Finding meaning during difficult times

Carli Uys

November 8, 2024

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By Carli Uys

Industrial Psychologist (PS 0151149) Head of Design, Research and Development (MCom Industrial Psychology and MCom Communication studies)

We all face various obstacles in our lives, and some of us find it easier to cope or deal with these obstacles than others. We at times experience turmoil, and don’t really know how to cope with the obstacles or change and cannot truly see the meaning of it.

David Kessler co-authored two books with the legendary Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and adapted her well-respected stages of grief.  The Kübler-Ross grief cycle was created to help people understand their response to loss and was not meant to help people tuck their messy emotions into packages, but rather to help them understand where they are in the grief cycle. Each person’s response to grief is different and there is no typical response to loss.

The grief cycle is not some linear timeline of grief, it a guideline of various stages that you can experience. Not everyone experiences all the stages in the same way, nor do they go through them in a prescribed order. You can move back and forth between various stages until you can finally accept the loss. The grief cycle stages help a person better navigate their terrain of grief, helping you to be better equipped to cope with life and the loss you experienced. Each person’s grief is unique to them and their experience and relation to the loss.

The five stages of grief are:

Finding meaning is the (new) sixth stage in the grief cycle. Finding meaning is about remembering the who or what you have lost with more fondness than pain. Love and grief are intertwined. If you love, you will also one day experience sorrow. The search for meaning after the loss will lead you along a divergent path. You will experience many different emotions, and it is up to you to determine how will let these emotions impact your life. Finding meaning from a loss is personal and is relative to your situation. The meaning does not necessarily require understanding, but that you need to find closure to be able to move on with your life. Only you can find your own meaning of the loss, and no one can force their meaning on you or find it for you. The important part of finding meaning is that you get up and put your pieces back together – it takes times.

Gareth Furber states that it is important to increase your self-awareness and human connection. Here are some tips on how to find meaning during difficult times.

1. Focus on your personal values. Determine what is most important to you and focus on that. Your values are your compass in life, they allow you to rationalise your beliefs, attitudes and actions. They are your guidelines and serve as foundational structure that can support you during difficult times.
2. Find people who have gone through difficult times. Talk to people who have experienced loss, and find out how they coped with the loss and found meaning from the loss, so you can incorporate it in your search for meaning. Not everyone processes loss the same, so only use it as a guideline to be able to find meaning. Incorporate your values into this advice so that finding the meaning of the loss resonates with who you are.
3. Don’t dwell on the past. Focus on your present and the emotions you are feeling. Don’t let your mind wander, or ruminate about the past, but focus on how you are feeling now, so you can deal with each emotion as they arise.
4. Constantly check your behaviour. As you are going through the grief cycle, and experience depression, you might have tendency to withdraw yourself from the world around you. This leads to you denying yourself the opportunity for positive reinforcement – positive emotions from other people. This can lead you to stay longer in the depression stage as you don’t allow yourself to move past it and experience life anymore.
5. Reflect about your emotions and your thoughts. Expressing your feelings freely in your journal as this allows you to release them and not hold on to destructive thoughts and feelings. Allow yourself to go into a safe space, and to feel the anger and other emotions so you can process them and allow yourself to accept and find meaning in the loss. Narrate your story so you can deal with it.

Find meaning or trying to make sense of pain during grief is no small order, and it doesn’t happen quickly. Finding meaning should not be a goal you want to achieve by a certain date, you need to allow yourself to cry, to be angry, to feel depressed (sad) about the grief to allow yourself to heal, and only then can you truly find meaning about the grief. Be gentle on yourself and be humble. Remember to put yourself first when experiencing grief and do not try to be strong for other people, as they experience the grief or loss differently and need to go through the cycle at their own pace and understand what they are feeling and allowing the process to heal them with time.

When you have experienced loss or grief, you cannot truly find meaning if you do not have hope. Hope and meaning are inseparable. To be able to focus on both, you need to look at your desire for mastery and being in control of the situation. You unfortunately do not have control once you experience loss or grief, but you can master your ability to navigate through the pain to find peace within yourself.

Once grief occurs, your day-to-day activities have been impacted. Grief completely reshapes your inner dialogue, your thoughts, your beliefs and your view of life. Only you can process grief for yourself in a healthy way, and you need to allow yourself to dig deep into your emotions and feelings to be able to grow.

Emily Esfahani Smith created a quiz to help you determine what your pillar of meaning is. The four pillars are belonging, purpose, storytelling, and transcendence. Here is the link to complete the quiz: https://www.emilyesfahanismith.com/quiz/whats-your-pillar

Emily refers to posttraumatic growth in her book: The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed With Happiness. To truly be able to grow from the traumatic experience in your life, you need to spend time thinking about the event, try to make sense of it, and to NOT shy away from the sadness and the pain but rather lean into it. This is a natural and adaptive process to growth after trauma. She goes further to say that you need to find an integrated feeling with your community, such as family and friends, to have a daily mission, to be able to narrative a positive story for your life and to have a sense of connection larger than yourself. This will help you to find a way forward after the trauma. This however requires effort from your side, such as putting effort into a nonprofit that produces life-saving research or does outreach to those less fortunate or who have gone through trauma. You can also do some volunteer work that honours your passions. If this is something you are not interested in, then you don’t have to go to these lengths to be able to find meaning. Finding meaning is different for each person. Meaning can also be found in the little moments, the caring messages you receive from loved ones, someone sending you flowers, it does not have to be a big event.

What is truly important, is that you remain open to your feelings and allow yourself to feel them. This contributes to your meaning-making process. With time you will learn how to feel and honour the many griefs you carry, no matter how big or small they are. Allow yourself to feel and experience your emotions to truly be able to heal with time.

Finding meaning in loss, is about your mental health and your ability to understand yourself on a deeper level. The choice is yours, only you can find truly meaning and improve your mental well-being.