When Time Doesn't Heal How To Distinguish Healthy From Pathological Grief

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

It can hardly be compared with anything in terms of the strength of the pain experienced by a person experiencing the death of a loved one. This is a shock and inability to believe and come to terms with what is happening. Acute melancholy and obsessive thoughts about the deceased. Strong emotions such as anger, guilt, grief, and resentment. The feeling that a part of yourself has been lost. A person in a state of acute grief can lose the meaning of life, it is difficult for him to maintain his usual way of life, he can withdraw from communication and withdraw into himself, feel deeply lonely. These are all incredibly painful yet normal responses to loss.

The process of mourning is the process of saying goodbye, which is necessary in order to realize and come to terms with what happened through the expression of emotions, to express feelings, to express the unsaid and to end the relationship. Normally, this process lasts up to 12 months, during which the intensity of the experience weakens, and the meanings and feelings are transformed and changed.

What could go wrong?

The duration and intensity of grief is influenced by the degree of attachment to the deceased and the circumstances of death. Thus, grief reactions are complicated by deaths as a result of unnatural causes (accidents, suicide), sudden deaths; loss of children by parents; the age at which a person experiences loss (the older, the higher the risk of complicated reactions); loss of loved ones. A separate factor that interrupts the mourning process and leads to the risk of developing pathological conditions are situations when a person is missing.

Pathological conditions that can develop as a result of complicating factors are prolonged grief, post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder.

How to understand that the process of mourning has gone beyond the healthy and requires the intervention of a specialist?

First of all, and this applies to all disorders - if the symptoms significantly disrupt the life of a person, causing disturbances in social, professional and other important areas of life, if it has become impossible for a person to perform normal duties (for example, stopped going to work or even leaving home, stopped following hygiene, cannot cope with the responsibilities of caring for a child, alcoholism, etc.). If symptoms persist for at least 6-12 months after death. If the reaction is persistent and severe and is not culturally attributable (eg, it is normal to wear cultural mourning).

With such reactions, it is worth seeking the advice of a clinical psychologist and a psychiatrist in order to rule out the disorder.

How can you help yourself cope with loss? Technique "writing".

In order to cope with the loss, it is very important to express your feelings for the lost person (for example, that you miss him a lot), as well as your emotions in relation to the event (for example, that you are angry about the circumstances of the death). All of this will help you cope with intense experiences and get closer to coming to terms with what happened.

To give vent to your worries - try writing letters to the deceased. Set aside 30 minutes a day to write your letter and continue for two weeks. If you are stopped from performing this technique by the fact that you do not know what to write, then write “I don’t want to write this letter because I don’t know what to write”. Notice your feelings and describe them. Don't worry about the logic or meaning of the story, write whatever comes to mind. As you do this practice, you will find that you have something to talk about. Express your feelings and concerns through writing.

Conversation technique

Very often, people who have experienced loss feel guilty before the deceased. This is especially true for survivors of traumatic events. This is a normal, common reaction, even if it's not your fault. To cope with feelings of guilt, try talking to the deceased about it in your imagination. You can ask him for forgiveness for what you think you are to blame. And then switch roles with the deceased and try to imagine what he would say to you in return. This exercise allows you to express and experience feelings that remain unexpressed due to the absence of the addressee. It can be done independently or in the presence of a psychologist.

The process of mourning is to assimilate a new experience through the expression of emotions and to accept the changed reality, to come to terms. Thus, some feelings are replaced by others, less painful. Unexpressed emotions do not find their discharge and interrupt this healing process, and their intensity does not decrease over time.