Insight from a Psychotherapist: Grief By Proxy

“It is easy to become philosophical when it isn’t your parent dying.” That is what I told a patient when we discussed another upcoming break in my schedule. It is the third trip in six months and my long-term patients have been incredibly understanding, as have the new ones on wait lists. Although it isn’t my father dying in England, it is disruptive.

When my own father had a heart attack several years ago my patients got an email and a call from my office staff. I could barely text family during the worst of it. My husband, who is English, embodies many of the tropes of a stiff upper lip, so his feelings are not exactly on the surface. I had a nurse pull me aside and forcefully tell me to ‘get it together’ upon just hearing the news that my dad needed a triple bypass. My husband has exhaled sharply a few times since the cancer diagnosis was deemed ‘terminal’ by his father’s Oncologist.

We deal with grief in our own ways, obviously, yet carrying personal grief, while working with patients, has considerations a skilled practicioner must address in order to navigate our work ethically and effectively. But what of the grief we experience by proxy? The pain we witness from afar or in others. The grief of watching an in-law die, of just watching the news — of living in America; of Covid-19, of climate destruction. Of worrying about being shot outside; a woman’s right to her fertility criminalized, the negative effects of racism and privilege, rents increaing by 30%.

There is a cartoon of a woman swimming, surrounded by sharks. Each has a label: Gun Violence, Climate Change, Inequality on it’s fin. There is a man located on a dock nearby. He is yelling to her: “Just be resilient!”

Being a therapist lately feels like the man on the dock and the woman in the ocean.