Bereavement and loss

The process of grieving is a normal and natural response to loss. But it hurts a great deal, especially in the early stages and often for a very long time afterwards. The process of grieving helps us to adjust to the huge changes that have taken place in our life when someone important to us dies.

While this article focuses on the experience of grieving following a bereavement, the same feelings can be experienced after any significant loss even ones that don’t involve the death of a loved one. For example, the loss of a relationship through separation or divorce, physical losses through serious illness or accident, and major life events such as job loss, loss of home, and immigration (which often involves multiple losses – home, culture, community, family, freedom, self-image, etc).

Grieving, no matter what the cause, can feel overwhelmingly difficult and painful at times. We can feel confused, shocked, guilty, lonely, numb, hopeless, angry, despairing and intensely sad. We may also experience the grief physically and experience insomnia, changes in appetite, a lack of concentration, or a loss of memory, for example.

The stages of bereavement

You may have heard of the ‘stages’ of bereavement. A number of researchers have tried to name the process of grieving that we experience when we go through a major loss. Most people will experience a range of emotions, that may include the ideas that researches have tried to name, but not necessarily in the order given and the movement through the various phases may not be straight-forward and are rarely linear. Some people may also become stuck and find it difficult to move on. Essentially every person’s experience of grief and mourning is unique to them, even if we can see certain patterns of experience across groups of people who have been bereaved.

Some of the phases of the bereavement journey might include:

• Accepting that the loss has really happened

• Experiencing the painful feelings that come with grief

• Adjusting to life without the loved one

• Emotionally relocating the person who has died, and memorialising them

Other terms are used to describe the grief process and the journey through the process from the initial shock to the place where the bereaved may feel they can move forward with their life. This ‘change curve’ describes different feelings over the course of time (see diagram below).

The process of grieving is an evolving process, that happens at its own pace. Most people will find themselves able to return to a place of reasonable emotional balance, especially if they have some good support networks. While grief is a fairly universal experience, each person grieves in a way that is unique to them, so these stages are really only a guide.

There are a range of experiences that can be explored in therapy that might help you to incorporate your grieving experience. For example, the idea of ‘dual processing’ which means looking at how much time you allow for being with your grief and how much time with other activities which allow you time away from your grief, and exploring how helpful or difficult this might feel as a way to experience your loss. If a loved one has died we might look at ways in which you can remain connected with your loved one in a meaningful way. Examples might be, carrying on traditions they really liked, imagining what they might say, engaging in activities you know they used to enjoy.

Accepting loss

Some people get worried about the idea of ‘accepting’ the death of a loved one, or that the idea of ‘moving on’ means forgetting about the person who has died. But really ‘resolving’ grief is not about detaching ourselves from the person who has died; it is more about relocating them to a place in our lives that allows us to move forward with living. We may always experience a sense of missing the person who has died, but we can find an acceptance of the change that has happened to us as a result of our bereavement. 

Complicated grief

Complicated, or complex, grief is the term used to describe what happens when the process of grieving becomes ‘stuck’, or if thoughts of the deceased become preoccupied or obsessive, or when grief turns into depression. For most people, a bereavement also contains within it the emotional experiences of past losses and bereavements, and this may increase the complexity of the grieving process. The key difference between grief and depression is that grief is something we experience ‘in waves’, whereas depression tends to be more constant and pervasive. 

Disenfranchised grief

Grief known as ‘disenfranchised grief’ can be particularly difficult. Disenfranchised grief is grief which is not readily acknowledged or validated by others, and which make public grieving and getting support harder to do. This might include the death of an ex-spouse/partner, a still-born child, a pregnancy termination, the death of a companion pet, even the death of a celebrity that was dear to us. The golden rule is that it is the strength of our feeling and bond with the deceased that is important, not necessarily the nature of the relationship, that determines the depth of our grief.

A catalyst for growth

Finally, bereavement is not something we ‘recover’ from or ‘get over’. Once bereaved we cannot go back to being the person we were before the loss of the person we cared about. The experience of being bereaved changes us, but this can be experienced as a time of personal growth rather than depletion. The experience can be a catalyst for change for many, deepening relationships, discovering personal strengths, finding a deeper compassion for self and others, finding new possibilities in life. 

Resilience

You may have heard of the term ‘resilience’ used quite a bit in therapeutic circles. Resilience means the ability to manage and bounce back from adversity, and this can include bereavement. If you are curious about resilience and about how to move nearer to feeling more resilient this is certainly something we can work on in therapy.

The work of Lucy Hone can be helpful for some people. She was a top level researcher in the field of resilience when she experienced the sudden death of her daughter and used her knowledge about resilience to help herself through her bereavement.

Her model for developing self-resilience is focussed on three key understandings: (1) developing an acceptance that everyone faces adversity and trauma, (2) developing a practice of gratitude which involves switching attention to the good things that are happening and making a deliberate and sustained practice of noticing the good things that happen to us on a daily basis, and (3) asking ourselves if whatever we are doing/thinking/acting is helpful or harmful to us. You can watch Lucy talk through these ideas in greater depth in a TED Talk she gave in 2019 below. For info: this video is around 16 minutes long and mentions the death of a child.