Bereavement and Depression
Jul 17th, 2008 by zania
What if all the Stages of Grief hit you at once?
When Depression hits, it can suck all the life right out of you. I must be getting depressed, because I feel as drained as hell right now. And I know it’s because of my Mum’s recent death.
When Mum died, I was sad beyond words, especially as I couldn’t be there with her until after her death. And even amongst my sadness, a little selfish voice told me that if I wasn’t careful, this sadness would turn into depression, so I had to grieve properly and this could help.
So I had a look at psychology books and websites about Bereavement to study the:
Stages of Grief:
- Feeling emotionally numb: Which enables you to get on with things - funeral arrangements etc.
- Yearning for the person who has died: Little things remind you of them.
- Anger and Guilt: Why them? Or why didn’t I do this/say this to them before it was too late?
- Intense sadness and emotional withdrawal: Not wanting to communicate with anyone and bursting into tears at unexpected moments.
- Letting go: The sadness and depression lifts and you can remember your loved one, but get on with the everyday things in your own life.
No one seems to know whether these are all the stages of bereavement, or whether you have to go through these stages in a certain order, or whether you may be able to skip some of them.
Obviously Letting Go is not an option at the start, but as to the others and how we follow them, well, it seems the jury of psycholgy is out on that one.
But what if you go through all the stages of grief at once (apart from the last one)? Because that’s how I feel right now.
One moment I can communicate with people, then the next (sometimes in the middle of a conversation), I just want to shut them out.
One moment I am getting on with my work and the next I just cannot be assed to continue, even though I know I have to do it.
Little things remind me of Mum now; things which never did before. And that leads to guilt; why didn’t I think of her this way when she was alive? Why wasn’t I there more for her?
And beyond all that is growing lethargy. It’s getting harder and harder to be assed to do anything. For me, this is a sure sign I am going into a bout of depression.
Which is not good….
[...] I typed my last post, I said I had Nothing To Write. At that time it was true. My family had just suffered a loss and we were all feeling shitty, so it’s not surprising that, despite usually being able [...]
My father committed suicide when I was 8 years old. Now, more recently, I met an older couple in their late seventies, almost three years ago. Me and the guy got along real well, he agreed with me on a lot of stuff, so basically I realized I’m not so screwed up as to my outlook on things and life as I thought. We weren’t extremely close, but he did fill in some gaps from not having a father. He died early this year; my first real experience dealing with death since my father died. I”m currently learning more about the stages of grief, from the perspective of an adult. Crying all the sudden, and I’d never cry for long, just little spurts here and there, probably lasting for less than a minute. Sometimes more than once a day. I still talk to his wife. I burst out crying in front of her a few days ago, talked about him a little. I noticed since then, so far, it’s becoming easier to remember him. I talked about him for over a minute last night with his wife and a friend of mine without tearing up even a little. Well, can’t say otherwise I know what you’re going through, but interesting to read some of the parallels in your post. Take care.
My Father died when I was just into my teens. He had always been my ´favourite parent´, but when he died I was going through the ´terrible teen´ years, and for months we hadn´t had a nice word to say to each other. He died suddenly and it was a shock, but it left me numb for years. I simply could not grieve for him. It messed me up quite a bit emotionally I think.
When you lose a parent as a child, it´s in many ways a different experience. As you said, it´s a new experience dealing with grief as an adult.
I´ve done quite a bit of therapy over the years and only fairly recently discovered that my Dad´s death is one of the main things which has made me so screwed up emotionally. So I knew it would be hard when Mum died (especially the guilt factor. I loved (love) her a lot, but we had definitely had our differences! I was hoping that I would be able to grieve ´properly´ for Mum and not get more screwed up. Only time will tell.
I´m sorry for your recent loss (and I mean that without cliches). Just reading your comment shows me just how much the elderly guy meant to you. It makes me sad, for you, for him and for his wife. But that´s ok. It´s as it should be.
Thank you for commenting on this particular post. It would have been easy to avoid it.
Your words helped.
Thank You
Yeah, I had to think twice before writing all that. Glad it helped though, thanks for letting me know.
May I recommend Damned Tears?
I’ve just left you a comment.
Thanks for sharing Andy.