When We Suffer Political Grief

Co-authored with Darcy Harris

Have you ever experienced psychological distress because of an election or experienced a loss of relationships in your life due to political disagreements? Maybe you are grappling with identity loss because of a lack of shared overarching values in your community.

If so, you may have experienced political grief.

Political grief can occur when we experience a loss of safety, trust, or hope for the future because of government practices and/or backlash to enacted policies. Additionally, there are many other death and non-death-related losses associated with oppression, systematic racism, mass shootings, human rights violations, war, and environmental degradation.

Source: Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

Across the world, irresponsible governance, the breakdown of political structures, communal instability, systematic inequalities, economic crises, the dissolution of the social contract, and misinformation or the distortion of facts can exacerbate political grief. Many people are shifting to more extreme sides of the political spectrum due to feelings of grief, despair, and hopelessness.

With an increased sense of threat created by these experiences, we may respond by going into states of survival. For instance, we may respond to political grief by insulting those who disagree with us (fight), avoid viewing the news (flight), respond with political apathy (freeze), or sometimes politically agree with whatever our parents or partners are saying as to preserve connection (submission) even if we feel otherwise.

The Theory Behind Political Grief: Attachment Theory and the Assumptive World

Bowlby posited that early-life attachment experiences lead individuals to form ‘working models’ of the self and of the world; for example, a working model based upon secure attachment represents the world as capable of meeting one’s needs and provides a basic sense of safety and security. The attachment system functions as an unconscious mediator of the grieving process, and people tend to grieve in ways that align with their primary attachment pattern.

Janoff-Bulman stated that expectations about how the world should work are established earlier than language in children and that assumptions about the world result from the generalization and application of early childhood experiences into adulthood. The assumptive world is thought to be informed and shaped as part of the attachment system. Basic assumptions about how the world should work are deeply woven into the fabric of how individuals live their lives, interpret life events, and predict outcomes. The three core concepts that comprise the assumptive world revolve around:

1. How we find safety in the world.
2. How we believe things work, and why events happen.
3. Our view of ourselves and how we fit into our social spheres.

The Assumptive World and Political Grief

Janoff-Bulman stated that our basic assumptions about how the world should work can be shattered by life experiences that do not fit into our view of ourselves and the world around us. What is apparent is that the experience of a significant life event that cannot be readily incorporated into these assumptions can create a state of disequilibrium.

In the aftermath of significant loss experiences, the core beliefs that comprise our assumptive world are challenged, and the entire structure that we have built our lives begins to crumble. There is no going back; the way the world made sense before and the expectations and beliefs that were deeply held about oneself and others are no longer salient.

In essence, we grieve the loss of our assumptive world, and our grief (although painful and disorienting) provides us with the process by which we grapple with the assault on our most deeply held assumptions and beliefs to eventually rebuild a new assumptive world that will integrate the lived experience that catapulted us into this uncharted territory.

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In political grief, the loss's origin is in the overarching social and political structures, but the impact is deeply personal and painful. Thus, political grief is felt as a violation of one’s personal assumptive world and a tear in the social fabric of a political system or nation to which an individual identifies.

Political Polarization

Political polarization often accompanies political grief, and both sides of the divide describe feeling a sense of moral outrage over the views expressed by the other. Moral outrage can be defined as anger provoked by the perception that a moral standard—usually a standard of fairness or justice—has been violated.

The emotions that arise are often big, and the threat system is readily activated in a defensive or even aggressive posture. Thus, it is common for people who experience political grief to find it difficult to try to bridge the gap with those who oppose their beliefs and perspectives, as doing so feels like a violation of what they hold to be most valuable in their core sense of identity as individuals and with their social groups.

How Do We Engage With Political Grief?

Engaging with political grief may include identifying a way of relating that preserves the integrity of the common humanity that different groups share, particularly when there is factual confusion, uncertainty, conceptual ambiguity, and moral complexity.

Taking a stance of common humanity does not mean diminishing one’s deeply held values, nor is it meant to condone abuses of power, political oppression, or social marginalization. Critical reflection and conscientious awareness might help uncover the underlying sense of threat that fuels the ongoing divisions and polarization.

Source: Darcy Harris / Used with permission.

Ultimately, we must be able to step back and acknowledge the common experience of grief (even if on opposite sides of the continuum) and choose responses that might foster connection despite differences if we hope to reduce the damage being done to ourselves and our communities in the current political climate. Doing this can be incredibly hard, but focusing on our intention to connect rather than our need to defend can constructively guide our responses where possible.

This article was co-authored with Darcy Harris, RN, RSW, PhD, FT. Dr. Harris is a Professor of Thanatology at King’s University College at Western University. Both Darcy and Mark maintain clinical psychotherapeutic practices specializing in issues relating to attachment, loss, change, and transition in Ontario, Canada.