Life insurance is about more than money. When someone you love dies, a life insurance policy can help protect your financial future. Although life insurances are great at keeping such practical matters in order, they can’t realistically cover other needs. After all, accepting a loved one’s death and achieving inner peace is a very important aspect of loss and grieving. Unfortunately, it’s also the hardest. With this article we’re discussing ways of approaching loss and leaving behind a legacy. Specifically, we’re focusing on the concept of emotional insurance – a new kind of legacy!
How does emotional insurance work?
Perhaps it’s useful to compare emotional insurance to life insurance since most of us are already familiar with the latter. People working in this industry want to make sure you have a way to keep your income flowing even after your insured loved ones leave this world. Or vice versa, of course. Therefore, life insurance asks you to prepare yourself for the worst by doing little on a regular basis. That would be paying your monthly or annual policy fees. That is, in a way, what emotional insurance does too.
Start with smalls steps
Picture emotional insurance in a similar way. You start taking small steps thinking about death, loss or your legacy. This depends entirely on your situation. You can start investing some time building up defenses and bracing yourself for a loved one’s imminent passing. Or, if you’re dying, you can leave behind messages, instructions and wishes to your family. You want to say a last goodbye to that old friend? Do it!
Create everlasting goodbyes
There are ways to record videos or write messages that your loved ones will receive after your passing. You can tell them all the things you need to share or you think hey need to hear. Emotional insurance in this case is both you sharing your love and affection, but also thinking about your loved ones’ needs. Both of you will experience the benefits this approach. Saying goodbye in general helps with closure and allows for people to transition into new phases of the lives; so it’s that much more significant when dealing with feelings of loss and grief.
And technology allows us to not only leave behind goodbye messages but also make them last for ever. Every time your family misses you they can watch your farewell video. Or every time you think of a deceased friend, you can read their last goodbye words. So why not provide this sense of closure and peace to people you love?
Find your pace and make new memories
Going back to our life insurance comparison, we mentioned before that you should set up your own emotional insurance in small steps. After all, even acknowledging death can be too confronting for most people – much less thinking about it.
So find the pace that works for you. Emotional insurance is about allowing yourself to be in touch with your feelings without being overwhelmed. Are things getting too intense? Take a break! For example, Myend offers many ways that you can pause, take a breath and continue when you feel ready.
Before you know, you have built new memories both for you and your family and friends. These memories are essential in this model of emotional insurance. Keep in mind, closure and healing should be the end goal here. After all, not being able to say goodbye and create such memories was a serious issue during the early days of the pandemic too. That goes to show you that emotional insurance takes even religious concerns into consideration. We discuss this next.
When is emotional insurance important?
The short answer to that is that you always need emotional insurance. Specifically, it’s relevant for every time you are in the heartbreaking position of mourning someone’s passing. Or if you are the one about to pass away and want to leave behind a legacy.
We mentioned above that emotional insurance takes religious considerations into account too. For example, most religions believe in the existence of souls or spirits. From American Protestants and British Anglicans all the way to Thai Buddhism and Taoism or Japanese Shintoism, souls and spirits are present. Keeping one’s soul appeased, and letting them rest in peace is very important for the deceased and their loved ones. And what better way of resting in peace other than knowing that you leave no loose ends behind?
Until now we’ve been discussing emotional insurance as something you could (and should) prepare for. You may think that you don’t need that. It’s quite common for humans to avoid contemplating death and loss, after all. Instead, procrastinating or being in denial protects us from the tornado of negative feelings that comes with grief. So when is emotional insurance important then? That becomes crystal clear in certain cases.
Unexpected Loss & Closure
For example, what happens if you (or a loved one) die unexpectedly? Or in a manner that you couldn’t say a meaning goodbye? For example, if a relative is in a coma or if they have severe dementia.
Emotional insurance helps tremendously in this case. You cannot predict an unexpected death – yours or of a loved one. What you can do, though, is be prepared. By buying a life insurance you don’t expect to die tomorrow, you just want the certainty and protection that comes with it. It’s the exact same thing for emotional insurance.
This time, though, you’ll be protecting your loved ones from not knowing your last wishes or whether you loved them – or how much! Sudden loss and lack of closure often comes with the – so called – guilt of the survivor. So why let your loved ones with these feelings, when you can still shield them from some pain from the grave? Below we focus more on the importance of having emotional insurance.
Why is emotional insurance so relevant to grieving?
From all we discussed above it should be clear by now that emotional insurance is all about certainty, protection and closure. We think it might be useful to explain the importance of emotional insurance through examples. You can approach this from two ways: Leaving a Legacy behind as the dying person or achieving inner peace as the grieving person.
Setting up a Legacy
We all care how people important to us perceive us. It’s natural to want to be accepted by family and to have people love you. That’s why we here at Myend think that there’s a lack of emphasis on creating your own legacy. Do not underestimate the feelings of closure and empowerment you’ll experience once you feel in control of your legacy. Your legacy is not just how our loved ones remember you; it’s also a reminder that they loved you and you loved: an eternal digital monument of who you are.
Achieving Inner Peace
This approach focusing on the sense of closure your loved ones can experience through emotional insurance. Grieving a particularly turbulent process so being able to shield a relative or friend from some of the pain can be an amazing gift. Finally, consider this: allowing yourself to be vulnerable with your loved ones, you’re also allowing yourself to explore new ways of understanding your own feelings.
Insurance VS Reassurance
We hope that it’s clear that the concept of emotional insurance is does not refer to a paid policy. It is, instead, a way of understanding and handling legacy, loss and grief.
Moving away from the financial aspects of the word insurance, and focusing on its emotional contributions reveals something: This is less about in-surance and more about as-surance and reas-surance. Assurance because you have the promise of closure, certainty and security; reassurance because this process removes your loved one’s doubts or fears. These doubts can include things we discussed already such the survivor’s guilt, whether you loved the people surviving you, fear that you won’t be ok.
Final Thoughts
Summing up, emotional insurance refers to everything you can do to provide emotional security and closure to your loved ones. Myend doesn’t offer tangible emotional insurance policies – they don’t exist after all. What does exist though, is the human need to mourn, love, remember and be remembered. And Myend’s services are geared towards serving this exact purpose. The emotional insurance we offer is a state of mind, a way of seeing your life – and death.
Does this sound too abstract to you? Are you curious to see how all of this translates into tangible services? Let’s have a look here. Or maybe you’re ready to sign up for free and see for yourself? Then click here.
