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461 points LaurenSerino | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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graemep ◴[] No.45290469[source]
There is a problem with rigid medical definitions. There is a huge difference between the author of this, a young pregnant woman losing her husband, and say, something like a middle aged person losing an elderly parent (as I did earlier this year). Of course it will take her far longer to recover (if at all).

I would guess her grief is not "disordered" though. As she says she functions - she works, she looks after her child, she looks after herself.

> We medicalize grief because we fear it.

Absolutely right. There is a certain cowardice in how we deal with death in the contemporary west.

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righthand ◴[] No.45290594[source]
In the west we’re trained to believe that if something happens there should be some sort of tangible reward on the other end, no matter how minute. Death takes and leaves nothing tangible and it’s the absence that drives us crazy. Since we’re trained this way we seek out some solution with the other trained aspect, spending money. Which in turn only temporarily numbs the grief until you deal with it.

We also stigmatize mental health care in the west, telling people to “suck it up” or “get over it”. So our money spending usually doesn’t direct us to a more helpful path.

I often wonder how dealing with death compares to the east where ancestors are commonly remembered, contemplated, and revered.

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AlexandrB ◴[] No.45290858[source]
> We also stigmatize mental health care in the west, telling people to “suck it up” or “get over it”.

I think this idea is ~10 years out of date. If anything, we now seem pathologize every behavior and personality quirk into a mental health issue. At least on social media, it's also trendy to have a mental health issue to the point that people will claim to have ADHD because they're easily distracted by their phones. I've also lost count of the number of big "content creators" who casually mention their therapist or going to therapy. If there is a stigma, it's not found among the younger generations.

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SoftTalker ◴[] No.45291543{3}[source]
I think for people over 50, I guess "Gen X" and older, this is still often true. I've never considered therapy or medical help for any way that I was "feeling" and certainly have had times of grief and loss and sadness in my life. In some of those moments, when peers or friends noticed it, the gist of their advice was to “suck it up” or “get over it”.

I am also introverted, procrastinate, am not very organized, and am not very good at housekeeping. My view on how I would change those things would be to just suck it up and do better, if I had to. And when it matters, that's what I do.

I don't mean to say that this is the only correct way to approach life but it is how I look at things.

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samarthr1 ◴[] No.45292445{4}[source]
I tol am unfortunately also introverted, prone to procrastination and seem quite unable to keep my house as spotless as I would like

Do you have any advice for overcoming my problem with atleast procrastination (i suspect that it is probably causing the other two issues).

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1. SoftTalker ◴[] No.45297338{5}[source]
Suck it up and just do it.