Fandom to individuals or sports teams is a big part of American society.  One forms close ties to public figures or actors or for one’s sports team.  Whether football, baseball, basketball or hockey, or professional or college levels, individuals form tight bonds with their teams.   They became entranced by the teams record, status, players, and play close attention to every move and play.  In addition, individuals invest heavily financially in tickets, or sports clothes, pennants, or mugs.  Family gatherings around sporting events become very important and the value of a particular team becomes identical to family tradition, history and local area.  The team represents the person and his or her background.  In many ways, it can become very personal.

Due to this type of bond that involves investment of self, the team is not merely an outside agent but part of the individual.  While the person may not play the game, suffer the loss, or earn the win, the individual does mentally and emotionally share every play and outcome.  This can lead to the pain of loss and grief when the team loses or suffers.  It is a pain that is real because it involves the person’s life itself as well.  The day or week may be greatly affected by a loss.

The degree of the loss and adjustment however determines the healthy response versus the pathological response.  A healthy individual who finds great joy in sports has a greater connection than someone who sees it only as minor entertainment.  The bond to the team hence will create a natural response of grief due to loss.   If a team loses or is re-located, a true pain can set in that is personal.  However, how one adjusts and is able to respond to life itself after the loss determines if the response is normal or pathological.   If one feels low or bummed out, it is quite natural to feel this way for a couple days, but if one enters into a depressed state for weeks and is unable to interact or find interest in life, then the connection and the loss itself is pathological.

Fans can be fanatical.  It is OK to have fun and it is definitely normal for the passionate fan to feel grief and sadness over loss.  However, when that loss becomes so empowering that it prevents the person from enjoying life outside of sports, or prevents them from existing in the world, then one should seek counseling help and re-evaluate the bonds one has with the particular team.

Too many times, one sees violence at sporting events.  This type of deep passion is associated with unhealthy bonds with the team.  It involves associating the team with oneself so deeply, that anyone else becomes the enemy.  Loss hence becomes extremely painful for these individuals and can negatively affect their life.

Sports is fun.  It is good and for those who have deeper bonds to a team due to family history, community or identity, then one should find great pride in that, but one should not allow it to become disproportionate and cause massive depression or violent moods.  One will suffer the grief of loss more than a regular outsider, if one is bonded with a team, and that is OK.  The joy of having such a connection enhances the entertainment and value, but one needs to prevent such attachments from becoming pathological.

Please also review AIHCP’s Grief Counseling Training Program and see if it meets your academic and professional goals.  The program is online and independent study and open to qualified professionals seeking a four year certification in Grief Counseling.

Grief Counseling can help many individuals through the bereavement process.  It becomes difficult for many to sometimes progress through grief.  Some experience prolonged grief, others experience depression.  For the most part, many merely experience normal and natural grief and adaptation.  Grief Counselors can help others through it

Please also review AIHCP’s Grief Counseling Training and see if it meets your academic and professional goals.  The program is online and independent study and open to qualified professionals seeking a four year certification in Grief Counseling

Please also review the video below

With grief comes change.  Change is one of the elements of grief that makes it so uncomfortable.  The change of no longer having a wife or husband, or the change of no longer having your mother or father.   It can be also be a change that does not involve death. The change can involve no longer dating someone, or switching jobs.   With all change comes adaptation, challenge, emotional re-balancing, and time.   Grief is the result of change and attachment to what was changed.   Hence, change is a constant.

Ancient philosophers also had a difficult time understanding change.  They pondered if everything is in a state of change and flux, is there any permanence in anything.  Is someone the same or constantly someone new.  Obviously, change does not alter the substance or permanence of an individual.  Accidental qualities change within a person or a thing, but the person remains the same person, but it is obvious change alters.   It is the person’s ability to cope with change and understand the nature of change in life to better equip a healthy attitude conducive to success in an ever changing reality.

One thing that is greatly effected by change is identity.  Identity is who a person is and how one perceives oneself.  When role is altered due to loss, identity can sometimes become confused and muffled in the chaos.  Individuals may start to lose themselves in the chaos of loss if they are not able to better anchor themselves.  It is critical during loss and hence change for one to be able to retain identity but this is harder than it may seem and many struggle during loss to retain their sense of self.

Loss of identity can be common for many individuals who define themselves with their vocation, career, or relations with others.  Mothers who lose a child, may no longer feel they are a mother.  The cruel loss of losing a child can make a woman feel like she is no longer a mother.  This strip of identity of motherhood can be a horrifying loss for the person.  Many women who lose a child, may make statements such as “I am not longer a mother” or “I used to be a mother, but no longer am”.   It is important to help these women understand that their identity as a mother is permanent regardless of loss.  They will forever be mothers and nothing can ever alter that.  Unfortunately the loss can be so devastating as to attempt to even strip these grieving individuals even of such titles.   One can apply this standard of title to anything.  It can be applied to a grieving father, brother, uncle, or even a position.

This can also be applied to individuals who lose certain abilities.  A runner who loses a leg, or a person who loses his or her sight.  Or even the loss of youth as individuals come to grips with a mid life crisis.  What one once was or what one could once do, poses serious changes to individuals.  Individuals may feel they are no longer who they were and may not recognize themselves.  The reality is change occurs within any organism and change, both good and bad will occur.  These changes cannot define the individual at the core but they can affect secondary attributes.  How one is able to cope with the changes is key to life.  Unfortunately sometimes, others face changes that are far more difficult and require far more effort and time.

