Accepting yourself without a reason: looking for meaning after a loss

A reason, and a sense of what happened

How it works

"Why did this happen?" can arrive with a loss, a setback or a disappointment, and stay. Whether things happen for a reason is yours to settle, in your own words or your own faith, and nobody else's.

The question why does two jobs at once. It asks for an answer, and it holds a feeling: protest, guilt, fear, the shock of a world that did not go the way it should. The answer rarely settles anything, and the feeling under it, once it is felt, often does.

What happened can also wake older questions than this one: why I was left, why it is always me, why I was not enough. Those are the patterns a hard feeling gives you a chance to meet.

Researchers have studied something narrower than the big why, in people after a death, and they split it in two. Sense-making means being able to make sense of the death. Benefit-finding means seeing some benefit or life lesson in it.

When the search for a reason after a death is in the way

Why it matters

A why that will not settle is often carrying a feeling that has not been met yet. In a large sample of bereaved parents, a struggle to make sense of the death was the strongest predictor of anguished, lasting grief. Other studies in the same program linked making sense of a death with fewer grief complications among young adults, and with greater later wellbeing among older widowed people.

Nobody has to go looking. In one study of older widowed adults, most were not searching to make sense of the death six months after it. Searching is not, on its own, a warning sign for any one person, and not searching is not avoidance.

Meaning, when it comes, comes in company. In a review of older adults whose spouse had died, those who reported finding meaning in the death showed less anger and more sense of personal strength, and support from others appeared to help people find it. A feeling said out loud to someone is a feeling that can move.

Four places the search gets stuck

Where people get stuck

1. A reason someone else hands you. Set it down. In interviews with bereaved parents in one Canadian city, parents named religious explanations of the death among the remarks they found insensitive. Explanations handed to a grieving person are a different thing from a faith the person holds.
2. The push to find a lesson. A lesson is not the price of moving on. In the same research program, finding a benefit or a life lesson went with fewer grief complications mainly among people who could not otherwise make sense of the loss. A lesson that arrives on its own is yours; one you are pushed toward is someone else's.
3. Faith, held or not. Faith is part of how many people meet a loss and absent for many others, and either is a sound place to start from. In one review, most studies found some favourable link between religious or spiritual beliefs and adjustment after a death, and among bereaved college students, spiritual or religious involvement went with personal growth.
4. A question that keeps coming back. A question that keeps returning is asking for the feeling under it to be heard. The link between struggling to make sense of a death and heavier grief is a pattern across groups of bereaved people, not a verdict on any one person who keeps asking.

When the search is worth taking to someone

Any hard feeling that stays very heavy and gets in the way of daily life is worth taking to a doctor or a therapist.

A search for meaning that has stayed painful for a long time, or that has come with daily life no longer working, is worth taking to a doctor or a therapist who works with grief. Therapies built around meaning after a death exist and are still being tested.

If you are thinking about not being alive, please reach someone now. The help box near the end of this page says how. For immediate danger, contact local emergency services.

Where the research on meaning and acceptance is thin

Where the research is thin, or disagrees

Most of the evidence on meaning comes from one research program and is correlational, and the faith studies were mostly weak in design. The one study here that measured searching directly partly disagreed with the rest: making sense of the death was not linked to less grief, and more searching went with more grief. All of it is about a death, and none of it studies the search for a reason after other losses or setbacks. No study here tested urging anyone toward meaning, or how a person comes to accept themselves without a reason.

Noticing a reason as it lands

One thing you might notice

The next time someone offers a reason for something that happened, or you catch yourself reaching for one, you might notice what happens in your body as you hear it: settling, tightening, or nothing much. Any of those is information, not a verdict. If noticing makes it heavier, you can stop.

What a session does with the search for a reason

How Feelings Buddy fits

Feelings Buddy is built for working through feelings with self-compassion, toward self-acceptance and self-motivation. A hard feeling is the obstacle, not the destination.

A session is an AI working from written instructions, so it can get them wrong. Its instructions say to:

• never add a detail, a feeling or a fact the person has not given, and offer any connection only as a question they can wave away;
• treat words about wanting to be with the person who died as a possible risk, and ask once, plainly, about suicide, with crisis lines on a yes, an unsure answer or no clear answer.

Leaving meaning to the person is my judgement call, and no study has tested it.

There is no diagnosis, and a session carries nothing about risk into a later session. No one reads the conversation as it happens. A session can miss signs, so if you are in danger, do not wait for a session to notice; the help box near the end of this page says how to reach someone now.

No study has tested Feelings Buddy. How a session works, step by step