I became obsessed with Wilfred Bion during my counselling course a few years ago.
Fascinating man. Psychoanalyst and tank commander in the First World War. Did
incredible work with soldiers with shellshock.
He believed that anger is a much easier emotion to access than sadness. Feeling
furious screens you from grief, but in an unhealthy way that doesn’t allow you to
process anything. You end up with what I call ‘undigested grief’ here. Allowing
yourself to feel sad is challenging because it’s exhausting and you can feel out of
control.
I was speaking to an old friend recently who switched from being a solicitor in her
mid 30s (“I was bored”) to become an Occupational Therapist (“astonishingly
rewarding”). She’s been an OT for 30 years now and her clinical speciality is
palliative care. When she’s heading off to see patients and their families, she’ll tell
her colleagues: “Right. I’m off to make people cry”.
She explained that what she means by that is, whilst grief is a healthy response,
getting stuck in ‘angry’ grief makes the rest of your life harder. “Palliative care
professionals will want to ‘get the grief moving’, which, in effect, means helping that
person and their families to move on.”
It’s not that anger is ‘wrong’. It’s a completely understandable part of the process.
But it’s also important not to get stuck. Allowing space to feel the sadness of loss,
however challenging, is really critical.