Missing

The festive period is a key anniversary time of the year for many and it can be quite difficult getting through Christmas & the New Year without those we love. And, this year has been one which has involved a lot of loss for us all.

When we think about grief & bereavement, we tend to think about the people in our lives that have passed away. Our relationships with those people, whether they were good or bad, can have a great impact on our experience of grief and often in ways that we don’t expect.

Social culture is important, too, with all kinds of belief systems influencing how we think of death. There are times when society is very judgemental about our experience of grief. For example, consider how people sometimes think about suicide, miscarriages, loss of pets or perhaps even losing someone who isn’t well thought of by others.

These are just a few of the circumstances in which society seems to react differently to death and this can have consequences for our experience of grief. Despite this, our experiences of grief & bereavement are felt in all such instances.

Death itself is something which comes to us all but we rarely talk about it, and for many it is a taboo subject. Often, people are uncomfortable talking about their own passing or that of another. If we start to break down grief and understand it more clearly we can develop strategies for dealing with it.

Grief is essentially about the loss of something or someone we once valued (not necessarily positively) – Or put another way, something or someone to which we were once attached and maybe still do. It can be experienced about the loss of material things like an item with sentimental value, as well as immaterial things like losing an opportunity or becoming disabled.

So, let’s start off with some basics:

1. There is no scale against which an appropriate level of grief for a specific loss should be determined. Grief is simply your experience – it is what it is. There is no right or wrong here, but there are ideas about what is healthy & what is not. For example, if profound grief is experienced over a long period of time and is having severe consequences on your daily life, it’s time to ask for some help.

2. Therapy following a loss: Generally, counsellors & psychotherapists wouldn’t offer therapy in the first few months to a client after losing someone. However, they may offer other forms of support if the loss has been traumatic. This is because the immediate reaction after losing someone is often very raw & takes a little time for each of us to process & understand how we feel. After a few months, many have already begun to heal naturally. Most professionals recognise this and prefer to allow people’s natural healing process to kick in but in the immediate period following a loss they may offer other forms of support.

3. People grieve in different ways & over different timescales. There is no right or wrong here, either. It’s not a competition to see who can grieve more, quicker or slower. Getting over the loss of someone quickly doesn’t necessarily indicate that you didn’t care for or love that person. It may be that you are simply more resilient when it comes to grief. However, taking longer to grieve doesn’t mean that you are any less resilient or cared more, it may just be that your healing process takes a little longer.

Here are some of the feelings we might experience when grieving:

• Anxiety – This might be experienced as a fear that you may die too, questions about how you may cope without the person lost, or of a general loss of control.

• Anger – This is sometimes directed at the person who has died for having left you, or perhaps directed at someone or something else.

• Guilt – We can experience guilt in many ways. An example would be when mothers have miscarried or lost a baby shortly after birth. It’s not uncommon in such circumstances for parents to blame themselves, feeling that they have in some way contributed to the death despite there being little they could have done to avoid it.

• Shock – This is often experienced when death is sudden or unexpected and can include feelings like numbness. It’s thought to be a process that actually serves to protect us, providing a kind of automatic mental process which allows us to respond to sudden & unexpected change.

• Sadness – Probably the feeling most associated emotion with grief but it’s also one that we often deny.. me included. On the day my father died a plumber visited the house and politely asked how my day had been. I replied ”Fine, thank you” despite my father having died less than 4 hours previously!

• Loneliness – Friends & family are more than just the people we feel most attached to in life. They actually fill the space & time we have in our lives and when they are gone we become aware of the space & time left by their passing. The experience of that can leave us feeling very alone in all that extra space & time.

• Fatigue – Another feeling that can affect our grieving process is one of overwhelming physical & mental tiredness. This can make it very difficult to perform even the most basic of tasks that make up our daily routine. Frustratingly, this can occur at the very time when some feel like the just need to try to get on with things.

• Yearning – A feeling of a need to be with the one we have lost and can exacerbate our pain of having lost someone as the realization takes hold that those we have lost cannot return to us.

• Relief – An experience that can leave us feeling conflicted about the death of a loved one. For example, when a loved one experiences a slow death in which they suffer distress or indignity we may wish for death to come for them to ease their suffering. When it comes it can be accompanied with a feeling of relief that their suffering has ended but can also leave us feeling confused. We are used to the idea that grief is characterised by sadness & pain so when we feel relief we may question our what’s behind those feelings. Needless to say that relief is a common experience & doesn’t necessarily indicate that you love the deceased any less. It can simply indicate that you desired an end to their pain & suffering.

• Freedom – In a similar way to relief, feelings of freedom can follow the death of a loved one. It may occur when a loved one passes away after a period of needing our care. Also, if they have suffered over a period preceding their death, our experience of witnessing their pain can cause us great distress and we may feel free of the worst of that pain when they pass away. It can give rise to the same sort of conflicted feelings described above with feelings of relief.

If you’d like to talk about this or anything for else for that matter, feel free to give me a call on (+353) 899420568, email help@broadmindstherapy.org, or message me directly via this page. Your message will be handled discretely, and will be private & confidential.

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Thanks for taking the time to read this.