It feels like people are talking about “toxic positivity” a lot at the moment and challenging the “positive vibes only” attitude that’s been pervasive in recent years (especially on social media), recognising that it actually does more harm than good.

Today, we wanted to talk about the impact of toxic positivity on someone experiencing pet loss grief.

What is toxic positivity?

Essentially, toxic positivity is the idea that, regardless of the circumstances, you should only ever have a positive, happy or optimistic outlook, ignoring things that are painful until they’re forced to go away.

Toxic positivity is the attitude that you should dust yourself off, smile and be grateful for what you have because “there’s always someone worse off”. 

Well, yes, of course, there will always be someone somewhere who is “worse off” (however we rank these things) but that doesn’t make your pain less valid!

This kind of positivity is toxic because it ignores or denies the messier parts of being human. It tells us that happiness is good but other emotions are bad and shouldn’t be expressed.

But the thing is that life isn’t relentlessly happy, something you know only too well, having experienced a loss in your own life. Grief is part of the fabric of human existence and when we don’t face difficult emotions in life, they almost always come back to bite us!

Toxic positivity and grief

There’s no doubt that grieving is hard and it brings up some challenging emotions. Anger, guilt, sadness, regret – these can all be difficult to process and for others to be around. But these are all important feelings that you have a right to experience and express.

The discomfort around grief, of not knowing what to say to make things better, makes people lean on toxic positivity. 

You may well have had people say things to you like, “It’s a blessing in disguise” or “They’re in a better place” about your loss. Worse still, many pet carers hear sentiments such as, “At least you can get another” (as though you’re shopping for a new mobile phone!) or “At least it wasn’t someone in your family who died” when, actually, your pet was very much part of your inner circle.

While usually well-meaning, these phrases – designed to put a positive spin on things – can leave you feeling unseen, unsupported and alone in your grief. 

This can lead to you masking your grief and experiencing:

• Shame and avoidance
• Anger
• Mental health problems
• Other negative stress responses such as anxiety and depression
• Faking happiness to appease others

Grief is not something you can power through. The pain you’re experiencing is a huge neon sign that you have feelings that need to be felt and will not be pushed away indefinitely by a fake smile.

Internalising toxic positivity

A major problem with toxic positivity is that we can end up internalising it and believing that we should behave in certain ways.

You may find yourself trying to avoid the hard emotions you’re feeling or downplaying them (“I don’t know why I’m still upset” or “I know there are worst things happening in the world” or “It’s silly that I’m this upset about an animal”). Perhaps you’re keeping yourself busy, avoiding coming home, working harder or socialising more because you feel you have to focus on the positives.

But the truth is that grief needs to be felt. It’s the only way to move forwards.

What about toxic negativity?

It is worth pointing out that toxic negativity affects how we grieve too. Many of us end up feeling like we have to stay stuck in our pain, frozen in the moment of loss, because it’s the only way to stay close to our pet, the last reminder we have of them.

There’s also the fear that if we feel anything other than sadness or let go of our guilt or anger, then we’re somehow betraying our pet or forgetting how much we loved them.

This isn’t true at all. Love never dies.

Not all positivity is toxic – it can be healthy

There’s a huge difference between toxic positivity and a healthy, genuine positivity that does help people cope with grief.

Healthy positivity allows you to acknowledge and feel the hard emotions in life while recognising that there is space for good things too, if not today then one day.

Positivity in grief is being able to say, “I am heartbroken that my pet died and the future may not look the way I want it to but I know that I will be able to experience joy and purpose again”.

Those who push toxic positivity would have us believe that the only way to be whole and well in life is to be endlessly happy, to the exclusion of everything else, but that’s peddling a lie. If you think about your relationships, the things you’ve accomplished in life, and what gives your life meaning, it’s probably a messy mix of highs and lows. That’s the human condition.

True positivity can co-exist with pain. It doesn’t categorise emotions as good or bad because it understands that emotions simply ARE. 

The key to being positive in a healthy way is to have compassion and empathy for all of your feelings. It’s about saying, “My pain is valid. I don’t need to justify my grief to anyone else and I have a right to experience and express it”.