Identity can also be effected in other ways.  Change, whether bad or for the good is always difficult.  The change alters one’s perception of oneself and in some cases how others view the grieving.  An individual who changes will face a period of adaptation regardless.  If one ceases an individual bad habit, then that change will create new struggles as well as new paradigms.  Removing oneself from a party scene for example, may pose a challenge in and of itself but also create new difficulties with older friends.  Others may no longer wish to associate since the same shared activity is no longer part of one’s life.  Hence loss of friends and new challenges of finding new friends can make one question identity.

Ultimately, one can fall into a fear of not knowing thyself.  Who am I?  Who am I not?  Grief and bigger changes can cause an existential crisis in some that requires counseling and help to truly find oneself again.   Grief and change are powerful things and can erode one’s very foundation if one does not cope.  One can lose a sense of self and become isolated and question one’s own very reality.  It is natural to have fears of change, to struggle with these changes, and come out different.  However, just because one is different after change, does not mean one is another person.  One may have different outlooks and different perspectives, but it does not mean, one’s identity or true self is lost.   YOU are still YOU.  Just like physically YOU were different when younger, YOU can be different emotionally and mentally due to change of loss.  It is important to hold on to the anchor of self despite the storm of change around oneself.   Life is about change, but it is about how YOU change with it, not your very identity itself.

In all stories of our life, it is important to not allow the bad chapters in our life to become isolated from the story of YOU.  While the story changes, the book title is still YOU.  How one incorporates the past chapters with the present in writing the future chapters is key.  Change is part of life and without it there is no existence.  It is important to be open to change, even difficult change throughout life if one wishes to live.  Some change may be very terrible, some minor, and others pleasant, but whatever the change, it will affect oneself.  How one connects the changes in life to the overall theme of one’s story is key.

If you would like to learn more about Grief Counseling Training, then please review AIHCP’s Grief Counseling Certification and see if it meets your academic and professional goals.  The program is online and independent study and open to qualified professionals seeking a four year certification in Grief Counseling

Resources

“Whats Your Grief” article on “Change, Identity Loss and Grief by Eleanor Haley.  Please click here

The ultimate reality of grief is it forever tied to love.  Love creates attachment and loss breaks that attachment.  The greater the love, the greater the grief.  It is within this fallen construct of reality that we see the cruel paradox of life.   Do we not love because of this?  Of course not, we accept the realities of life and properly understand that death plays as much as a role in life as birth.  Many hope to ignore death and loss but this is unhealthy.  It is important to discuss life but also death.  In doing so, one can better understand the losses that eventually find everyone.   Part of being alive is experiencing loss.   We need to understand loss, help others through it and adjust.

There is a reason there is no true recovery in grief.  Since love is forever, so is grief.  The only difference is that when grief is properly handled, the acute grief becomes integrated into our life.  Unfortunately, some experience complications in grief and are unable to integrate.  Hence the grief response which is both healthy and natural becomes distorted.

The video below covers many basic grief ideas and can serve as a great educational tool.

Please also review AIHCP’s Grief Counseling Training Program and see if it meets your academic and professional goals.

Many individuals deal with depression and exhibit few if any symptoms.  They are able to look content and happy and may even feel happy or have an uplifted mood at times.  For the most part though, they feel unworthy and sad about life and are oppressed with depressive feelings.  The ability to look well and smile and be able to function does not mean they are not depressed.  This type of depression is difficult for professionals to diagnose due to the lack of symptoms that are hidden by the individual.

The article, “What Is Smiling Depression?” by Claudia Rodriguez and reviewed by Bethany Juby looks at what Smiling Depression is and how to work through it.  The article states,

“While you might think that you’d notice signs of depression in someone, that’s not always the case. If you experience smiling depression, you may appear perfectly happy from the outside but have symptoms of depression behind closed doors.”

To read the entire article, please click here

Please also review AIHCP’s Grief Counseling Training and see if it meets your academic and professional goals.  The program is online and independent study and open to qualified professionals seeking a four year certification as a certified Grief Counselor.

During the pandemic it has been difficult to live a normal life.  With the vaccine on its way and some already receiving it, life can in some ways turn to normal, but grief and loss during these years will not be washed away with a vaccine. There is no vaccine for grief and it is part of life.  It is important to deal with grief and learn to better live with it.

The article, “There Is No Vaccine for Grief” by A.C Shilton presents an excellent story on the reality we cannot just make grief go away but instead must face it.  He presents a few steps to help others deal with grief and learn to face sad emotions.  He states,

“Inoculating yourself against feelings of loss may prove harder than getting a routine vaccine. “Grief is as unique as a thumbprint. What works for one person may not work for another,” said Deanna Upchurch, the director of clinical outreach services at the Providence-based hospice HopeHealth. ”

To read the entire article, please click here

There is no quick fix for grief.  During the pandemic, the fear of loss has tormented society, instead of fleeing those fears, indulge them briefly and analyze the feelings and see if there are better ways to cope with potential loss and how to deal with those we love.

Please also review AIHCP’s Grief Counseling Training and see if it matches your academic and professional goals.  The program is online and independent study and open to qualified professionals seeking a four year certification in Grief Counseling