Why Bereaved Parents Get ‘Stuck’ in their Grief
Debilitating GUILT!

 

More than any other grieving adults I‘ve helped over the years, I firmly believe that parents are the greatest victims of guilt because of this over-powering belief – which, I quickly add, is NOT a fact – that they are responsible for their child’s death.  This is their logic as they’ve shared it: parents carry this burden of guilt because they are the parents and with the advent of that title came the responsibility of raising, nurturing and protecting their helpless gift from inception to emancipation, years later.  Therefore it follows that if something happens on ’our watch’ then ‘we are responsible.’  Next comes suffocating guilt and this consuming emotion soon becomes a fact in the tortured minds of most, if not all, parents.

But logic should also dictate that we’re responsible for what can be controlled. After all, if we can’t control something – like an accident or a lone gunman or the free will of an adult – then how can we be the cause of any consequences, namely, the taking of a life?

But grieving parents usually respond to this logic with the belief that they should have been able to foresee what was coming, foresee the consequence that took their child’s life.  But in every set of circumstances I can recall from distressed, guilty parents, – and I’ve heard a lot over the years with half my practice being parents! – this crystal-ball belief is usually imagined and not grounded in actual facts. Which is why I’ve adopted the simple truth, feelings aren’t facts.  Parents are indeed masters of second guessing themselves.  Masters of ‘Monday Morning Quarterbacking that insists ‘you should have known then what you know now.’  Which is why arguing with parents is not recommended! At least not initially.

Parents – filled with ill-placed beliefs that they are, or should have been in control and able to foresee outcomes – are therefore enveloped and consumed with guilt.  While there are admittedly exceptions to this general profile, experience dictates that they are few and far between.  Guilt clings to grieving parents like dust to a wet cloth.  Yet most guilt is groundless.  Generally speaking, guilt is not a logical response to circumstances that can’t be controlled or were not foreseeable.  But that doesn’t keep guilt dormant in parents who are consumed by their loss.

And when a child dies, at any age, by suicide, at the hands of violence or from an accident, parents belief that they are responsible absolutely balloons, engulfing and almost burying them in guilt.  This intensity can cause parents – and other adults similarly feeling guilty – to become mute, so unwilling are they to speak aloud of their assumed ‘neglect’ and resulting shame.  After all, when any of us talk of our guilt, most folks feel more guilty afterwards: putting it on the table, so to speak, for others to see, makes it more concrete and real.  Silence, therefore, is how many of us, including parents, ‘heal’ ourselves.

So I return to my familiar refrain that it is only by giving our guilt a voice that we can heal ourselves in a healthy manner.  Our belief in our culpability – fact or fiction – will survive and thrive, like weeds in a neglected yard, if we don’t talk, then talk some more and then revisit our guilt, yet again.  I know this works because I’ve done this repeatedly with a lot of clients, a lot of whom were and are parents.

Take on the job of healing yourself instead of becoming emotionally handicapped.  Get help now.  Call me.  Please.