Symptoms of Grief
After cremations that are part of the cremation services offered in Camillus, NY, we will start fully grieving the death of our loved one. There is a numbness that sets in immediately after our loved one dies that mutes the full expression of grief so that we can take care of the immediate things that follow, including funeral plans.
However, after we all return back to our new normal lives, which often means that our families are far-flung across the country or around the world, then we are alone and the impact of what has happened sets in. This is the real starting point of our grieving process.
Because death has become such a taboo subject in Western culture, the signs and symptoms of grief have become unfamiliar, and if they’re shown, undesirable. So, we, as a society don’t know what grief looks like nor how it feels. We also don’t recognize that it is a normal part of being human.
In Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s landmark book about death and grief, On Death and Dying, she described five stages of grief. These included:
- Denial
- Anger
- Bargaining
- Depression
- Acceptance
In the intervening years since the book was published, psychologists have recognized that while these cover broad categories of emotions and experiences among people who are grieving, they are not well-defined nor hierarchal stages in each grieving person’s unique journey through the process.
Grief is not a straight path nor a logical procession. Bad days and good days are intermingled in the process, and there is no ending point for loss. Grief changes over time, but it never goes away completely when we lose someone we love.
The symptoms of grief don’t follow a straight line either. Sometimes we experience several symptoms simultaneously, and sometimes we experience them one at a time or one symptom gets replaced by another one. It is not unusual when we lose a loved one to death to have periods of sorrow, then peace, and then sorrow again.
This is the work of grief. Grieving really is a process that makes sense of loss and death. It seeks to comprehend the incomprehensible and to find a place in our lives where loss and death can exist in a relatively settled state. But that takes time.
Some of the most common symptoms of grief include, but are not limited to:
- Shock
- Apathy
- Powerlessness
- Disbelief
- Anxiety
- Uselessness
- Helplessness
- Fear
- Guilt
- Betrayal
- Anger
- Thankfulness
- Sadness
- Loneliness
- Relief
- Isolation
- Despair
There are also mental, emotional, and spiritual reactions to grief. Physically, we may experience changes in sleep patterns, eating habits, fatigue, heart palpitations, more illnesses, increased headaches and stomachaches.
Some of mental reactions to grief may include being unfocused, obsessively thinking about the loss of our loved one, being indecisive, increasing dreams and nightmares, feeling different from the rest of the world, and thinking self-destructive thoughts.
Our spiritual reactions to the loss of our loved one, even if we are well-grounded in our faith, may be disturbing because we may feel like we’ve been abandoned by or are being punished by God, feel angry at God, or start to question our belief in God.
Grief also affects our social relationships with other family members, friends, and colleagues. We may feel as though we’re on a stage where we are constantly being critiqued by others, and we may either withdraw because we feel like others are judging and criticizing us or we may get hostile and fight with everybody.
If you’d like to know about cremation services in Camillus, NY, our compassionate and experienced team at Bagozzi Twins Funeral Home, Inc. is here to help. You can visit us at our funeral home at 2601 Milton Ave., Solvay, NY 13209, or you can call us today at (315) 468-2431.
