Bereavement Counselling Online
You can have bereavement counselling from the comfort of your own home, simply with Zoom counselling. Call a therapist now on +44 781 69 77 334.
Normal Grief
Grief is a normal part of life. It is painful but does not need medical treatment.
When a loved one passes away, grief is experienced in three main stages:
1) Numbness
This lasts from a few hours to a week. You may feel numb and feel as if the person hasn’t died, or that you can’t accept the reality of the death.
2) Mourning
From one week to six months after death (it gets easier after three months), you may feel sad, depressed, have little appetite, find yourself crying a lot; or maybe agitated, anxious and unable to concentrate. Some people feel guilty. They may feel they did not do enough for the deceased. Others blame professionals or friends and family. You may find that you have physical symptoms, such as pain, during this phase. Most people have the feeling at some point that the deceased is present in some way. One in ten people reports seeing, hearing or smelling the dead person when they are not there. Many of the experiences mimic depression, but they are normal. You are not depressed or going mad; your body is simply responding normally to a traumatic, sad event.
3) Acceptance
From six months onwards. Your symptoms will subside. You start to accept the death and try to get back to normal.
Coping with Grief
Grief is natural, and so are your feelings. Grief is a process that has to be worked through. If it is not, then your feelings could fester and they could catch up with you in the end, turning into depression. Grief should not be bottled up – it needs to be let out.
Even if you seem to be having a severe reaction to the death at first, you are likely to come through the process with just the support of your friends and family, or perhaps a counsellor.
It is usually best to turn to your family and friends initially. They will also need to grieve. You can help each other to come to terms with what had happened.
Counsellors can offer support in grief and can help people work through the process in a controlled way. They are particularly useful if you find that you are not passing through the stages of grief or you are having a particularly difficult time. Bereavement counsellors aim to help you acknowledge the death by helping you talk about the circumstances surrounding it; they encourage the emotional expression of the pain of grief; they try to identify coping strategies and people who might offer support; they help you in the process of building a new life and help you let go of the dead person.
Abnormal Grief
Not everyone passes through the stages of grief smoothly. Some people find that they get stuck at one stage. Others find it difficult to grieve and do not acknowledge the death at all. Some people find that they are consumed with intense anger or feelings of betrayal that last for months. If grief is intense and unbearable, it needs to be treated.
