The double pain of ambiguous loss.
What’s the ambiguous loss?
Since starting the Change Signal project, I’ve been thinking about grief and its role in stymying change.
I’ve had the hypothesis that we underestimate people’s sadness at leaving the status quo behind. Even when it’s a messy, diminishing and miserable status quo, it’s our status quo. We know how it works and what our role is in the whole catastrophe of it all.
I recently interviewed Michael Norton, author of The Ritual Effect, for a forthcoming episode of the pod, and we ended up spending quite some time on the whole idea of ambiguous loss and its cousin, anticipatory grief.
Ambiguous loss is a term coined by Pauline Boss. It’s when there’s a discombobulating combination of presence and absence. Someone with dementia is physically present and psychologically absent. Someone who’s been reported missing might still be very psychologically present.
This “grief limbo” can be hard to process. We’re stuck in the ambiguity and uncertainty of it all. Going through some of the rituals of mourning can feel too premature, and it’s easy enough to assume you’re just “making too much of it all”.
The status quo has a denser gravity than we realize. It’s not that easy to escape its pull. As we experience organizational change, we can underestimate the hidden forces that make it hard for people to move.
A deeper attachment to the way things are right now than anyone expected, and anticipatory grief at its passing, even if it might also come with a sense of relief or excitement.
A sense of ambiguous loss, with some things still present and others now absent.
Humans are messy, delightful, and complex. Helping them move through change is subtle, challenging and important.
