Loss Your Loved One – How To Cope With Crisis?
The loss of a loved one is a crisis that has to be faced sooner or later. Grief and mourning are almost exclusively associated with death, but in fact, you feel grief – and mourn your loss – whether you lose a job, a home, your ideals, a treasured possession, a much-loved pet, a close friend, or a partner. In all such situations, you have to make adjustments to new circumstances by mourning.
Helping yourself
In coming to terms with the loss – particularly the death – of a loved one, the people best able to cope could be those who come from cultures that have strict, formal, and intense mourning rituals. In modern society, you are often expected to act as if nothing has happened, but research has shown that mourning is an essential part of coming to terms with a loss. Mourning occurs in three consecutive stages. But grief should not be used as an excuse for maintaining sympathy or for not changing your life. There comes a time – although its arrival is ill-defined – at which you have to give up some of your grief and rejoin the mainstream of life.
Mourning is also dangerous to physical and mental health if it does not progress properly through its various stages. Mourning that restarts after it has apparently finished, often accompanied by other signs of clinical depression, is another sign that professional psychological help is needed.
Divorce and Other Types of Crisis
It is natural to grieve when a marriage ends in divorce, when you lose your job or suffer a loss of similar proportions. In some ways, losses such as these are more complex to cope with than death. With death, someone has gone from this earth, and although the loss is painful after the numbness is over, you can and must start to come to terms with it and begin to create a new life.
With divorce, the “lost” partner is still alive, so beneath all the feelings that exist, there lurks the notion that the relationship might somehow be revived. You will probably have friends in common who may tell your ex-partner’s latest news and induce a feeling of nostalgia. For this reason, many people find it impossible to start mourning a divorce until long after it has occurred. Often, it is the remarriage of one of the partners that finally spurs the other into proper and necessary mourning.
Also crucial in divorce is the sense of rejection with which it is associated. Although you might feel you could have improved the quality of a dead person’s life, death is not usually surrounded by feelings of personal guilt. Divorce, on the other hand, is a situation in which guilt thrives, and this guilt – along with feelings of personal failure – complicates the logical steps of the mourning process.
Helping Others in Crisis
There are many ways in which you can help someone who has been bereaved.
- Let the bereaved people give the lead. Do not make judgments on their behalf about whether they should be cheered up or told to pull themselves together.
- Grieve with a bereaved person. This permits grief and shows that you, too, value the mourned person.
- Provide practical help, especially during the early stages—before the funeral and for the first few weeks afterward—when the bereaved will not feel like doing day-to-day tasks.
- Be there. Bereaved people often feel the need for help and support, even if they do not use them. Your support should not stop after the first few days of mourning but will be needed for many months.
- Be aware. If you are sensitive to a bereaved person, you will see when he or she is ready to be distracted from grief. When this time comes, seize the opportunity.
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