At the very beginning, I would like to say that in our modern society a healthy and adequate attitude towards the death of a person has not been developed. Perhaps they talk about her if she died old man. There is a death that happens to people of middle age, they talk about it less often and more quietly. And, of course, when grief caught small child, are often silent about it. What is it connected with?
First, every person has a fear about his own death. The phenomenon is uncontrollable, causing a lot of feelings, anxiety and worries. Therefore, sometimes it is easier for a person to close from the topic of death than to think or talk about it. Magical thinking can work here: if I do not come into contact with this, this will not happen to me or to my loved ones.
Secondly, in our culture there is no specific mechanism for how to behave if someone close to us has died. There are funerals, commemorations, memorial days. On them people cry, eat and drink. And often we are faced with the problem when we do not know what to say or how to behave in the event of a tragedy with our acquaintances. Usually the phrase is: "Please accept our condolences."
Thirdly, it is not always clear to those in whose family grief happened how to behave with people. Whether to talk about your trouble, to whom to report? People can choose two lines of behavior. One of them is to close, withdraw into yourself, experience grief alone. The second is to ignore feelings and transfer everything to the level of intellect: here there may be explanations that the deceased is now in the other world, that he is well, that everything happened for a reason.
Sometimes it happens that a person can handle grief and"stuck" in German This is called "complicated loss symptom" and they come in several forms:
- Chronic grief. A person cannot accept that a loved one is no more. Even years later, the reaction to memories is very acute. Let's say a woman cannot get married again if she lost her husband even more than a few years ago, his photo is everywhere. Man does not go out real life lives on memories.
- Exaggerated grief. In this situation, a person can increase the feeling of guilt, exaggerate it. This can happen with the loss of a child: a woman strongly blames herself, respectively, emotionally strongly attached to death.
- Masked or suppressed grief. A person does not show his experiences, he does not feel them. Typically, this suppression results in psychosomatic diseases, including headaches.
- Unexpected grief. As they say, when nothing foreshadowed trouble. Sudden death loved one provokes the impossibility of acceptance, exacerbates self-blame, aggravates depression.
- Delayed grief. A person seems to be postponing for a while the passage through the stages of loss, turning off or blocking his feelings. This does not mean that he coped with the situation.
- Absent grief. The person denies the loss, is in a state of shock.
In fact, psychologists have long described the healthy stages of experiencing loss or acute grief. For each person, their duration and intensity is individual. Someone can get stuck in one of the stages or go in circles. But in any case, knowing the stages of grief, you can help yourself to really mourn for a person whom you will never see again. There are two classifications in describing what happens to a person who has experienced a loss. I suggest considering both.
First classification
1. Denial. It is difficult for a person to believe what happened. He seems to be in denial about what happened. Usually the stage is accompanied by such phrases: “This cannot be”, “I do not believe”, “He is still breathing”. A person can try to feel the pulse himself, it seems to him that doctors can be mistaken. And even if he has already seen the deceased, there may be a feeling inside as if death did not happen.
What to do: used to be good tradition when the deceased person was at home for 3 days - this helped to realize what had happened. Now those who say goodbye approach the coffin, kiss the deceased on the forehead - this is a very important action. So a person feels that a really close one has died. You can put your hand on your forehead, on your body, feel and feel the cold. If you did not see the body of the deceased, did not see the funeral, then the stage of denial may be delayed. You will understand that a person has died, but at the level of feelings there is a feeling that he is alive. Therefore, it is more difficult to accept death when a loved one is missing or there was no funeral.
2. Anger. The person becomes aggressive. And here it all depends on the causes of death. He can blame doctors, God, fate, circumstances. And also yourself, that, for example, did something wrong. Can accuse the deceased himself that he was not careful or did not follow his health. Anger may be directed at other relatives. There are such phrases here: “I can’t accept this!”, “It’s unfair!”
What to do: It is important to understand that anger is normal reaction. Base Emote which is associated with loss. It's important to respond. Get angry, discuss your anger, write it down on paper. Share feelings and actions. Yes, you have the right to be angry, now it hurts a lot, the process of experiencing the loss goes through its natural stages. All people go through them.
