Cloe Shasha Brooks: Hello, TED Community,
克洛·莎莎·布鲁克斯 (Cloe Shasha Brooks):
you are watching a TED interview series called How to Deal with Difficult Feelings. I’m your host, Cloe Shasha Brooks, and a curator at TED. This past year has been full of both personal and collective grief. And this grief has taken many forms. And to dive deeper into the world of understanding and managing grief, I'll be speaking first with Nina Westbrook, a marriage and family therapist who has supported clients through loss. Hi, Nina.
TED社区你们好。 你正在收看TED访谈系列—— 《如何处理难受的心情》。 我是你的主持人,克洛伊·莎莎· 布鲁克斯,也是TED的策展人。 过去的一年充满了 个人和集体的哀伤。 而这些哀伤有很多种。 为了能更深入地进入 理解与调节哀伤的领域, 我会先和妮娜·威斯布鲁克 (Nina Westbrook)谈话, 她是一位婚姻与家庭治疗师, 帮助客户度过丧失之痛。 妮娜你好。
Nina Westbrook: Hi, Cloe, good to see you. Thank you so much for having me.
妮娜·威斯布鲁克: 克洛伊你好,很高兴见到你。 感谢你邀请我参加节目。
CSB: Thanks for joining us. Nina, you have talked about how grief can be about the loss of people and tangible things. But that it can also be about the loss of dreams, something that many people have experienced over the past year. Can you give me some examples of grieving for lost dreams and talk about what it means to experience this kind of grief?
克洛伊:谢谢你出席今天的访谈。 妮娜,你有说过哀伤可能是关于 失去人或触手可及的东西。 但哀伤也可能是失去梦想, 很多人在过去这一年里 都经历了这件事。 你能不能给几个因为 失去的梦想而哀伤的例子, 跟我们解释一下经历这种哀伤 是什么样的感受?
NW: Absolutely. I believe that grief can take so many different forms, and I think oftentimes when we think about grief, we associate it with the emotional process that takes place when we're coping with the death of a loved one. I don't know. It's just not as common to associate grief or correlate grief with the loss of a dream. So when you think about dreams and when they begin and how deeply they're rooted into our daily lives and our routines and how much our dreams determine our decision-making process and the choices that we make throughout the course of our lives, they hold a pretty significant amount of space in our minds and in our hearts. Imagine a child who, you know, from a young age, we begin to dream and they begin to dream about becoming an astronaut one day and walking on the moon or becoming a professional athlete. And then as we grow older, we begin to focus in on what our needs are and what our wants are, and our dreams begin to look more like acquiring our dream careers or job positions or opening businesses, having children or finding love. And the reality is that these dreams do not always work out and manifest themselves in a way that we have imagined, right? And that can be so devastating for so many people. The loss of careers and jobs or our divorces, the loss of relationships, or infertility can all be extremely devastating things and those types of devastating events propel you into the emotional process that takes place during grief.
妮娜:当然可以。 我相信哀伤有很多种, 而我们讲到哀伤的时候, 通常把它联想成了 我们为了应对失去挚爱 而经历的的情感过程。 我不知道为什么, 但是人们一般不会把失去梦想 和哀伤互相联系在一起。 当你想到梦想的时候, 思考梦想什么时候开始的、 梦想如何在我们的 日常生活和定式中根深蒂固, 我们的梦想 如何决定了我们的决策过程, 包括我们一生中所做的决定, 梦想在我们的脑海和心中 有着很重要的地位。 想象一个小孩, 像我们一样,他从小 开始梦想自己有一天 能成为一名宇航员, 走在月球上,或者成为 一名职业运动员。 随着我们的成长, 我们开始专注于我们需要的事物 和我们想要的的事物, 而我们的梦想变成了 追求理想的事业、 岗位或创业, 生育或谈恋爱。 但实际上这些梦想不一定能够实现 和表现得如我们想象的一样,对吧? 这对很多人来说是毁灭性的。 失去事业和工作 或者离婚、失去感情, 或者不孕都可能对我们 是非常大的打击 而这种毁灭性事件 会把你推入哀伤的 情感过程中。
CSB: Let's bring a question up from the audience. What are comforting things to do or say when someone is grieving? So I guess someone else in this case.
克洛伊: 我们现在回答观众的问题吧。 当一个人在哀伤中, 我们能做或者说什么来安慰? 指的是另一个人该怎么做。
NW: That's a really amazing question. A lot of the time, simply being present and offering support and encouragement is really going to be important when you're trying to support someone else through their grief. I think communication is also important, asking that person, "What can I do," or "What do you need from me in this moment and how can I best support you," is kind of going to be the best way to figure out how to support this person. Sometimes they just want someone to listen to. Sometimes they need someone to make them laugh or to help, you know, keep them distracted for a moment or sometimes they just need someone to be around them. It just really depends on the person, since grief is so subjective in the way that we go through it.
