Depression after the death of a loved one: how to cope

Depression, or a depressed psychological state, is a completely natural defensive reaction of our body. It occurs against the background of overwork, excessive emotions, and mental stress. Therefore, it is not surprising that after the death of a loved one we often experience depression. After all, the sudden passing of a person dear to us invariably provokes an internal crisis and physical weakness. Going into self-isolation, closing ourselves off from others in a kind of cocoon and spending vital energy to a minimum temporarily saves us from disaster. However, prolonged stay in this state is fraught with even greater complications.

Stages of Grief

Psychologists identify seven stages that allow you to come to terms with and understand what happened.

The first stage is called denial. The individual does not believe what happened and does not understand how to continue to live. He may begin to behave inappropriately. It is important that there are people nearby who could bring the grieving person out of his state, distract him, and make him think about others who are also experiencing the death of a loved one. There is no need to try to console him, he is now unable to accept your help. At this stage, the person is able to hear the voice of the deceased person, see him in the crowd, but this is all a reaction to what happened, and not a deviation in the psyche.
The second stage is the manifestation of anger. The person believes that what happened was unfair, does not understand why it happened to him, to his family, begins to show his anger towards people who are alive and well, calmly walking down the street, sitting on a bench, communicating, does not understand, why are they alive when his relative is no longer there?
The third stage is a feeling of guilt. A person begins to blame himself for not being attentive enough, behaving incorrectly, or spending little time. For some, this feeling persists throughout their lives.
The fourth stage is a state of depression. The individual no longer has the strength to hide his condition, his emotions. One feels completely exhausted and the person becomes unhappy.
The fifth stage is acceptance. The person finally realizes what exactly happened, the pain becomes less, and the depression slowly goes away. The realization comes that you can now let go of the situation and move on with your life.
The sixth stage is the period of revival. After the death of a loved one, an understanding comes that one needs to live on, accept new conditions, but at the same time the individual withdraws into himself and communicates little with other people. One gets the impression that he is constantly analyzing something. This period can even last up to two years or more.
The seventh stage describes the beginning of a new life. This is a period when the stages of grief are experienced, life is at a new level. Some individuals at this stage are trying to find new friends, change the environment, someone changes their place of residence, work, does everything to ensure that nothing reminds them of the past. For example, the realization may come that the death of her mother was a deliverance for her if the woman had been ill and suffered for a long time before this.

The problem is that not all people are able to go through the seven stages; sometimes they get stuck at the fourth stage, locked in their tragedy. In this situation, you need to contact a psychotherapist. A specialist will help you cope with the current situation and teach you how to overcome depression. A psychotherapist will help you overcome all stages of grief, maintain a healthy psyche, and prevent complications from developing.

The death of a father or mother literally deprives you of support; this is especially difficult for those people for whom family is the most valuable thing in life. For a person, a connection with his mother is the basis for a feeling of inner comfort.

First-person life stories that helped me cope with the death of my mother

I fell out of life for six months after my mother died, then everything was like a fog. They wanted to save me, but I just wanted to see her again. I remember my uncle helped. He just came to our house, took me by the hand and took me out for a walk. We walked in silence for several hours until we were exhausted. The next day I was already a little more alive, during that time some kind of reboot occurred in me.

Milena Rimskaya

Maria Lebedeva

I don’t remember my mother’s funeral; I lost her early – I wasn’t even 15 years old. I went to a psychologist, but my grandmother helped me - she brought me to the cemetery so that I could talk to my mother, see the grave, and say goodbye. It was hard, but at that moment I realized that life goes on, we have to live.

