What happens when the living cannot forgive the deceased?

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The death of a loved one is almost always associated not only with grief, but also with a feeling of guilt towards the deceased.
After the departure of a loved one, some people feel that they did not give something to the deceased during their lifetime. Others blame themselves for words not spoken on time or actions not completed. Feelings of guilt are a normal reaction to the death of a person. It is extremely rare that it has a valid basis; most often these feelings are irrational, but very strong. This feeling is inherent in everyone, even psychologists who are familiar with the mechanism of their occurrence - they, like everyone else, are also capable of feeling guilt towards the dead.

Where does guilt come from?

After the death of loved ones, many experience not only understandable depression and sadness.
Often people are simply overcome by sadness and depression, as well as a feeling of powerlessness from the inability to change the course of events and return the deceased. Many people tend to get bored and even talk to the dead, continuing an unfinished conversation. In some cases, people may suffer from feelings of guilt towards the deceased. To overcome this, first of all you need to try to understand what can cause such experiences, and how realistic it is to change the current situation.

Why does this feeling occur?

Feelings of guilt and anger are a clear response of the human psyche in response to one’s own helplessness and inability to prevent death. In this case, it is easier for people to admit guilt than to understand that it was impossible to foresee and prevent this event.

The same reasons are the basis for the appearance of feelings of anger. This is a protest of the psyche against a person’s powerlessness before death. It is easier for believers to cope with the death of a loved one. In their minds, death is not the end point, but only a transition to another form of existence. In this case, true Christians hope to meet the departed, and this faith helps them avoid feelings of guilt and anger for what happened.

How to deal with such emotions

If a person is directly responsible for the death of the deceased, for example, as a result of an accident, the situation can be even more difficult. However, a way out of this situation can be found. For example, if a driver who hit a pedestrian, after a considerable time after the tragic incident, not only continues to repent, but also suffers from the awareness of his own guilt, it is necessary to put this energy into a “peaceful channel”, for example, to help the relatives of the deceased both morally and materially. If the relatives of the deceased categorically refuse to make contact, you can try to act with the help of intermediaries, turning to your friends and acquaintances. As a last resort, you can do something while maintaining anonymity to try to shift the heavy burden from your soul.

Believers can go to church - confession, prayer and fasting can not only restore peace of mind, but find a way out of the current situation. Sometimes it is enough just to communicate with a clergyman, regardless of what denomination the person belongs to.

If you can’t cope with feelings of guilt on your own, and sadness and depression only increase over time, despite all the actions taken, you should think about the help of qualified psychologists. Perhaps if a person speaks out, voicing his fears and the essence of his experiences, it will be possible to look at the current situation from a different angle. It is likely that as a result of a confidential conversation, new ways to solve the problem may be discovered, in particular, some actions that can compensate for the feeling of heaviness in the soul and the feeling of guilt towards the deceased.

Feelings of guilt without the prefix “Would”: What is our guilt before the dead

May 31, 2020 - People experiencing grief have one important problem - guilt. How to solve it correctly and is it necessary?

- Of course, it needs to be solved. After the death of a person, his loved ones often have a lot of “woulds”: if I had not done this, then he would not have died... Distant events are remembered, which, it seems, also influenced the outcome. People think that if they had behaved differently in the past, things would have been different. Many people regret that they did not give enough love, were unfairly offended, reproached, quarreled, did not do something good for a person who now can no longer do it...

Let me give you an example. I recently counseled a woman who was very worried and blamed herself for the death of her husband. In the fall, she asked her husband to go to her mother in another region to buy potatoes. Before that, for many years, every autumn he went to his mother-in-law to buy potatoes, and no problems arose. But this year tragedy struck. A traffic accident occurred not far from the regional center, as a result of which a man died.

The poor woman began to blame herself for what happened. She was sure: the tragedy occurred because she asked her husband to go to his mother. “And if I had not insisted on these potatoes, my husband would not have died,” she reasoned.

