Speak Up: Why Loss, Death, and Grief Shouldn't Be Taboo
The Silent Space Society Reserved for Grief—Why Are We Still Hiding From It?
Grief, loss, and death are all natural and inevitable parts of life, yet many still choose to see them as taboo topics. This stigma has been perpetuated by culture, religious beliefs, social norms, and personal attitudes prioritizing silence over facing the reality of these experiences.
But avoiding difficult conversations and suppressing emotions related to death and grief only serves to create a barrier between us and understanding these essential parts of life. Let's discuss why loss, death, and suffering should no longer be taboo.
The Silence Around Death & Loss
Death and grief are often challenging to discuss, as society embeds a certain level of silence and stigma surrounding these topics. This stigma is partly due to religious beliefs, social norms, and personal attitudes that emphasize avoiding negative emotions.
The silence around loss has real consequences, including people not having a chance to grieve and healthily process their emotions or being unaware of how to talk about their grief with their family or friends.
We must break down these barriers and start talking openly about these unbearably challenging and complex emotions instead of allowing silence and stigma to surround us.
What Is Stigma?
Stigma is based on stereotypes and prejudice and can lead to discrimination, marginalization, and exclusion of a person or group. The stigma associated with mental illness and people experiencing grief or other difficult emotions can typically fall into two categories:
Social Stigma: A set of negative beliefs and attitudes held by a society or culture based on a specific characteristic of a particular person or group living with mental illness or difficult emotions.
Self-Perceived Stigma: The internalized blame, guilt, shame, and judgment a person has about the mental illness they live with or the complex emotional challenges they face.
Studies show that stigma is one of the most significant risk factors leading to poor mental health. It can reduce the chances of a person receiving the support they need or lead to delays in treatment once a person receives care.
Factors that Perpetuate the Stigma of Grief
Grief and death are often taboo in many cultures, religious beliefs, social norms, and personal attitudes. This "hush-hush" approach to grief reinforces a culture of silence surrounding death and loss, which can be detrimental to grieving people.
Grief is a complex and difficult emotion people experience when they suffer a significant loss. And loss doesn't always involve death and dying; it can also include the loss of home and shelter, infertility, separation from a parent or parents into foster care, incarceration--the list goes on.
Death and loss do not discriminate; they are a fact of life we all must face, but the care and support we receive in times of grief may vary based on the social environments we find ourselves in. Societal norms, religious beliefs, and personal attitudes are all factors contributing to a culture of stigma and silence around death, loss, and grief.
We must break down these barriers and start talking openly about these unbearably challenging and complex emotions instead of allowing silence and stigma to surround us.
Cultural & Social Norms
Research shows social support is a significant predictor of the psychosocial outcomes of bereavement. Unfortunately, the widespread acceptance of outdated grief theories and popularized media depictions of grief means many bereaved people receive inadequate social support due to cultural stigma.
For example, cultural norms may require one to stay silent about death or keep one's feelings to oneself. And those watching a loved one experience grief may also remain silent due to the topic being too "taboo," when all their loved one may need is someone to ask how they're doing.
Religious Beliefs
Research on the psychological inflexibility of religion found that "a majority of individuals use religion to cope with grief and other life stressors. The negative stigmas perpetuated by major faiths may leave many [grieving] individuals vulnerable seeking emotional comfort and social support within a religious community that propagates stigma, blame, shame, and rejection."
Some religious beliefs discourage talking about dying or death, as if doing so will invoke bad luck or a sign of disrespect for the deceased. Religious beliefs often influence the way grief is experienced and viewed, and some may interpret death as a punishment or an inevitable outcome of life.
Personal Attitudes
And finally, personal attitudes can drive self-stigma, influenced by cultural values, past experiences, individual beliefs, and more.
Personal attitudes can range from wanting to avoid talking about grief and loss due to fear and discomfort to an individual feeling that death is not worth discussing because they should "suck it up" and move on. Even within families, individual members may have their own personal attitudes toward death and grief, which can create a barrier to honest discussion and expression.
The Critical Importance of Talking About Loss
Death, grief, and loss are not topics to be riddled with shame. They are a part of life, and by understanding the cultural, religious, and personal attitudes that shape our attitudes toward death, we can learn to better talk about it openly and without fear.
Grief's severity varies in every situation, but often, the pain can be overwhelming to the point where it affects daily life. The effects include sleep disturbance, loss of appetite, difficulty making decisions, social isolation, the development of mental health conditions, and more.
People talking about their grief is a necessity. Talking about loss allows people to express their feelings, learn healthy coping mechanisms, and begin the healing process.
The Bottom Line
Grief likes to frequently pair itself with anger, guilt, blame, and longing--processing this complex web of emotion can help people make peace with what they're going through and, hopefully, start to see a path forward in their life.
We must take a close look at the cultural, societal, and religious norms we're all responsible for perpetuating so we can start to shed the beliefs or values that make expressing difficult emotions feel impossible. If we prioritize positive emotions and normalize open expression of the challenging ones, we can help lead ourselves and our communities along a path of healing and acceptance.