Walking the Lonely Road of Guilt in Grief

After someone we love dies we often experience guilt. Learning to move through the guilt and find release is crucial to healing. But it can be tricky to know how to get unstuck. It is helpful to put words to the feelings and articulate our own unique experience with loss. Grief is universal and understanding the messages we tell ourselves when we feel guilt in grief is paramount.

We use bargaining as an escape from the pain

Grief is heavy! It is also immensely painful. As humans, we are wired to try to escape our pain. Bargaining can be a particularly useful tool. However, it often exacerbates the guilt we feel. Bargaining involves the deal-making we engage in before the death. Although bargaining often involves circular thinking and can make no logical sense to outsiders, it does help us live in our minds which serves to dull the pain of loss. However, we must eventually face the pain of grief to let go of the guilt.

We think we have superpowers

No one ever said that guilt was logical. But, it is our attempt to make sense of the story in our grief. We desperately cling to this as we want to exude some power over death at our most vulnerable moments. The trouble is, we really can’t. But, in our grief, we believe we could have stopped death.

Death is an inevitable part of life. It is not fair or orderly. We would rather feel guilty than helpless. Therefore, we assign superpowers to ourselves in our stories we create around death. In doing so, we ascribe power to ourselves over the heartbreaking and unpredictable death of our loved one.

We let the “what ifs” narrate the story

We want to have control in death. Guilt gives us this. So we let the “what ifs” take control of the story. We think maybe if I had just picked up the phone, answered the text, made more of an attempt to connect, then maybe our loved one would still be here. It defies all logic but we often are married to our stories.

One exercise to release some of the burden of guilt is to write down all of the “what ifs”. Then, using the scientific method, question whether each of the “what ifs” are repeatable. Then replace the “what ifs” with “even if.” Even if I had answered the phone, my loved one still would have been in the accident. This helps free us from our guilt in the stories we tell ourselves.

We let proximal causation define the death

So often we believe what happens preceding the death actually causes the death. We link precipitating events to the death. We question what our loved one ate last or what we might have discussed (if our loved one was coherent). The person we love may be on hospice or dying of cancer and we erroneously associate the call we never made or the argument we did have with the cause of their death.

Your grief needs to be shared

We can be so incredibly hard on ourselves in grief. In our best moments, guilt is an attempt at controlling an absolutely uncontrollable part of life. In our worst moments, guilt eats us alive and keeps us from accepting the love that still is available to us.

If you are overcome by guilt and are uncertain how to navigate the lonely road, please don’t hesitate to reach out to start your grief therapy journey. As a certified grief educator and a counselor who specializes in grief, I can provide counseling to help you navigate your life after loss.