Bereavement

Losing someone can be painful and complex, even if they lived a long and happy life and experienced a ‘good’ death.

Saying goodbye to someone can also go deep into the heart of our own identities. Our relationships fulfil fundamental needs for intimacy, love, connectedness and attachment. Sometimes when someone leaves us, we struggle to go on.

Bereavement can be especially difficult to recover from if we lose someone in difficult circumstances – for example, if we did not get a chance to say goodbye to them or if the person suffered at the end of their life.

Whoever we have lost and whatever the circumstances, seeing a therapist can help people cope after a bereavement.

Understanding Grief

When someone we know dies, we usually experience a long period of adjustment to the loss of our relationship with them – what we mean by bereavement or ‘the grieving process’.

During this period, we are likely to experience different facets of a few basic emotions:

• Sadness that they are gone.

• Anger that they have left us.

• Fear of living without them.

This period of months or years can be very difficult and painful, and we may also experience loneliness or isolation during this period. This is not just because we have lost a relationship; sometimes, other relationships change following a bereavement.

Even after adjusting to living without this person, we will continue to think of them and miss them. For example, we will continue to attend events without them, meet people we cannot introduce them to, and think of things we cannot do or say now that they are gone. We may dream of them. Our adjustment to losing them will unfold over time.

Every relationship has its challenges, so no matter how much we love someone, we usually also experience complicated feelings about their death. We might also feel disappointment, regret or even relief. As time passes, our memories of them may change or even fade, creating a new sense of loss and perhaps also loss of control.

When parts of grief are hard to reveal or explain, seeing a therapist can help us cope with the many complex and difficult feelings that emerge when we lose someone.

Signs Of ‘Complicated Grief’

‘Complicated’ or ‘prolonged grief’ is a way for people to describe a wide range of struggles within bereavement.

According to Cruse, this might include:

• ‘Feeling stuck’ – for example, feeling depressed or numb for months without any change or break in how you feel.

• ‘Not coping with life’ – for example, not being able to eat or wash for a prolonged period or not being able to return to work after several months.

• ‘No enjoyment’ – for example, avoiding friends or hobbies for long periods.

• ‘Very difficult feelings’ – for example, on top of grief, you might also feel guilt or hopelessness about the future.

Complicated grief is a risk for certain types of bereavement, Cruse adds:

• Sudden or traumatic loss.

• Losing a child.

• Loss of someone you were estranged from.

• Loss of family where there was conflict.

• Loss of parents or carers where the early relationship was difficult.

• Previous experience of bereavement, such as being bereaved as a child, losing more than one person at once or bereavement with loss (of home, job or marriage, for example).

• Bereavement with existing mental health conditions.

Grief is difficult enough to cope with without also dealing with the experiences that can make it ‘complicated’. Bereaved people need as much support as possible to adapt to the way life changes when someone they know passes away.

How Therapy Can Support You After Bereavement

Yes, therapy can support people with grief, even if the loss is not recent. Therapy can help you understand the more complex aspects of your own experience of bereavement, as well as offer useful tools to help you cope with life after loss.

Person-centred therapy for bereavement

Person-centred therapy is a supportive and warm approach that focuses on factors that impact our sense of self, such as relationships. The philosophy behind this type of therapy is that everyone is inherently good and has the capacity to reach their full potential given the right conditions. Distress arises from a disconnect with our true selves – for example, as we may do when we experience loss.

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy for bereavement

EMDR is an evidence-based therapy recommended for recovery from trauma. It can be particularly supportive to those who experienced trauma before or during bereavement, for example, a bereaved person who experienced trauma or a person bereaved under traumatic circumstances.

Please get in touch with us to learn more about bereavement support or schedule an appointment for a free initial consultation.