Our Emotional Health & Grief

Sadness: Feeling the profound sense of our loss.

Anger: Being frustrated or resentful about our loss or the circumstances surrounding it.

Guilt: Feeling regretful or responsible. It can be related to things left unsaid or undone. Most people have guilt with grief. It is a way to try to make sense out of a death even though most deaths are not truly preventable by those who grieve.

Exhaustion/fatigue: There is so much effort going on in our brains and pysche when trying to process a loss. That, along with stress it brings, can lead to feelings of tiredness or depletion. 

Shock: At first many people experience shock which can be felt as disbelief or numbness. This reaction often occurs immediately after a loss and makes it hard to fully comprehend what has happened. It can help protect our brains from experiencing the magnitude of what has happened all at once.

Loneliness: A profound sense of isolation and feeling disconnected from others. It can occur even when we are surrounded by others feeling the loss of the same person or a similar loss. We all have unique relationships with our loved ones that no one else has experienced. 

Anxiety: Worries about how to cope and/or fears about facing life without a loved one. Life is hard for many of us when we are in limbo. The death of someone we love can bring on the biggest of "limbos."

Helplessness: Feeling unable to change the situation or alleviate the pain can lead to a sense of powerlessness. It can feel as if grief has hijacked us, and in a large sense, it does for a period of time.

Numbness: Emotional detachment or inability to feel emotions can be a protective response to overwhelming grief. 

Fear: When anxiety about the future, fear of forgetting a loved one, or worries about experiencing more loss are present. 

Confusion: Difficulty processing the loss and/ or understanding what it means for the future. "Grief brain" can result in "foggy" thinking and difficulty with memory and making decisions.

Relief: In cases where a loved one has been in a place of prolonged suffering before their death, there may be a sense of relief that their suffering has ended. Caregivers might feel relief from the toll that can weigh heavily on their own emotional and physical health.

Yearning: A deep longing for the person who has died.  Sometimes, we can physically feel this in our heart space.