Grief is something that everyone will experience at one time or another during their lifetime. When a person experiences loss they are forced to deal with grief. Grief is your emotional reaction to a significant loss. Whether you lose a beloved person, animal, place, or object, or a valued way of life such as your job, marriage, or good health, some level of grief will naturally follow. Grieving is not simply sadness, "the blues," or depression. You may experience grief as a mental, physical, social or emotional reaction. Learning more about what to expect, how to cope with reminders of your loss and how to find the help and support you will need, will make the grieving process a healthy, healing journey.

Grieving is the process of emotional and life adjustment you go through after a loss. Depending on who you are and the nature of your loss, your process of grieving will be different from another person's experience. Some take a year or more, particularly when their daily life has been radically changed or their loss was traumatic and unexpected. The stress of grief and grieving can take a physical toll on your body often resulting in symptoms such as weight loss, hair loss, skin conditions and sometimes illnesses. Because of the intensity of grief emotions, irrational decisions are often made that can result in consequences leading to even more grief.

Since the grieving process is different for everyone, it is imperative that grief be dealt with by recognizing it, understanding it, accepting it and working through it so that you can come out on the other side of it and get on with your life. If life circumstances make it difficult for you to stop, feel, and live through the grieving process, you can expect grief to eventually erupt sometime in the future. It may be possible to postpone grieving, but it is not possible to postpone grieving altogether. It is an unavoidable journey, but it can be a healthy one.

What is mourning? As opposed to grief, which refers to the emotional response to the loss of a loved one, mourning is the outward expression of that loss. Symptoms of grief can last years after the mourning period has passed.

What are the symptoms of grief? Seven signs that you are grieving are shock, denial, bargaining, guilt, anger, depression, and hope. If you are experiencing any of these emotions then you are in a state of grieving. When you grieve, it's part of the normal process of reacting to a loss. Reminders often bring back the pain of loss in the form of one or more of the seven signs of grief, even years later. Whether the loss was recent or long ago, it may still be limiting your ability to participate fully in life.

Think you will never recover from your loss? You must talk about the loss until you accept it. The more you talk about it, the more you will realize that the loss is real - that the person is really gone and will not come back. In any loss, you must accept the painful reality and finality of the loss. The surprise though, makes it difficult to integrate the "story" of the loss, so you may struggle with an initial task of simply believing that the loss has occurred.

How does grief feel? Just after a death or loss, you may feel empty and numb, as if you are in shock. Grief lasts as long as it takes you to accept and learn to live with your loss. While the terms are often used interchangeably, bereavement often refers to the state of loss, and grief to the reaction to loss. Our response to loss is varied and researchers have moved away from conventional views of grief that is, that people move through an orderly and predictable series of responses to loss to one that considers the wide variety of responses that are influenced by personality, family, culture, and spiritual and religious beliefs and practices. Normal grief typically involves a range of transient behavioural and emotional responses to loss. Similarly, both children and adults often feel the pain of losses brought on by an upcoming move or divorce.

When a loss occurs, most of us are unprepared for how to handle it, especially if we have never had to deal with it before. If you have suffered a loss through the death of a loved one or through divorce, and don't feel "normal", you are probably grieving.

Throughout the course of evolution instinct develops around the premise that attachment losses are retrievable. When faced with this loss, the most powerful forms of attachment behaviour are activated in an attempt to reinstate the relationship. Such reactive depression following a significant loss is not abnormal and usually dissipates over the first year of bereavement.

Anger is a frequently experienced emotion following a loss and is often confusing for the bereaved. Expressing anger is a sign that you are beginning to deal with your loss. It is most important to release your anger and not bottle it up inside as long as it is expressed in a healthy and safe manner.

The meaning of attachment furthers our ability to comprehend grief. It is characterized by the grief reaction intensifying to affect all of the sufferer's close relationships, disrupting his or her personal faith and beliefs, as bereaved persons reassess personal definitions in the face of great pain. It tends to result in the bereaved experiencing meaningless and ongoing longing for their deceased loved one. In an attempt to make the loss less significant than actuality, the meaning of the relationship can be denied, but that's not always the case.

The intensity and emotional response to a loss will vary according to many factors, including the importance attributed to the loss, the circumstances of the death and the availability and utilisation of support networks.
The time spent grieving also depends on your relationship with the person lost and how prepared you were for the loss. Anticipatory grief is grief that strikes in advance of an impending loss. This anticipatory grief helps us prepare for such losses.
Although not a formal medical diagnosis, complicated grief refers to a reaction to loss that lasts more than one year. Complicated grief is usually grief where the story of the loss is in some ways difficult to tell. As mentioned before though, talking about the loss and telling the story is the first step to accepting and believing that the loss is real.

Reorganization is the assimilation of the loss of something or someone and redefining of life and meaning without the person that has been lost. It is an important step in the grieving process and necessary to moving on with a healthy and meaningful life.

Death of a spouse. Although the death of a spouse may be an expected change, particularly as we age, it is a particularly powerful loss of a loved-one.

Children will exhibit their mourning very differently in reaction to the loss of a parent than a widow would to the loss of a spouse. The kind of loss must be taken under consideration when determining how to help. The loss of a parent, grandparent or sibling can be very troubling in childhood, but even in childhood there are age differences in relation to the loss. Childhood loss as mentioned before can predispose a child not only to physical illness but to emotional problems and an increased risk for suicide, especially in the adolescent period.

Death of a child can take the form of a loss in infancy such as abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth or neonatal death. In the event of a miscarriage or abortion, it is important for friends and family members to acknowledge the loss of the pregnancy, and not to attempt to minimalize the significance of a pregnancy that did not come to term. Feelings of guilt, whether legitimate or not, are pervasive, and the dependent nature of the relationship disposes parents to a variety of problems as they seek to cope with this great loss. Intervention and comforting support can make all the difference to the survival of a parent in this type of grief but the risk factors are great and may include family breakup or suicide.

While many who grieve are able to work through their loss independently, accessing additional support from bereavement professionals may promote the process of healing.

Grief counselling, professional support groups or educational classes, and peer-led support groups are primary resources available to the bereaved. But if you find that your grief is making it difficult to function for more than a week or two, contact a grief counsellor or bereavement support group for help. The support and encouragement of a loving family and a good support group is necessary in order to move on with your life. Seek help because help is there and talk about your loss. Many others have experienced similar losses. You are not alone.

Grief and the grieving process is a journey. It takes time. With understanding and support from bereavement professionals, support groups and a loving family and friends, your life can become meaningful and rich in a fresh, new way.

Suggested reading:

Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep: Over 250 Funeral Poems And Readings.

If Theres Anything I Can Do: How To Help Someone Cope With Grief.

Back To Life! A Personal Grief Guidebook.

How to deal with grief effectively - ebook