妮娜:这是一个很棒的问题。 很多时候,陪伴、 给予支持和鼓励 真的很重要。 这是当你想要协助 一个悲痛的人可以做的。 我觉得沟通也重要, 问那个人: “我可以做什么?” 或者“这一刻你需要我做什么, 我怎样才能最好地支持你?” 这是搞明白如何 帮助这个人最好的方法。 有时候他们想要有人可以倾诉。 有时他们需要一个 让他们笑或者帮助他们, 让他们转移一会儿注意力的人, 或者他们只是需要有人在身边陪伴。 真的需要看个人情况, 因为我们的哀伤的过程是很主观的。
CSB: Totally. And let's go right into some strategies, too. So I'm sure you have strategies for managing the grief of lost dreams. How do people pick themselves back up after that?
克洛伊:是的。 那我们现在也来说说一些策略吧。 我相信你肯定有一些应对 失去梦想而哀伤的策略。 人们如何在经历这种 事情后重新站起来?
NW: You want to give yourself permission to grieve, first off. And it's not a linear journey, there is going to be lots of ups and downs that take place. Some days you're going to be OK and some days you might cry and sometimes you might go a month without crying. And then one day everything comes crashing down all at once. It's just a matter of giving yourself permission to go through these feelings and knowing and reassuring yourself that this is OK and it's normal. And also keeping in mind that it's OK to feel joy even in those moments of sadness that you're going to experience when you're grieving. The other thing that I think is really important is just to be proactive in the grieving process. Don't ignore your grief. You can seek support. You can't be afraid to ask for support or lean on others, people that you trust, friends, family members, coworkers, whomever it may be for support. And then making a plan, making a new plan. Mourning happens over time. What it's doing, what we're doing, and all of the emotions that were going through during that mourning process is we're literally detaching ourselves emotionally from the dream that we are mourning or from the object that we're mourning. And what that's doing is opening yourself up and making space for new dreams and new experiences and new opportunities in the future. So goal setting and planning is going to be key. A lot of the time we really focus on plan A. So this is a great time to pivot and focus on planning for a new future and a new outcome.
妮娜:第一,你要 允许自己悲伤。 这不是一个直线的旅程, 会有很多起起伏伏。 有时候你会觉得还好, 而有时候你可能会哭。 有时候你可能一个月都不会哭, 然而最终一切在一瞬间都会垮掉。 这就是要允许 你自己经历那些情感, 理解、安抚你自己, 这没关系、是正常的。 也要记得 即使在悲伤的过程中 感到快乐也是没有错的。 另外有一件非常重要的事情 是在哀伤的过程中要主动。 不要忽视你的哀伤。 你可以寻求援助。 不要害怕寻求援助 或依靠别人,那些你信任的人, 朋友、家人、同事、 无论是谁,能支持你的就好了。 然后做一个计划,一个全新的计划。 哀伤总是会发生。 它的作用、我们所做的、 所有我们在哀伤过程中 所经历的情绪 就是在把自己的情感 和我们在悼念的梦想 或事物分离。 这么做的作用是让自己敞开心扉, 为新的梦想和体验 以及未来的新机遇腾出空间。 所以制定目标和计划会是关键的。 很多时候我们会把焦点 放在原定的计划上。 所以这是个转移焦点、 着手计划新的未来 和新的结果的好时机。
CSB: Absolutely. And just one final quick question for you, which is that sometimes people get mad at themselves for not getting over their grief. What would you say to those people?
克洛伊:绝对是的。 还有最后一个简短的问题要问你, 就是有时候人们会生自己的气 因为他们没法走出哀伤。 你会跟那些人说什么呢?
NW: It's really important to keep healing at the forefront of your mind. And I think that understanding the grief process and going through the ups and downs and knowing that that's all a part of it, you have to be patient with yourself, you have to give yourself grace and understand that you're going to have good days, you're going to have bad days. But when it all comes down to it, if you're keeping the idea of healing in the forefront, then you can focus your energy and your time into that process and going through it in a way that is productive to your emotional well-being in the future.
妮娜:把疗伤放在 第一位是很重要的。 我觉得要理解哀伤的过程、 经历波折、 了解那些都是哀伤的一部分, 你要对自己有耐心, 对自己仁慈一些, 要懂得你会经历好日子, 也会有坏日子。 但当这一切归结起来时, 如果你把疗伤放在第一位, 你就可以把精力和 时间投入那个过程, 而你需要一个对 你未来的情绪健康有益的 方式来度过这个过程。
CSB: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for this conversation, Nina. We have come to the end, but really grateful to you for joining us. Take care.
克洛伊:太好了。 那么,妮娜,非常感谢你 参加这次的谈话。 我们已经结束了, 很开心你今天能来参加。 保重。
NW: Thank you so much for having me. Take care.
妮娜:谢谢你们 邀请我来。保重。