Signs of Depression

The fact that depression has set in after the death of a relative is evidenced by the presence of the following manifestations:

the world is seen as black, in shades of gray;
no interests;
thoughts only about the deceased person;
food is consumed automatically;
may suffer from insomnia, nightmares;
increased anxiety;
thoughts about one's own death;
melancholy is constantly present;
the person feels guilty;
concentration is noticeably reduced, the person is unable to concentrate on anything;
his motor skills and thinking become inhibited;
there is slowness of speech;
feeling of emptiness and worthlessness;
lack of social contacts, desire to be alone;
apathy;
changes in behavior that are manifested by special oddities, for example, vagrancy;
hallucinations may occur;
a person stops taking care of himself;
physical weakness and fatigue are felt;
the individual becomes sedentary;
there is a constant expectation that something bad will happen;
a feeling of physical pain, which is unfounded by any disease, is a psychosomatic manifestation;
Excessive sweating, tachycardia, and possible arrhythmia may be observed.

If these manifestations persist for three months or longer, then a diagnosis of depression is made. This state will be especially profound if the individual was present at the death of his loved one.

The following signs may indicate a condition that requires mandatory treatment:

lack of acceptance of death;
disappearance of goals in life;
shock after the death of a loved one;
inability to trust someone;
numbness (for example, can be observed when a child dies).

How to feel love again

Cheryl was obsessed with the events that occurred between her mother's first heart attack and her death. “I feel like I should have done more for Mom,” she sighed. Cheryl spoke with difficulty, as if there was a lump in her throat. Together we “reduced” the levels of anxiety that were blocking her feelings, and soon Cheryl began to experience searing rage. She described in detail every medication her mother took and every doctor's visit, especially the ones she missed.

As a nurse, Cheryl felt she should have known more, but she was a pediatric nurse so she didn't know much about heart disease in adults. Cheryl never talked to her mother about death - she was afraid that “it would ruin karma.” They superstitiously believed that mentioning “dead” words would awaken the bad gods, who would then take her mother to themselves. They discussed the upcoming vacation, plans for Christmas, but never even mentioned the possibility of death.

Since I couldn't imagine Cheryl's mother or them together, I asked her to bring photographs. She took a whole “family set”: funny pictures of herself and her brothers as children, her mother’s favorite brooch and shawl. It all lay on her lap as she told me family stories about vacations in Jamaica. I felt that Cheryl was very proud of her mother and her hard work to give her children everything. Cheryl's eyes sparkled as she told the story.

Suddenly she lifted the shawl and inhaled its scent: it shocked her. Tears flowed down my cheeks. Cheryl buried her face in the shawl, inhaled the smell, cried and wiped away her tears with a rhythmic movement every couple of minutes. The smell of her mother's perfume transported her back to the days when she sat on her mother's lap and sang against her chest.

After this incident, our work flowed much easier and faster. Cheryl only attended six sessions, but that was enough. It was as if she was waiting for someone to open it. She rediscovered the mother she loved with all her heart. “I thought that if I blocked my love, I would block the pain... it prevented me from living...” Cheryl shared. “Once upon a time I lost myself, but now I have found myself.”

Treatment

A person may have difficulty overcoming depression due to the following circumstances:

thanatophobia occurs;
pain from interruption of emotional connection;
lack of feeling of security;
strong confidence in one's guilt;
resentment towards the person who left and left the grieving person;
misunderstanding why this happened and the loved one is now gone.

Then you can’t cope without the help of a doctor. Psychotherapy sessions have proven themselves the most. However, in very advanced or profound conditions, medications may be prescribed, namely:

antidepressants;
neuroleptics;
tranquilizers.

The doctor may also prescribe:

a course of vitamin therapy;
physiotherapy;
nootropic drugs.

The doctor also advises to follow the correct daily routine and not break it.

Grief for mother's love

I learned that Cheryl always obeyed her mother. “We were a model family that only looks good from the outside,” she said. “In fact, mom rarely showed love.” Her mother went to church, had high expectations for her children (there were three of them), and forced them to do well in school. “She died quite sadly,” Cheryl said. “She was of the old school and proud of herself all her life, but she died in the arms of doctors. If she was on your side, you felt militant love. But she didn't share her problems. She said: “I don’t like people who poke their nose into my affairs.” She just lived her life."

