In addition to being a grieving widower, I have, for pretty much all of my life, been a depressive. My depression is diagnosed as treatment-resistant. I also have suicidal ideation. This means that I don't just simply wish that I were dead, but that I actually formulate plans to carry it out. (Okay don't panic: yes I do have a religious objection to committing suicide.) It used to be that my depression was cyclical but now it is more or less permanent.
Therefore it was interesting a few days ago when I realized that I was thinking about the future. Generally when I think about the future, it is with a sense of disappointment that God has not yet killed me and I am not dead already. It usually constitutes a kind of existential dread in that there are things in the future that I must do and I don't feel that I have the energy to do them. And so it was with some surprise that I realized that while I wasn't making any definitive plans, I was thinking about the future in somewhat neutral terms as something which probably would happen, and without any particular sense of dread.
This got me started thinking about the intuitive/instrumental grieving styles. Intuitive grieving is about feelings, talking about feelings, and talking about the past. Talking and *thinking* about the past. So intuitive is primarily about the past. Instrumental grieving is about cognition, work and grief work, and planning for the future so instrumental grief is about the future.
At the moment this is just an idea. But, given that intuitive/instrumental has never been a dichotomy between men and women, and is in fact a continuum for each individual, this means that individuals generally process grief in both intuitive and instrumental ways. And given the inclusion of both intuitive and instrumental components in the Grief Guys program, is it possible that all grievers go through periods of intuitive and instrumental grief at different times during their own grief journeys? Should we be including the possibility of intuitive and instrumental periods of grief in any grief support program?
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