“Is it my imagination, or is dying, and grieving, harder in the age of Trump with his endless flak field of chaos, cruelty, corruption, and lies?”
The question hangs in the air as my buddy, a hospice Bereavement Counselor, takes a sip of his high octane coffee and considers how to respond.
He and I work for different hospices and get together now and then to compare notes. I’d been telling him what I’m seeing in “the field” as a clinical social worker visiting patients who are dying, and their loved ones.
Dying is hard enough when cultural norms feel stable and the world being left to loved ones seems relatively safe. And when homes provide a buffer from the intrusion of fear, anger, and worry related to political and cultural strife, allowing those who are dying and their loved ones to focus on what time remains without additional stress or distraction.
But all this has changed.
I’d been telling him about a patient in a residential facility whose anxiety has been spiking every time the “shark music” comes on and the “Breaking News” banner pops up on the cable news his roommate’s television is constantly blaring.
“What kind of world are my kids and grandkids going to be stuck with?” he’d asked. “I feel like I’m letting them down, leaving them alone in a world where there are dangers and threats everywhere. I’m terrified about what’s happening in this country and the way the economy is being wrecked. I feel like I’m abandoning them right when all hell is breaking loose.”
I’m used to working with people grappling with intense fear. Usually, though, the fear is related to disease progression (e.g. loss of independence or meaningful roles, increased dependency, or symptoms like pain or respiratory difficulty), or of death (e.g. annihilation or divine judgment). Sure, many worry about how loved ones will cope, but until recently no one worried about whether loved ones or friends would be targeted by ski mask wearing thugs jumping out of unmarked vans or die because they lost their ACA health insurance. No one worried about a spouse or grandchild facing a world of increasingly violent authoritarianism.
“It definitely complicates things,” my friend says. “It’s hard to grieve when the world around you doesn’t feel safe and you’re constantly bracing against the latest wave of bad news. It’s hard to absorb a loss and find a new life rhythm when the rhythm of everything else feels like it’s in flux.”
“I mean, losing someone you love is disorienting. It can feel like the world, including your sense of self, your sense of the future, has been shattered in some way. One of the things that can help is having the reassurance and support of things that are familiar and haven’t changed. The basics like trust in norms around civility and kindness, or a sense of community, belonging, and safety within one’s family and institutions like schools and churches.”
He motions wearily at his cell phone. “Or, with all our devices these days, having a media system that is trustworthy and builds some kind of larger consensus about the world and ways we can work together to identify and solve problems. Not like what we have now where we are barraged with reactive, catastrophic narratives about how unsafe the world is, keeping us all on edge so we’ll keep clicking or tuning in so these greedy bastards can sell more Prozac and home security systems.”
“But when basic empathy seems challenged by all this kneejerk tribalism, gaslighting, and blame, when even schools and churches and family systems can feel unsafe and laden with lines of conflict, when the narratives being pushed by media are all about crisis and threat and division, it can add a layer of uncertainty and fear that can be overwhelming for people who are grieving the loss of a loved one.”
He pauses, giving me a chance to respond but I encourage him to continue.
“And remember, many of us are still grieving the 2024 election. We could – we should – have gone in a very different direction. Many of us are grieving what happened, feeling betrayed, knowing we had a chance to go down a much more compassionate and hopeful road, and we blew it. So, you’ve got grief piled onto grief and it can all blend together.”
I take a sip of my watery, overpriced, hot chocolate and add, “I can see how, when the world around us seems to be falling apart, when norms and institutions we’ve counted on to support and protect us appear to be wavering or even failing, it can feel frightening as hell.”
“Especially if you’ve lost someone on whom you’ve depended for support, encouragement, or protection when things get tough. I’m always aware that when someone dies you don’t just lose someone you love, but you lose someone who loves you. That means a lot when everything feels so up in the air. At least I know this person loves me. Imagine dealing with all this shit and then one of the few people, maybe the only person, who has always had your back when the chips were down is suddenly gone.”
I tell him about a recent conversation with a buddy who is a psychotherapist specializing in anxiety and depression. Several of his clients started having a constellation of various symptoms after Trump was re-elected. Things like insomnia, emotional reactivity, anxiety, irritability, hypervigilance, social avoidance, zoning out when overwhelmed (including dissociation and emotional numbing), sudden waves of dread, yearning for a time which has been lost, feeling alone.
