What does grief have to do with peer support for anxiety? Grief can cause anxiety. Anxiety can complicate grieving. This cyclic relationship between unexplored grief and unrecognized anxiety can persist and intensify for years.
Grieving is delayed when the recognition of the reality of a traumatic loss is repressed or when the grieving emotions are suppressed. The two forms of interrupted grieving differ. Repressed acknowledgement of loss is a conscious reaction that can occur when other urgencies demand immediate attention. When the distracting urgencies fade, the reality of the loss can be acknowledged, and grief can resurface. A less recognized, but dangerously pervasive form of interrupted grief, is the suppression of emotions related to traumatic loss. Suppression is a subconscious reaction to pressures that deny grieving. Living in a culture that disparages grief can lead us to carry suppressed grief which will affect our emotions and behaviors for years until we find a way to express that grief. Meanwhile, we suffer. We can sense something is very wrong, but we can’t quite name it.
The adverse effects of delayed grief can shape our lives if it is expressed through: ambiguous anxiety of varied intensity; recurring memories of the loss; frequent dreams and nightmares about the person you lost; trouble sleeping; strong feelings of sadness; feelings of longing; loneliness; inability to trust others; anger, which is often easily triggered; trouble concentrating; low energy levels; fatigue; mood swings and edginess; changes in appetite; feelings of apathy; depression; a compromised immune system; often serious somatic aches and pains; addictive attraction to nicotine, alcohol, food, or drugs; and self-harm or suicidal impulses, all without understanding the root cause.
Suppressed grief-related emotion arise from situations as diverse as childhood abuse and violent combat. But any and all loss of an intimate relationship is traumatic, whether by sudden illness, accident, suicide, or overdose. Such loss can lead us to anxiously question the safety and justice of our world and direct our fear and anger even at the very foundations of our faith. In truth, the psychological reality of childhood trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are relatively recently recognized extreme pathologies. The subconscious cyclic relationship between anxiety and grief is one mechanism responsible for the pathological intensification.
Breaking the intensely pervasive cyclic relationship between anxiety and unresolved grief requires professional help. This help is needed because people who experience traumatic grief can rapidly cycle between experiences of acute and overwhelming grief to serious posttraumatic stress symptoms of intrusion, avoidance, distorted perception and heightened arousal. But to acknowledge a need for and to seek this help, the presence of a suppressed emotion needs to be recognized. Talking about traumatic loss can bring the suppressed emotion to the surface. Such talk requires a safe place and appropriate time for self-disclosing discovery. Peer support groups for grief and anxiety are one means for enabling such self-discovery.