GRIEF, LOSS AND BEREAVEMENT

  • You feel as if you will never be happy again
  • You can't imagine living without that one person
  • The simplest things can set off the tears
  • You feel numb all of the time
  • You feel as if you will never stop crying
  • You feel lost in your own life
  • You can't cry, and you think you should be able to
  • People are telling you to move on
  • Friends ask you why you aren't over it yet
  • You can't face going out and meeting people
  • You just want to stay in bed and pull the duvet over your head
  • It's been weeks or months or years and it's not getting any better

    • If any of this describes how things are for you at the moment, it's quite likely you are experiencing grief.

    Grief is how we respond when we have lost someone or something very important to us - it doesn't matter what or who it is, the response is the same. It's a normal human reaction. It's not an illness or a disorder or a mental health problem. It's just grief.

    For many people, grief is a long and painful journey, and one of the worst things about it is the loneliness. Typically after a bereavement there is a flurry of activity and support in the first few days and weeks, and there is so much to do especially if you are preparing for the funeral, that life feels very full.

    After the funeral however, often the support that was there for you fades away, other people go back to their own lives, and you are left with the emptiness. Close family and friends care about you, but after a time even they can become less willing to hear how you are really feeling, and just seem to want you to 'get over it'.

    So - where are you to go with your feelings of grief, with the enormous sadness, all those memories, the longing, the regret, the anger, and the despair?

    People often find that talking to a counsellor about their grief helps. It gives you someone to share all of your feelings with, rather than keeping them locked up inside of you. It provides a space in which your grief can be heard, and where you can talk about the person you have lost without fear of upsetting someone else.

    I can't promise that having some grief counselling sessions will make your grief go away - on the contrary, it's likely to be with you in some form for the rest of your life - but I can be confident that counselling will not leave you feeling worse than you do now. It opens up the possibility of working through all of the range of emotions that grief brings with it and, in time, for you to be able to move forward.