And there are many such examples. Almost any death of a person is accompanied by a feeling of guilt among those who remained alive. If a person died, for example, from a disease, the feeling of guilt is presented as follows: “It’s my fault that I didn’t see the symptoms of this disease earlier,” “It’s my fault that I didn’t insist that my wife go to the doctor. But if we had turned to a doctor for help in time, then perhaps she would be alive now.”

And it seems, at first glance, these conclusions seem logical. One action, it would seem, follows from another: she asked to go to the village - the husband died, he did not insist on hospitalization - the wife died. But this is only logical at first glance. In fact, the question of a cause-and-effect relationship cannot be posed so directly. A specific action of a person - for example, the same request to go buy potatoes - is just one of the factors in the formation of the situation that turned out to be fatal. And nothing more. This is not the determining factor, and not the only one, but just one of many.

To really assess your guilt, you need to understand that not a single person can foresee, calculate, evaluate all the factors, provide for all the nuances that can save or, conversely, lead to the death of another person. People cannot be responsible for everything. Why? The answer is simple - because, as I said, every person is just a person, he is imperfect and does not have the ability to make calculations of this level.

Let's be honest: in life we ​​do bad things to many people, we don’t ask for forgiveness for it and quickly forget about what happened. And we usually don’t blame ourselves for all the hundreds of thousands of insults (conscious and unconscious) that we inflict on people throughout our lives...

But if a person has died, then we everything and are “covered” with a feeling of guilt. Moreover, it is inadequate to reality, exaggerated. We blame ourselves for not being able to foresee something, not being able to say good things, not being able to forgive earlier, etc. In such cases, we often believe that our actions could have saved the person from death. This happens largely because we are sincerely convinced, although we do not admit it to ourselves, that we can control the issues of life and death of another person. This is what our pride speaks to us...

We do not understand, or do not want to understand, that the issue of death is not in our, but in God’s competence. We can only be responsible for our choices, which are made based on the information we have at that moment, as well as existing opportunities.

Let's illustrate this with a metaphor. Let's imagine this situation: you and I play football on the same team. One of the players on our team received the ball, made a mistake and passed the wrong pass. The ball hit the enemy, and... he scored a goal against us.

Will we blame the player on our team who received the pass? If he had not trained before and deliberately passed the ball to the other team, then yes, he could be blamed... But this is not so, and his inaccurate pass was an unintentional mistake, because we all make mistakes sometimes. And it would never occur to anyone to quarrel with him, to find out “how could he do this.”

Or, for example, our goalkeeper. He also missed the ball into our goal! Maybe he should be blamed? No, we understand that he did what he could at that moment. We understand that he cannot catch all the balls flying towards our goal! This is impossible because he is not football perfection, but a human being just like us. He does not have the supernatural ability to influence the outcome of the entire match... And if we look for the culprit, then he is not the only one to blame for this goal. He catches it as best he can. If the goalkeeper missed a goal, then we can say that the team played poorly and defended the goal poorly. This goal depended on a huge number of factors: the strength and preparedness of the opposing team, the degree of preparedness of our team as a whole, our will to win, team spirit, the condition of the field, etc., and not just on the performance of a particular football player.

Now imagine that you were that goalkeeper. Would you blame yourself in this situation, believing that you are personally responsible for this goal? Of course not. And the striker who scored a goal against someone else, in turn, cannot fully attribute this goal only to his good play. This is a credit to his entire team.

But this is football. And life?... Life is much more complicated. Moreover, no one can foresee all the nuances that may arise. Any case is a problem with too many unknowns. And if a wife asked her husband to go pick up potatoes, and an accident occurred on the way, this does not mean at all that it was her direct fault. Because he might not have gone to pick up potatoes, but gone out into the yard, and the same thing would have happened, but only in a different form... We are all strong in hindsight in searching for our own guilt. And this prevents us from looking at things soberly.

— Often people begin to blame the death of loved ones and other people, and not just themselves...

- Yes, this happens even more often than self-accusation. We can blame the death on people who also did not want what happened, but their actions, in our opinion, led to the death, directly or indirectly. Usually, close relatives, friends of the deceased, doctors, and colleagues fall into the category of such culprits.

