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I totally agree. Everyone actually deals with grief and loss the same way, it is just a question of whether they do it through a gauzy layer of useless and unhelpful abstractions or not.
I used to want to hear about the divinity's plan but (I suspect, like you) the degree to which actual reality fails to live up to said plan render it just another obscenity that I don't want to have to deal with atop everything else.
Incidentally, I am sorry for your clustered losses ... they do sometimes gang up on you. It gets better. I'm sure you know that intellectually but sometimes it helps to hear it from a fellow human.
Thank you. I'm hoping not to carry them with me. I have to save my energy for my mom since I'm the one who lives closest. I don't think my sister means to upset me. She has always enjoyed attention, and, though I believe she is sincere in her requests, it's annoying me and strikes me as self-motivated. My own fatigue and anxiety may be clouding my judgment, however. I always ask my level-headed, calm husband if I'm overreacting before I respond.
Religious or not, God or no god... All mentally normal people can feel pain,loss and difficult times once or many times in life, the difference for me as an agnostic,I usually cope up using my logic and move on. I Cry if it still hurts and then laugh after it burst. We dont have to pretend that we are ok if really are not. It's all in the mind and we can control it.
I'll admit that I really don't understand this question, but when tragedy strikes, I acknowledge the pain of loss and grieve until I feel ready to move on. That's pretty much it.
For me, personally, religion simply isn't a part of my life and I spend almost no time thinking about it. I don't go to church, I don't pray, and there's no spiritual aspect of my life. I have nothing against those who do. "To each his own." In terms of coping with hardships, it's just part of life. You deal with things the best you can, the way that's good for you, and then you move on. Some folks need religion for it, others don't. Sometimes, life is wonderful, and sometimes, it's terrible. There's no rhyme or reason why things happen when they happen, but well-adjusted people find ways to cope with the bad things that'll eventually happen in life.
Even if subscribing to such ways-of-thinking could potentially bring some type or sense of an illusory comfort , I am not able to turn off my rational thinking brain and wrap my mind around such delusory thinking (or not anymore) when day-to-day reality just simply slaps me in the face to tell me otherwise.
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Amusing result of an incident about this the other day although it should scare the bejeesus out of some believers.
Lady overheard me and another recent widow having a 'how are you doing' conversation where aI mentioned wishing to be able to just be able to pass on inconsequential day to day happenings to my husband.
Eavesdropping lady consolingly put her arm around me and both assured me that he would know what I was thinking and to go ahead and converse with him.
I was telling somebody about this later and it hit me!
OMG! Can he only 'hear' me when I address him specifically or can he read my mind all the time?
That thought brought up the old Desi/Lucy remark..."Lucy,you got some 'splainin' to do!"
There's times when I don't think these believers follow through with some of their ideas.
To me the OPs question sounds like asking how did I cope when I cut my finger.
When a child cuts its finger, Mommy kisses the boo-boo and tries to make it all better. Nothing scientific about that. Arguably something childish / immature about it, and arguably not age-appropriate for grown men and women. Still, when under duress, even adults sometimes regress, and that is not inherently a bad thing provided one doesn't become "stuck" in it.
At times such as that, I might indulge in "comfort foods", sitting by my fireplace staring at the flames, watching mindless entertainment on TV or reading comparable literature, and other escapist emotionally soothing rituals.
One thing I do not do though, even though I'm a former theist, is turn to the trappings of my old faith for comfort. Because it never gave me real comfort even in the day, when I most needed it. It gave me, not comfort, but the hope of comfort, down the road, over time, eventually. But the problem was that one day, it WAS down the road, time was up ... and still no real comfort. Indeed, what I found was that when the rubber really needed to meet the road, suffering was intensified because rather than just being part of life, it was something God had supposedly bought my way out of, at least for the really big things.
I think its actually easier to deal with hard times by being an atheist. I dont try to blame things on a magical realm or wonder why "god" would allow bad things to happen to me. Rather I address the situation after a deep seeded need to pout and tirade a bit.
If somebody does something wrong to me I just aknowledge that person isnt right to be in my life. If something bad happens to me I try to learn from it and if my actions caused it to happen I dont do that again. If my wife or I developed cancer or something it would suck, but Id just know thats what happens to multicellular creatures in this universe we live in. It would suck, sure, but I wouldnt be crying to my ceiling asking "why! Why!"
When a child cuts its finger, Mommy kisses the boo-boo and tries to make it all better. Nothing scientific about that.
Perhaps, but you will find the mother also deals with the wound, treats it using best practices, and does not ignore it and pretend it is not there. That is the point of my analogy which should not be over extended.
Dealing with grief means addressing that injury in the best ways we know how. Dealing with it and treating it and working through it. Not ignoring it through pretending it is not there until the pain goes away. Allowing the wound to fester and become harder to treat in the interim.
I have seen people lose their faith later in life having used it to ignore a grief earlier in their life. They then had to deal with that grief all over again later due to this, because now they realised the dead are.... dead. But it was worse the second time around, and harder to treat, because the ways to deal with grief are more effective closer to the time, not later in life when useful memories are faded or even gone.
There is a reason why psychologists try to treat grief literally as soon as possible. For example during recent natural disasters in the US child psychologists were flown into ground zero on day one. Not day two or three when the children could be brought to them. Because when dealing with loss and grief it is recognized that NOW is better. Not in 5 years when the wound has been ignored under the ineffective dressings of faith.
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