Losing someone, either because they leave or die, can lead to grief. Grief is our natural response to loss. The importance of loved ones in our lives is one of the reasons that their death can have such a significant impact on us.
Grief is not just an emotional response, it’s the way our whole mind and body react to losing someone. Since every close relationship is different, people experience grief in many different ways, including: a sense of disbelief; confusion/difficulty thinking clearly; sadness; a sense of disconnection from others; frequent thoughts and memories of who or what we’ve lost; yearning or longing; difficulty concentrating or being interested in anything other than the loss; doing things to try to feel close to who we’ve lost, or conversely trying to avoid reminders. Other painful emotions, including anxiety, anger, remorse, guilt, and shame are also common.
Not everyone who suffers a loss needs therapy, even when the loss is sudden and unexpected as we have natural ways of adapting to loss, often with the support of friends and relatives: we all do it in our own way. You can think of healing after loss as being equivalent to healing after a physical wound. The loss, like the injury, triggers a pain response which can be very strong. Injuries also activate a healing process. Loss does too. However, a wound complication, like an infection, can interfere with healing. Similarly, challenging thoughts, disturbed behaviours or inadequate emotion regulation can interfere with our adaptation to loss and can become problematic when they feel like the only way of managing painful emotions.
If the loss is permanent, so too is the grief, but its form evolves and changes as we adapt to the loss. Acute grief occurs in the early period after a loss and often dominates the life of a bereaved person. Activities are often focused on doing or not doing things to try to deal with the loss. Integrated grief is the lasting form of grief in which loss-related thoughts, feelings and behaviours are integrated into a bereaved person’s ongoing functioning: grief has a place in the person’s life without dominating it. Complicated grief is a persistent form of intense grief in which challenging thoughts and disturbed behaviours are present along with continued yearning, longing and sadness and/or preoccupation with thoughts and memories of the person who died.
In therapy I witness client’s distress and help them to find a way forward that’s right for them, wherever they are on their grieving journey. It is possible to live well whilst grieving, and to find new and unexpected ways forward that feel liberating and that allow you to honour both your lost loved one and yourself.
You can find out more about the conflicting feelings that often accompany grief from my blog https://www.theexetercounsellor.com/feb-2023-five-stages-of-grief/. You can find out more about my therapy and fees here https://www.theexetercounsellor.com/how-it-works/ and options for contacting me here https://www.theexetercounsellor.com/contact-me/.