With time, healthy positivity will help you develop coping mechanisms for your pet loss grief that strengthen and support you rather than harm you. It will inspire you to find purpose in your life and to create a new relationship with your pet through the memories you carry with you.

Very best wishes from Shailen and The Ralph Site team
The Ralph Site, non-profit pet loss support

Since your pet died or went missing, has thinking a coherent thought been like wading through treacle? Are you experiencing brain fog that manifests as memory loss, confusion or an inability to concentrate?

Do you walk into a room and forget what you’re there for, miss appointments, struggle to stay organised or feel distracted?

If so, please be reassured that, as scary as it feels, all of this is a natural response to grief and should be temporary.

Why do we experience brain fog when we’re grieving?

Brain fog is such a common symptom of grief that it even has its own name: Griever’s fog. 

One reason it happens is because bereavement is a trauma, even if it’s expected. In response to this trauma, the body produces the stress hormones – cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline – because it believes you need to be ready for “fight or flight” at a moment’s notice.

As evolved as we humans think we are, our bodies and brains still have a fairly primitive response to stress; bereaved or about to run for your life from an attacker, our stress hormones can’t tell the two apart!

But when your body and mind are flooded with these hormones, it can affect your ability to remember things, concentrate or make decisions (because who needs to remember what they came into a room for when they’re running away from an attacker?!)

Even without the stress hormones as a factor, bereavement is such a huge emotional event to process that it’s completely understandable if you’re struggling to track the more commonplace things in life.

Brain fog is your brain’s way of protecting you

It seems that Mother Nature has gifted us with brain fog as a kind of protective mechanism for coping with a bereavement.

By dulling your senses for a while, brain fog acts as a cushion between your thoughts and reality, giving you an almost-surreal space to begin to process your pet loss. In fact, common grief reactions such as shock, numbness, confusion and disorientation are all connected to the brain fog induced by stress hormones.

Our stress hormones can affect our ability to create short-term memories (which is why you might forget whether or not you’ve eaten today) or to turn short-term memories into long-term ones, which can be why it’s so hard to remember the days following a bereavement.

In addition, activity in parts of the brain such as the hippocampus (responsible for memory and learning) decreases – or changes – at a time of stress or trauma because the body needs to channel its resources to survival rather than laying down new skills or memories.

Of course, pet loss grief can also disrupt your sleep, appetite, immune system and mood (a lot of that being down to those stress hormones too). These are all factors that can affect your ability to concentrate or enjoy life the way you did before your pet died.

How can you improve your grief brain fog?

You may not have noticed how foggy your brain felt until you tried to do “normal” things like carry out a task at work or even cook a meal.

Griever’s fog can impact everything, from how we perform in our jobs to our ability to connect with our friends and family.

For this and many other reasons, it’s important that you show yourself as much self-care as possible, despite your current sense of shock.

In most cases, grief-triggered brain fog eventually goes away on its own. This can take days for some people and weeks or months for others.

If you are at all worried that your brain fog is getting worse over time, we recommend that you have a chat with your doctor. It could be a sign that you’re experiencing complicated grief, which is when the intense feelings of grief persist for so long that you end up feeling stuck and need support to move forward.

In the meantime, the following tips may help you:

• Give your grief space to exist – You loved your pet very much and your grief is a natural expression of that. Unfortunately, you can’t think your way through grief; you need to feel it.
• Connect with supportive people – This could be friends and family or other bereaved pet carers (for example, in The Ralph Site Facebook Group).
• Acknowledge that your life is on a different path to when your pet was alive – The surreal nature of brain fog can keep us wanting to go back to before our loss (after all, this new state of mind doesn’t feel real). It’s important to recognise this.
• Seek bereavement support – You might find it helpful to speak to a pet bereavement counsellor or support line.
• Set reminders for yourself – If it’s making you feel anxious that you’re forgetting appointments or even whether you’ve eaten today, you could set reminders in your phone. A free app like Todoist can help you track what you need to do and when.
• Be gentle with yourself – You are feeling physically and emotionally vulnerable right now. Sadly, bereavement leave doesn’t formally exist for bereaved pet carers but if you’re able to take some time off, it might help you navigate the worst of the brain fog.
• Ask people to follow up with you if you’ve made plans together – If you’re meeting up with a friend and struggling to remember the arrangements, you could ask them to message you beforehand with a reminder.

