Grief

Post Reply New Topic

So, there's a new diagnosis in the DSM called "Prolonged Grief Disorder." It applies to someone who is unable to cope with grief after what is considered a reasonable time has passed, and continues to be incapacitated by emotional pain, can't get back to normal activities and is bereft virtually all the time. This made sense to me until I read that this diagnosis applies if someone is feeling this grief a year after the death! And that only about 4% of people are incapacitated in this way. I was completely shocked by this because I assumed that 100% of people would still be experiencing this level of grief a year after a death. That is my experience.

I also read several other articles about grief because in the New York Times when you read an article you get suggestions for more articles on the same topic, and I was struck by how somewhat mild the descriptions of grief were for the people mentioned in the articles, even though they were supposed to be examples of severe grief. They seemed to be sailing through as far as my own experience compares.

My boyfriend of 15 years died in 2015, my father in 2018, my mother in 2021, and my best friend of 41 years didn't die but losing him, for most practical purposes, in early 2022 has been the most painful of all the losses, and I am not remotely over any of them! Is this really not the norm?

My partner is still grieving his late wife, ten years on.
He was dx with an Adjustment Disorder for not ... adjusting?
I'll see if this term applies to him too.

I don't know how people could move on after a year, either.

Bee.

You have been hit by bereavement after bereavement for years. It sounds totally normal to me that you are completely struck down by all that grief. Especially as I don't think you have a big support network. Be gentle with yourself.

I found that a year after my dad died I was only just beginning to cope with his death. A year is absolutely nothing in bereavement, we never get over deaths because there is that hole in our lives that won't ever be filled. We just learn to put the feelings in a room in our minds and shut the door. My dad died 40 years ago and I still feel sad I didn't grow up with a dad, just a big hole where he should have been. He wasn't there to see me pass my exams, get engaged and married, have a baby. He never met my husband and daughter. Whereas most people's dads are there. Mine just...wasn't.

Some people never get over their ex-husbands (or ex-wives) or close family members or other people important to them. The likelihood of this happening seems to increase with the importance of certain people in one's life having reached mulitple decades or more.

That is very weird, that the “prolonged” grief starts at a year. Having worked as a hospice nurse for many years, we know the first anniversary of a loss typically brings on a new, sharp grief experience.

If you truly loved and lost, the grief is always there.Just differing degrees of pain.

There's also complicated, conplex and traumatic grief (which I think I have).
It's been 4+ years and I still can't think of it without having a severe emotional response. Certain places, objects, even dates trigger it.
The grief wasn't the same when I lost other close family members..
I was grieving and missed them but I wasn't disabled by it, or in constant pain as I am now.

Its not a question of "normal" or abnormal. It happens when someone doesn't have either the innate ability or support needed to move through the grieving process. Like anything else in life when a situation comes up that we do not know how to handle, we don't know how to proceed. When that happens the basic options are trial and error or simply stopping where we get stuck.

Grief can also be prolonged by co-dependence. In that situation, people can feel incomplete, or as if a piece of themselves is gone and it is now impossible to continue life as they know it because they no longer feel or believe that they are a whole person.

15 years .....for the worst of it . 2017 most recent ...and all the subsequent triggers inbetween . . .
years of therapy ...on and on .....

Thank you for all the thoughtful and insightful replies. Sometimes it seems like it's just too hard to be human. How do any of us (humans) do it? There's so much just muddling along and trying to get through the days as best we can, and kind of failing at it most of the time.

I still grieve for my dad twenty years after he passed. It's not a sad, tearful grief and it never really was, but that's because I see him pretty much every night in my dreams and we have good talks in those dreams. In that respect it feels like he's not really gone. I grieve him by thinking of him daily and wishing I had more time with him, or that knew more about his life. The details of his death are very troubling too. I hope there's a way people really do get an afterlife and I can ask him some of these questions when I die, but I doubt that's possible. For now I just fill my days noticing all the places he is absent, and imagining how he'd be so proud of everyone left behind. I promised him I'd take care of my mum and I hope I've done him proud. It hasn't been easy, but I did it for him.

Yes, 40 years here for my dad. I barely remember him or what it was like having a dad.

Same. 'noticing all the places he is absent, and imagining how he'd be so proud of everyone left behind.' The big dad-shaped gap.

I think the thing I miss is having a protector. From the age of 13 there was no one to protect me. I watched a show on TV where the dad saved his 14 year old daughter from a tornado. By the time I was 14, I didn't have a protector anymore.

Sending you ((hugs)) Isabella

40 years? Wow. You were so young. I'm sorry for your early loss. That would have a profound impact on a 13-year old. I still feel my dad's absence that he's not protecting me, even though I was in my 30's when he passed. He used to do my home or car repairs and could fix anything. I'm always sceptical that new people are going to rip me off or sell me something I don't really need. He died on Christmas Eve so my neighbour gave me a little bauble for the tree. It was a figurine of Santa on top of a house with his big bag of gifts. She said that's how she always viewed my dad, climbing up on my roof to fix things, and bringing me whatever I needed any time of year. On Halloween he used to always buy my pumpkins and leave them at the door so the kids thought there was a magic pumpkin fairy. Things like that still get to me, but that's all part of this horrendous journey we call grief.

I wasn't going to mention him in this thread because he was my dad. Losing a dad doesn't seem as traumatic as losing a partner, like Raleigh or Bee, but it still hurts and it takes a lifetime to heal. Well, for me it will anyway. Maybe it's different for others. My partner is still in grief therapy for his late wife so I know all about the ups and downs of losing a partner, or moving on to find love again. That's not easy either.