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Grief is normal human response to loss. As well as being a response to the death or loss of loved ones – people or pets – grief can be a response to the loss of anyone or anything that we have had an emotional attachment to. Grief – profound feelings of loss – can be a response to a range of life changes – to divorce, family moving away, the loss of a job, or loss of a social group. It can also be a response to the diagnosis of a health problem, which results in a change in autonomy, identity, and/or physical appearance.

How we each manage and cope with grief is influenced by gender, cultural, philosophical, and spiritual beliefs. As well as being a cognitive and emotional response, grief is also experienced physically. Physical aches and pains such as chest pain or aching are common, as are feelings of being unable to breathe. Feelings can vary in intensity over time.

Emotional responses:

 Deep despair that is triggered easily by reminders

 Fearing harm to oneself and others, fearing a repeat of a similar loss

 Fear of being left alone

 Fear of breaking down, or losing control

 Anxiety

 Intense sadness, crying and sobbing

 Anger

 Mood swings

 Helplessness/powerlessness

 Shock, numbness, a sense of things being ‘unreal’ or ‘surreal’

 Sense of longing

 Feeling let down and abandoned

 Guilt or shame

 Spiritual beliefs may be challenged

 Sense of ‘what's the point’, meaninglessness of life

 Feeling suicidal, sometimes wanting to join the person who has died

 Loss of perspective on other life issues.

How you might behave:

 Withdrawing from close family and friends

 Being aggressive to others/argumentative

 Impulsiveness

 Inability to talk about other subjects, constantly returning to issues of loss

 Inability to concentrate on daily tasks

 ‘Ignoring grief' and ‘pushing through it’

 Refusal to get up from bed

 Impatience with self and others

 Using or increase in use of alcohol, recreational drugs, cigarettes.

In terms of that horrific pain and inability to see that life will ever be the same again – yes grief does end. Do you get over grief? Absolutely you do – with love. Is there joy? Absolutely. But in those early days I never thought grief would end. In my case, it took quite a period of time. Those first 5 years. . .grief is very shocking. I miss her every single day.

Joely Richardson. Actor

Although Joely says, that for her, ‘grief does end’, many people experience the death of a loved one and subsequent feelings of grief differently. Their description is that they learn to live without their loved one and find a ‘new kind of normal’ in their lives. It has been described by some as a ‘slow healing quarry of grief’.

The grief is not always present for them, but there are times that, as one person has said, ‘I drop into my grief, with the same intensity, as if it happened yesterday’.