This is known as complicated grief, sometimes called persistent complex bereavement disorder. In complicated grief, painful emotions are so long lasting and severe that you have trouble recovering from the loss and resuming your own life. Different people follow different paths through the grieving experience.
Grief is born when someone significant dies – and as long as that person remains significant – grief will remain. Ongoing grief is normal, not dysfunctional. It's also not dysfunctional to experience unpleasant grief-related thoughts and emotions from time-to-time sometimes even years later.
So, if you get the chance, spread the word--grief never ends, and that's okay. P.S: Some of you may be struggling with the idea of grieving forever because, well, grief can be a nightmare. You need to know; it does get easier as you find ways to cope with your experiences and, hopefully, support.
Grief is a natural response to the loss of a loved one. For most people, the symptoms of grief begin to decrease over time. However, for a small group of people, the feeling of intense grief persists, and the symptoms are severe enough to cause problems and stop them from continuing with their lives.
The intensity of grief may change over time and the characteristics of grief you experience change as well. Yet grief rooted in the death of a loved one never goes away and that is a good thing. Grieving is not about making it end as quickly as possible.
Even many months or years after a loss, you may still continue to feel sadness and grief especially when confronted with reminders of their life or their death. It's important to find healthy ways to cope with these waves of grief as part of the healing process.
Depression is usually the longest and most difficult stage of grief. Depression can be a long and difficult stage in the grieving process, but it's also when people feel their deepest sadness.
Distinct from depression, prolonged grief is marked by a pervasive yearning for the deceased. It is most common among people who have lost a child or a romantic partner and is more likely to occur after sudden or violent deaths, such as deaths by homicide, suicide or accident.
But if the grief seems to intensify as more time passes, or persists for six months or longer, complicated grief may have developed. The signs of complicated grief include: Obsession with the departed person, expressed through speech and behavior. Deep, unbearable sadness that never seems to lift.
Medical professionals do not know what causes some to be more likely to develop complicated grief than others. We do know the condition occurs more often in females and with older age. Factors such as your personality, environment, and inherited traits and your natural chemical makeup make be risk factors.
There are many misconceptions about death and grief that can make mourning an even more difficult experience. Our society expects people to get used to grief as they age and lose more of their loved ones. However, no matter how many times you've experienced loss, it never truly gets easier.
The literature reports that death anxiety peaks in middle age and decreases with increasing age, a finding supported by the author's study.
But there is no timetable or timeline for grief. It is completely normal to feel profoundly sad for more than a year, and sometimes many years, after a person you love has died. Don't put pressure on yourself to feel better or move on because other people think you should.
Distorted grief
Often characterized by an extreme reaction, distorted grief provokes an intense response from the griever. This type of grief can be identified by the griever's immense emotional response and often hostile behavior. This anger is directed at other people and/or the griever themselves.
Your brain is on overload with thoughts of grief, sadness, loneliness and many other feelings. Grief Brain affects your memory, concentration, and cognition. Your brain is focused on the feelings and symptoms of grief which leaves little room for your everyday tasks.
There is no set length or duration for grief, and it may come and go in waves. However, according to 2020 research , people who experience common grief may experience improvements in symptoms after about 6 months, but the symptoms largely resolve in about 1 to 2 years.
Here are some of their key findings. The scariest time, for those dreading the loss of a parent, starts in the mid-forties. Among people between the ages of 35 and 44, only one-third of them (34%) have experienced the death of one or both parents. For people between 45 and 54, though, closer to two-thirds have (63%).
Grieving necessarily has a time component to it. Grieving is what happens as we adapt to the fact that our loved one is gone, that we're carrying the absence of them with us. And the reason that this distinction makes sense is, grief is a natural response to loss — so we'll feel grief forever.
Often the second year is the hardest as that's when the real grief work might begin. This is the time when you may be ready to face your grief head on and deal with any issues that are holding you back.
This is true not just for the person who is dying but also for close loved ones. If you decide not to visit your dying loved one, it's possible you may regret your choice later on. Find meaningful ways to spend time together. Try sharing old photographs or memorabilia.
Emotional numbness is a common experience following a trauma, so it's no wonder it can happen after a death. The people I support have all lost a loved one to a terminal illness, which can add an extra layer to their trauma.
One study suggests that elderly people are more likely to fear the dying process, while young adults are more likely to fear death itself. Another study found that the children of elderly parents actually had a higher level of death anxiety than their parents, peaking at around middle age.
The reasons why death is scary are often related to the fears of the unknown, of non-existence, of eternal punishment, of the loss of control, and fear of what will happen to the people we love.