The conventional wisdom on grief: Face it, talk about it, cry about it. Otherwise, you could fall into denial, something worse than grief itself.
Men don't always do that.
"I think that there is a great misunderstanding about how men deal with loss," says Neil Chethik, author of Fatherloss. "I found that men grieve, but they do it in a way that does not look like grieving. When we don't have access to tears, we can find others ways to express that energy."
The book details a national survey done by the University of Kentucky that asked how males dealt with the loss of their fathers. Many studies on grief have used a disproportionate number of women, neglecting males and the ways they deal with loss. Men do grieve, but they generally do so in a different manner.
"While women seem to grieve more through talking and crying, men grieve through thinking and acting," says Chethik. The survey finds that most men choose to grieve their fathers' death through action, such as continuing their fathers' hobbies. This bereavement process is slower and more gradual, but it does effectively resolve grief.
