never lived more fully in many ways.

Losing my child isn't all of who I am but it is a profound part of my core.

I had an relative who was very dismissive of any public display of grief. Even of a private cry within the family home. When people were bereft she would say things like "Buck up, we don't wear our hearts on our sleeves in this family." or "Get on with things, keep busy, don't wallow".

Her briskness and dismissiveness hurt people, made them feel bad and stayed with them.

Then her own mother died. Oh my goodness she fell apart to the extent that DH and I had to hold her up at the graveside. For months she was inconsolable. We were all as loving and supportive of her as we could possibly be and felt that her past coldness had been because she'd never felt grief herself.

I thought she would change as a result but she hasn't.

They key word there is 'survive'. Do you think God is any comfort for many when they experience such a profound loss? I was a Christian until I saw how much my child suffered in the years before their death. Any loving god who allowed that, had the power to heal it and didn't, and allowed such injustice, has no room in my life. (And there's another way it changes your identity. Loss of faith.)

What a very strange post, totally without empathy. I lost the love of my life, very suddenly 3 years ago. Yes, I grieve, but don’t let the loss identify me. Life goes on, as does bereavement. Grief is love with nowhere to go 💔

When someone loses their whole family (within War, a traffic accident or horrific murder as we sometimes see in the news), I believe that God has still given that individual the gift of life ..they need to process the grief, even if they don’t reach an acceptance, and find a way to survive

You again, OP? Yawn.

Not if they were dismissive, thought she should be over it by now, or weren't able to really 'hear' her.

Yes I think you're right. But talking about it and showing her grief to anyone who happened to be around must have been of some help to her

I think that it depends on the type of grief.
Death that comes outside of the normal circle of life, say the death of a child, death of a sibling while a child or young person, or the death of a parent while children are still young means that statistically, at least in developed countries, in the minority.
So your personality and perspective on life is formed by the death in a way that most people, who lose grandparents then parents/ aunts/ uncles etc won’t ever experience or understand.

Even if many people in this unfortunate position choose not to voice it, losing someone in a non standard way will alter you indefinitely. In the same way that if someone is murdered it is difficult to them dying of an illness and different to them having an accident.

It’s not for me to judge if someone want to ensure that people remember that they are a person who is living life with grief in their shoulders.
I know a mother who lost her boy at 14. She never mentions it, but had she felt the need to, and wanted to let others k ow of her grief, then she could do so as much as she wanted as far as I am concerned. It would never be too much.

I do too.