“…my husband didn't have COVID, but I still feel like he was a victim of the pandemic,”  actor Jean Smart told Fresh Air’s host Terry Gross.

Jean Smart’s breakout role was in the 1980s as Charlene on the sitcom Designing Women. Recently she’s been having a “career renaissance.” Smart recently appeared in a string of popular, critically acclaimed television shows including HBO’s Mare of East Town and Hacks.

Yet as her career hit a high point, she faced a personal tragedy. Her beloved husband, actor Richard Gilliland, died unexpectedly in March 2021. They’d been married for more than 35 years.

His death was heart-related, but Smart speculated that COVID may have indirectly contributed.

Maybe the Urgent Care clinic assumed his symptoms were vaccine related? Maybe that’s why they didn’t run an EKG or refer him to the ER? If it hadn't been for COVID, might he still be here?

Smart also talked about sometimes fighting irrational self-blame. She admitted, “… there was a part of me, in dark moments, where I thought, this is the universe looking out and saying, oh, you thought you could have it all, huh? Not so fast.”[1]

Grappling with Loss

Near-death researcher Elizabeth Kubler-Ross said humans “pretend death doesn’t exist.”

I’m not sure we’re pretending. I think we have a hard time wrapping our minds around death.

Yeah. I mean, for me, it's as unreal as if the Martians landed on my front lawn. -- Rob Delaney, talking with This American Life host Ira Glass about the death of his two-year old son, Henry.

How can a human being be here, and then, not here?  How can they disappear before our eyes, even with their corpses lying in plain sight? 

Worse than that, death sometimes seems so unfair.

Children die. So do young adults with promising futures. And perfectly healthy elders who eat birthday cake one day and get wrapped in a shroud the next.

The randomness of death can make our logical minds short-circuit.

The Mind In Grief

If left to its own devices, your mind won’t let go of trying to understand why someone died.

If it can’t find a good reason, it will return over and over again to the experience. It’ll churn through the what-ifs of the blame-and-shame cycle:

• What if he’d worn a mask? 
• What if I’d moved her home from assisted living when COVID hit?
• Why did we let the doctor admit her to the hospital when we knew we wouldn’t be allowed to visit her? She could have died at home!
• Our logical, creative, problem-solving, risk-assessing minds will go on and on if we let it.

 And, in doing so, it increases our suffering.  

So what do we do with these thoughts?

Stop Resisting Your Thoughts

The first step is to recognize your anxiety and stop resisting it.

It means learning to step back and observe the thoughts. Realize they’re a normal reaction to a confusing situation. Your mind is just trying to understand what happened to prepare for future danger.

It takes some self-talk.

I often use this technique from Action and Commitment Therapy.  When you feel stressed, say “I notice I’m having the thoughts again about how I shouldn’t have moved Dad to assisted living” or “I notice I’m having thoughts again about how  the assisted living place wasn’t careful at the beginning of the pandemic and my mother got COVID.”

Stop Believing All of Your Thoughts

Our minds are filled with facts and beliefs. Facts are observable. Even if you ignore or argue against facts, they don’t go away.

Our beliefs, on the other hand, are created by us. We form them to make sense out of our experiences.

Which means we can change them. And sometimes, questioning our own beliefs can help us see things from a new, less painful, perspective.

For example, many of us believe no one should die alone. Or, at least, it’s unbearable to think of our loved one’s passing with no one by their side.

Yet it happens often. Family members stick close to the dying loved one.  Sometimes for days. Then, in a brief period when everyone takes a break for a shower or a nap, the loved one slips away.

Family members can have a hard time letting go of guilt. They think, “My loved one died alone. I failed them.”

The first sentence is a fact. The second one is a belief that might shift under scrutiny.

In fact, it’s a belief that many hospice workers would argue. Those who work with dying people believe we humans have some control over our moment of death. That means many who pass alone choose to do so.

Maybe the person can’t bear to leave when their loved ones are nearby. Maybe they want to protect others from the trauma of their death.

Who’s right?

It doesn’t matter.

What matters is that you can open your mind to alternative explanations. You’ll find relief in the fact that your beliefs might be wrong.

You don’t have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you. – Dan Millman, author

Learning to identify and question your beliefs is a powerful skill, but it helps to have a concrete method for doing it. If you try to simply mentally reframe your beliefs, it usually won’t work. You’re still relying on your logical mind to solve your emotional experience. You’ll find more success with a method of inquiry designed to shift beliefs at both a cognitive and emotional level. I recommend The Work of Byron Katie.

Give Your Mind Solvable Problems

You can’t think your way out of grief. You need to lean into the emotional experience of loss. Give yourself time. Incorporate rituals to help you integrate your loss. (I wrote about this in my blog post “Wading Into Grief.”)

Yet your mind as a brilliance for certain tasks. It’s great at problem solving. Making plans. Coming up with ways to execute those plans.

The mind responds particularly well when it’s presented with a question.

So, when your mind is fussing around, mulling over false beliefs or unchangeable facts, give it a question to work on:

• What can I do right now to make myself feel better?
• Who can I connect with now who can give me unconditional love and support?
• What can I do, going forward, to honor my loved one?
• How can I best take care of myself right now?  

Finding Peace In The Pandemic

Most of the world has been through the mental wringer since 2020 with the COVID pandemic. This unexpected virus has riddled our lives with uncertainty and loss.

We may be past the worst of the pandemic, but the trauma haunts us.

When I remember the people I’ve lost over the past year, I find myself back in the Valley of Blame and Shame. Thoughts about our nation’s disgraceful pandemic response. My dear ones who avoided medical treatment out of fear of exposure. Or couldn’t get medical care for newly diagnosed conditions because specialists closed their practices. Or the elders who simply last the battle against the loneliness of COVID isolations.

When I catch myself flipping through grievances and regrets, I initiate my action plan:

• I hold space for my emotions, allowing the unchangeable to be what it is. Feeling the emotional energy move and diffuse. (I talk more concretely about how to do this in my blog post Wading Into Grief.)
• Question my beliefs that are ginning up fury or fear.
• Remind myself that whatever happened in the past doesn't mean the future is bleak.
• Commit to doing what I can to make the future better than the past. Wear a mask. Get my vaccine booster. And call my people whenever I have a change.
• And ask myself, “What can I do right now to feel better.”

And I let my mind take it from there.

Questions about coaching? Schedule a free discovery call. Click the button below to get started.