Healing Through Compassion And Faith - Mental Health 5/7
As-salamu alaykum. I am Berak Hussain, the Muslim counsellor. What is grief? What is bereavement? How do we respond to the loss of a loved one? Now, a loss doesn't necessarily mean death. It could also mean a loss of a friendship, losing a job, moving away, losing something that we are familiar with. The natural response to that can be individual and unique to each person, depending on how they respond to difficult and different situations around them.
When it comes to the actual death of a loved one, or friends, or whomever, everybody, again, will respond uniquely and differently. Usually, usually, people will respond by being shocked in denial or perhaps feeling numb. They don't know how to respond. They don't have the opportunity or the chance to really feel anything yet because there is so many red tape things that needs to be done, taking care of the funeral arrangements, setting up for the majales, or anything like that, paperwork. So the person could be busy taking care of that at first. They don't have time to feel.
Next, things start setting in after the funeral, after the seven days, or whatever cultural or traditional forms of grieving and processing, that is done. You are not seeing people anymore, but you are now living alone with that loss of that person, not in your life. You don't see them anymore. You don't feel them around you. Then you begin to perhaps start feeling this sadness, actually feeling the loss of that person no longer being in your life. That is when you start missing them. That is perhaps when the grief starts setting in. This is when the real deep sadness comes in.
After this phase, people start negotiating within their environment, starting to accept that they are no longer in their lives. Life goes on, so to speak. And so grief, the stage is again, denial, perhaps feeling emotion. And within that emotional stage as well, it could be anger. People could be feeling anger towards God, towards the universe, towards the thought of, you know, why do bad things happen to good people? God, why did you take this person away from me? And as we know, as Muslims, we are from God, and to Him we return: "inna lil-Lahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un" (2:156). This is part of the coping that we can also experience in terms of acceptance.
How do we help somebody? How do we get into the mind of somebody who's dealing with grief? To be honest, we can't, unless we have experienced it ourselves, then we will know exactly what they are going through. Sadness doesn't usually hit somebody until after all the details are taken care of themselves. For example, somebody is so busy taking care of the deceased estates or trying to take care of younger siblings, perhaps, or insurance or all of this paperwork. They have to deal with all of that, and they also have to be strong for everybody else around them. So they have to put their own sadness and emotions aside.
But once that is tapered off and things are in place and people are doing what they need to be doing, this person could eventually, you will eventually experience that sadness, and it will hit you hard if If you don't have the right coping mechanisms in place, if you don't have the right support. And so for those of us who don't know what is going on into the mind of somebody who is experiencing this, it is really important to show that love, support, and compassion, not just at the funeral, not just at the majales, not just at the gatherings. But as life goes on, we have to move on and show that support as well. And the person who is experiencing that loss, it is good to be aware of what this process process is, but also be in tune with what is going on inside of you and acknowledging.
And that is an important part of the grieving process is to acknowledge that the person is no longer physically with you, but they will emotionally always be with you. So the question of, does it get better? Does the pain go away? The pain will never go away, but it won't be as sharp. It will dull out in time. I have seen that with friends and family. I have seen that with clients. I myself have experienced that type of loss. And I can promise the person who is experiencing that grief that it will get better in time.
Our faith in our religion encourages us to experience all types of emotions, including grief, in a healthy manner. And when it becomes unhealthy, we have to be there to support those who are not dealing with it well. But if we are not aware, we have to notice and try to really dig deep to understand because we are not reaching our full potential, not giving it our all, and we are just losing track of time and losing track of everything around us because we are so stuck in the pain and the loss of our beloveds.
With that in mind, again, I can assure you that in time, it will get easier and it will get better. It is so important to take care of our overall well-being when we are struggling through these losses, and get the support and reach out with each other, with our friends and family in our support. As-salamu alaykum.
