You’re lying awake at night.
You keep coming back to the minor incidents that happened today - you argued with a friend and then someone pushed in front of you on the tube.
You’re thinking “why am I so hung up on this? Is it really that big of a deal?” but you can’t shake the feeling that yes, it is a big deal, it sucks and you don’t know how you’ll get over it.
If it helps, you’re not weird, you’re not crazy and you’re definitely not alone.
This happened to me recently after I interviewed for a promotion at work. I felt fully prepared, my presentation was slick and I went in with confidence. I was saying to myself, “Promotion, here I come! Welcome to the big leagues!”
But when I had the follow up meeting, I heard this:
“Thanks for you time, we really appreciate all the effort you’ve put it - you gave a brilliant account of yourself, but… we’ve decided to go in a different direction”
Well, shit.
In the days following, something really strange kept happening. I was quieter, I was snapping at people around me and it felt like the “shine” had been taken off everything.
I stopped and asked myself “what the hell is going on?”
It felt like I was going through a period of mourning. Almost as if I was cycling through the stages of grief.
And truth be told, I think I was!
Why do the smallest losses make us feel a disproportionate amount of pain? Like losing your AirPods, or arguing with a friend or not getting the job you wanted.
All these things suck. But in the grand scheme of life they are comparatively small-time problems.
Well, although they may be “small”, it doesn’t mean that we don’t feel the emotions at a lower scale.
These small “losses” could be described as “micro-griefs”.
But in the same way that first world problems are still problems, these micro-griefs are still griefs. Meaning you’ll still feel the full range of emotions from denial to anger to depression, before finally arriving at acceptance.
The unexpected impact of micro-griefs
Why do these little things sometimes hit us so hard?
It’s because everyone’s frame of reference or scale of grief is completely different - all 8 billion or so of us have experienced 8 billion different versions of trauma/loss/grief.
This is why some people seem to get unjustifiably upset by minor inconveniences, and other people who have gone through arguably massive loss seem to handle it better. It’s all dependent on what has come before.
If you’ve never dealt with the loss of a parent, and then you fall out with a friend, you may be grieving for weeks because it’s the biggest “loss” you’ve had to face. Whereas someone that has grown a tougher “grief callous”, will handle that fall out a lot better - because, unfortunately, they're more accustomed to grief.
This doesn’t make it any less significant - you just have a different scale of grief where that grief rates higher.
It’s important to remember that every single person in the world is different, and will react differently to things. So we need to remind ourselves to be patient with others.
Recognising those pesky little micro-griefs
How do we spot when we’re being impacted by a micro-grief though?
Micro-griefs can trigger our anxious or self-defeating behaviour, and this will manifest itself differently in everyone.
For me, I retract into myself, get quiet and broody (which is unusual for an extrovert) and I have less patience with people. I feel more negativity and more scepticism creep in.
But I’ve come to realise that it's all part of the process. It’s important to let these feelings in, acknowledge them, and then remind yourself of what you’ve been through before.
Former emperor of Rome and famous Stoic philosopher, Marcus Aurellius, wrote in Meditations, “Remind yourself what you’ve been through and what you’ve had the strength to endure.”
When we’re facing difficulties in life, like being stressed at work or fighting with a loved one, it’s important to look back at all the crap we’ve overcome before and show ourselves that we can endure anything, and this too shall pass.
We’re a lot stronger than we think, and all it takes is asking ourselves “If I’m still here, was it really that bad?”
Whenever micro-griefs occur and we react poorly, it’s worth taking a look around our lives to find out what is actually triggering this emotional response. Because it’s probably not just this small event.
Ever heard of the straw that broke the camels’ back?
Ask yourself, am I really angry that I can’t find my keys or is something else bothering me?
In my case, not getting a promotion got me down and I spiralled quietly into self-pity. But it also forced me to zoom out and examine what else was going on.
It made me realise I’d been feeling homesick, a feeling which I wasn’t acknowledging, and I was putting a lot of emphasis on my happiness and self-worth coming from my career.
The rejection from the job highlighted the subconscious feeling of distance between me and my home. Which sucks. But I have to accept it’s part of my reality.
The silver-lining though, is that it caused me to reach out to my family (who all live on the other side of the world) and reminded me that they’re only a phone call or FaceTime away!
It also made me reflect about where else I could channel my energy to get more satisfaction out of life.
And guess what was born out of that realisation? This blog! A blog that I hope some of you resonate with, learn something from and ultimately help make your lives a bit better.
These positives probably wouldn’t have happened without experiencing this micro-grief, so was it really all that bad?
As another of my fave Stoics, Seneca said, “A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials”, so make every micro-grief an opportunity for growth and learning, and come out better and stronger.
Lifting up your heavy heart
It’s inevitable that bad shit will happen to us, right? We’ll get frustrated, angry, sad and feel all of the emotions. And we’ll have to deal with those.
You’re allowed to accept that a micro-grief like missing the train makes you feel like you want to scream at the slow walker in front of you that made you late.
Just remember, you’ll get over the grief - no matter how big or small - with time. Time is good like that.
There is no formula. There is no shortcut. And the time it takes to grieve will be different for everyone.
Relax and don’t beat yourself up. You’re still smashing it, and you’re going to come through this stronger, more resilient and be more ready to kick life’s ass!
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