Grief brain is real

Grief brain is certainly real. If you’re finding it hard to keep track of conversations or to read or watch TV or complete tasks at work, we hope this will reassure you that it’s a natural response to loss. We understand this doesn’t make the brain fog less distressing but maybe you can find some comfort in knowing you’re not alone in how you’re feeling. Give yourself time. Be kind to yourself. Reach out for support if you need it. One day, the fog will lift. Until then, take things a day at a time.

Very best wishes from Shailen and The Ralph Site team
The Ralph Site, non-profit pet loss support

Although grief is a normal and natural reaction to losing anyone or thing in life that matters to us, including a much-loved pet, we all handle grief differently.

Some people process grief head-on, giving all of their emotions space to be expressed, while others try to deal with their grief intellectually, shutting down their emotions or refusing to process their grief at all.

This latter response can lead to something known as “masked grief”. This is often associated with complicated grief or incomplete grief.

Could you be experiencing masked grief?

Masked grief is about trying to push down or supress the feelings of grief in the hope that they’ll eventually go away of their own accord. Someone who is masking their grief will usually try to act as if life has carried on as normal, exhibiting what they perceive to be “normal” behaviour.

Does this strike a chord with you?

It’s common for a disenfranchised grief like pet loss and masked grief to go hand-in-hand. This is because people feel that their grief isn’t viewed sympathetically by our wider society and so they try hard to hide it away.

If you’ve had people say to you, “It was only a dog/cat/rabbit/horse…” or “Are you still upset?”, you may have felt that you have no choice but to mask your grief and pretend you’re fine.

The problem is that grief can’t go away without help, so it starts to make its presence felt in other, usually unhelpful, ways (we’ll talk more about this in a moment!)

No one teaches us how to grieve

In The Grief Recovery Method’s article about masked grief, they point out that it’s rare to find a person who’s been taught how to grieve and pet loss is usually unrehearsed. 

When we experience emotional hurt and loss as a child – even if it’s over a broken toy or saying goodbye to our favourite teacher – no one really lets us sit with and express how awful it feels.

Parents will say things like, “Don’t cry” or “It’s OK, we’ll get you another one” or “Well done for not making a fuss”. Of course, they mean well. It’s uncomfortable to watch someone we love suffer but, unfortunately, this just teaches us that it’s not appropriate to get upset or that we should stuff down sad and unhappy feelings.

In many societies, men, in particular, learn that they should mask their emotions, especially big and challenging ones like grief. They’re told that “Boys don’t cry” or that they should “Man up”. These kind of cultural norms and gender stereotypes can have a toxic and lasting effect.

The problem with masked grief

The thing is that grief demands to be felt. It isn’t designed to be shut down.

You loved your pet. The pain of losing them reflects that.

When we allow ourselves to feel grief, finding the capacity to move forward eventually stems from processing whatever feels emotionally incomplete as a result of the loss. You may feel your pet’s life – and your time with them – came to a premature end, for example, or that you didn’t do everything you intended together.

If you can somehow discover and complete what’s unfinished emotionally, you may feel more peaceful and able to move into the next chapter of your life without carrying anything that may harm you later on.

With masked grief though, the suppressed emotions become a melting pot that’s waiting to boil over.

All of the stored emotional pain that’s been secreted away pushes to get out. Your body will feel it, even if you don’t let yourself feel the emotions.

Your physical symptoms could be a sign of masked grief

Masked grief often manifests as physical symptoms a long time after the loss has occurred. Ongoing problems such as headaches, digestive issues, a stomach ulcer, sleep disturbance, rashes, heart palpitations or high blood pressure are red flags that you are holding grief tightly inside.

It’s common for people experiencing masked grief to seek medical advice for these symptoms, not realising that they’re a manifestation of emotional pain. 

Of course, there are many medical conditions that cause similar issues so it is important to get them checked out. At the same time, do let your doctor know that you have suffered a bereavement as they may want to consider masked grief as a potential cause.

