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Grief
Dr. Suzanne LaCombe, October 26, 2006.
Updated: June 20, 2010.
Most people manage their grief using the love of their families and friends. We know it's normal to grieve so we anticipate that it will take some time. This normalizing factor plays a big role in why most people don't seek psychotherapy for bereavement.
Not Moving Beyond Your Grief?
Receiving comfort for a loss is not the same as resolving that loss.
If someone is not moving on with his or her grief, counseling is often helpful--but not for the reasons most people assume.
For these folks the comfort of family and friends may not be sufficient. Instead, what they need is to resolve their loss. They need to move through or work through their feelings of loss in order to move on. This means they must allow the feelings to flow through them. This is how counseling is beneficial where the words of a kind friend often fall short.
Loss is experienced to the degree to which we have experienced other losses.
Bottom Line: the more loss you have experienced in your life and the earlier you went through it, the more difficulty you will experience moving through grief later in life.
Experiencing a loss easily triggers other losses especially those losses that have not yet been fully resolved. The reason that this happens is due to the interconnectivity of the brain and how our experiences are mapped out via neuropathways.
The reason why it is important to consider how early your loss occurred is that the brain is more impressionable during our formative years. This is especially so when the nervous system is growing in the first 3 years of life. We are learning more at this stage of our life than the next 13 years. So this learning has greater impact.
"I can't feel but I think I should be feeling."
A loss, sudden or otherwise, is sometimes flooding to the nervous system. It can increase your physiological arousal so much so that you move outside your Window of Tolerance (or also known as the Zone of Comfort).
One way the nervous system responds to an influx of energy is to cap it. We subsequently feel numb. (See dissociation for more an indepth discussion of feeling numb.)
The brain couples up our experiences and because our experiences form neuropathways it is easy to see that the interconnectivity of the brain makes us tap into other losses.
(If you have a hard time seeing how this works, imagine a time when you were really angry at your brother, or your sister, or your friend or your partner. Many people start to experience anger that was left unresolved: "And I remember the other time when you…!" One moment of anger triggers another and suddenly we remember all the other times when we felt that way.)
We need the comfort of others.
As I may have suggested elsewhere, being around others who are more grounded helps us to regulate also. In other words, we affect each other more than we realize.
And thankfully, science is catching up with what many of us already know in our hearts. That is, we know that it's a comfort to have others around. But some of us don't always know that we know--if you know what I mean. It sometimes takes the progress of science for us to believe what is real.
Sidebar
For an interesting article on what neuroscience has found about the effect we have on each other, read a recent essay in the New York Times by the well-known Daniel Goleman. As you may already know, Dr. Goleman wrote Emotional Intelligence, a ground breaking best seller.
Dr. Goleman cites research for instance, that suggests the physical presence of loved ones can lower our blood pressure. You probably already knew how the opposite feelings can effect us...
Just imagine the last time that your partner was angry--even if the anger wasn't directed at you. You no doubt felt some of that distress in your own body.
To view the article you will have to register with the free Times service. You may want to use an alternate email:
Friends for Life: An Emerging Biology of Emotional Healing
How Can I Help You To Say Goodbye?
"Mama whispered softly, Time will ease your pain
Life's about changing, nothing ever stays the same
And she said, How can I help you to say goodbye?
It's OK to hurt, and it's OK to cry
Come, let me hold you and I will try
How can I help you to say goodbye?"
- By Patty Loveless
liz (Croydon, Surrey, UK)
My daughter died 2 years ago in a car accident when she was 21. 6 months ago I got involved with another man. We had got close and he was very supportive to me. My husband found out just as it was starting. We wanted to remain friends but this was unacceptable to my husband.
My friend then started experiencing emotional difficulties and he disclosed to me that he had issues of abandonment from his childhood. Recently he told me that it would be best for us to end our friendship. Since then I have been experiencing emotional difficulties and a sense of loss.
Also since my daughter died when I get upset about things I get this emotional pain which affects me. Also when my daughter died I had a delayed reaction to it about 6 months later. I think I was being strong for everyone else.
I am a catholic and my faith also helped me to cope. When I got involved with my friend this also caused me stress because it was against what my faith says and not characteristic of me. My husband and I are having counselling and we also had 1:1 counselling. I also had bereavement counselling 6 months after she died.
Are these normal reactions to grief or do I have unresolved abandonment issues?
Victoria
This article on Grief has been very helpful. I lost someone I loved 17 months ago, not to death, but to a nursing home for Alzheimer patients. She is gone, but not gone. I am only just starting to really believe she is gone and my heart is starting to feel as though it will break. I am deep down distraught.
Now, after your article on Grief, I think I maybe understand myself a bit better. I was exceptionally close to my mother who apparently adored me until I was 4 and then things changed and I 'lost her', and spent the rest of my life until she died over 30 years later trying 'to get her back'. It was as though she lost interest in me and I loved her so much.
Of course I never ever resolved this, just buried it deep down somewhere. When I lost my partner to Alzheimer's Disease, and to a Home outside of this country after looking after her 24 hours a day during the last years, I did everything possible to be philosophical about it, and held on, gritting my teeth tightly. We had been together 25 years.
Now I think I understand why for these past 16 months I have been feeling as near to numb as I quite definitely have been. I guess, as you say, I put a cap on the feeling of loss, which happened very suddenly.
Lately I am finding the numbness going and I feel grief stricken to the point of wanting to cry whenever I think about her. For the first time I feel so alone.
I have been in therapy for about 20 months, but up until now I have not wanted to talk about this loss in sessions. There have been other and huge issues in my childhood which came bubbling up, and it has been real hell acknowledging them, let alone trying to sort them out. Will I ever I wonder?
Now that I feel I have reached rock bottom, grief is starting to really fill me, and suddenly I am very emotional. I want to thank you for your article. I was beginning to worry and wonder why I was apparently so heartless, and numb. I feel sure this article of yours will help me even more than it has already.
I am lucky, too, in that I have a really wonderful therapist who I know will help every step of the way as she already has done with regards to my childhood traumas.
I am a new My Shrink member, so I have a whole lot of reading and exploring of your excellent site.
Thank you Suzanne.
Victoria.
charley
I stumbled across this website today and I absolutely love the information and the affirmations.
charley
Well, thanks Charley, glad you found us.
Shrinklady
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