Grief is the emotion and pain we feel over significant losses in our lives. Grief counselors suggest some of the following as concerns:
Probably the most disturbing loss will likely be the experience of bereavement: death of a person who is significant to us.
Bereavement grief
This grief is the physical and psychological reaction to the changes forced upon us by a loved one’s death. We must then find a different way of going about our lives, coping with the gap, and face a lot of unforeseen changes.
Bereavement is not only a major loss in itself, but it often sets off a chain reaction of other losses too:
Grief may be felt for an extended period, even for several years. Sometimes the pain of grief intensifies during the first few months after death because not only are the realities and consequences just ‘sinking in’, but the support of others tends to fall away. This if often because those less affected have moved on, or those similarly affected are pre-occupied with their own pain and struggle.
Grief is a journey that demands a preparedness to experience much sad emotion. It calls for courage and daring to walk a new path, and to adapt to new challenges.
Men and Women Grieve Differently
Every person will grieve in his or her own particular and individual way. And there is a difference in how men and women tend to grieve. Women generally grieve more publicly and it is helpful to understand how the sexes differ.
Women and Grief
Women are usually very good at seeking out support for themselves. They tend to relieve their emotional pain through the open expression of it, and to verbalise it in the company of others. When women encounter difficulties with grieving, it is more often because they pay too little attention to the tasks, challenges, and practicalities of restoration: attending to life changes, doing new things, forming a new identity and new relationships.
Men and Grief
Men exhibit differences in grieving because of dissimilar biology, brain function and hormone systems. And from the stereotype entrenched in society that ‘real men don’t cry.’
How Men Tend to Respond to Grief
They are not as self-caring or help-seeking as women. Men pay less attention to the initial emotional pain than women, until those around them seem ‘safe’ and things appear ‘in order.’ Men often distance themselves from the emotional content of difficulties or threatening situations as part of their masculine trait to be protective toward others.
Men tend to need more time to connect with grief emotions.
Men often need privacy, to be alone, before facing and experiencing emotional pain. Being generally less verbal than women, men prefer to ‘mull things over’ and ‘think things through.’
Men tend to exhibit more anger than women. This can pose a problem for men as people tend to be sympathetic to the more subtle emotions that women exhibit, and unsympathetic to men who might express anger (“Be angry, and do not sin”—Ephesians 4:26). What lies behind the anger are usually the subtle emotions of sadness, yearning, helplessness and suffering.
Men often respond negatively to be more public in their grieving than with what they personally feel comfortable. While men usually cope through activities, action, and ‘mulling things over’—women do this by talking and crying out their grief.
Men benefit from the company of other men, or by working alongside them. And this is not necessarily by verbal exchanges, but just by other men being ‘present’ who care, but who do not intrude.
How Grieving Men Can Best Help Themselves
For all who grieve, whether men or women, take comfort that this painful emotional experience will in time be able to help others going through similar life experiences.