One must also be extremely careful with such accusations. Or better yet, leave them altogether (of course, this does not apply to the case of premeditated murder).

Don't judge. Indeed, in this case, compared to the situation of self-accusation, we know even less of those details that simply need to be known reliably in order to bring any charges against these people. Or even just suspect their involvement. Returning to our football metaphor, we can draw an analogy: blaming others is the same as blaming the same goalkeeper for missing a goal (the fact is obvious), but not taking into account the variety of factors that made it possible. Even when the connection between the actions of another person and the death of a loved one seems quite direct and obvious to us, we should not blame anyone. We cannot know exactly how much this other person wanted what happened, how much he could calculate the consequences of his steps, which, in our opinion, led to a sad outcome.

— What can you say about a situation where relatives saw that their loved one was in bad moral condition, but out of their own ignorance did not take any action, did not take them to a doctor, or did not bring a psychologist to church? And then, after what happened, people begin to blame themselves for allowing a loved one to commit suicide...

“They allowed this to happen because they did not know how to behave in this situation, they did not fully understand what this situation could lead to. If they knew for sure and didn’t help, that’s a different question. But when a person does not know what to do, does not know what can happen, does not know for what reasons this will happen, then it is wrong to accuse him of inaction. Of course, when everything is later revealed and the reason becomes clear, they begin to think: “Oh, how come I didn’t think of that before. It’s so elementary!” That’s why I didn’t realize that you were imperfect. Perhaps God did not let you think of this in this case, because it was His providence...

A person cannot be held responsible for a tragic incident that turns out to be the last in a certain chain of events, just because some of his actions in this chain preceded the tragedy. The fact that it preceded does not mean that it was the determining factor.

- What should we be responsible for then?

— God gave each of us the right to choose . Before we commit any action, we make a choice: to go or not to go, to decide or to postpone, etc. And the choice, naturally, is determined by our life principles and the information that is available at the time of making the decision. If we know that a person has a heart condition, we have a choice: call an ambulance or not. If we reliably know about the disease and can accurately make a prognosis, then most likely we will call. And if we don’t know what’s wrong with him, then we may get confused, we may not give it the necessary importance and not call. Of course, everything will become clear later. After which, if a person remains alive, and we called a doctor for him, then we will attribute the merit of saving his life to ourselves; If a person dies, and we didn’t call a doctor because we didn’t know what to do, then we’ll take the blame. Both are wrong. We must understand that we are responsible only for our conscious choice, taking into account the information available at the time of making the decision.

- What is this choice? Could you give an example of such a choice?

“For example, we know that we are sending a person to certain death. We have a choice: to send or not. Moreover, we have sufficient information to conclude that death is almost inevitable. It is precisely for this choice that we must be held accountable.

If at the time of choice we did not have information that our action could lead to such an ending, then we cannot bear full responsibility for this ending. This should not weigh heavily on us...

We ourselves will forgive a three-year-old child who, after playing in the garden with a dog, accidentally ran into the garden bed and trampled strawberries. We understand that he is small, could not foresee the consequences, and even played too much. But we will definitely punish a three-year-old child if, after a warning that he is not allowed to walk in the garden beds, he makes a conscious choice and tramples the strawberries. The result seems to be the same: the strawberries are trampled by the child. But the situations are completely different. One situation is an example of a conscious choice, a conscious disobedience. The other is an example of unintended consequences of completely acceptable actions.

Returning to the aforementioned potato incident. It is clear what the wife wanted - for her husband to go get potatoes. And there's nothing wrong with that. My husband has already gone for these potatoes many times. The wife’s choice - to ask her husband to go buy potatoes - is quite understandable, and we cannot give him a negative assessment.

Everything that happened next was God’s providence. A person cannot predict that far. Of course, if she knew that she was sending her husband to get potatoes, and on the way a KAMAZ would drive into his car, but did not cancel her request, then yes, she would be to blame... But she could not know this. This is much beyond human strength.