Other symptoms of masked grief

Masked grief inevitably manages to impair your ability to behave “normally” in everyday life. It might not happen overnight but cracks in your behaviour will usually start to show. This can lead to unhelpful coping mechanisms such as eating or drinking too much, taking unnecessary risks, addiction, destructive behaviour in relationships and more.

In some cases, people who experience sadness or grief – especially men who were raised to believe they shouldn’t be vulnerable – are more likely to channel those feelings into emotions that are seen as more socially acceptable. For instance, getting angry or behaving aggressively. Men are often taught that emotions to do with dominance and strength are more masculine and, therefore, more appropriate.

Women, on the other hand, are often told that they’re “too sensitive”, “too emotional” or “hysterical” for expressing their emotions, so may mask their grief with destructive behaviour to protect against this kind of criticism.

Usually, these behaviours are a sign that there’s emotional turmoil under the surface. 

The difference between managing and masking your grief

We all have to manage how we express our grief to a certain extent. No one wants to burst into tears at work or in the middle of the weekly food shop. The dual process of grief model also tells us that, in order to cope with a bereavement, we all need to take a break from grieving or distract ourselves at times.

The difference is that managed grief still has an outlet. While you hold in your tears at work, you might still come home and sob for your pet and how quiet the house is without them.

With masked grief though, the emotions stay firmly buried. It’s not that they’re being managed, it’s that they’re being denied. 

Ironically, masked grief tries to hide emotions but ends up creating more.

Your pet loss grief is valid 

It’s important for you to know that your pet loss grief is valid, natural and normal. We’re sorry if anyone has ever made you feel otherwise.

Accepting loss and moving forward requires you to go through an emotional journey. There is no shortcut through or around this. As we’ve seen, grief must be felt. You can either give it permission or it will find a way to make you feel, even when you least expect it.

Masked grief can be complex. You may need support from your GP and/or an experienced bereavement counsellor. If this is affecting you, please do reach out. You deserve to feel whole and well.

You can’t and won’t ever forget your pet and you won’t ever stop having feelings about them. By allowing your grief the space to be felt, you will find a way to carry forward your memories and emotions in a way that can no longer harm you or shut you off from new and good things.

Very best wishes from Shailen and The Ralph Site team
The Ralph Site, non-profit pet loss support

What do you do when you’re experiencing grief without belief to give you comfort?

When a pet dies, some carers find solace in the idea of the Rainbow Bridge – a beautiful, lush place between heaven and earth where animals are healthy and whole again, where they play all day and never know discomfort, and where they wait to be reunited with the humans who loved them.

Other pet carers turn to their faith and/or spiritual beliefs of an afterlife to help them process their pet’s passing.

But what if you’re an atheist (i.e. you don’t believe in a god or afterlife) or agnostic (i.e. you don’t believe it’s possible to know for sure that a god exists)? What if the Rainbow Bridge doesn’t bring you comfort because you don’t believe we go anywhere when we die? 

Please be reassured that many pet carers feel this way.

How can we make sense of grief without belief to comfort us?

How do you deal with someone you love dying (animal kin or human) if you believe there is nothing beyond death? This can be a truly uncomfortable question to wrestle with.

There is something incredibly vulnerable about trying to align your logical, pragmatic views of what happens when a living organism dies with the emotional need to believe in a “greater purpose”.

Many of us end up finding comfort in the very science that tells us there is probably no life after death.

Maybe this will help you if you’re grappling with grief without belief.

Think about what we do know.

DNA

Your pet’s DNA was an astounding collection of genetic material from previous generations. Even if they didn’t have any young of their own, somewhere in the world other members of their species share some of that same DNA. This means that some of their quirks and traits continue to live on. 

If your pet was a parent, they have directly contributed their unique collection of DNA to future generations.

The Butterfly Effect

But even if we put thoughts of DNA to one side, the world is different because your pet lived.

This is the perfect example of the “butterfly effect” – the idea that something as seemingly small and inconsequential as the flap of a butterfly’s wing can lead to big, complex changes elsewhere in the world.

Because your pet existed, they shaped your days. Every time you hung out with them or even thought about them, it sent you along a different course of events than would have happened if you hadn’t thought about them. 