3. Bidding. At this stage, it seems to a person that he could change something in the current situation. It looks something like this: "If I devoted more time to my mother, she could live longer." In the case of the loss of a loved one, a person goes into his fantasies and tries to seem to agree with God or fate.
What to do: let your mind play through these scenarios for a bit. It is still very difficult for our psyche to accept changes, it is difficult to realize that dear person will never be around again. The main thing is to stop in time, not to go into a sect. Remember the soldier resurrection scams?
4. Depression. Usually here a person feels unhappy, says: "Everything is meaningless." Depression can be expressed in different form. It is very important to take care of yourself and seek help in a timely manner. People complain about Bad mood, depressed state, lack of energy. Because change is inevitable. We will have to build our lives in a new way. The man realized what had happened, got angry, tried to bargain. Now he understands that really nothing can be changed.
What to do: neither in in which case you can not be left alone, be sure to invite to friends, relatives, ask them to take care, let them stay in yourself, cry enough, worry. This is fine. The time is really important now.
5. Acceptance. When a person has really gone through all the previous stages, there is now a chance that he will accept death. Come to terms with what happened, agree and begin to build your life in a new way. Of course, he will remember a loved one, cry, be sad, miss, but with less intensity.
What to do: be grateful to yourself for having found the strength to honestly endure grief. Death is an inevitability that we face sooner or later. Yes, we will miss a loved one, but now we look at the situation with adult eyes. It is important to note that the first 4 stages do not guarantee a transition to the acceptance and integration of experience. A person can walk in circles or return to one or another stage. Only the stage of acceptance indicates that grief has been experienced.
Second classification
Surely you know that usually a person is buried on the third day after death. Then they gather on the 9th, 40th day, half a year and a year. Such dates were not chosen by chance, it is precisely such time frames that make it possible to gradually come to an acceptance of the situation.
9 days. Usually a person is not can understand to the end of what happened. Tactics here, most often, two. Either leaving for themselves, or excessive activity in funeral preparations. The most important thing in this period is really to say goodbye to deceased. Cry, cry, talk to other people.
40 days. At this stage, a grieving person still cannot accept what happened, cries, he dreams of the deceased.
Six months. Gradually there is a process of acceptance. Grief seems to “roll over”, and this is normal.
Year. There is a gradual acceptance of the situation.
How to help yourself cope with the loss of a loved one
- Cry out. It doesn't matter if you are a woman or a man. Having a good cry and doing it regularly, as long as there is such a need, is very important. For feelings to find an outlet. If there is no desire to cry, you can watch a sad movie, listen to sad music.
- Talk to someone. Discuss your grief as much as necessary. Let you tell the same thing to the tenth acquaintance - it doesn’t matter, this is how you process the situation.
- Get on with your life. It is very important to give yourself the opportunity to grieve, but do not disconnect from life - very gradually, day by day. Clean the table, cook the soup, go out for a walk, pay the bills. It's grounding and helps you stay on your feet.
- Follow the routine. When you have regular activities, it also helps your mind to be more calm.
- Write letters to the dead. If you have feelings of guilt or other strong feelings to the deceased, write him a letter. You can drop it without an address in the mailbox, take it to the grave or burn it, as you like. It can be read to someone. It is important to remember that the person died and you stayed, take care of your feelings.
- Contact a specialist. Of course, there are situations when it is difficult to survive the situation on your own and even with the help of loved ones, and a specialist will help you. Do not be afraid to consult a psychologist.
- Take care of yourself. Life goes on. Indulge in simple pleasures.
- Set goals. It is important for you to understand the connection with the future, so take care of planning. Set goals for the future and start realizing them.
What to say to children?
It is very important not to lie to the child. The child has the right to know about the death of a loved one. Psychologists here disagree on whether to take the child with you to the funeral. Some children may have a negative perception of the process of digging into the ground. Therefore, it is important to be close to the children emotionally. stable person. If a child's mother or father dies, there must be a farewell procedure.
It is important not to tell the child about the mother who looks from the clouds. This can add anxiety to what is happening. Help your child cry out the pain, get over the situation. Each case is unique, so it is best to refer to child psychologist to help you deal with trauma.
Today we will talk about the death of loved ones, about how to survive it.
We are all mortal. Everyone around us will one day die, just like us. As the saying goes, no one has yet come out of life alive.