I will say again that we are all strong in hindsight. And we all blame ourselves for not being able to foresee something. In this case, we need to think about the fact that a person is not a supercomputer that can calculate everything so far. Yes, you must draw conclusions for the future. And I should know that this could happen again in the future. And perhaps you will already know what to do. Or perhaps not - as in the situation with potatoes. A car accident can happen again, and again we will be powerless to change anything.

No one can say clearly what will happen, since the future is unknown to us, and the entire universe, the most complex interactions of human destinies, chains of events that we are unable to predict are impossible to understand. All is in God's hands. There is such a principle: “Do what you must, and come what may.” The first part of this statement (“Do what you must”) says that we have the power to make the right decisions, taking into account the information available, and to take responsibility for them and their direct consequences. The second part (“Come what may”) reminds us: what will happen next, how other people will react to our actions, and what situation will develop in the end is the result of a complex interaction of many factors, and this is not in our control. Therefore, we cannot take full responsibility for this result. We just have to accept it with humility as the will of God.

— You often hear about the will of God, but how do you understand how it manifests itself and how it works?

— The Holy Fathers of the Church have detailed explanations for these questions. They are not difficult to find.

I really liked the reasoning on this topic by one wise abbot (Doctor of Physics and Mathematics). He gave the following metaphor: We push one ball along the floor. At the same time, knowing friction, push force, and inertia, we can very accurately calculate where it will stop. This is described by a fairly simple formula. Another person next to us can take another ball and, having the same data, also push it. And he, too, will know exactly where his ball will stop... And so we push each of our balls, and wait for them to stop in the place we calculated... But they collided! It turns out that we did not take into account the angle at which a collision could occur. Before this, we could accurately predict the outcome. But the collision shattered all our calculations. Because the angles at which the balls collide or do not collide with each other are not in our control, but in the power of chance.

Although it is not entirely legitimate to talk about the power of chance. After all, all so-called accidents are not accidental; they reveal the Providence of God . All “accidents” depend on God. We cannot calculate the collision angles of the balls; We also cannot know who, when and where will make adjustments to our plans in the future. And we cannot be held responsible for this.

— It turns out that everything depends on God?

- Yes, sure. Everything depends on Him, except our choice. As St. Theophan the Recluse wrote, instructing his spiritual daughter: “Place yourself completely in the hands of God, not worrying about anything, but accepting every opportunity calmly, as God has deliberately arranged for you, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant. Your only concern should be to act in every case according to God’s commandment.” That is, we accept those circumstances of life that do not depend on us - with wisdom, without despondency; and we must devote all our strength to making the right choice under these circumstances and taking into account the available information.

We can say that God, as a caring and teaching Father, constantly puts us before a choice, constantly gives us to solve this problem. But how correctly we solve it depends on us. And He respects our conscious decision. But He also completely transfers responsibility for our conscious decisions to us.

- But there is a deliberately made wrong choice... - Yes, this often happens. From anger, for example. Instead of forgiving, a person takes out his anger on a loved one... For example, a husband came home very drunk. As a human being, we should forgive him, not sort things out while he’s in this state, and talk calmly the next morning. No, my wife says: “Go to your mother, I don’t want to see you!” And on the way they kill him...

Of course, it was impossible to foresee that everything would turn out this way. But the wife’s act of not letting her husband home is in itself not good towards her husband. But it is no longer possible to ask for forgiveness or to make amends for your actions in any way, since the person died. Yes, in this case self-criticism begins. It is not uncommon for people to blame themselves for the rest of their lives.

But here a fundamental question : do we believe in the existence of the soul and its immortality?

