Hi everyone. I’ve been struggling a lot lately again and, as a result, today am particularly late writing my #AtoZChallenge contribution. Today’s letter is G and I want to talk about grief.
Grief can refer to a person’s reaction to losing a loved one to death. That’s the most heard of definition anyway. Grief for a loved one who has passed away can last very long and, in fact, isn’t considered abnormal for the first year. If a person still experiences significantly distressing symptoms of grief more than a year after their loved one has passed, they may be diagnosable with prolonged grief disorder (also known as complicated grief).
Grief, of course, can also refer to the distressing symptoms experienced after losing a beloved pet. It doesn’t matter in this respect that the pet isn’t human; grief can still be experienced very deeply. I mention this because, like I said on Saturday, my spouse and I lost our cat Barry that day.
Grief, however, can also relate to distressing symptoms experienced after a loss that isn’t due to death. For example, heartbreak is in a way grief too. So are the distressing symptoms I experienced when losing my sight and, later on, many acquired skills due to autistic burnout.
Most people will be familiar with the five stages of grief described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. These stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. In reality though, many people will not necessarily experience these stages in order and they may fall back due to stress. Still, many of the symptoms associated with the earlier stages in this model, made it into the criteria for prolonged grief disorder. Symptoms of prolonged grief include:
- Identity disruption (eg. feeling as though a part of oneself has died).
- Marked sense of disbelief about the death.
- Avoidance of reminders that the person is dead.
- Intense emotional pain (eg. anger, bitterness, sorrow) related to the death.
- Difficulty reintegrating, such as problems engaging with friends, pursuing interests or planning for the future.
- Emotional numbness (absence or marked reduction of emotional experience).
- Feeling that life is meaningless.
- Intense loneliness: feeling alone or detached from others.
Of course, people can experience many of these symptoms without having lost a loved one to death. Emotional numbness and avoidance of triggers, after all, are also symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Many other symptoms occur in people who were traumatized in some way too. As an example, I relate to all symptoms when the aspect of bereavement is removed, and not just since Barry was put down. I don’t know whether that makes sense, but oh well.
A Multitude of Musings 