However, it often happens that those whom we love go to the Other World without asking us, without saying goodbye, without taking us with them, without asking how those who loved them will stay here. Such death is unpredictable: no one knows the hour and day it will leave, and each of us can leave at any moment.
This article, perhaps, will be subjective and written through my experience. If you search the Internet for the answer to the question "how to survive the death of a loved one" - there will be a ton of articles of the same type about different stages grief, about how to survive it, based on a certain template. Most rewrite other texts. Tips on how to get out of depression are divided into religious (like “believe, go to church”), pragmatic (“let go, go to work”) and stupid, about nothing.
Psychologists monotonously, using coaching methods, without instructing, without teaching, push the person talking to them to turn over the page of the past as soon as possible, along with the crosses in the cemetery and once loved ones lying under them, and the psychologist would stick a star on his chest for completed task. And we became harder and stronger and more cynical, finally learning to step over our own and others' pain.
As long as we are alive and full of strength, we cannot believe in death. It often seems that death is an illusion, it does not exist. And no life plans, no happiness, no self-confidence, no flight of success can be interrupted by such an absurdity as death. Death is not about us.
However, she, this death, as if with a scythe, stands over everyone and measures the time, and for sure, better than us, she knows to whom and how much is measured. No matter what anyone says (and, for example, pathologists pretend that they get used to death, like forensic scientists, doctors), that you can get used to death - you can’t.
You can never accept that only (or recently, in case of a serious illness) a healthy, young, beautiful person lived, and now he is gone, his lively eyes, voice, laughter, tears ... This cannot become the norm - as some reassure themselves. Death is always against nature, the opposite of life. Even according to the biblical version - death, like a curse, appeared only as a result of sin, initially people were immortal.
As Freud and his followers said, different types people who perceive death differently, both their own and those of their loved ones. And there are such types of people who accept someone else's death more easily than others, they see in death a deliverance from mortal world, from suffering, from pain, peace, they react more or less evenly to the death of loved ones. And there are types of people who, with their suffering for the deceased, will bring themselves to a heart attack, stroke, sleep on his grave, cry for years, go crazy in direct and figuratively. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle...
A friend of mine literally lost three close people in just a couple of months. I can't imagine how in her situation it could be said that death is a relief for the departed, it's easy to let go ... A quick calm behavior would be crazy than sobs and depression.
The death of young people and especially the death of a child for a mother is a grief that you will not cross and will not forget, and how to survive his advice is difficult to give ... It is extremely unfair - to bury those who did not have time to live, who were born, so that, it turns out, just die ...
Of course, the pain of loss depends on the degree of kinship, closeness with the deceased. Thousands of people die every day in the world, and only the death of loved ones really touches us.
In some catastrophes, when people die, very often psychologists try to support the relatives of the victims. According to the reviews of those who went through such support: I wanted the psychologist to just pour tea, sit next to me, give handkerchiefs for tears and ... .. was silent ... when everyone started pestering “let's talk about your grief, open up, don't accumulate in yourself, speak up, you will become easier” — I wanted to give on the forehead.
Different, of course, there are psychologists, but it happens that they do their job like robots, otherwise burnout will occur. And now he doesn’t care about the one whom people have lost, and everything is covered in the eyes of relatives - they have lost the most dear thing in this world, and no one will understand them, and from this relative there was a pectoral cross, and yesterday it was a man, a child . For others, this is one of the thousand dead, a grain of sand in the sea, and for those who mourn, it is part of them, the dearest and dearest person who will never become alive, their universe has lost its meaning ...
But the main thing: yes, a thousand times you tell everyone about your grief, and even if someone cries nearby, this will not return those whom these people loved. They leave these psychologists for a world where there is no longer the closest and native person and no one will heal this wound. And it’s better to let them roar for a couple of days, yell at everyone and everything with the questions “why? why he, she? where is God?? why did he let this happen?? etc.
Naturally, psychologists are needed, with emergency situations especially, but with severe grief, they can not always help.
There are several stages of grief, even according to well-known information and the same articles from the Internet. The first ones, the shock ones, the most difficult ones…
However, ahead of important point articles, I will say - the main healer is only time. Perhaps there are people with other experiences. But no matter what anyone says - with regard to the death of loved ones - only time heals ...
