Dear Friends,
I need to begin today by making a very important distinction which is misunderstood by most of the rest of society. Sadness is what we feel when we lose, for example, an aging parent. Even though the loss is forever and the pain may be quite intense, even impairing our functioning for a while, this type of loss is integrated relatively quickly. This is what about 85% of all survivors experience.
But traumatic grief, often also called complicated grief, or traumatic bereavement which I prefer, is quite different – and experienced only by about 15% of survivors. There are other terms out there as well such as “pathological grief”, used with relish by many mental health and other health care professionals. But I do not like any term which implies there being “something wrong” with the person. How are we to respond to the untimely death of a spouse or partner, child, parent, sibling or other loved one? Or their violent death such as in an accident, through suicide, or homicide? Or to having participated in the terminal care of a loved one, possibly also involving an Intensive Care Unit?
These are all traumatic experiences and traumatic losses. The symptoms of trauma, possibly depression, anxiety and thoughts of one’s own death I see in my practice to me are “normal reactions to an abnormal experience.” Our brains are not “programmed” to handle such events and go into a protective mode which leads to thoughts, feelings and behavior unfamiliar to us.
This is what this blog is all about – the 15% of traumatized survivors. And the gulf between them and the rest of the world, basically insurmountable through our common means of communication. Because the extreme pain of a traumatic loss can not be imagined by those who have not been there, and our language lacks the expressive dimension adequate to transmit what we are going through.
Dr. Weide
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Tomorrow: No, learning to live better with traumatic grief is not an act of will! A response to an article in the Washington Post Magazine.
Tags: bereavement, death, grief, grief counseling, grief group, grief support, mourning, weide