Maybe you are kinder, more empathetic and caring because of your pet. In turn, this means you show these qualities to other people, making someone else happy because of the kindness your pet inspired. Who knows where this might lead the people whose lives you have touched?

It’s amazing what a ripple effect a pet can cause. The world is changed because of them and that will ripple until the end of existence. 

The cyclic nature of life on Earth

None of us want to think about what happens to a loved one’s physical remains after death. However, it can be comforting to think about an animal returning to the earth and making it possible for new life to grow or come into being.

In this way, death isn’t an ending at all but simply a change in form and energy.

Speaking of energy… 

In physics and chemistry, the law of conservation of energy (the first law of thermodynamics) states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another.

This means that the energy that was your beloved pet still exists in the universe. That energy cannot die.

There’s a stunning interview with writer and performer Aaron Freeman in which he says we should all want a physicist to speak at our funerals. Although he’s talking about human death, his words apply to our animal companions too.

Freeman says that a physicist will remind us of the first law of thermodynamics and that every particle, vibration and unit of energy that was our loved one remains in the world. Scientists have measured this and it’s a provable fact.

A physicist will tell us too that every photon that ever touched your pet is now racing around the world on a different course because of that contact. Your pet literally changed the fabric of existence!

Energy gives off heat and so, the energy from your pet can be felt in the warmth of the air around you.

Finally, Freeman concludes that when someone dies, “According to the law of conservation of energy, not a bit of you has gone; you’re just less orderly”.

There was a time before any of us existed

For some people, it’s comforting to remember that there was a time before any of us existed. We have no memory of the billions of years that came before our birth.

If you believe your pet’s consciousness ended with their death, then you can take comfort from knowing that they’re not alone waiting for you, they’re not reflecting back on their life or regretting the circumstances of their death. They aren’t lonely or suffering.

You carry everything they were or will ever be in your memories. They aren’t beyond your reach now. In fact, they’re firmly inside you to carry for the rest of your life.

Multiverses, parallel worlds and infinite possibilities

It might be a sci-fi favourite but there are a growing number of scientific theories that support the idea that we live in a multiverse, i.e. that there are parallel universes running alongside our own in which we might be living an infinite number of possible lives.

This means that your lost pet could be alive and thriving with you by their side in multiple other universes. While this might not bring you comfort (why can’t they still exist in this universe?), you might find solace in thinking of them being close by, just hidden by the veil of space and time.

A miracle of science

With or without belief in a god or an afterlife, grief is deeply personal and inevitably challenges what we know to be true. For some people, it reconfirms their beliefs. For others, it sets them on a new path.

As we always say, there is no right or wrong – only what feels right for you.

It’s understandable if you find sentiments like, “They’re in a better place now” or “They’re waiting for you at the Rainbow Bridge” upsetting. After all, is there really a better place than where they were loved and happy?

People say these things to offer comfort and because we’re all searching for a way to find some meaning out of loss.

Perhaps all we can do is remember that no one lives forever. If we did, would we ever stop to appreciate just how precious life is?

Because the truth is that the time you had with your pet was nothing short of a miracle. The odds of you both existing at the same point in time in an infinite universe are infinitesimal. How lucky you both were! Maybe this can give you comfort. Through the butterfly effect of the universe, everything conspired to bring you and your pet together and the future was changed because of it!

Very best wishes from Shailen and The Ralph Site team
The Ralph Site, non-profit pet loss support

Throughout human history, it has generally been accepted that grief is a natural part of our existence and that the bonds we share with our deceased loved ones, including our pets, continue long after the moment of death.

In this way, grief is the price of love, a normal and natural reaction to losing someone or something we value.

But in the 20^th century, starting with Freud’s influential essay on mourning and melancholia in 1917, attitudes towards grief changed – not necessarily for the better. 

Freud viewed “grief work” as a process whereby the bereaved person must sever their bonds with the loved one who has died so that the survivor is free and able to form new attachments in the future. He believed this process of “letting go” should happen as quickly as possible.

Stemming from this, grief theory became about “closure”, “acceptance” and “moving on”. 

Later grief theorists of the 20^th century mapped out predictable trajectories of grief, suggesting that once certain stages or tasks had been accomplished, grief would end. The most famous of these models – the five stages of grief – stems from Kubler-Ross’s text On Death and Dying.