Let's assume we don't believe it. And if there is no soul, then there is nothing to blame yourself for. Well, there is no person and no. He doesn’t care at all anymore, since he’s simply no longer there. It doesn’t matter to us, since in the person of this person we have lost, perhaps, a friend, an assistant, some kind of support in life. We are lonely, but he can’t bear it anymore. Therefore, we should not have before him

And if we understand that there is a soul (and, of course, it exists), then instead of these self-accusations, soul-searching and endless regrets (now what should we say, what should we have done?) - we should go and repent , ask God for forgiveness for your crime! Yes, you can throw yourself on the lid of the coffin, sprinkle ashes on your head, and tell everyone, “What a mean thing I did.” But this path will not bring comfort. But there is a path that really brings consolation: repentance . Through repentance we will become closer to God. The prayer for the deceased will become stronger, and with this we will provide him with real help, we will be able to at least somehow correct the evil that we caused to him. Both the soul of the deceased and our soul will become calmer.

Here is an adaptive mechanism for experiencing the situation. Do not endlessly regret that the situation has changed, and the old cannot be returned (a person cannot be resurrected), but accept the new situation and adapt to it, find the best option for behavior both for yourself and for the soul of the deceased.

- What if a person wished good for his loved one, but everything turned out to be evil? And so he involuntarily begins to think: it’s not for nothing that people say: “If you don’t do good, you won’t receive evil”...

– For example, I gave a friend a valuable thing, he really asked me about it. Good deed? Kind. I sacrificed my wealth and gave it to a friend. And he was killed for this thing. And I begin to blame myself: if I had not given this thing to my friend, he would be alive. And in this case, maybe it would be so...

But let's take another example: a man asked me for this thing, but I did not give it to him. And in theory they should have killed him, but they didn’t kill him, because he didn’t have this thing. But it wasn’t, because I DID NOT give it to him.

Should I receive a reward in this case? I saved a man, I didn’t give him the thing for which he could have been killed!

And in the first case, I blame myself for killing a person because I gave him a thing, although I could not give it, be greedy, and save him.

This is a completely wild approach. Everything is turned upside down. We blame ourselves for doing a good deed out of love for a friend, and we praise ourselves for doing something bad and not showing love.

Why did we seem to be reasoning logically, but the conclusion we received was absolutely incorrect, and even the opposite of the correct one? But because in our reasoning we focused not on our conscious choice, but on the final situation, which was the result of a huge number of factors and did not actually depend on us.

And for our soul, in the prism of eternity, what matters is not the final result as a whole, but precisely our conscious choice towards good or evil. This and only this reflects the ability of our soul to love. But God is Love, and only a person who knows how to love can be involved in Him. And at God’s judgment, our very actions will testify either for us or against us; it is our choice that God will look at...

Yes, it seems that some of our choices ultimately led to the death of a person. But we again forget that everything is in God’s hands. Did we want to do good? Certainly! And we made every effort to deal with the person according to love. And what happened next depended completely not on us.

And if we could have done good, but didn’t, then this is, of course, a purely negative act, because it was we who did not help this person. We are responsible only for our choice. Moreover, as we have already said, for choice in conditions of limited information (we cannot know all the circumstances). This is the area of ​​responsibility that we bear.

It is a great sin to take responsibility for something over which we have no control - in this way we try to take on the functions of God. That is, we think that we could change something globally and foresee the result! But how could we foresee? So many factors influence the final result!

It's like I'm sitting down with the world chess champion to play chess. He checked me once and almost immediately checkmated me. And at the end of a lost game, I will blame myself: but I could have foreseen that he would do this! I could have foreseen how the game would go further, how he would move. Maybe you can win the game against the world champion if you go back and put the chess in its place again. And now, knowing how he would go, I could change everything... But the fact is that I am not a world champion. And I cannot predict how he will move, because he plays chess much better than me. That's why he is the world champion.

And we must understand this limitation of ours, our imperfection, so as not to live in the past, not to blame yourself for what you have no control over, and not to engage in self-criticism.

- What should the woman do who kicked out her drunken husband, and then he died? What to do in such a situation?

- She needs to repent. But she must clearly understand: she is responsible not for the fact that her husband was killed (she didn’t kill him!), but for the fact that she treated him mercilessly, cruelly, not out of love. It is precisely because she acted this way, not in a Christian way, that she must repent before God.

