What are some of the struggles or challenges? Know when to close your mouth and when to open your ears. Simple listening skills such as maintaining eye contact, leaning forward and nodding your head can encourage the griever to open up. It is important to understand what grief is and how it manifests itself. Only then will we know what is normal.
Grief is an emotional response to a significant loss. It manifests itself in many different ways, in greater or lesser degrees and in various combinations. In simple terms, grief is unpredictable.
This is what makes normality so difficult to define or neatly package. What is normal? Why can two different people react to grief in completely different ways and both be considered normal? Our grief response is a unique blending of numerous emotions. All these emotions are normal.
People in grief, not understanding this emotional explosion they may be experiencing often think they are going crazy. They are normal. You may not be a doctor or a psychologist, but if you can help people to see they are normal in their feelings of grief, you will bring the best medicine. By the way there are other messages in this series that will help you understand the grief process more fully.
How can I know how they feel. All I know is how I felt when grief touched my life. People say these words with good intentions, but the grieving person often does not appreciate them. To say I know how a person feels somehow minimizes their experience. The loss is unique to the griever. The feelings of grief are unique, influenced by many factors around the relationship, and the circumstances. Sure, I lost my wife, and I remember how that felt…but someone else may be feeling something quite different, and we need to validate that.
We need to let the person know it is OK to grieve. You might experience:. Allow yourself to also grieve for any secondary losses you may experience after a death, for example, having to move out of the family home or no longer having to maintain a role such as mother, wife, career etc.
You might want to talk to:. This can help us to process our grief and feel less alone in our experience. This could be particularly valuable in the early days after a death, when you might not feel ready to talk to others. Cruse Bereavement Care — Recommended reading list. The Compassionate Friends — Recommended reading list. The Compassionate Friends also operates a postal lending library. Another study found that older grieving people are more likely to develop infections due to a weakened immune system.
Potential health consequences related to grieving are a real concern among caregivers and healthcare providers today. While grief is a natural response to permanent and impactful loss, it should lessen with time. It may take months. It may make you sick. The important thing to remember is that it should lessen ever so slightly over time. But the importance of self-care cannot be stressed enough.
You must take good care of yourself so you can stay well. Eat a healthy diet, drink plenty of water, rest, get exercise and get outside for Vitamin D. We offer several bereavement services to help survivors cope with the loss of a loved one. Please contact us today to learn more so you can get started on the path to healing.
Or you might feel numb or shocked. Cruse Bereavement Care. Cruse Bereavement Care Scotland. Samaritans We'll use the results of this survey to understand how our information helps people and how we can improve it.
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If you want to talk to someone following a bereavement, we have a range of services to support you. Published date: 31 March
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