And then, after a while, it seems that everything was easier than it really was. And when you meet with the grief of others, you understand that it was not easier, it was just a long time ago.
When a loved one dies, the pain of loss cannot be drowned out by anything, at least tell someone, do anything, it will not return the one whom the person loved.
There is shock from the news, then denial (that is, doubt about the news, suspicions that this is not true or some kind of sinister mistake), there is resentment and even anger at the deceased for leaving the one who loves him alone, the desire to leave after him , to have a close connection with him, to contact him, to hear his voice, to find out some unsaid moments. Self-accusations, resentment against oneself, a feeling that one is to blame for something before the deceased, that one is to blame for his death are possible.
There may be searches for the causes of death (or even blaming others for death) and long reflections through sobs about how they could have been prevented.
Tears, tantrums, which, it seems, do not bring any relief, experiences of the most severe of pains - mental, and no matter what pills you drink - you will not drown it out. There is even a desire to go back a day or two in order to change events and not let a loved one die, a desire to fall asleep and that all this was a dream, but in reality everyone was alive again.
There is a stage of devastation, when it is already clear that there was no mistake, that a loved one really died, that no anger, indignation, resentment and protest will return anyone, it is impossible to contact the deceased, and that a person is left alone with his grief and this needs to be learned accept. Emptiness sets in, silence, darkness... Conversations with the grave and visiting the church, prayers for the deceased help in part.
For someone, the acceptance of death stretches for years, for someone for a couple of weeks, months. Someone else for years almost every day goes to the grave, puts candles, commemorates loved ones in the church, and someone a year later no longer corrects the cross ... the latter does not always mean indifference to the death of a loved one - sometimes you just want to let go in spite of everything, but constant visits to the cemetery reopen the wound again and again.
We are told “it’s not bad for the one who left, he doesn’t care anymore, but it’s bad for those who stayed and cry for the departed”, or: “people in the highest degree egoists, tormenting themselves and the soul of the deceased with exorbitant sobs, reproaches instead of letting go.
As for the latter, they can also add phrases like “when you sob strongly for the deceased, you hold his soul on earth, or between heaven and earth, not letting him leave, and his soul also sheds tears, because it feels that it is being held, not lets go." Indeed, between the deceased and the remaining on earth, if they were in close relationship, and after death there is close connection, and if the living is indignant, crying for the dead - the soul of the deceased is not calm, rushing about, wants to return back, and the body is dead, and the soul hangs in suffering.
Regarding the first phrase, that it’s bad not for the one who left, but for the one who stayed - we can’t be robots that turn off the buttons of suffering for the dead once or twice, we don’t have the function of deleting memory, analgesia of feelings. The strongest of pains is mental, one of the strongest among heartache- the pain of losing a loved one. It is impossible to take it and stop feeling it, it is not subject to the will. It can be sublimated, pacified, rationalized over time, but not neutralized, not turned off.
And about the convictions of all those who advise that the soul of the deceased feels bad from our sobs - NO ONE KNOWS RELIABLY WHAT THE SOUL OF THE DEAD IS AND what she experiences after death. Therefore, all the arguments about the groaning of the soul of the departed due to the excessive sobbing of relatives are thought out by those who calm the latter.
However, despite the fact that there are religions that say that after death it is pointless to pray for a person, it is right and useful to pray for him, no matter what anyone says (only it is wrong to look for connections with the world of the dead through psychics), since this is the most effective help that can be help the soul of the deceased and yourself.
Unfortunately, death is a reality, everyday, every second, omnipresent. Some of our acquaintances, friends, relatives have gone to the Other World, someone else will leave, no matter how we close ourselves off from reality, but we will not prevent this. It may be wrong to say that you need to learn to accept it, but ... you need to learn to accept it ...
It’s better to cry enough, as they say, the gel state needs to be worked out, a lot of internal heaviness goes away with tears, go to church, pray for 40 days for the soul and (and after 40 days) go to the grave. Fencing off grief, a person accumulates pain in himself ... It needs to be experienced. Do not get stuck in it, do not kill yourself, namely survive. You can kill yourself in sobs, screaming, hysteria for the first days, but after accepting the fact of death, feelings calm down. And a person can artificially introduce himself into a state of hysteria, hopelessness after the death of the one he loved, he can put himself into this trap.