It is necessary to understand that, first of all, the soul of this woman, and not the soul of the deceased, needs repentance. After all, the offense is obvious, and the heaviness in the soul is from this act. And it is important for her to receive forgiveness for this cruel step. And although her husband can no longer forgive her, because he has gone to another world, receiving forgiveness from God in this situation is quite enough. Therefore, there is no need to shed tears for months and fall into depression, we need to go to God and bring repentance for those actions in which we made the wrong choice (we talked about this above) in relation to the deceased.

And what is now important to the husband’s soul is not whether the wife cries or not, but whether the wife will pray for him, whether she will do deeds of mercy for the salvation of his soul. This is the most important way we can and should help our deceased loved ones.

- What prevents people from forgiving themselves? After all, it is very difficult for many to forgive themselves for this or that action...

– Forgive yourself... it would be too easy. A person cannot forgive himself, he cannot justify himself. Of course, we often try to do this, but it does not bring relief. We can tell ourselves a hundred times a day that we forgive ourselves, but we will not achieve results. And everyone knows this from their own experience. Why? Because conscience, which is the voice of our soul, continues to convict us. We ourselves cannot forgive ourselves because our soul will not accept this forgiveness, it will still torment and remind. We can, of course, drown out the voice of conscience for a while - with wine, binge drinking, business. We can push this voice of conscience into the depths of the subconscious, but then this voice will still break through. Only God can truly forgive and calm our soul... This is precisely what repentance is for!

- What is conscience? Why can she make us suffer so much?

— The Holy Fathers said: conscience is the voice of God. As Saint Theophan writes, “We have a vigilant guard - conscience. She will never let anything go wrong; and no matter how you explain to her that something is nothing, but this will do, she will not stop repeating her opinion: what is bad is bad... Conscience is always our moral lever.”

That’s why she constantly wakes us up, constantly gives us some signals. Only we most often perceive it as something that interferes with us. “There’s something gnawing at my soul, tormenting me, and it just won’t stop... As much as possible!”, we think. And at critical moments, the conscience directly says: “Go and repent, you have committed a sin.” And the sin is not that, as in our example, the wife asked her husband to go buy potatoes. No, there are specific sins against this person: we once treated him consumeristly, treated him mercilessly, said a rude word, humiliated him, did not support him in a difficult moment. This happens to everyone, unfortunately, to a greater or lesser extent, and we need to fight it. How? Repentance, correction of your life.

Moreover, if a person has died, this does not mean that it is too late to improve, become kinder, more tolerant. After all, we have other close people. We can learn a lesson from our misdeeds, learn to show more love to people, and if we are guilty of them, ask for forgiveness while the person is still with us, before he leaves...

And as for our guilt before the deceased: if we repent of our wrong steps, we will be forgiven by God, we will receive unspeakable spiritual relief, and we will be able to live on with a cleared conscience. (But repentance must be sincere...) Simply put, after sincere repentance, conscience (the voice of God) calms down.

And if we do not repent, then this burden will always be with us, the burden of our mistakes, our guilt. And unfortunately, despite the fact that there are quite time-tested and people-tested algorithms for how to act in these situations, how to ease the soul - in spite of everything, people for the most part do not use them. They don’t go to God and don’t repent.

Most people, not knowing how to drown out this voice of God, try to find their way out: they begin to blame themselves, engage in self-criticism, some even fall into complete despair and try to commit suicide. Others, on the contrary, “go on a spree”, begin to lead such a lifestyle so that there is no time to think, so that there is no time to look at themselves soberly... They drown out the voice of conscience with anything: vodka, drugs, unbridled entertainment. When, in rare moments, conscience makes itself felt, it prompts: “I was unfair to this person, I must at least somehow correct it. Even if he is no longer there, there is probably some way to make amends to him, to do something for him.” And there is this method - this is repentance and prayer for the soul of the deceased, as we said above. But going to church, to God, is hard, you have to break yourself, overcome it. It’s easier to “get drunk and forget”...

