In the first article, “How to survive the death of a loved one,” about experiencing the death of a loved one, I talked about how to live through all stages of grief as carefully as possible for yourself and avoid getting stuck in negative feelings.
The death of a loved one is not just an event that happened in your immediate environment, it is a significant event in your inner world. When a loved one dies, we remember our own mortality, encounter the laws of life that do not depend on us, and think about the meaning of our life.
It turns out that the death of a loved one confronts you with so-called existential experiences that relate to your attitude to life and perception of yourself in the context of life. Facing death forces you to stop in the flow of your life to rethink something.
In this article, “How the Death of a Loved One Affects Your Life,” I will talk about how you can interact with the existential processes and experiences that the death of a loved one provokes: how to understand their meaning and move on with your life.
Navigation for the article “How the death of a loved one affects your life. Part 2":
- Fear of death caused by the loss of a loved one
- Death as a reminder of the inability to control everything in your life
- Death of a loved one and the meaning of life
The first stage of grief: numbness
This stage usually lasts up to 9 days. An extremely powerful and significant event occurred: a loved one died. This is a serious crisis, and it is impossible to understand the full meaning of what happened at once. During this period, people who have lost a loved one may appear indifferent and unemotional - this is to a certain extent an altered state of consciousness.
If you have lost a loved one, during this first acute period you are in a state of shock. It is not recommended to be alone in this state. It is important to have people nearby who can take care of you: prepare food for you, sit next to you, hug you.
You may feel like you're not feeling something you should be feeling. Your feelings are now on pause, the psyche protects you from all the intensity of feelings that can hit you at once. The funeral will take place, you will finally understand that your loved one has died, and after a short time you will face all the painful feelings.
During grief, especially in the very first period, it is harmful to use alcohol or medications, since these substances inhibit all internal processes.
Unfortunately, this recommendation is ignored in our culture, which provokes difficulties in coping with the grief of loss. Important, but unconscious work takes place in the human psyche, for which all internal resources are needed. Alcohol and sedatives take a person away from painful reality, while it is necessary to immerse oneself in this reality in order to face all the feelings associated with the death of a loved one.
Stage 2 of Grieving: Facing Your Feelings
At this stage, which lasts up to 40 days, there is a meeting with painful feelings associated with the death of a loved one. At this stage, you may feel sadness, anger, resentment, guilt - all together, each feeling separately and in any order.
It is very important to admit to yourself the feelings you are experiencing and express them in a constructive way. This is not easy in our culture: for example, it is believed that it is impossible to be angry with a deceased person. But the ban on expressing feelings does not negate the presence of these feelings, they simply remain locked inside and prevent you from fully experiencing grief.
If intense feelings associated with the death of a loved one do not subside for a long time, “hold” you, take away your vital energy, it means that something inside is preventing you from letting go of the deceased person.
Most likely, you are stuck on some feeling that does not allow you to continue the internal work of grief. And in this case, the answer to the question “How to survive the death of a loved one?” will - allow yourself to feel all the emotions associated with the death of a loved one.
Getting stuck on feelings
Often a person gets stuck on one of the forms of manifestation of feelings of anger: anger, resentment, guilt.
No one is perfect, and a deceased loved one could leave bleeding wounds in your soul. Anger in this case is most often associated with unjustified expectations - with what you really wanted in a relationship with this person, but he could not give it to you.
Guilt is the other side of anger: it is anger directed at oneself. You may blame yourself for hurting or offending the deceased person, for not having time to ask for forgiveness or to say about your love for him, for being angry with him during his lifetime and not understanding something. These are natural human feelings that arise in any relationship. It is true that our words or actions can hurt another person. We're not perfect either.
After anger, resentment and guilt are acknowledged and expressed, sadness remains inside. It is the feeling of sadness that helps to do the inner work of mourning. And the next short answer to the question of how to survive the death of a loved one is to survive his loss.
Sometimes you get stuck on the feeling of sadness: you seem to be holding on to the person who has left, you cry a lot, you are afraid to fully accept the fact that he is no longer around.
When stuck on any feeling, I recommend using the following technique
Visualize your loved one in front of you and tell him everything that you did not have time to do before his death. Imagine what he could answer you: this is a person close to you, and you can probably imagine his reaction to your words. Internal dialogues are as real to our psyche as communication with people in life.
