The Daddy’s Girl Without a Daddy: Grief & Psychological Flexibility

My Daddy died in July 2017. It was expected, in the sense that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer years before, and it had been a long time since he identified as living the life he wanted (due to his health deteriorating). However, for me the moment he went from living to not living felt sudden. He was with me, and then he wasn’t. He was someone I could message and speak with about my day, and then he wasn’t. He was someone I could seek advice from, and then he wasn’t. This change felt sudden and was unimaginably painful.

Studying, teaching and living by the principles of Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) supported me with this pain and grief. I could absolutely remind myself that my Daddy’s death felt so painful because we had such a loving and meaningful relationship. I could be thankful for our close bond and notice that this pain was the consequence of that. I could remind myself that I wouldn’t swap this pain for not having had such a strong friendship and respect between us. However, there were other aspects of the grieving where I felt stuck.

Within ACT, one of the important aspects of psychological flexibility (not getting so caught up in our minds that we are unable to live a life that gives us meaning) is the ability to see ourselves as a “context” for our experiences and not as the “content”. This means that we are the observers who notice our minds and experiences, we’re not the content of those thoughts, images or the meaning our minds attach to an emotion.

An example of this context vs. content idea is when I’m offering psychological therapy and someone reports that this work is helpful: I am the one who notices my thoughts (e.g. “is it really helpful”, “it was just luck”, “I always knew I was a great Psychologist”) and emotions (e.g. pride, anxiety, gratitude) in response to this comment. I am not the “perfect Clinical Psychologist” who hears this comment as confirmation of how my mind tells me I should be. If I live my life based on this “content” of perfection, then I have little flexibility to be “good enough”: I’m either “perfect” or I’m a “failure” depending on how someone experiences me. This is not flexible (and basing our self-worth on the feedback of others is a very risky strategy).

I find the terms context and content a little hard to hold onto, I therefore name these positions as the “defining” self and the “defined” self. I am the one who notices and gives words to my experience (defining). I am not the good, bad, shameful, awkward (or whatever my mind tells me in that moment) self who is defined by these words.

Following my Daddy’s death, I was the being who noticed the sadness that my Daddy was no longer with me. My mind also kept returning to the thought that I am now a “Daddy’s girl with no Daddy”. I couldn’t make sense of this: I couldn’t be defined by someone who was no longer with me. However, I also didn’t want to give up and stop being a “Daddy’s girl”. It was a confusing, painful and very stuck position.

The labels of our defined selves are often short-hand, inflexible ways of describing a set of qualities or characteristics that we identify with (e.g. “I’m a worrier”, “I’m incompetent”, “I’m a fighter”). For me, the label of “Daddy’s Girl” meant I always had someone supporting my corner, that I was always loved no matter how much I might stuff-up, and that I could recover from whatever errors I might make. Why would I want to let that go? In some ways this was a really helpful and empowering defined self – until it wasn’t. This was psychological inflexibility of a defined-self slapping me in the face!

Once I had noticed the impact of this defined self (and it felt a relief for me to notice this), I chose to explore in more detail what this “Daddy’s Girl” content meant for me. That sounds far easier than it felt – I still did not want to accept not being a Daddy’s girl. However, I knew my alternative was to stay stuck and miserable whenever this thought popped up, which didn’t sound like a great option.

When I think about what being a “Daddy’s girl” meant to me, I connect with the qualities we shared or that I think he appreciated in me. I think my Daddy valued me as being someone resilient: I’d been through some tough stuff and still came out smiling and not too bitter about the world (most of the time). We shared a silliness: appreciating things just because they made us laugh (and that thing didn’t need to have any purpose beyond that). We also shared a sense of curiosity and wanting to understand how and why things or people did what they did. With that curiosity also came a shared desire to be tolerant of others – we weren’t always as tolerant as we’d like to be, but we shared the wanting to understand other’s perceptions.

The above are qualities I can hold onto. Living by values of curiosity and tolerance is important to me. When I connect these with my Daddy, I experience a real sense of loss and sadness that I can no longer share these with him, and a sense of love and gratitude that these are aspects of him that I carry with me.

There are also parts of this short-hand model of being a “Daddy’s Girl” I cannot take with me. I no longer have his protection and cannot call on him if I need help. This was a gradual change: as my Daddy’s health deteriorated, he was less able to support me in the same way (e.g. he couldn’t come and fix my electrics or help me when I moved home). However, until the final day before his death he was still a source of advice and I really miss those chats. I miss the sense of validation I had from him when I’d achieved something, and the moral guidance he gave when I knew I’d disappointed him.

These are painful and heart-breaking losses. To manage this pain, I try to connect with my belief in acceptance and compassion. I try to remind myself how lucky I am to have had a relationship I valued to such an extent that this loss hurts so much. I also remind myself of the people I still have around me who support and care for me, and I feel immense gratitude to have such people in my life.

Letting go of the false and inflexible aspects of my defined “Daddy’s Girl” self was (and is) painful and freeing. Being able to understand what these words meant has allowed me to accept his loss (not that it is no longer painful) and make space to commit to how I move forward with the memories of my Daddy.

People say that grief becomes more bearable over time. My experience tells me that I agree: the pain pops up less often, the reminders of my Daddy connect more with joy (and sometimes irritation: he wasn’t perfect!) than pain, and there’s more distance from the feeling of grief when I talk about him. However, for me, my experience tells me that the core pain doesn’t change. If I connect with that sense of loss and the reality that I now live in a World which doesn’t contain someone I would like it to then that still hurts, and that’s OK (horrible and painful…and OK).