I cried and that's enough, you can't help grief with tears, they say. You need to be able to stop at some point ... Nobody knows why a little man is given trials in the form of the death of loved ones, but it is worth living on, and your own life.
When feelings calm down, the fact of death and its inevitability, completeness is accepted. When you realize that you will never return anything. And that very last day, when you saw a deceased loved one still alive, and he, laughing, said “see you tomorrow!”, And for tomorrow there was a sea of plans and you did not have time to tell him about many things and about important things - this day was really the last for him ... And it happens that people leave forever, with a smile, without even saying goodbye, remaining in their memory with fragments of unsaid words, with an absurdly ended conversation.
When the fact of death is accepted, you can calmly think about what this person gave us, who he was in our life and what is worth remembering about him forever, what moments need to be honored.
Remain memory, photos and instructions.
Once, my close relative, who later died, gave advice during his lifetime, unobtrusive, wise, which I did not always accept and understand. And when he died, I regretted that I had not listened in time. As a token of his memory, I carry out part of the instructions in life and always wear it. bright image inside.
Some of my friends who buried the elderly generation later recalled with sadness the habits of deceased relatives, kept cooking recipes in a secret place. Sometimes children were treated according to the recommendations of grandmothers, which today no one will give.
Memory is all we have left of a person. A person can live 80 years and only a bag of things remains from him, a couple of photos. Still a person remains in descendants and his works.
: Reading time:
Four steps to help you deal with loss.
“When parents lose a son or daughter who has not yet reached the age of blooming youth, or loving spouse loses her wife, or a wife - a husband in the prime of life, all the philosophies and religions in the world, whether they promise immortality or not, cannot eliminate the impact of this cruel tragedy on loved ones ... "
Lamont Corliss
It is difficult to disagree with the philosopher's thought expressed in the epigraph that nothing will eliminate the heavy impact of such a tragedy as the loss of a loved one. But a person who is going through such a strong shock can be helped.
Psychologist J. William Vorden identified four main tasks that a mourner must complete in order to return to a fulfilling life:
- admit loss
- Experience the pain of loss
- Reorganize life and environment
- Build a new relationship with the deceased and continue to live
In contrast to the stages of grief that have been identified before, the formulation of these tasks emphasizes the active and responsible, rather than the passive and helpless role of the mourner. Grief is not something that happens to us by itself, changing its phases. We are accustomed to treating negative feelings as unnecessary ballast that needs to be disposed of as soon as possible. Experiencing the pain of loss is a necessary part of the journey that leads to acceptance. And this is first of all inner work most grieving.
This does not mean that the mourner should cope with the loss, relying solely on his own strength. The presence of people who are ready to support the grieving and share his grief, as well as his help to others in their grief, greatly softens the experience of loss.
1. Admit the loss
How do you come to terms with the death of a loved one? To cope with a loss, you need to acknowledge that it happened. At first, a person automatically tries to establish contact with the deceased - “sees” him among the people in the crowd, mechanically tries to get through to him, buys his favorite products in the supermarket ...
In the usual scenario, this behavior is naturally replaced by actions that deny a far-fetched connection with the deceased. A person who performs actions similar to those noted above normally stops and thinks: “Why am I doing this, because he (she) is no more.”
For all the seeming oddness, this behavior is normal in the first weeks after the loss. If the irrational hope for the return of the deceased becomes stable, this is a sign that the person himself cannot cope with grief.
Give yourself time to come to terms with the loss.
2. Experience the pain of loss
How to accept the death of a loved one? It is necessary to go through difficult feelings in order not to carry this burden through life. If you do not immediately experience the pain, then returning to these experiences will be more difficult and painful. The delayed experience is further complicated by the fact that later it will be more difficult for the grieving person to receive the sympathy and support of others, which he can count on immediately after the loss.
Sometimes, despite all the unbearable pain and suffering, the mourner clings to them (more often unconsciously), as for the last connection with the deceased and the opportunity to express his love to him. The following distorting logic works here: to stop suffering means to reconcile, to reconcile means to forget, to forget means to betray. Such an irrational understanding of love for the deceased does not allow one to accept the loss.