“I myself lost a loved one, so I understand well what it is. Yes, often people do not have a basic understanding of how to behave in a given situation, or where to go for help. But what to do if you simply don’t have the strength, you don’t even have the strength to get out of bed because of the pain? And this pain is not only mental, but also physical...

– Yes, it seems like you have no strength for anything, and you feel nothing but pain. But in fact, this is not a lack of strength... This situation can be compared to exercising on an exercise bike. We pedal, it’s hard for us, but we’re not going anywhere. Movement – ​​zero. But the strength is leaving. That’s all emotional experiences, when they are directed in the wrong direction, can be likened to idle work. And the pain does not go away, and there is no movement forward, and there is no more strength left. The wheels just spin.

And so year after year can pass until a person understands that the bicycle does not move, and if nothing is changed, then he will never ride. That is, if we do not understand something important, then we will never be able to truly come to terms with the death of a loved one, we will not be able to live (and not exist).

Most often, we are worried about what we did not manage to do in relation to a loved one who is no longer around. They didn’t give enough love, they didn’t ask for forgiveness for their offensive actions. We all, as a rule, feel that we owe something to the deceased. But – who should we give it to now?? It is this question that shocks us and plunges us into depression. We don't understand what we should do now. We do not understand the situation, and therefore we begin to panic and fall into despair. Previously, when a person was alive, we understood how to behave with him; now everything has changed, and we feel helpless, like blind kittens... A lot of feelings appear (aggression, despair, an all-consuming feeling of guilt) that exhaust a person physically, psychologically, and spiritually. This is exactly what you were talking about.

—What do we need to understand so that our spiritual work does not go in vain? What should you focus your energy on?

But we must understand that the person who is not with us is now with God. And any connection with the departed can only be carried out through God. Give to God and thus this person will receive; ask God for forgiveness and thus you will be forgiven to your loved ones.

Pray for this person - and you will give him what he needs most now. Do you owe him money? But he doesn't need your money now! Your prayer is much more important to him! Give his soul what it needs, what it needs so much.

It’s the same in the situation of death: why does the soul of the deceased need all our lamentations, tears, luxurious wreaths in the cemetery, marble monuments, expensive wakes, touching speeches and the like? We, the living, need all this. And what is most important to his soul is our prayers, alms and works of mercy.

We didn’t give back the money we borrowed from the deceased? Let's give it to the poor or spend it on some charitable cause. By doing this, we will truly usefully return them to the soul of the deceased. No money? Please, have mercy. If a person has done a lot for us, invested time and effort, we can give everything to him. This usually happens, by the way, when parents die. They have done a lot for us, and we understand it very well. They invested a lot in us, but now we can’t give back. Please - you can give it to children, the poor, the sick, the elderly. Help them with your attention, give them part of your personal time. You can show more love to your children and pay more attention to their spiritual education.

In this way, we will repay the debt to the soul of the deceased - in the very currency that the soul of the deceased can accept. And then there will be no such state of physical and mental exhaustion and devastation. Because there will be real movement forward, and not just spinning the wheels on an exercise bike.

“I’m almost sure that many who lose loved ones simply lack the knowledge of where to turn and what to do.

- Well, it all comes from our culture. For centuries there was such knowledge, and it was successfully used, but now we throw it all away like dirty laundry. We prefer to go with the flow... and drown our sorrows in alcohol.

But here again we need to decide. If there is a soul, this is one question, but if there is no soul, it is a completely different question. If there is no soul, then there is no need to worry, as we have already said. There is no point in worrying about someone who is no longer there...

It's another matter if there is a soul. Since she exists, it is clear that you need to do everything for her... And not for yourself. Mental pain, like physical pain, is generally necessary for a person. The pain of the soul in psychology is called psychalgia. This is a signal that something is wrong with our soul.

- And what should we do with it? It's very painful!

- What do we do when we have a toothache? Well, we can endure the pain for a day, we can take painkillers to dull it. But time passes, and we still understand that the tooth needs to be treated, because the pain did not arise without reason!