He'd said this pattern seemed especially acute in clients who had bull’s eyes on their backs like those who are gay, transgender, people of color, as well as a few with underlying post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We had talked about how these symptoms parallel those of PTSD and how this made sense given the way Trump’s violence-peddling, bullying, rage, and victim blaming, embody the profile of a predator/perpetrator.
“It strikes me,” I tell him, “these symptoms can also be challenges for those who are grieving.”
Before he can respond, simultaneously my cell phone goes off and he gets a ping that someone just texted. “Guess it’s time to get back to work,” he forces a smile.
Our conversation is left unfinished.
I’ve been a hospice social worker for over thirty years. Other than a brief time after which the nine eleven attacks shook our collective sense of safety and opened a cascade of fears about the world in which we lived and the future that awaited, I have never seen a more challenging time to have a terminal illness, or to grieve the death of a loved one.
If you are feeling it, if you’re getting overwhelmed, feeling stuck, wondering what you are doing wrong, please know that there is nothing wrong with you. You’re not “weak,” you’re not a “basket case,” you’re a human being who has taken a life-altering hit during an intensely challenging time.
This is hard.
I don’t pretend to have special wisdom about navigating grief and bereavement during these troubling times, but I want to offer some words for those who are grieving.
Be aware of your thoughts, how you “talk” with yourself, and the stories you tell
Please be gentle with yourself. Yeah, I know it’s a cliché, but I’m damn serious. Be aware of how the voice, voices really, inside your head – we all have them – is constantly talking, judging, predicting, and distilling your experiences down to stories which you, like the rest of us, tend to take for reality.
When we are hurting and it feels like things are falling apart, these voices can become especially alarming and self-critical. Here’s an exercise I often use with people who have lost a loved one that is intended to gauge how someone is talking to him or herself.
Think about what you are going through right now, feel what’s going on inside.
Now, imagine a close friend about whom you care deeply, is going through the same thing and comes to you for support and understanding. There’s no need to try to fix anything. No need for advice. Just a heart-to-heart moment between friends. How would you talk with them? What would you say? What would you hope for them?
Are you talking with yourself the same way you would talk with a close friend who is hurting? Would you say to your friend what you are saying to yourself? If not, well…you know where this is going. You deserve the same compassion, patience, and kindness.
If you are feeling resistance to this, try to turn down that inner voice which is resisting and criticizing. It probably comes from other people’s voices in the past which said or implied things like “Your needs and feelings don’t matter” or ”It’s your job to be strong” or other common messages we internalize, often when we are young, and which become so automatic we are not even conscious of them.
Be aware that your inner voice may get more easily hijacked by the kind of fear, sadness, guilt, or anger that are often common features of grief. And that the stress, chaos, and dread all around us may entangle with your grief and amplify or reinforce troubling thoughts and emotions.
When this happens, it’s easy to fall into the trap of catastrophizing about the dystopian future we are sure awaits. Especially when bombarded by a media ecosystem desperate to keep us in a state of fight-flight-freeze or collapse.
It’s well known that our brains and nervous systems have a “negativity bias”. We tend to remember, prioritize, and learn from negative experiences more than positive ones. As psychologist Rick Hanson puts it, our brains are like Velcro when it comes to negative experiences and Teflon for those that are positive. When our nervous systems were formed in the ancient past, this was because those negative experiences could have gotten us killed.
Given the way the brain is wired, this negativity bias can kick into high gear during times like these when threats are constantly in our faces, potentially making us even more susceptible to over-focusing on the world’s dangers, real and imagined.
Unfortunately, grieving can also make us more susceptible to this negativity bias due to the power of what mental health professionals call “cognitive distortions.” These are automatic, self-defeating, assumptions and patterns of thought such as negative mental filtering, black-and-white thinking, emotional reasoning, and over-personalization.
Here’s something I wrote in non-jargon-laden prose for mental health and healthcare professionals about how cognitive distortions can complicate grief and bereavement. And what we can do about it.
When the vulnerabilities, intense emotions and thoughts, and disorientation of grief combine with the uncertainties and perils of our current time, the inner voices of those who are grieving may be at greater risk of coming up with harrowing, even hopeless-feeling, stories about where we are going, what lies ahead, and what will become of them and us.