If you are angry with the deceased, tell him everything that you expected from him during his lifetime. If you feel guilty, ask for forgiveness. You may want to thank him for something. If you are overwhelmed with sadness that the person is no longer around, tell him about your love and how the relationship with him was important and dear to you.
You may feel like crying during this dialogue: these are tears of loss. Crying when experiencing grief is completely natural and is a constructive way of expressing your sadness.
Thus, you name your feelings, “legalize” them, allow yourself to experience them, and gradually their intensity and painfulness will decrease.
It is unknown how many times you will need to “communicate” with your deceased loved one, exactly how long you will be angry, how many tears you will need to cry - these are all individual processes. But in order to survive the death of a loved one, you will need to go through all this pain.
Reaction to loss - atypical symptoms
Strange, inappropriate types of reactions occur more often during loss in women. Men are more persistent and reserved. No, this doesn’t mean that they don’t worry, they just keep everything “to themselves.” An atypical reaction occurs immediately:
- numbness lasts approximately 15-20 days, and the general stage of suffering can last more than a year with a severe course;
- pronounced alienation, the person cannot work and constantly thinks about suicide. There is no way to accept the loss and come to terms with it;
- A person “sits” a powerful feeling of guilt and incredible hostility towards everyone around him. Hypochondria, similar to that of the deceased, may develop. With an atypical reaction, the risk of suicide within a year after the loss can increase by two and a half times. You should especially be close to the sufferer on the anniversary of your death. There is also a high risk of death from somatic diseases within six months after a person’s death.
Atypical symptoms of grief also include a delayed reaction to a sad event. Complete denial that a person has died, an imaginary absence of suffering and experiences.
An atypical reaction does not arise just like that and it is caused by the characteristics of the human psyche and circumstances such as:
- The death of a loved one came suddenly, because it was not expected.
- The sufferer did not have the opportunity to say goodbye to the deceased in order to fully express his grief.
- The relationship with the person who had passed on to another world was difficult, hostile, and acute.
- Death touched the child.
- The suffering person has already suffered a severe loss, and most likely the sad event happened in childhood.
- There is no support when there are no loved ones nearby, relatives who can lend a shoulder, distract a little and even physically help with organizing a funeral, etc.
Stage Three of Grief: Recovery
This period usually lasts a year, which is also called the year of vulnerability. The previous stage is repeated many times: a meeting with different feelings caused by the death of a loved one.
Over the course of a year, all the regular events happen that evoke associations with the deceased person and help us accept that he is no longer around: birthdays, New Years, the change of seasons, and some other significant events. You learn to live on, without a loved one, change your picture of the world and form a new idea of the future.
A real person died, this is an irrevocable loss. But you still have his image inside, ideas about him, feelings from him. Everything valuable that you received in this relationship is inside you. You have lost someone, but the memories and experiences of that relationship will remain with you forever.
You have already admitted to yourself all the different feelings associated with the death of a loved one, and allowed yourself to live through them.
Gradually, you begin to think less and less about the past and be in the present more often. You already allow yourself to enjoy life and feel the joy of the present moment. And then you begin to look into the future and plan your life.
All this suggests that you are beginning to build a new picture of the world, which means that the process of experiencing the death of a loved one is ending. And your life goes on.
If you have fully lived through all these stages, then you will not have a question about how to survive the death of a loved one. But you may feel that something does not allow you to move on, does not allow you to look into the future and constantly returns you to the past. Most often this is a story about needs, which will be discussed below.
Death as a reminder of the inability to control everything in your life
Facing the death of a loved one is a reminder of the forces of nature beyond our control, randomness and life processes beyond our control. Essentially, this is evidence that every person is, to a certain extent, helpless in front of some external forces. And this fact can provoke strong internal disagreement and corresponding experiences.
There are people who want and strive to control everything in their lives. They think that their life and future depend solely on themselves. They just need to draw up a clear life plan and stick to it - then everything will be the way they want. But the death of a loved one reminds us of the inability to manage certain processes on our own.
It turns out that the death of a loved one does not fit into your picture of the world. It turns out that not everything can be controlled, and sometimes you have to accept the adjustments that life itself makes.
