Enduring Connections

Throughout March we’ve been thinking about the human experience of grief & bereavement.

We considered grief & bereavement as a unique personal experience but with some common themes & patterns that characterise loss.

In this post I shall try to bring together the key elements & ideas into a summary that I hope you will find useful in some way, in coping with your own experience of loss:

1. Grief isn’t just about losing people. We can experience grief as a result of losing anything from losing someone close to us to losing materials like an item of importance to us, or immaterial things like relationships.
2. There is no defined programme or process that you should try to work through in coping with your grief.
3. There is no right or wrong timescale in which you should try to process your grief.
   • Given items 2 & 3 in our list, there are, however, ways & timescales that are considered unhealthy for processing our grief and it’s these that you may need help with. These include:
     1. If your grief is getting in the way of your daily functioning.
     2. If your grief is resulting in destructive behaviours like substance abuse, aggression, violence, etc.
     3. If your grief is leading you to think of harming yourself in anyway.
4. Grief can affect our physical health. Common physical symptoms include:
   • Tightness in the chest
   • Inhibited breathing
   • Stomach pain
   • Loss of appetite
   • A hollow feeling in the stomach
   • Weakness & fatigue
   • Dry mouth & thirst
   • A sense of depersonalisation – The feeling that little seems real or that reality feels like a fantasy
   • Disrupted sleep
   • Hallucinations
   • Hyperactivity

Although these are common experiences associated with grief and may well be down to no more than grief related stress, it’s best to get these experiences checked out with your Doctor to rule out any physiological causes.

In addition, if these problems persist regardless of cause, please consult your GP. Prolonged exposure to stress can lead to physical illness.

5. Common behaviours associated with grief include:

• Disbelief
• Confusion
• A sense of presence
• Lack of awareness
• Withdrawal from public & social life
• Yearning
• Crying
• Attachment to associated objects

6. Common feelings associated with grief include:

• Anxiety
• Anger
• Guilt
• Shock
• Sadness
• Loneliness
• Fatigue
• Relief
• Freedom
• Longing

7. Our cultural ideas & beliefs influence our ideas about grief. Commonly held views about how we should handle grief, like moving on or time being a great healer, aren’t without merit but they oversimplify our experience of grief and can cause more problems than they propose to solve if we come to evaluate our grief experience with these common held standards.

Key Take Aways from our focus on grief & bereavement:

• Your experience of grief is unique & personal but will likely include a mix of common experiences.
• There is no prescribed programme or timescale against which you should assess your progression through grief although there are ideas about healthy & unhealthy processing of grief.
• Grief can invoke physical symptoms that should be discussed with your GP.
• Grief can result in behavioural changes, which for the most part are perfectly OK, but can become unhelpful or destructive.
• Grief can be a very challenging experience which can be deeply emotive.
• Social & cultural beliefs can have a great influence on our experience of grief.
• Death can be considered as a transformation of our relationship with those we have lost.
• Consider your support network of friends & family as well as professional supports in coping with your grief.

If you’d like to talk about this or anything for else for that matter, you can reach us using any of the following contact details:

Phone: 0899420568

Email help@broadmindstherapy.org

Message us directly via this page or visit our Facebook page: BroadMinds | Facebook

Your message will be handled discretely, and treated as private & confidential.

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