There is seldom a person on this Earth who will go through life without losing someone they love. It can seem as if the mind is reverted to childhood in the face of profound loss. It makes us feel unprepared, and frightened. Our emotions run out of control, and we haven’t a clue what to do. It is completely normal to react this way.
Grief is a part of life, and it can be hard to power through. Though it may seem like there is no light at the end of the tunnel, with a little help, it is possible to navigate out of the dark and into happiness again. There are many different kinds of grief one can experience. Though everyone’s experience is unique, according to spire.com, there are commonalities that categorize 8 types of grief:
“1. Anticipatory Grief
Anticipatory grief occurs in anticipation of an impending loss. For example, if you know that someone has terminal cancer, you will feel sadness at their loss even prior to their passing away.
2. Normal or Common Grief
When going through normal or common grief, people are able to function and continue with basic daily activities. Normal grief includes emotional reactions ranging from numbness, shock, and disbelief. Normal grief is typically expressed through crying, sighing, and having dreams of the deceased. When suffering from normal grief, physical symptoms include insomnia, lack of appetite, fatigue, and trouble concentrating. Usually, normal grief comes with intense pangs of distress that last between 20 to 30 minutes. During these episodes, bursts of crying and emotions may make any functioning impossible. These can occur completely unexpectedly. As time moves on, these bursts become less frequent, less intense, and shorter. Although the normal grief experience is painful, most people are able to cope fairly well and may even experience personal growth from the experience.
3. Complicated Grief
Complicated grief occurs in about 7 percent of people facing a loss. Complicated grief is when you are completely overwhelmed with grief. Rather than reflecting upon the reality of the death, a person with complicated grief gets caught up with irrational thinking about what could have been done differently. They are not able to come to terms with the loss at any time and are almost constantly facing intense bursts of grief. Complicated grief symptoms often interfere with normal daily functioning and with the person’s ability to find meaning and purpose in life. This type of grief is best diagnosed by clinicians. Those afflicted with complicated grief typically need counseling to return to normal and avoid developing a mental illness.
4. Delayed Grief
One common experience among the bereaved is delayed grief. When a loss occurs and a person is not in a position to fully experience the grief and sadness, the feelings can surface at later times. Things that can block the initial grief process include:
- Age: Losing a parent at a young age can delay the grieving process. Young children are especially prone to this as their brains are not developed enough to deal with the loss.
- Substance use: Using substances or drug abuse to dull the pain of loss will prevent a person from grappling with grief and overcoming it. When the grieving process is interrupted in this way, it comes back at a later point.
- Social context: If you were encouraged or forced to bury your feelings after a loss, as many are during a war or another dangerous situation when grieving is impossible, this may interrupt the grieving process.
5. Inhibited Grief
This is when people avoid or escape their grief instead of experiencing the emotions of grief. You might passively avoid it by suppressing your thoughts and feelings or not expressing how you really feel to people you’re close to. Inhibited grief prevents a person from fully digesting the experience, and may lead to delayed grief.
6. Disenfranchised Grief
Disenfranchised grief is grief that is not socially accepted or even acknowledged. Examples of disenfranchised grief include loss of a pet, abortion, loss of a body part, loss of a personality from dementia, and loss of a loved one who is not blood-related like an ex-spouse. Society disenfranchises grief and mourners by not recognizing the relationship between the deceased and a survivor, the importance of the loss, or the need to grieve.
7. Absent Grief
This is where a person shows little to no signs of distress about the death of a loved one. This pattern of grief is thought to be an impaired response resulting from denial or avoidance of the emotional realities of the loss.
8. Exaggerated Grief
This is where grief remains prominent in a person’s life years beyond the loss. It doesn’t seem to ease like in normal grief and bursts of emotions still happen for an extended period beyond normal grieving times.”
As one of our therapists at the Psychological Healing Center, Zalman Raskin, put it so deftly grief is like an app on a smartphone. When we are experiencing it openly, the app is running and we are aware that we are using it. However, when you try and shut grief down prematurely, even though you think you have closed it, the app is still running in the background of your mind, draining your emotional battery. You have to find the source of the emotional drainage and move towards healing. If you keep on going without acknowledging your feelings, you will not get better. There is a common myth that says “time heals all wounds.” That is not true. Time can only heal if you are actively trying to heal.
You Are Free to Feel
The first step to grieving is letting yourself feel whatever emotions come your way. It may seem like a cliché, but bottling up emotions never helped anyone. There may be some people telling you you are overreacting or that you need to be strong, but the truth is: you don’t. You have a right to grieve, whatever that may look like for you. Go at your own pace. Be nice to yourself. When you feel ready, here are some tips for coping with loss from Will Meek, Ph.D.:
“1. Staying physically healthy: depending on what kind of grieving we are doing, it can be a trying physical experience. It is essential to maintain the best diet, sleep schedule, and exercise as is possible each day.
2. Meaning making: when we can make sense out of what happened, derive meaning from it, and put it into context, we feel better.
3. Honoring the loss: Many people do this through some kind of art, activism, prayer, or community involvement. As a side note, it is also very common for people to maintain some kind of connection to the person they have lost, often by continued communication with them. This is only problematic when it becomes part of the excessive avoidance in prolonged grief.
4. Time for loss and time for life: when we are really consumed by grief, it can seem impossible to continue living as we normally do. This is not always clean and easy, but becomes easier over time.
5. Don’t judge your feelings: allowing them to be valid in your own mind will go a long way toward relieving tension and helping you stay on track toward healing.”
From A Mind Map Perspective
Loss can be navigated through the Mind Map. If you did not get the necessary ingredients for a healthy mind in part 1 of your life, loss of a loved one can be a devastating blow to your psyche. Once you develop negative core beliefs about the world and build up unhealthy defenses, grief can come in a tear everything down. When this happens, you must introspect at your past, see what caused this fragile sense of self, and disassemble the negative beliefs. Once you have dealt with the psychological blocks that keep you in an unhealthy cycle of defense, then you can paradigm shift into a healthy place to deal with your grief. Through self care and support from loved ones, you can close the psychological file.