These models have dominated conversations about grief until very recently. This is why we often find ourselves saying things like, “I don’t know why I still feel bad” or “I know I should be over this by now”.

Rejecting 20^th century models of grief 

Thankfully, attitudes are changing. 

Back in 1996, a book called Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief – edited by Dennis Klass, Phyllis Silverman and Steven Nickman (all bereavement experts) – offered an alternative view that “a healthy resolution of grief enables one to maintain a continuing bond with the deceased”.

This book has continued to reshape attitudes towards grief over the past 25 years. 

Today, many bereavement experts believe what grievers have always instinctively known – that healthy grief includes forging a different relationship with departed loved ones and that it’s entirely natural to want to stay connected.

This is known as the Continuing Bonds theory of grief.

What is the Continuing Bonds theory?

American playwright Robert Anderson, author of the film Tea and Sympathy, famously said, “Death ends a life – it does not end a relationship”.

This is the essence of Continuing Bonds, which brings many people comfort and clarity. 

It’s a model of grief that recognises:

• Grief is ongoing; it isn’t something that you finish with, it’s something that becomes part of you
• While grief is ongoing, it isn’t continuous – you may experience temporary breaks in your grief and also recurrences 
• It’s normal to stay connected to a loved one who has died
• Our continuing bonds with the deceased explain many natural grief behaviours, such as looking at photos, keeping a pet’s belongings, creating a memorial garden, talking about our memories and more
• Remaining connected to a loved one can help us to cope with grief
• It’s also okay if the idea of a continuing bond doesn’t bring you comfort – everyone is different

The Continuing Bonds model says that when someone we love dies, grief isn’t about emotionally detaching from them and leaving them in the past; instead, it’s about adjusting and redefining the relationship so that the bond is able to endure in different ways throughout your life.

Your love for your pet hasn’t died

While your pet is no longer physically present in your life, the love you felt from them is still very much part of who you are. Why should anyone expect that to end?

It’s absolutely fine to look for ways that you can stay connected to your pet and continue to express the love you carry for them.

There are many ways that you might do this. You could:

• Talk to your pet as if they were still here
• Write a letter to your pet telling them how you feel
• Display photos of your pet around your home
• Incorporate your pet into special days by lighting a candle for them or watching an old video of them
• Bring them into conversation whenever you want to 
• Live your life in a way you know they would love

Experience your pet’s continued presence

Studies have shown that many people take comfort from experiencing their pet’s continued presence.

This can happen in different ways for different people.

If you have religious or spiritual beliefs, you might take comfort from the idea of an afterlife or the Rainbow Bridge or look for signs that your pet is still nearby. For some people, this can be finding a clump of fur somewhere they’ve cleaned many times since their pet died. Comfort might come from sounds (feet padding across the floor) or smells (dog fur after the rain) that you experience unexpectedly. Other people view white feathers as a sign that their loved one is near.

If you’re an atheist, you might take comfort from the first law of thermodynamics – i.e. that energy cannot die – it simply changes form. The energy that was your pet still exists, surrounding you. 

Every photon and particle that ever touched your pet is still in existence, its course through the universe changed forever because of that contact. The world is different because your pet lived.

Sometimes, just feeling the wind against your face or watching birds fly across the sky can be enough to help you feel your pet’s presence and reconnect with them.

The relationship changes

Research in the Continuing Bonds book by Klass et al found that the relationship we have with someone who dies changes throughout our lives, in much the way it would if they were still alive.

If you lose a beloved pet in your 20s, the way you connect to their memory is likely to evolve with your different life stages. You’ll see your relationship differently in your 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond. Rather than creating distance, this ever-changing connection keeps the relationship present and means you can carry your pet with you at all times.

Some people struggle with this. It feels like a poor substitute for having their living, breathing companion by their side. Others find a way to move forward knowing that the relationship continues.

As ever, there is no right or wrong. The important thing is that you don’t have to “let go” or “find closure” to process grief, so ignore anyone who tells you otherwise! You can stay connected and continue those precious bonds, even as you move forward, not on.

Very best wishes from Shailen and The Ralph Site team
The Ralph Site, non-profit pet loss support