May 2, 2006 -- Is closure going to see the new 9/11 feature film United 93 and finally being able to face what happened to loved ones on Sept. 11, 2001?
Is closure watching the Zacharias Moussaoui verdict unfold and perhaps seeing the conspirator executed? Moussaoui is currently the only person in the United States to have been charged in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks.
Or for the family of the missing Aruban teen Natalee Holloway, is closure finding her body and getting a confession?
Is closure having that final conversation or run-in with an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend where you both are open and honest about what went right -- and wrong -- in your relationship?
Closure can be all of the above or none of the above, experts tell WebMD.
"Closure is something that allows you to close one chapter and to move on with some resolution," explains Barbara O. Rothbaum, PhD, an associate professor of psychiatry and the director of the Trauma and Anxiety Recovery Program at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.
Whether or not it is something that is actually attainable depends on how you define closure, she says. "Is it being able to find some peace and move on? Then it's possible," she says. "Is it feeling like 'OK, it's over, the person has been caught and punished', then I think it's possible," she says. But "something like 9-11 is hard because you don't have a ritual like a funeral, which is meant to give closure."
For example, "part of the Jewish funeral tradition involves having the mourners throw dirt on the descending coffin, which is very painful, yet very therapeutic" she says. "There is no denying that person is dead and in the ground" and that is closure.
Closure Can Be Symbolic, Personal
But "with 9-11, so many people were not found and we couldn't bury them and go through all the processes to get closure," she says. In these cases, closure can be achieved on an individual basis for some, she says, "If a person feels that they need a burial, then it will be hard, but closure may be able to be achieved symbolically," she says.
Decide what is meaningful to you, she suggests. "Sometimes it is just doing a ceremony on your own or having a memorial service," she says, "Burn something or bury something. Do whatever will help you find meaning and go on," she says. "So often closure is trying to make sense of a senseless situation and asking yourself what does it take to get through it, so it doesn't haunt you every day?"
For some, closure may come in the form of visiting the Freedom Tower, the symbolic skyscraper designed to replace the destroyed World Trade Center. For others, it may involve seeing United 93, the first feature film to deal explicitly with the events of Sept. 11. Wounds may still be too fresh for this movie. When previews of the movie began showing, some audience members screamed, "Too soon!" In fact, in New York City, a theater actually pulled the trailer after several complaints. The movie opened at No. 3 at the box office this weekend, behind the family comedy RV starring Robin Williams, suggesting that many Americans may actually be looking for an escape more than a revisiting of the horrific events.
"Legal proceedings such as the trial of Zacharias Moussaoui trial can help some people achieve closure, but can they can also keep the wound open and if you don't like the outcome, this can be another wound," she says. Public executions, however, can be a mixed bag when it comes to closure. They can provide friends and relatives with a sense of retribution, but they don't really help deal with the loss of a loved one, experts tell WebMD.
Overall, "I think closure is good and important," she says. "Figure out what is meaningful for you even if it's painful, and do it to help you move on," she says. "When you have lost someone in a terrible tragedy, there is no way to the other side except through it," she says.
Is Hope the Opposite of Closure?
"It's hard to achieve closure when you still have fantasies that maybe the [loved one] is alive such as with parents of missing children," Rothbaum says. "As painful as it would be to hear that a person is dead, you can get through the pain and grieve and achieve some closure whereas if we have a sense of hope -- whether small and flickering -- we can't get to the other side," she says.
In the case of Natalee Holloway, the teen who disappeared in May 2005 on the final night of a high school graduation trip to Aruba, "finding the body brings closure. You would think at first blush that finding the body brings misery, but it's the end of uncertainty [for her family]," says Carl Hindy, PhD. clinical psychologist in private practice in Nashua, N.H., and the author of If This Is Love, Why Do I Feel So Insecure?
"So much time has gone by that there is probably very little hope, but it is still unfinished because no one is sure of what happened but if you have a story, it can be a little easier to build a defense around it." So far, Aruban authorities have arrested and then released seven people in connection with Holloway's disappearance.
"Closure is a widely used term that probably has several different meanings for different people," he tells WebMD. In a nutshell, closure is doing whatever it takes to move on. "It's always a matter of degree," he says. "Closure allows people to feel the emotions less frequently and eventually less intensely."
He's Just Not That Into You … or Is He?
In broken relationships, "closure is a matter of coming up with a story that you can accept," Hindy says. "It's a coping mechanism or an account of an event that fits with your own world views and is not too threatening," Hindy explains.
For some people, closure may be nailing the door shut behind themselves. "Closure can be getting out of the uncertainty by putting an end to it as in 'if there was any life in it, I killed it now," he says."It can be putting yourself out of the pain that comes with uncertainly and that haunting possibility that something is not over," he says. For example, it may be doing that one thing -- such as cheating -- that the other person could never forgive.
Wounds Heal, but Some Scars Remain
In some ways, "closure is like emotional scar tissue and I think that you have different amounts of closure depending on the impact of the event or the person," says Ann Rosen Spector, PhD, a clinical psychologist in private practice in Philadelphia, and adjunct professor of psychology at Rutgers University in Camden, N.J.
"You can get over love affairs, lost jobs, and opportunities and then there are other things that you don't want to get past, you just want to develop a higher level of functioning such as the death of a loved one," she tells WebMD. "You don't want that person gone from your psychological map, but you want to function at a higher level than you did immediately after the loss," she explains."There are certain things that you can get over and move on from and don't need to revisit, but there are other things that you want to take with you in a way that is not as dysfunctional," she says.
"There are different kinds of closure for different events," she says. "When you break up with your high school boyfriend at 16, you think your life is over and you will never love again, but most of us go on past high school and can't even remember the person's name today."
But, "if you look at people who lost someone in 9-11 particularly a spouse or a spousal equivalent, they will never forget the person they lost, but some of them have gone in to make successful unions," she says. "Do they have closure? They can move on and love again, but they will never forget the person they lost and or how they lost him or her," she says. "Some events you can move on from and be done with and other things you will always remember, but the emotional psychological charge should be lessened over time," she adds.
