Grief is a journey not a Prozac Deficiency

I worry more about people who do not grief. To me, there is something drastically wrong when a person is unable to grieve. However, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) which is published by the American Psychiatric Association, where 80% of their contributors have ties with the pharmaceutical companies is now is branding grief as a medical condition if a mourner feels sad for more than two weeks. Drug therapy has shown to have very little impact on grief recovery and many people have said they were unable to do their grief until after they were off medications.

Grief is a journey not a Prozac deficiency. Grief simply happens and is an automatic reaction. It is missing someone we once loved who is no longer here with us. I tell my clients that grief just means we loved. Love does not require medications, nor does the journey deep into our soul.  Grief is a normal response to loss and there is no one “right” way to grieve just as there is no one way to anticipate how the feelings of sadness, anger, loss, and loneliness will heal and evolve and resolve. There is no time table that says how long this journey will last. Grief is balancing our inner and outer realities while learning to accept the loss.