Wikipedia Trails: Grief to Illusion of Control

Let me apologize now. This is probably the strangest and most depressing way to start a Wikipedia Trail. I think I am starting from a non-traditional place. I chose to start with grief because of several reasons:

1. Last night I was driving, and I got the sudden urge to call my grandpa. I got my phone out, pulled up the phone application, got ready to hit his number, but then had to remind myself he's gone. It's been almost a year since he passed and I still have moments like this.
2. I read Erika's Famous Last Words post talking about how she wrote an essay for another class inspired by her relationship with her great-grandmother and her hymnal.
3. I am sitting at a Panera, and a man walked in and sat right in front of me. He looks exactly like my grandpa, and having to sit in front of this man is making my heart ache.
4. In both the Mythology and Folklore and Indian Epics classes, I have read many stories about grief. It is such a powerful emotion that inspires so many storytellers.

So yeah, this is depressing. But going into this assignment, this is what I wanted to learn more about.

Source: Wikipedia

Grief: What I found most interesting about this post is how it discussed that while crying is a very common response to bereavement and sign of grief, there are other ways and are referred to as "coping ugly". It also mentioned that there are five different identities people fall into when grieving: nomads, seekers, memorialists, normalizers, and activists. The article most often mentions George Bonanno and his research, so he must be a leading researcher on grief and bereavement.

Self-Serving Bias: This is one of the "coping ugly" reactions mentioned as a response to grieving. It means that someone believes everything good that happens to them is due to their own merit, but bad things are due to external factors (I get good grades because I'm smart, I get bad grades because that teacher can't teach and that one hates me and that one etc etc.). It didn't explicitly say how this looks in relation to grief, but I imagine it as "I had this person in my life because I'm so good and kind, but I lost him/her because the world is out to get me/God is out to get me/I'm the universe's target."

Optimism Bias:  This was listed as something to look into further at the end of the article. Like how the title sounds, it is the cognitive bias which leads someone to believe that bad things won't happen to them or that good things will happen to them. I think that many or most people have this. Almost everyone always thinks many times "but that won't happen to me".

Illusions of Control: A positive illusion that causes people to believe that they have control over things they couldn't such as gambling. Researchers believe this is adaptive as it is more common in mentally healthy individuals. This is something I believe I had when my grandpa was suffering from ALS. I would often think "if I pray hard enough, if I visit more often, if I think about it more or less, he will get better". It was an absolutely mentally exhausting and horrible experience. The best freedom came when I mostly understood ALS had nothing to do with any of us and we couldn't affect it neither positively nor negatively.