Grieving without a god

I'm finding that grieving is harder in a way now than it was when I was a theist... and not in the way I expected.

Most readers are all too familiar with the stages of grief, and how anger and denial and bargaining are usually the first ones to happen. Well, back when I believed there was a god out there... there was a place to focus all that. I could be angry at my god for fucking things up so bad that this person was dying; I could try bargaining and asking him to fix his shit and heal the person; I could spend the denial phase convincing myself that a miracle was possible. But now... I feel the anger, but there's no one to be angry AT. I feel the drive to bargain, but there's no one to bargain WITH. I feel the drive to denial, but there's no false belief to retreat into, just the hard truth that the person is dying and there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it.

So I really confronted for the first time the question: What do you do with those feelings when there's no imaginary friend to focus them on?

I didn't know. I'd never been taught REAL coping skills, just the ones that relied on my imaginary friend and the illusion that I'd see the people I care about someday after my own death.

So the first thing I dealt with was the physical aspect of the anger. I lifted weights and then practiced martial arts kicks and punches until I was too tired to do it anymore.

And after I'd burned off the adrenaline, I realized why I'd needed that so badly:

When we are confronted with mortality, the monkey part of our brain takes over.

But when it's someone ELSE's mortality, all our survival instincts don't have anyplace to go.

What would our ancestors do if one of the pack was being attacked by a wolf? First they would rage out and attack the wolf. Maybe they would save the victim, maybe they would kill the wolf, maybe they would just teach the wolf to be cautious about eating monkey-shaped things henceforth, but the anger would accomplish something.

However, when death isn't coming from a predator, but simply from natural processes we can't fight, the survival brain doesn't know what to do. It quickly works out that there's no one to fight, and flight doesn't work, so it goes into freeze and fawn because those are the only other things it knows how to do.

So: First we get fight - anger. But there's nothing to be angry at, unless we imagine something invisible to target.

Then we get flight - denial. This can't be happening, it can't be real. We scramble desperately for an escape. But there's no place to escape to, and no physical thing to escape from, unless we imagine one.

Then we get fawn - bargaining. But there's no attacker to negotiate with, and no ally to ask for help, unless we imagine one.

And then we get freeze - depression. We shut down in the self-protective haze that the brain gives us to at least numb the pain when there's no escape.

Finally, when enough time has passed, the logical part of the brain starts working again, and we get acceptance. We hate it, but we finally realize there's no other option, so we accept reality as it now is.

UNLESS we used imaginary enemies or allies to fight, or flee, or bargain with, back when the monkey brain was in charge. Then we never really get to accept reality - we stay in one of those other phases forever.

So, I guess the first thing to do is: Give the monkey brain what it needs. Engage in a safe version of fight or flight behavior, give yourself some time to wrestle with the difference between reality as it should be and reality as it is, give yourself time to shut down and be numb... and then, once the monkey brain has had time to calm down, there is room for true acceptance. It hurts... but it's got to be a healthier coping strategy than spending a lifetime stuck in denial and pretending that, to borrow the phrase, "They are not dead, but asleep".