If the death of Matthew Perry has hit you harder than you expected, you’re not alone. Just minutes after the news that the actor died, social media was filled with people expressing their heartbreak over the loss of this person they’d never met. Even though we didn’t know Perry personally, we feel like we do because we knew his character on “Friends,” Chandler Bing, so well and for such a long time.
While our relationships with celebrities are different from the ones we have with people in our lives, experts say we can grieve for a stranger. “Mourning the death of a celebrity we’ve admired is just as important as any other death,” explains therapist Dr. Aniesa Hanson. “Because we bond to celebrities at a distance, we have a tendency to immortalize them through nostalgic life experiences.”
Hanson points out that just because you may have never met a celebrity in person doesn’t make your grief about their loss invalid. She notes that celebrities become part of our lives and when they die, “a little part of us dies too.” Psychotherapist Adam Koenig adds, “When a famous celebrity dies, it brings home the reality that no one can escape death.”
Source: Daily Mail