Grieving Losses
Grief is the natural emotional response to the loss. Grief can occur after a serious illness, a divorce, or other significant losses. It is one of the more intense human emotions and experiences.
Grief often involves intense sadness, and sometimes feelings of shock and numbness, or even denial and anger. For most people, the intensity of grief eases over time and the episodes of grief become less frequent.
Grief is usually described in relation to the death of a loved one, but other types of major losses can also lead to feelings of grief. The more significant a loss, the more intense grief may be.
People may feel grieve over:
- the death of a loved one — grief can be particularly severe following the death of an infant or child, or a suicide.
- divorce or separation.
- the loss of a pet.
- giving up something that mattered.
- work changes — for example, unemployment, retirement, or retrenchment.
- the diagnosis of a terminal illness.
- the loss of good health because of an illness, accident, or disability.
- miscarriage or infertility.
- having a child with a disability, a terminal illness, a mental illness, or a substance abuse problem.
- moving away or separation from family or friends.
- having an ‘empty nest’ when children leave home.
Bereavement
Bereavement is the grief and mourning experience following the death of someone important to you. While it’s an inevitable part of life, losing someone you love can be one of the most painful experiences you’ll ever have to endure.
Whether it’s a close friend, spouse, partner, parent, child, or other relative, the death of a loved one can feel overwhelming. You may experience waves of intense and very difficult emotions, ranging from profound sadness, emptiness, and despair to shock, numbness, guilt, or regret. You might rage at the circumstances of your loved one’s death—your anger focused on yourself, doctors, other loved ones, or God. You may even find it difficult to accept the person is really gone, or struggle to see how you can ever recover and move on from your loss.
Bereavement isn’t limited to emotional responses, either. Grief at the death of a loved one can also trigger physical reactions, including weight and appetite changes, difficulty sleeping, aches and pains, and an impaired immune system leading to other health problems.
Understanding the grief of losing a loved one
The intensity of your feelings often depends on the circumstances of your loved one’s death, how much time you spent anticipating their loss, your relationship to them, and your previous experiences of bereavement. Of course, just as no two relationships are the same, no two losses are ever the same, either.
In short, the more significant the person was in your life and the more feelings you had for them—regardless of their relationship to you—the greater the impact their loss is likely to have.
Losing a spouse or partner
In addition to the emotional impact of grief, when you lose a spouse or romantic partner, you often have to deal with the stress of practical considerations such as funeral arrangements and financial issues too. You may also have to explain your spouse’s death to your children and find a way to comfort them while simultaneously dealing with your own heartache.
Losing a romantic partner also means grieving the loss of your daily lifestyle, the loss of a shared history, and the loss of a future planned together. You may feel alone, despairing, and worried about the future. You could even feel guilty about somehow having failed to protect your partner, or angry at your loved one for leaving you.
Losing a parent
For younger children, losing a mother or father can be one of the most traumatic things that can happen in childhood. The death of the person you relied on, the person who loved you unconditionally, can shake your foundations and leave a huge, frightening void in your world. It’s also common for young children to blame themselves for a parent’s death, prolonging the pain of grief.
As an adult child, losing a parent can also be extremely distressing. It’s easy to feel lost and childhood insecurities might suddenly return. You may gain some solace if your parent had a long and fulfilling life, but their death can also cause you to consider your own mortality. If you’ve lost both parents, you’re suddenly part of the older generation, a generation without parents, and you’re left to grieve your youth as well. And if your relationship with your parent wasn’t an easy one, their death can leave you wrestling with a host of conflicting emotions.
Losing a child
The loss of a child is always devastating. You’re not just losing the person they were, you’re also losing the years of promise, hopes, and dreams that lay ahead. The grief can be more intense, the bereavement process harder to navigate, and the trauma more acute.
As a parent, you feel responsible for your child’s health and safety, so the sense of guilt can often be overwhelming. Whether you lost your child in a miscarriage, as an infant, or after they’d grown up and left home, losing a child carries an additional weight of injustice. It feels unnatural for a parent to outlive their child, making it that much harder to find meaning and come to terms with their death.
Losing a child can also put a huge strain on your relationship with your spouse or partner and make parenting any surviving children emotionally challenging.
Grieving your loss
Whatever your relationship to the person who died, it’s important to remember that we all grieve in different ways. There’s no single way to react. When you lose someone important in your life, it’s okay to feel how you feel. Some people express their pain by crying, others never shed a tear—but that doesn’t mean they feel the loss any less.
Don’t judge yourself. Don’t think that you should be behaving in a particular way or try to impose a timetable on your grief. Grieving someone’s death takes time. For some people, that time is weeks or months, for others it’s years. It’s not uncommon for grief to change you profoundly. There are people who feel that parts of them died with a loved one. This is a normal grief reaction. As the grief unfolds, there is room to rediscover your identity outside your loss.
Allow yourself to feel. The bereavement and mourning process can trigger many intense and unexpected emotions. But the pain of your grief won’t go away faster if you ignore it. In fact, trying to do so may only make things worse in the long run. To eventually find a way to come to terms with your loss, you’ll need to actively face the pain. “The only cure for grief is to grieve.”
Grief doesn’t always move through stages. Many people find that grief following the death of a loved one is unpredictable. For some, grief can come in waves or feel more like an emotional rollercoaster. For others, it can move through stages. Don’t think that you should be feeling a certain way at a certain time.
Prepare for painful reminders. Some days the pain of your bereavement may seem more manageable than others. Then a reminder such as a photo, a piece of music, or a simple memory can trigger a wave of painful emotions again. While you can’t plan ahead for such reminders, you can be prepared for an upcoming holiday, anniversary, or birthday that may reignite your grief. Talk to friends and family ahead of time and agree on the best ways to mark such occasions.
Moving on doesn’t mean forgetting your loved one.
Finding a way to continue forward with your life doesn’t mean your pain will end or your loved one will be forgotten either.
Most of us carry our losses with us throughout life; they become part of who we are.
The pain should gradually become easier to bear, but the memories and the love you had for the person will always remain.
this is your #Wellnesswatch
with Nyaguthii Kariuki
Consultant Clinical Psychologist.