And we can also say that this pain took all our strength, because like any pain it is exhausting. But it is obvious to us that this pain will continue until we see a doctor. When we finally go to the doctor, then, most likely, our tooth will be cured. And the pain will go away, as the cause of the pain will be eliminated.

Mental pain is a slightly different kind of pain. And the doctor in this case is not a dentist, but God. (Sometimes some help comes from a psychologist. But this is not the main help. The main one is from God.) For centuries, there has been a correct algorithm: a person has died - first of all, you need to go to church, help the soul of the deceased, and not pump yourself up with despair. First of all, we need to think not about ourselves, that we feel bad, but about the deceased - that he needs our prayers. And when we begin to pray and do deeds of mercy, then we ourselves gain strength, and our pain really weakens. This has been proven by thousands of years of practice... If we reject this path to recovery, then we will continue to stew in this pain for a year or two or three...

Why do we need this??? In this case, we will not help the soul of the deceased, and even less will we help ourselves, and we will even harm it.

To put it very briefly, we need to realize the loss and begin movement and treatment. And think no more about yourself and your loss, but about the soul of the deceased.

— How can you at least somehow help a person experiencing the loss of a loved one? If this did not happen to us, how can we console and support?

— A person experiencing the death of a loved one should share his feelings. A layman is able to console with what can lead to God. God will comfort you. A person is a bad comforter in this case... If we know, we can lead to a wise, experienced priest.

Friends can support in everyday life, take on the burden of some expenses, labor, the organizational part of the funeral, look after the children (while the parents are in a difficult mental state), so that a person can pay more attention to his own soul, and through this at least find some comfort.

You can simply listen to the person and let him speak. You cannot leave a person alone with trouble, especially in the first days. Alone in your grief is a preserved state, when there is no opportunity to talk to anyone, to look at the situation from the outside...

You just have to sit and listen to the person. It's not very pleasant. A person throws out his pain, his grief. And to be close at the same time means to accept this grief and pain, to share them. And, of course, most of us hedonists find this unpleasant. We want to live cheerfully, enjoy ourselves, not think, and if we talk about something, gossip and discuss. And here there is such pain!!... But if we really want to help a person, then out of love for him we must sacrifice something. In this case – the state of one’s own stability, one’s peace of mind. No wonder they say: shared grief is half grief. That is, when they share grief between the one who speaks and the one who listens and empathizes, the pain decreases a little. Thus, the friend takes part of the grief upon himself. It's hard, but if we are strong people, if we sincerely want to help, then we must listen patiently.

The author thanks Elina Burtseva and Olga Pokalyukhina for their assistance in preparing the material.

© Memoriam.ru

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Actions that can reduce feelings of guilt towards the deceased

However, sometimes people themselves cannot explain what could have caused the feeling of guilt towards the deceased. Firstly, it is necessary to accept what happened as a fact - nothing can be changed, the person cannot be returned, no matter how much one would like it. And secondly, you can and should change your attitude towards what happened. According to ancient Russian belief, you should not cry too much when remembering the deceased - otherwise he will, to put it mildly, feel uncomfortable in the other world.

Remembering someone who is no longer there, it is better to think about what his wishes could be, and to the best of his ability try to implement it. For example, when thinking about your late parents with a feeling of guilt, you should try to understand what could make them happy - the marriage of a daughter, the admission of a son to a university, or the birth of grandchildren? Or maybe in recent years they have often talked about such simple things as repairs or arranging a beautiful flower garden under the windows of the house? After all, it’s not so difficult to try to do what they might really want during their lifetime. And a person experiencing guilt can alleviate his condition by concentrating on achieving one or another goal of this kind.

How to get rid of guilt: three steps

It is also possible to free yourself from the lingering feeling of guilt. All that is needed for this are three simple steps:

1. think about the situation, realize that each person goes in his own turn. Recognize that no one is to blame for what happened. Remove this stone from yourself;
2. learn to live with your loss, not turn loss and self-flagellation about it into your only pastime. Communicate more with loved ones, including about the deceased;
3. switch to those nearby. Compensate for your guilt towards the deceased by caring for children, spouses, and loved ones.