These thoughts and experiences are also from the “existential” series - this is so, and we, people, cannot do anything about it. The internal task here is to accept your real helplessness in managing global life processes.
External circumstances can interfere in a person’s life at any moment and must be taken into account. It is impossible to plan your life with 100% certainty.
But this does not mean that you can only go with the flow, surrendering exclusively to external forces. This means that you need to be flexible, regularly compare your desires and plans with your real life situation and be ready to make adjustments.
If, in response to the idea of your own helplessness, an excessively strong emotional response appears inside you in the form of anxiety, fear or panic, this is a reason to turn to your own history and meanings.
Answer the question: What will happen to you if you agree that you cannot control something? What will this mean for you?
This path of exploration of meaning will most likely lead to some self-beliefs that you formed as a child. But now you look at life through the eyes of an adult and can find something to counter these childhood beliefs.
If you encounter any difficulties in the process of reformulating your beliefs, you can go through this path together with a psychologist.
How to cope with the death of a loved one and let him go
In relationships, we satisfy different psychological needs, for example: love, attention, support, security, acceptance. In close relationships, two opposing needs are possible. The first, accompanied by resentment and anger, is when the deceased person could not give you what you really needed.
These feelings are rooted in childhood - when our parents, being, like all people, imperfect, could not give us everything.
For example, as a child you wanted your mother to play with you, talk to you and be interested in your experiences. And the mother could be too busy with work, household responsibilities, or her own personal worries. And she had no time left to communicate with you. Behind this could be a need for attention - attention to your personality.
We try to satisfy such needs, coming from childhood, in relationships with loved ones. But the lack from childhood is too global for another person to make up for. Sometimes we continue to expect something from our parents even as adults. And then it can be difficult to survive and accept their death.
The second point about needs is related to sadness and loss. If you continue to grieve for the good things associated with the deceased person, it means that you received something from him that you do not see the opportunity to receive in other relationships.
And here we return again to childhood lack: you did not learn to interact with some of your needs on your own and placed responsibility for this on another person. The person probably took on this role. But it was so convenient for you, and as a result it became habitual.
In order to understand how to cope with the death of a loved one, it is important to understand what exactly you have lost. Answering the following questions will help you determine the needs that are important to you:
- What was valuable to you in your relationship with this person?
- What was this relationship like for you?
- What did you get from your relationship with him?
- How did you feel when you were around this person?
And then you have to learn to satisfy these needs yourself.
Fear of death caused by the loss of a loved one
The death of a loved one reminds us that we will all die someday. Sometimes after the death of a loved one, a panicky fear of one’s own death appears.
All people have a fear of death to one degree or another. It's an existential fear that we all somehow live with. After all, in reality, no one knows what will happen after death and whether there will be... But if these thoughts provoke panic in you, “invade” your life and prevent you from doing your usual things, this is a reason to look for the hidden meanings behind the fear of death.
In order to begin interacting with your fear of death, you need to understand what exactly you are afraid of. Answer the question: what is the worst thing about death for you?
Oddly enough, the fear of death says something about your life. As a rule, this is a signal of dissatisfaction with life: that something does not suit you, but you do not feel able to change it. And then this is a reason to figure out (on your own or with a psychologist) what is stopping you from making your life the way you want.
The reason for such states and fears is often “learned helplessness”: when you do not believe that you can influence your life.
From the term it is clear that you once learned this: as is usually the case with psychological mechanisms, the roots of this life habit are in childhood. Maybe you were not allowed to make your own decisions, they told you how to live, they doubted your strength and ability to cope with your life on your own - everyone has their own story.
In order to believe in your ability to manage your life as an adult, you need to explain that this is possible to yourself as a child: your “childish part” that still lives inside you. If you feel like something is preventing you from believing in yourself, it makes sense to seek help from a psychologist.
Form for appointment with psychologist Galina Uraeva:
If you have any questions for a psychologist regarding the article:
“How to cope with the death of a loved one. Part 1"
You can ask them online to our psychologist on Skype:
If for some reason you were unable to ask a question to a psychologist online, then leave your message here (as soon as the first free psychologist-consultant appears on the line, you will be immediately contacted at the specified e-mail), or go to the psychological forum.
