Recently we have been seeing more clients with loss in their lives. Primarily this has been at the passing of a loved one, but there have been other significant losses in some client’s lives recently.
So how do you approach a bereavements in your life. It is a very painful experience and it can bring up a great many emotions for us. Sometimes it feels like the pain will never end and we get annoyed with the seemingly endless streams of people telling us that “time is a great healer” or that “you will get over it” because just at that moment you can’t believe that this sense of loss will ever end. These are perfectly natural feelings when a loss happens and despite what you might hear there is no ‘normal’ way to grieve. Everyone has their own process and needs to go through their own pain. Ultimately you will be able to accept that the person is not here, is not coming back. Yet that doesn’t mean you will forget them or the pain that their loss caused you.
When loss first happens (even when the end is expected) there can be a sense of this can’t be happening now. Perhaps you thought you had longer, perhaps you had harsh word s the last time you saw them. You want to deny what has happened so that you can be better prepared.
We often feel angry perhaps there was something you could have done, or the doctors, or god perhaps even you are angry at the person who died that they should have taken better care of themselves.
We find ourselves saying that there has been a mistake, he is away on a business trip, or there has been a mistake. In the recently bereaved it is very common to dream about meeting the deceased.
Depression is perhaps what we most associate with grief that sense of Auden’s poem of stop all the clocks etc. Life needs to come to a halt. You are too sad to go on
Ultimately as you work through the process you come to an acceptance of the reality – that does not mean that you are happy with what has happened but rather you know what has happened and can start to move forward with memories of the person and the events that do not prevent your life going on.