It seems as if every person going through grief will have some "If onlys." There will always be those things we wish we had done, those words we wish we had said, and those things we wish we had not done or said. Hindsight is always 20/20 so it is very easy to look back and see mistakes or things we wish had happened. That is a very normal part of grief.
There are those, however, who obsessively play the game of "if only." They seem to be almost totally consumed with the guilt and some how feel the death was their fault even if there is no possible way it could have been. They will build elaborate scaffolds to prove their case. I have been amazed at how often this happens. I have been amazed at how it happens even to children.
After visiting with a young mother whose husband had recently died in a car accident, I asked if I could also visit with her nine year old daughter. The two of us went for a walk and I asked her who she talked to about her daddy's death. She said there was no one. If she talked to her mother it made her cry and she thought her daddy would not want her to make her mother cry. No teachers or other adults seemed safe to her, so she had no one. I asked if she would like to talk to me and she immediately said, "I should have been with him. I should have been there." Now what is a nine year old going to do to keep a care accident from happening or her father from dying? She could not get past the idea that if only she had been there her father would still be alive. Irrational or not, that was how she saw it.
I visited with a family whose daughter was murdered in an apartment near the college where she and her husband were students. The father spoke first and told how much anger he felt toward whomever had done this terrible deed. The wife spoke up and said, "Anger is not my problem. My problem is I went to the college with the kids when they were looking for a place to live. I found that apartment house and took them there to see it. Now if I hadn't found that apartment they would not have been in that apartment. If they had not been in that apartment the person would not have found her there, so it is my fault." That is an example of someone building a scaffold to prove the death was their fault.
My response to this mother was to say, "I am sure glad you aren't angry. You are just as angry as your husband but you do not feel free to be angry at the person who did this so you are turning the anger inside and blaming yourself.”
A lot of what we think is guilt in grief is really anger turned inward. When we have no place else for anger to go and no way to get it out, it internalizes and we blame ourselves no matter how far fetched the blame might be.
Arguing or explaining that there is no way the “if only” could be real or could in any way be the cause of the death does no good at all. Logic never cures feelings that are not logical in the first place. Helping the person realize that the problem is internalized feelings of anger can help. If they can begin to talk about the anger they feel quite often the focus will shift from the symptoms of the anger to the anger itself.
A couple asked to drive me to the airport. The trip took about an hour and a half and they wanted to talk about their daughter who had died of suicide a few months earlier. For the first hour of the trip they were unloading on their pastor, their church and most of their friends. Everyone had failed them. No one cared. I let them talk until they seemed to begin to run down. If people are allowed to talk, the anger will gradually peak. After it peaked I said, "May I tell you what I am hearing you say?" I love that statement. It says they have been heard but it is not threatening in any way. They asked me to continue and I said, "What I am hearing you say is you are angry, and you have the right to be angry. You have the right to be as angry as you want to be at anyone you want to be angry with."
I am no miracle worker, but in the last half hour of the trip their anger refocused from the focus of the anger to the anger itself. They began to say such things as "Yes we are angry and we have a right to be so. Who wouldn't be angry if their twenty-four year old daughter took her own life for no reason we can fathom. Just as we arrived at the airport the mother said, "You know why I have been so angry with all of my friends? I did not want to be angry with my daughter." That day proved to be a turning point in their grief journey. I have seen the same kind of thing happen to many others who were obsessing over some "If only." When they realized the problem was the anger and not the action they may or may not have taken, then they are able to deal with the anger.
Log on and respond to the comments section at the end of this blog and let's talk about the "if only's” you are dealing with.