It was very difficult for Cheryl's mother. She suffered enough as a child without receiving her mother's love. I began to understand the reasons for her rigidity: it was a necessary survival mechanism. In our sessions, we acknowledged that Cheryl loved and respected her mother, but also grieved for the mother she wished she had had: a more loving, more empathetic one.

Sometimes Cheryl would emerge from her pod and become cheerful, especially when talking about her 14-year-old son Jackson. Then she looked into my eyes and smiled. I felt her great love for him. Like many mothers, it was hard for her to see her son upset about his grandmother's death. It seemed unbearable to her. Cheryl intuitively felt that she had to relieve her son of sadness so that he would “be okay,” as her mother told her. We have recognized that this maternal reassurance instinct is often hard-wired into women, but it has the downside that it suppresses difficult feelings in children.

Adviсe

It is important to enlist the support of loved ones to survive this grief

After the death of a husband or someone close, it is important to remain among people; it is unacceptable to be alone with your loneliness. Don't interfere, don't resist her.
Be sad with them, remember how good the deceased was, but there is no need to grieve for him, realize that now he is better than he was on earth.
If it’s very difficult, cry, pour out your soul.
Try to throw yourself into your work so that all your thoughts are occupied.
It is unacceptable to abuse sedatives or try to drown your grief in alcohol.
Try to get rid of things that may remind you of the deceased; you can simply put them in a far corner or distribute them to those in need.
Try to pour out all your suffering on a piece of paper, re-read and analyze them, do not allow the development of feelings of guilt, you are not to blame for anything.
If you feel that you didn’t have time to say something, to thank, write a letter on a piece of paper, pour out everything that has accumulated in your soul, everything that you wanted and did not have time to say to your loved one. After writing, you can burn it.
Try to switch to some activity, remember what you have been interested in for a long time, perhaps there is some hobby that you have already forgotten about. Try switching to it.
If you are plagued by frequent panic attacks or severe pain, then you need to learn breathing exercises to calm down or practice meditation.
Try to gather all your will into a fist, lead your usual lifestyle, perform everyday tasks, go to work. Surely, the deceased person still has unfinished business, try to finish them.

Now you know the answer to the question of how to cope with depression after the loss of a loved one. Each of us faces such losses, some earlier, some later, the main thing is to be able to survive this state, to find the strength to live on. You need to realize that time really heals and sooner or later the understanding will come that the person is now in a better place, and you need to move on with your life. Understand that living in the past will not help your development, you will simply withdraw and bury yourself alive. Is this what the person about whom you are now suffering so much wanted?

With death, life ends, but communication is not interrupted

It's not easy to be separated from those we love. Under any circumstances, the loss of a loved one is a great grief.

Amy Green, M.D., M.D., director of the Center for Spiritual Care at the Cleveland Clinic (USA), notes that with death, life ends, but communication does not end.

Adapting to a new reality takes time and is unpredictable. Grief is a unique process, just as every grieving person is unique.

At times, emotions are hidden behind a feeling of detachment. And sometimes you feel that everything inside you is shrinking. It also happens that you have a desire to smash into pieces everything that surrounds you. Other times you may feel something like peace.

That's why, as Dr. Amy Greene notes, it's important to be patient. Everyone has their own unique way of coping with bereavement. . Often people who are close to you do not understand what grief is and what it means to grieve

They may advise you to get busy. But often this simply postpones the emotional experiences that we all must go through.

Often people who are close to you do not understand what grief is and what it means to grieve. They may advise you to get busy. But often this simply postpones the emotional experiences that we all must go through.

We live in a culture in which a person is expected to quickly deal with grief, as if it were one of the obstacles in his life's journey. We just want to rise above it. But the truth is, says Amy Greene, that it's normal for anyone grieving to feel for long periods of time as if their whole world has turned upside down.

Be patient with the people around you who have good intentions but sometimes do not understand how the grieving person truly feels. It is difficult for the average person who has not been trained in how to help people through grief to understand that grief is a multi-step process. After all, mental and spiritual work, which psychologists call the work of sadness, unfolds gradually and in stages.