How to manage the chaos of grief
Key points:
Moving forward doesn’t happen in a straight line
There is no set pattern to how we will heal
Common emotions and feelings
The first thing to remember is that grief is messy. It is chaos. When we are first told of the death - when sudden and unexpected - we almost fight to hold onto the life we had before.
Something similar can happen with an expected death, even when there’s been time to prepare. Grief follows no rules about the ‘type’ of death we are confronting.
There is no set pattern to how we will heal
Although gradually the times between bouts of intense distress lengthen, it's important to understand that moving forward doesn't happen in a straight line.
Most grieving people don’t need specialist counselling. Instead, we will benefit from reassurance, genuine acknowledgement of our loss and access to helpful information.
Psychologists today understand that there is a ‘duality’ about grief: after the initial, immobilising shock we can experience two things at the same time, both the intensity of grief and ‘getting on with life’.
We will move between each of these states, depending on what’s happening at a particular moment and on a particular day.
Common emotions
Here are just some of the emotions and feelings we may experience. But remember, these are not all you have to experience.
Shock: This can be both physical and emotional. In shock, tears can flow uncontrollably or not at all. We can have vocal reactions, or none. Memories from the time we were told the news can be patchy and out of time sequence.
Numbness: The level of the length of time we experience this feeling can be influenced by many factors, including our personalities. The feeling of numbness can give way to more intense emotional reactions later, creating a sense of delayed emotion.
Denial: This is a natural way in which we ‘pace’ our capacity to cope. This can be about denying the truth or the feelings. As time passes, reality usually works its way in.
Tiredness: There are so many new and different things that are happening that we can find ourselves exhausted. At this time we often have irregular sleeping patterns, irregular eating patterns, hours of unusual interaction with others, and all while feeling disoriented.
Guilt: Often we feel guilty because we didn’t do more, no matter how unrealistic this is. It may be that circumstances before the death of someone we love were complex, because this is the nature of life. Sometimes we feel weighed down by difficult memories of what happened in the period before the person died. Or we can feel regretful about things that were said – or not said – before they died.
Anger: Sometimes we’re angry with the person who died and this can be difficult to express or even acknowledge. And since this emotion is not ‘allowed’, we often redirect it toward others. We can also have unresolved feelings about the person who is gone due to a difficult and complex relationship when they were alive. This means anger can be mixed with other emotions.
Anxiety: Anxiety in grief is normal, typically experienced with, for example, a racing heart and the feeling that something bad is going to happen. Anxiety is slightly more common in those close to a death in violent circumstances, such as a car accident.
Wanting to ‘stay with’ the person: It’s accepted now that we aim to grow around our grief, rather than eliminate it altogether - that the person we miss might always be missed and will always be part of our lives. Where once grief specialists might have wanted us to ‘move on’ from the loss, today they encourage us to stay connected to the person who has died.