There is a cognitive distortion call “fortune telling” which fools us into thinking that we can predict the future, and that it is going to be bleak.
It may be helpful to remember that, despite pretensions to the contrary by so-called “experts” and “analysts,” we cannot predict the future with certainty. We don’t know where this is all headed. We don’t. Try not to let the pain of grief blend with the overwhelming sadness or rage at the senseless pain all around. This can blind us to the sources of light and inspiration that, even now, are all around us.
Responding to the question of how he remained optimistic during cruel and dangerous times, the historian and lifelong social justice warrior Howard Zinn wrote an essay called the Optimism of Uncertainty. Here are some passages:
There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue [this is true for grief as well]. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people’s thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.
What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability.
Apparent power has, again and again, proved vulnerable to human qualities less measurable than bombs and dollars: moral fervor, determination, unity, organization, sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, patience…
An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives…
If we remember those times and places–and there are so many–where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
Choose where you put (and don’t put) your energy and attention
Grieving is a complex and often confusing process. Despite the artificial demands of the workplace with our two days of bereavement leave (if we are lucky) and our death-avoidant, ‘hurry up and grieve’ culture, we cannot neatly wrap up our grief after a week of paid time off, then put it aside with the condolence cards so as not to bother others.
It is deep work that takes time. It can move in what feels like stops and starts rather than along a smooth timeline marked by “stages”, “phases” or “tasks” to be checked off and placed in the rearview mirror.
Grief, mourning, bereavement, require energy, and time.
In days like ours, full of loud voices and endless drumbeats about the next five alarm fire purportedly demanding our attention and energy, those who are grieving can find themselves in a bind. Not only can our current national crisis enflame the fears and sadness and confusion of grief, but it can steal our time, energy, and moments for tea with a friend, or quiet and reflection which could help us absorb and heal from the death of a loved one.
If you are grieving, you get to decide where you put your energy and attention. There are millions of us ready to continue the fight. It is not your responsibility to lead the charge. It’s okay to put the cell phone down and stop clicking. It’s okay to conserve your energy or use it in ways that allow you to process and express your interior experience and gain perspective. It’s okay to tune out the dramas and divisions of the day in favor of peace. You do not have to lead the charge. We will shelter you while you heal.
The pain of losing a loved one is a universal and potentially heart-opening experience, regardless of one’s political and cultural views. Grief spares no political ideology; it’s suffering, and the strengths it often reveals, our part of our shared humanity. The human tendency to reach out to another who is suffering is built into all of our hearts, not just progressives
I work with people who still adore Trump. They are not the bad people we often believe they are. They hurt the same way we do. Many of them are also becoming confused, even feeling betrayed. Many are finding that their grief is complicated by these same divisions, dangers and uncertainties.
If you are grieving and find yourself around others, maybe family members or people at work or at church, programmed by the stream of toxic lies spewed by Fox “News” and it’s malignant tributary cults like NewsMax, it’s understandable that you may not feel safe sharing your grief. Do what you must when it comes to boundaries and restricting self-disclosure.
But here’s a twist on the negativity bias: We all, for the most part, feel compassion for others who are grieving, because we all know how much it hurts to lose someone we love. Our brains are wired for fear, yes, but they are also wired for connection, compassion, and empathy.
One day, hopefully very soon, Trump will be gone; his fetid horde of schemers and bootlickers scattered or in jail. And we will still be here. All of us. Protect yourself and your wounds during this challenging time, of course. Find someone with whom you feel safe sharing. Don’t hesitate to seek a professional grief counselor.
But leave the door open to unexpected moments of connection and support in surprising places.
When we are in the midst of grief, there can be days when we are sure things will never get better. Some days, watching the so-called news, cataloguing yet another list of obscene crimes against our brothers and sisters, as talking heads and cowardly politicians blandly explain it all away, it can feel that way as well.
One thing that has kept me going into “the field” these last decades is constantly meeting people who are dying and/or grieving who say things like: “I can’t do this”; “I’ll never get through”; “It’ll never get better”; “I’ve never had to do something this scary before.”
And then watching as they connect with their inner strengths, with each other, and they surprise themselves in ways they never thought possible.