The performance of this task is often hampered by the reactions of other people. When confronted with negative feelings and severe pain those around you who are grieving may experience tension, which they try to reduce by providing not always correct help:
- switch attention (“get together, think about the children”, “you must take care of your mother”)
- they try to immediately occupy the grieving with something in order to distract them from their worries
- they forbid talking about the deceased ("do not disturb him, he is already in heaven")
- devalue the uniqueness of what happened (“we will all be there”, “you are not the first and you are not the last”)
Allow yourself to feel pain and loss, let your tears flow. Avoid people who interfere with your experience of loss.
3. Reorganize life and environment
Together with a loved one, a person loses a certain way of life. The deceased took on duties, helped in everyday life, expected certain behavior from U.S. Life needs to be rebuilt to fill the void. For this, it is important for the grieving person to learn to do what the deceased did for him, to receive this help from others, and possibly continue his work, if he likes it.
How do you deal with the death of a loved one if you were intimately connected? If the deceased did all the housework, select best option- Hire a person for cleaning or learn the simplest actions yourself. If you have lost your spouse and mother of your children, take over the organization of a comfortable family life, ask relatives to help or hire a nanny. In the same way, mothers, in the event of the loss of a spouse, can, for example, learn to drive and take the place of their husband behind the wheel in order to take their children to school and classes.
It may sound cynical, but sometimes there are upsides to losing a loved one. For example, a girl dependent on her mother said, “My mother died, and I began to live. She did not allow me to become an adult, and now I can build a life as I want. I like it". An adult man finally began to manage his life. Agree that not all "adults" can boast of this.
It is good if the freed time is occupied by what satisfies genuine needs grieving, fills his life with joy and meaning. It can be new or forgotten hobbies, communication with loved ones or friends who have moved away due to the loss, searching for oneself and one's place in a new life.
It is important to rebuild your life and your life in such a way as to minimize the feeling of emptiness that has arisen.
4. Build a new relationship with the deceased and continue to live
A new attitude towards the deceased does not imply his oblivion, it defines a place for him, taking which he will leave enough space for others. This is reflected in an illustration of William Vorden's thought, describing a letter from a girl who lost her father to her mother from college: “There are other people to love. It doesn't mean that I love my father less."
Old relationships can be very valuable, but they should not interfere with new ones. How to help survive the death of a loved one: build a new relationship - a person must realize that the death of a loved one does not contradict love for another man or woman, that you can honor the memory of a friend, but at the same time make friends with new people.
Separately, it is worth stipulating the death of a child. Often, parents are in a hurry with the decision to give birth to a new child, not having time to fully survive and accept the loss of the former. Similar decision it is not so much a movement towards a new life as a denial of the irreversibility of the loss of the old (unresolved first problem). They unconsciously want to give birth to a dead child again, to return everything as it was. But only having experienced the loss completely, mourning the deceased and leveling his emotional attitude to his death, it is worth thinking about a new child. Otherwise, the parents will not be able to build a genuine relationship with him and will unconsciously try on him the idealized image of the deceased. It is clear that this comparison will not be in favor of the living.
Surviving a loss does not mean forgetting the deceased.
When to ask for help
If you get stuck on any of the tasks described, if you cannot come to terms with the loss and learn new experience, the work of grief can acquire a pathological character. It is necessary to distinguish normal work grief from manifestations of clinical depression, which requires medical intervention and psychological help(on average, every fifth grieving person is subject to it). Among the symptoms of serious depression, when help is needed, it is customary to single out:
- incessant thoughts about the hopelessness of the current situation, despair
- obsessive thoughts about suicide or death
- denial or misrepresentation of the fact of loss
- uncontrollable or excessive crying
- inhibited physical reactions and answers
- extreme weight loss
- persistent inability to perform basic household tasks
Soreness of symptoms is determined not so much by their content, but by duration, severity and consequences: how much they interfere with a person's life and contribute to the development of concomitant diseases. Therefore, it is sometimes difficult for a non-specialist to distinguish the normal course of grief from its pathological form. If you have any doubts, do not postpone a visit to a psychologist or psychotherapist.
Remember
- Coping with loss takes time.
