When we lose something or someone meaningful to us, the experience of loss never fully goes away. Grief is a process, often taking longer than we expect. Grief is learning to weather emotions and finding some adjustment to life after the loss. The extremes of emotion and the disorientation from loss can last from months to years for some. So how do you know when you are healing and when you are stuck?
While experiences of grief are different for each individual, there are some patterns that seem to be generally true for productive grieving. Grief that is moving a person forward may have intensity of sadness, anger, or even a loss of interest in life, but these feelings are not present every day, every moment forever. There is meaning and importance to experiencing these emotions in showing the importance of the loss, and recognizing that things are different and do not feel the same. A person will also show gradual ability to find new meaning, to make it through the day and through the new world following the change. The loss does not go away, but the closeness of the pain or the loss of the future feels progressively less difficult. It’s really an amazing mystery how we all grieve and heal.
There are times when grieving becomes difficult or impossible. Ongoing losses and stressful events occurring closely together or repeating over time can create layers of pain. Eventually, any further loss or change feels intolerable. One loss brings up the feelings of a previous loss, resonating with deep and familiar hurt. This is known as complex- loss or complicated grief. It is so important to have rituals, memorials, and time to absorb each loss as a unique and impactful event. Often individuals with complex loss do not have ways to do this and find themselves unable to separate one loss from another.
Another obstacle to grieving a loss comes when it is a traumatic or sudden loss. Traumatic grief (bereavement) occurs when the loss is so horrifying for a person that a trauma response, such as Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), essentially ‘blocks’ a person from moving forward and resolving the loss. PTSD creates an ongoing neurological response where an individual continues to experience stress and fear continually even after the event is over. By definition, it is impossible to grieve something when the experience will not end. Symptoms of flashbacks, feeling out of control or the intense terror that it is all happening again are key signs that trauma has overtaken grief.
While grief can create many similar experiences, when the intensity continues to interfere with life years after the experience it may be there is trauma around the loss. Some key symptoms include emotional numbness, increased irritability, and anger, nightmares or terrors, feeling distant and detached from life, or an increasing sense of hopelessness or loss of purpose in life. These are not normal for grief and may be signs that further support is needed.
