
When my friend Frans Grimbergen found out in 2010 that both of his parents had died after being struck by a car in the Netherlands, he had no idea the ensuing grief would eventually nudge him into a new career.
After returning to work, the physical education teacher and head tennis coach at the Singapore American School started to notice a sense of unease that he might not be utilizing his full potential. By 2017, at the age of 53, Frans had resigned from his teaching job and dedicated himself to pursuing his dream of becoming an International Tennis Federation Masters world champion.
“Life can be taken away from you just like that with an accident, and I felt like it was time to let go of some old beliefs,” he said. “It felt like a second chance to really pursue something, to see what I was capable of.”
As an executive counsellor, whenever a new client shows up in my office with an urge to make radical changes, one of the first questions I ask is: “Have you suffered any recent losses?”
Many professionals experience a sense of disquiet with the status quo and start to crave change in the aftermath of grief. The death of a parent or loved one, a health scare, losing a job, or even a painful breakup can ignite an urge to strike out in an entirely new direction. Some leave jobs or change careers, while others decide to end marriages or terminate friendships that have felt one-sided for some time.
World-renowned grief expert and the founder of Grief.com, David Kessler, says grief has a way of knocking us out of autopilot. “Grief is a huge catalyst. It becomes a window, a period of re-evaluation in our life,” said Kessler, who suddenly lost his youngest son, David, at the age of 21. “I always say grief is a change we didn’t want.”
Most of the time, decisions made in the aftermath of a loss reflect who we truly are and what we truly want. Situations that have survived decades of complacency and been sustained by routine are often no match for the cleansing force of grief.
While any major life decision needs to be carefully examined, those made in the aftermath of grief often require an extra layer of due diligence before taking action.
“Sometimes the first thought in our mind, that’s the first or the loudest, may not be the best one,” said Kessler. “We want to make sure that it’s a response to the situation and not a reaction. Because we don’t want to act on something that’s just coming to get us out of the pain. We want to make sure we really think these things through.”
Frans, for example, gradually eased out of his full-time teaching job by working as a substitute while increasing the intensity of his tennis training. The process of transitioning into a semi-professional Masters tennis career took a total of six years.
Another potential distortion in our decision-making process that can emerge after a loss is repressed grief that nudges us toward fear-based decisions.
A lament of many clients who are grieving, especially high-achieving professionals, is frustration that they are not “getting over it” faster. They are used to exerting control over their environment and often get angry with themselves when grief follows its natural path and returns in unpredictable waves of varying intensity.
Comments like, “I should be over this already,” or, “I don’t understand what my problem is,” are often uttered in the therapy room. The inherent danger in treating grief as something that can be checked off a “to-do” list is that it gets repressed.
So how do you know if a potentially important decision is being colored by repressed grief?
“We begin to make our decisions and live our life from the perspective of wanting to make sure nothing bad is going to happen. We constrict rather than expand,” Kessler explained. “This is earth; something bad is gonna happen, but I am going to take risks and continue to grow.”
Another trick in the high-achiever’s cognitive playbook is feeling guilty about not having done more to prevent the loss. Instead of allowing yourself to fully feel and process the pain, guilt can be a way of fighting for stability and control in circumstances where neither exists.
“Your mind would always rather feel guilty than helpless. We try to find control by being guilty,” said Kessler. “Guilt is the Rubik’s cube that keeps us busy so we don’t have to go: Oh my God, I live in a world where something bad can happen. We try to find control by being guilty and ultimately it doesn’t work.”
Kessler says high achievers can learn a thing or two from the animal world about dealing with painful emotions. “Buffalos, when they sense a storm coming, run into the storm, thereby minimizing the time they are in pain (from the storm),” he reasons. “Think of us, on the other hand. We often put it behind us and ignore it. Instead, we have a long life with the pain three feet behind us.”
By highlighting the human tendency to avoid painful emotions, Kessler touches upon a profound truth: many of the issues that plague our day-to-day lives—feeling guilty, depression, staying frantically busy, perfectionism, alcohol use disorder, overeating, etc.—stem from unresolved issues in our past. Repressing our pain or pretending something didn’t happen does not make it go away.
When it comes to grief, it helps to soften one’s self-perception from being a highly competent professional who might have been able to change the outcome to simply being a human who has suffered a loss and needs time to heal.
While grief may take longer than we like to become tolerable, it doesn’t have to obliterate every other aspect of our lives; healing is not a linear process, and we can often expand in other areas while still in mourning.
“The thing that people don’t realize is that grief has a longer shadow. We want to get rid of the grief, make it smaller. But it doesn’t get smaller. We often have to grow around it,” said Kessler.
In his book, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief, Kessler expands on Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—by adding a sixth stage: finding meaning and living a life that honors your resilience and the people or things you have lost.
“We often talk about post-traumatic stress, but I like to mention post-traumatic growth because it occurs more often,” he explained. “After grief, people can cry a little harder, go a little deeper, and laugh more. Grief and loss expand our bandwidth for pain and for joy.”
This sentiment was echoed by Frans, who describes feeling closer to his siblings after losing his parents: “I don’t know how to say this. I’m actually blessed that the incident happened, which is crazy,” he mused. “All of us would have loved to have them with us, but something very special happened after that. Good things have come from it.”
Frans, by the way, did accomplish his dream of becoming a world champion. This past May, he won the ITF 2024 World Tennis Masters Tour Men’s 60 & Over Doubles in Mexico City.
Grief will find us all at some point. While it often robs us of a sense of fairness or control, it can also infuse us with a fresh perspective and wisdom about how to chart the rest of our journey.
As Kessler so eloquently summed up: “Grief changes us, and then we change our life.”
Our professional counsellors are here to support you.
Reach Out Today!