From the course: Supporting a Grieving Employee: A Manager's Guide

What grief is and is not

From the course: Supporting a Grieving Employee: A Manager's Guide

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What grief is and is not

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- Grief is not a subject taught in school. And addressing grief is not taught in manager training. If fact, in the Western culture we actively avoid it and fear it, so it really makes sense that you would feel uncomfortable with grief. Grief is actually a very normal part of the human experience. Grief is something that happens emotionally and physically, but simply put, grief is when you love something, or you love someone, and it either dies, changes, or goes away. It makes sense that you're body would have reactions to that happening. Grief is not something we choose. Just like we can't force ourselves to fall in love with someone, we can't really force ourselves out of grief. It's involuntary. I would be remiss not to mention the stages of grief, which you've probably heard about. The stages were actually developed for dying, not grieving. Grief, in my experience, is not a linear process. In fact it's very messy and unpredictable, and uncontrollable, very similar to love. Grief and love are actually inseparable. Grief is love. In fact, sometimes I think of it as the other side of love. We love someone, they die, we grieve, because we love. We love them deeply and they die, we grieve deeply. So when you break it down like that, and think about it logically, we love, we lose, we grieve. That can be a way to wrap your arms around why it is that we grieve, before we head into the emotion of what we experience.

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