Your grief may:
- take longer than most people expect;
- take more energy than you can imagine;
- show up in every area of your life and in every aspect of who you are. It can affect your social relationships, your health, your thoughts, feelings, and religious beliefs;
- be a response to a present loss or anticipated and non-finite losses, hopes, dreams and unfulfilled expectations;
- be over who/what you’ve lost already and over what you’re losing; for your hopes, dreams, and unfulfilled expectations of them;
- trigger reactions to losses, feelings, and unfinished business from the past; and
- create some confusion about who you are; this may be caused by the intensity and unfamiliarity of the grieving process, and by uncertainty regarding your new role in the world.
Within your grief experience, you may:
- feel guilty in some way or another, whether it is justified or not;
- lack a strong sense of self-worth or experience low self-esteem;
- experience waves of grief, or acute outbreaks of grief without warning;
- have difficulty thinking and making decisions;
- feel that you are going crazy, have poor memory and/or feel totally disorganized;
- be obsessed with the death or preoccupied with thoughts of the deceased;
- search for meaning in your life and question your beliefs;
- not receive the understanding from others that you might have expected; and
- experience a variety of physical reactions. A visit to your GP may be necessary.
“I didn’t know it was possible to feel such sadness. I have been unhappy before, but never like this. Sometimes the sadness is almost like a physical pain.”
– Beyond Grief
Source: ‘Healing After Loss’. Calvary Bereavement Counselling Service (2023)
