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Coping With The Known Unknown.pdf

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Maureen Trask
Maureen Trask

Living with the disappearance of a loved one can be difficult due to the uncertainty involved. However, learning to accept and embrace the unknown can help with coping. Psychologist Pauline Boss recommends not blaming yourself for the loss, finding a new identity beyond just your relationship to the missing person, expressing your emotions instead of bottling them up, revising attachments by cultivating new relationships while cherishing what remains, and discovering hope that grows with time and acceptance of uncertainty. Ultimately, navigating this process can lead to positive personal growth despite the suffering.

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Living With A Loved One's Disappearance by Christopher Beam and David Dudley, AARP The Magazine, Aug-Sep 2014 Whenever loss is laced with uncertainty, achieving ¡°closure¡± can be difficult. To overcome it, learn to embrace the unknown. Coping With the Known Unknown by Dr. Pauline Boss, 2014 Often, a big first step to accepting an ambiguous loss, says family psychologist Pauline Boss, is simply learning that there's a name for the feelings the situation has inspired: "People grab on to that and breathe a sigh of relief." Here are her other guidelines. Don't blame yourself. Life isn't always fair; bad things happen for no reason. Find a new you. If your role was defined by your relationship to the missing person, try to construct a new role. Express yourself. Being sad or angry about the loss is a normal response to an abnormal situation. Don't keep those emotions bottled up. Revise attachments. You can grieve for your loss while cultivating new relationships and celebrating what you still have. Discover hope. In time, you'll become more comfortable with uncertainty and find things you can control to balance the ongoing ambiguity. Living with ambiguous loss, Boss says, is a multistage process. If there's a silver lining in negotiating this path, it's in the positive personal changes that can occur along the way. Having a loving relationship with someone who can't reciprocate our feelings, she notes, is a worthy, if painful exercise: "In the end, we grow from that suffering we experience when our loved ones disappear. It doesn't have to destroy us."

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Coping With The Known Unknown.pdf

  • 1. Living With A Loved One's Disappearance by Christopher Beam and David Dudley, AARP The Magazine, Aug-Sep 2014 Whenever loss is laced with uncertainty, achieving ¡°closure¡± can be difficult. To overcome it, learn to embrace the unknown. Coping With the Known Unknown by Dr. Pauline Boss, 2014 Often, a big first step to accepting an ambiguous loss, says family psychologist Pauline Boss, is simply learning that there's a name for the feelings the situation has inspired: "People grab on to that and breathe a sigh of relief." Here are her other guidelines. Don't blame yourself. Life isn't always fair; bad things happen for no reason. Find a new you. If your role was defined by your relationship to the missing person, try to construct a new role. Express yourself. Being sad or angry about the loss is a normal response to an abnormal situation. Don't keep those emotions bottled up. Revise attachments. You can grieve for your loss while cultivating new relationships and celebrating what you still have. Discover hope. In time, you'll become more comfortable with uncertainty and find things you can control to balance the ongoing ambiguity. Living with ambiguous loss, Boss says, is a multistage process. If there's a silver lining in negotiating this path, it's in the positive personal changes that can occur along the way. Having a loving relationship with someone who can't reciprocate our feelings, she notes, is a worthy, if painful exercise: "In the end, we grow from that suffering we experience when our loved ones disappear. It doesn't have to destroy us."