- Allow yourself to feel pain and loss, don't try to suppress it. Let your tears flow. Try to be aware of all your feelings and thoughts and share them with those who sympathize with you.
- It is important to rebuild your life and your life in such a way as to minimize the feeling of emptiness that has arisen.
- Accepting a loss and creating a new relationship is not betrayal. But the refusal to continue to live and love, on the contrary, can be regarded as a betrayal of oneself, which would hardly have been supported by a deceased loved one.
- Only the full experience of the loss of a child can create fertile ground for the birth of a new one.
- You are able to move on. Even if you don't agree with it now, you are still capable. You will not remain the same, but you can continue to live and even be happy.
- If you feel that own forces and the support of others is not enough, do not put off a visit to a specialist.
However, there is general patterns human psyche in coping with the loss. Thus, the following stages of the combustion process can be distinguished:
1. Negation;
2. Aggression;
3. "Agreement with God";
4. Depression;
5. Adoption.
On the stage denial we don't want to believe what happened. We speak of the dead as if they were alive. We do not use the past tense, we say: “he is such a person”, instead of “he was ...”. We make plans for the future or think about the present, habitually including the deceased in the familiar picture of the world. For example, we continue to buy products that he/she liked.
Difficulties at this stage arise when there is no way to verify the fact of death. When a person goes missing or dies as a result of a catastrophe, fire or the crash of an aircraft or ship, when the body remains not found or difficult to identify. It is very difficult for relatives to give up the hope that their loved one miraculously survived and escaped, and the remains found belong to someone else. Instead of losing, a waiting process may be included.
Until a person goes through all these stages, the experience of the death of a loved one cannot be completed. At the same time, their living in the norm can be both sequential, when one stage smoothly replaces another, and parallel-sequential, when there are signs of two or more stages at the same time.
For example, a person angry that life treated him so unfairly, he is suing doctors, then falls into despair, and at the same time leads mental dialogues with myself“but if I did or didn’t do this ... then he would be alive”: he came early, forced him to go to the doctors earlier, noticed that he was depressed and was going to commit suicide, took his words more seriously, did not hold if there were pills in the house, I wouldn’t let him go on this trip, etc. AT this case we can talk about parallel flow stages of aggression, depression and "agreement with God".
And although each of us will need different amount time to cope with the loss and adapt to life without a person dear to us, due to the fact that someone survives losses more easily, someone needs more internal forces and time. However, there is a concept of the norm when living the loss and deviations from it.
Pathological is considered "stuck" at one of the stages. For example, when in a family for years they talk about the deceased as if they were alive, they keep his things, leave his room untouched. Or they refuse to openly name what happened, keep a secret, or come up with a disappearance story that is designed to “protect from feelings” and maintain the illusion that nothing happened.
So, for example, children are told that dad went on a business trip or mom left. And then the child begins to fantasize - to think out what happened, based on the pieces of information he saw and heard. Maybe blame yourself for what happened: "It happened because I misbehaved." Or he may begin to be very afraid of losing the remaining relatives.
For example, if a child knew that before “disappearing”, the grandmother was sick and was in the hospital, and then the grandfather was also “sick and lying” ... You can imagine what the reaction will be to the news of the mother’s illness or, even worse, to her hospitalization? Even if it is a banal SARS or a routine examination.
Very important at first find at least one person or people with whom you can share the experience of grief and loss. Talk to them about who this person was for you, what will never happen again, what will change in your life due to his death. After all, we lose not only specific person(family member) and those pleasant moments that connected us with him, but also ideas about our own future, our dreams, expectations, and often material well-being, and status.
dissatisfied, by at least, in the present and near future, there will remain the needs that were satisfied in contact with this person. This is the need for communication, love, acceptance, understanding, support; and divided common interests, hobbies, and possibly teamwork and caring for children or relatives.
It is very important that the person with whom you will discuss this understands you and accepts your feelings. Just was there and did not devalue your feelings.
Very often, even the closest well-meaning relatives, wanting to “encourage us” and “bring us back to life,” in such situations say: “Don't worry! It gets even worse!”, “How did you live during the war?” or “One child died, but you have two more. Live for them! or “Husband died, but you have someone to take care of! Live for your children/grandchildren!”
