Do you Need Help Dealing with Death?
Recovering from Bereavement Takes Courage, Effort and Time.
If you lose someone close to you, especially a spouse or a partner, you are very unlikely to return to being exactly the same person as you were before. You do not just forget the past and start a new life.
To help the recovery process, it is important to recognise that change has taken place. It is a change that cannot but help affect you in ways both big and small. Some of these changes within you may only come to light as time passes from the event.
There are things which mark recovery, or perhaps more realistically, help you to get used to a different way of life with a key relationship missing:
- The acceptance in your head of your loss.
- The acceptance in your heart of loss at an emotional level.
- Discovering your new identity; changing your own outer environment to match the inner truth that the one you love is no longer physically within it.
Here are some suggestions for helping the above things to happen in your life:
Acceptance in Your Head
Telling yourself the story helps you move from a traumatic state into being bereaved.
To make sense of your loss in your head you should try to develop an “account”, ie the story, of what happened. Think through what led ultimately to the death and put it together in a story of the final few hours, weeks, or even years if it has been a long drawn out illness.
We know that allowing the question ‘why did it happen and how did it happen?’ into your thoughts however unbearable it feels does actually help people immensely. Even if there is no actual answer as it was a random event, or due to human frailty the narrative told by yourself to yourself, or to another person, enables you to deal with your bereavement, rather than deal only with the moment of death again and again and again. It helps bring acceptance in your head.
Acceptance in Your Heart
Try not to avoid reminders of your loss as they will help bring acceptance in your heart.
One sign of acceptance in your heart is when you don’t feel the need to actually avoid reminders of loss in case you should break down in grief. This acceptance usually comes after unavoidable confrontation again and again with reminders of the person you love. Each reminder hopefully brings a slight lessening of intensity of distress. Emotional acceptance of loss is rarely ever complete and perhaps it would be sad if it were as the person has been a part of our own lives and journey. This shared journey is the place to start. When you feel strong enough, go places that were jointly important to you, try not to avoid them, it will lead to shared memories rather than constant painful reminders.
Who are you now? Discovering your new identity.
Reassessing who you are is important. You may become aware that the way you describe yourself no longer works, but when you say something different you do not yet recognise it. “I am Jane’s husband – or am I – I am not sure how to describe myself anymore”.
The special familiar name you were called by your mother may never be used again. It symbolises the loss of being someone’s child even if you are 50. The realisation that you are yourself a step nearer death is frightening.
What you own may be different, more or less, symbolising your role in the family.
There are different ways to start to feel comfortable in your new identity. For many it is simply time and practical arrangements which help. For others it is religious ceremonies. You can set aside time to talk to the person you have lost, for example a time by the grave, telling them what is different now. The tradition of wearing black is to give a period without pressure before having to ‘wear’ your new identity.
Discovering your identity after the death of someone close is vital to dealing with bereavement.
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