▲Getting rid of someone's things (in whatever manner) to remove physical reminders, writing a goodbye letter, scattering ashes, finding forgiveness in your heart, getting answers, and so forth.

▲From a young age, we’re trained to look for happy endings in tough stories. Though life is far from clean-cut, people generally seek out finality, as well as a foreseeable end to pain.

▲According to Mariana Bockarova, PhD, in Psychology Today, closure in breakups is about finding answers. Through closure, "we can restructure our past, present, and future in a healthy way, through understanding what went wrong and reconfiguring our story accordingly."

▲Psychologists say that searching for permanent closure to emotional pain closes ourselves off to healthier ways of processing grief and sadness.

▲"The empty chair," for example, is a therapeutic technique in which participants would imagine the source of their unresolved trauma, be it an abusive parent or deceased lover, sitting in the chair and they would speak to them.

▲While the empty chair technique often provided a short-term emotional release, the long-term pain remained.

▲There’s a common belief, too, that you are the only person who can give yourself closure. The person who experienced loss is thereby offered an illusion of control in a situation where control doesn't really exist.

▲Psychotherapist Ashley Davis Bush, author of 'Hope and Healing for Transcending Loss,' argues that pop psychology's brand of closure isn't actually achievable, and that it's really not productive.

▲The idea that we can completely end emotional pain is false. You can ease it, you can learn how to cope better, you can temporarily forget about it, but as Bush says, "In reality, it's not that the pain ends, but it changes over time."

▲An essential part of life is experiencing the full range of sadness and pain. These honest emotions are necessary in feeling the full range of joy and happiness.

▲When Bush sees clients who are grieving a lost loved one, instead of "closure" she uses terms like "healing" and "growth." Through that avenue, she's helped surviving spouses learn how to carry their precious memories in a positive way.

▲Bush encourages clients to keep the memories, instead of getting rid of them, but also emphasizes that you must learn how to let the memories fortify you instead of weigh you down.

▲Clinical social worker Bob Livingstone writes that the pressure to achieve closure, and its inevitable failure in the long run, can worsen the feeling of loss. Moreover, repressing your emotions is dangerous and unsustainable.

▲Our past relationships and experiences are always with us, no matter how hard we try to get rid of them. A more productive way to deal with them than ignoring them is to honor them, and extract wisdom from them.

▲Remaining emotionally alive, feeling all your feelings, however painful it may seem, has actually allowed Bush’s clients to fall in love again after intense grief, without sacrificing deep feelings of loyalty to their deceased partners.

▲Instead of thinking about the end of a relationship as a closing door or an ending chapter, imagine it as a new leg of your journey. Your baggage can either be a huge, heavy suitcase you have to drag behind you, or a lightened load that's easy to carry—and useful too.

▲From signing divorce papers to moving out of the apartment you shared, there are concrete ways of establishing some sort of finality.

▲After the writing exercise, the selected group writing positively reported no increase in negative emotions, along with a boost of positive outcomes including confidence, empowerment, comfort, optimism, gratitude, and wisdom.

▲Research has shown that writing, while not the end-all to feelings, actually does lighten emotional baggage and helps you put it to good use.

▲Researchers asked 100 people who had recently experienced a breakup to journal for 30 minutes a day for three days straight. A portion of participants were told to write only about the positive parts and how they’ve grown because of it…

▲It feels great to get those loud, angry thoughts out of your head and onto paper, but focusing on the negative won’t help you. And definitely don’t send that letter.

▲

While closure is widely considered possible, desirable, and necessary, many experts believe it’s none of those things.

Is closure a myth? Here's what experts say

You might be dealing with grief all wrong

28/10/24 por StarsInsider

LIFESTYLE Relationships

Click through to see how closure became so popular, how it has led us astray, and find out what experts think the real focus should be when attempting the harrowing task of moving on.