Needless to say, such “consolation” does not help, rather, it even irritates and additionally hurts with the feeling that you are “one on one” with this grief and “no one understands you.”
It also happens that it is difficult for others to be with the grieving, due to the fact that they themselves are unbearable strong feelings and suffering: they may not know how to behave, or the loss causes very strong painful experiences and memories in them.
And even if they are very worried about you, in fact they try to avoid communication with you. So, it turns out that a vacuum can form around exactly when you need participation and support most of all.
If you feel that you are alone in your grief, no one understands you or there are no such people with whom you can talk about it, you should contact a professional which will help you find the strength to live on, new meanings, adapt to a new life situation, cope with possible depression, accept a changed idea of \u200b\u200byouself (identity change), build a picture of the future and yourself in it, while not devaluing your experiences, helping to better understand yourself and providing the necessary acceptance and support.
How can you help yourself get over the death of a loved one?
In moments when it becomes especially difficult and unbearably painful from a loss that has occurred, the following actions can help: 1. Talk about the deceased with someone who knew him well and who can listen, support and understand you.
It may be near and distant relatives, friends, both yours and the one for whom you grieve, neighbors who knew you and your relationship, ministers of the church.
2. Speak out your feelings.
If you were present at death or it was extremely negative and difficult for you to attend a funeral, communicate with doctors in the morgue, or any other event associated with death, also try to speak out.
Tell in detail about what happened: how did you find out where it happened, where you were at that moment, who reported or knows about what happened, how you felt at the moment when you learned and / or saw for the first time, how you feel now. It is believed that repeated or detailed pronunciation calms, relieves anxiety and gradually heals your emotional wound.
3. Write an "unsent letter" to someone you're grieving about.
Grab paper and a pen, because it's very important that you don't do this on the computer. Try to describe as fully as possible everything that you feel (how bitter, painful, lonely you are) and what he / she meant to you, what exactly you lack, what went away with him, and even, perhaps, how angry you are, that he/she left you.
It is believed that about the dead "either good or nothing." But often, when working with the process of mourning, I see that it is the concealment of real feelings, and they are rarely only good or only bad, because when we love, we experience the whole gamut of feelings for a person, and therefore it is appropriate to be honest first of all with ourselves yourself and name whatever you really experience.
And try not to blame yourself for it. Because it is the vagueness negative feelings, often enhances or prolongs the duration of mourning, and often leads to getting stuck on them and to pathological variants of grief, preventing the process from going on naturally.
In an unsent letter, you can describe not only what you feel now, but also what is remembered in connection with this person: events, situations, feelings (joy or resentment, gratitude or anger). In it, you can ask for forgiveness or talk about your fears.
This letter can be written in several visits or when it becomes especially difficult.
4. Do the simplest ordinary things.
It brings back to life, distracts and soothes. Especially, washing dishes, cleaning, knitting, walking the dog.
5. Try not to be alone with your thoughts.
Grief is most difficult to experience alone.
6. Think about the future.
At first it will be very difficult, even almost impossible, to think about how you will live without the one who has died. But this is exactly what you will have to learn in the end. Live without. If you find it difficult to think about the future for yourself, try to mentally talk to the deceased and ask him what kind of life the one you have lost could wish for you?
7. Write what was valuable for you in this particular person.
What needs of yours were met in your relationship with him? What do you lose with his departure? And then, for each individual item, try to imagine where, with whom and how you can make up for this loss.
Again, at first, it will be very difficult. And some even believe that if they do this, they will thereby “betray a bright memory.” However, it is impossible to get peace of mind until all needs are met. Whether we like it or not, we are beginning to adapt to new conditions.
And the sooner we fill in the gaps, the sooner we can return to life. This does not mean forgetting a person dear to us. But this means helping yourself, and possibly those who are nearby (for example, children) to choose the path of creation, and not eternal suffering. Would the person you have lost be happy to know that you will spend the rest of your days in difficult experiences?
8. Take care of yourself.
Think about what calmed you as a child. Write a list of things that could calm you down right now. And try to do something from this list every day.
It can be the simplest things: a warm shower, good film, communication with loved ones, drawing, reading, warm blanket, relaxing massage, soft music, sleep, walk.
