How to Go on Living When Someone You Love Dies
Therese H. Rando, Ph.D
You can expect that:
Your grief will take longer than most people think.
Your grief will take more energy than you would ever have imagined.
Your grief will involve many changes and be continually developing.
Your grief will show itself in all spheres of your life: psychological,
social and physical.
Your grief will depend upon how you perceive loss.
You will grieve for what you have lost already and for what
you have lost for the future.
Your grief will entail mourning not only for the actual
person you lost but also for all of the hopes, dreams,
and unfilled
expectations
you held for and with that person, and for the needs
that go unmet because of the death.
Your grief will involve a wide variety of feelings, and
reactions, not solely those that are generally thought
of as grief,
such as depression and sadness.
The loss will resurrect old issues, feelings, and unresolved
conflicts from the past.
You will have some identity confusion as a result
of this major loss and the fact that you are experiencing
reactions
that
may be quite
different.
You may have a combination of anger and depression, such as
irritability, frustration, annoyance or intolerance.
You will feel some anger and guilt, or at least
some manifestation of these emotions.
You may experience a lack of self-esteem.
You may experience grief spasms, acute upsurges
of grief that occur suddenly with no warning.
You will have trouble
thinking (memory, organization, and intellectual processing)
and making decisions.
You may feel like you are going crazy.
You may be obsessed with the death and
preoccupied with the deceased.
You may begin in search for meaning
and may question your religious beliefs
and/or
philosophy
of life.
You may find yourself acting socially
in ways that are different from
before.
You may find yourself having a
number of physical reactions.
You may find that there are certain
dates, events, and stimuli
that bring upsurges
in grief.
Society will have unrealistic
expectations about your mourning
and may respond
inappropriately to you.
Certain experiences later
in life may resurrect intense
grief for
you temporarily.
