What are the four tasks of Mourning?
The process of mourning is an inevitable part of losing a loved one. The reality of a loss and its implications take time to process and understand fully. Mourning can be a very difficult thing to go through, and sometimes it can seem that your pain and sadness are all for nothing. No matter how long the grief of loss remains with you, you cannot bring your loved one back. There are, however, emotional tasks you can work toward in the mourning process that will help you deal with your loss. There are certain destinations you can reach on your journey to overcome grief. In this blog post, we will discuss four mourning tasks that will help you attain a sense of closure and begin your life after loss.
Task 1: Accept the loss
Oftentimes in the wake of a loss, it can often be hard to accept that your loved one is really gone. You might find it impossible to conceive of a world without them. You might be unable to imagine a life in which they are not physically present with you. You might even feel that you have been dealt an injustice. You might feel it is unfair to lose someone so close and dear to you. However, if you consider the people around you, you are likely to find that all of them have experienced a loss of some kind. They have all had to deal with the pain of grief at some point in their lives; if they haven’t, they will in the future. Loss is a reality of life that we cannot change. It is a part of being connected to others. To avoid loss and grief entirely would necessitate complete isolation and solitude. The first task to work toward when going through the process of mourning is accepting not only the reality of losing your loved one but the reality of loss in general. Doing so will allow you to begin the process of overcoming your grief.
Task 2: Allow yourself to experience grief
Losing a loved one is painful. The depression and anxiety of grief are scary, and they can intimidate you out of processing your emotions. You might feel a desire to bottle them up. You might suppress them and try to move on immediately. This doesn’t work in the long run. The nature of the feelings of grief is such that no matter how hard you push them away, they will catch up to you. They may come back later in an even more intense form. They may develop into clinical depression and remain an impediment to your life for a much longer time. The second task of mourning is to allow yourself to experience grief. While it may be difficult, it is a necessary stage in overcoming grief.
Task 3: Adjust to your new world
After losing a loved one, the world may appear different to you. The presence of your loved one had an impact on your life, and now that they are gone, your life is not the same. Perhaps there were certain activities, places, movies, books, or objects that you associate with your loved one. Those carry a slightly different meaning now, and being confronted with them might cause you pain. The third task of mourning is to try to get used to a world without your loved one. You can do this by finding other spaces in which to exist, other environments and surroundings to explore. It is important to make sure that these spaces and environments are positive and bring you emotional satisfaction. You can attach meaning to these spaces over time, and they will, in a sense, become your new world.
Task 4: Invest in other relationships
Part of being in a relationship with someone, whether that person is a friend, a family member, or a partner, is investing energy into the relationship. People devote time and effort to be with their loved ones and make them happy. After losing a loved one, that effort and energy is no longer being put into the relationship and creates a kind of surplus. This can be a good thing, as it allows you to invest that effort into other relationships. This is the fourth task of mourning. Investing emotional energy into your other relationships allows you to find comfort and experience closeness. This is crucial for overcoming grief and moving forward in life.
Conclusion
Mourning and grieving are natural processes that people experience after losing someone near and dear to them. While they are painful to go through, there are tasks you can work toward that will benefit you emotionally and spiritually. It should be understood that you do not really “complete” these tasks in a linear sense, as you would complete tasks at a job. Instead, you should see these tasks as a general process of emotional states and practices you can use to get to well-being after a loss. By getting to these emotional states and engaging in these emotional practices, you will be able to move closer to overcoming your grief.
