Week 2 / Blog 2

The Vampire Diaries features no shortage of death, loss and pain. The death, losses, and pain definitely take a toll on the shows character's mental health. Medical dramas like, Grey's Anatomy has a patient death in almost every episode. However, on The Vampire Diaries, almost every death is a close friend or family member. In the video clip above, Elena who is the main character has just found out that her brother really is dead. She is so consumed with this unbelievable grief she wants to burn her house down because prior to this video, all of her family members have died and she is the only one left alive. She is so affected by her brother's death, she cannot even be consoled by her friends. Caroline (the blonde woman) I feel like is put in the position of not knowing what to say to Elena because she has no experiences this much loss. Elena cannot handle the death of her brother, so because she is a vampire, she turns off her humanity allowing herself to not be able to feel this loss. Paul Boelen (2009) talks about the sense of unrealness when losing a loved one. From what is not in the clip above, the scene before, Elena is unwilling to believe he is really dead (she thinks he is coming back to life... there is a lot of resurrection in this show). Elena has diffuculty accepting this loss as a real one (p. 242).  ** clip of Elena unwilling to accept her brother's death ** Throughout the series, many of the vampires often turn off their humanity so that they do not have to deal with their pain. Almost every time that someone loses a loved one, they turn off their humanity (if they are a vampire, humans can't). To the public, it suggests that losing someone is unbearable which can be true in real life circumstances, but it really suggests that there is not amount of consoling that will heal a person. It may seem like the show is promoting its viewers to "turn off their humanity", become indifferent and abandon emotions when put into similar situations. But throughout the series, every instance where someone turns off their humanity, the other characters fight tooth and nail to help them turn it back on so that they can deal with their emotions and eventually come to terms with what has happened. So really, I feel like the show is saying that turning off your emotions may be the easy way out, but the best way to deal with grief is to confront it and take however long you need to heal. This could help us with communicating with people we know who are dealing with situations of death, loss and pain. The show suggests that the best way to tackle death, loss and pain is head on and to talk about it. Obviously, everyone handles their grief a little differently. Sometimes the best way to talk to someone who is coping with a loss is to talk it out with them and let them cry, or like Caroline in the video, offer your support in a silent kind of way. BOELEN, P. A. (2010). A Sense of ‘unrealness’ about the death of a loved-one: An exploratory study of its role in emotional complications among bereaved individuals. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24(2), 238-251. doi:10.1002/acp.1557