We have all lost someone or something in our life. You might have lost a friend or a relative, either through death or separation. You might also have lost an object, like loosing a job, or material possession through theft or a tragedy. We also feel a great sense of loss when we are diagnosed with terminal illness like cancer or when someone goes to a vct and turns hiv positive. We go through looses in different ways. After a loss, we go through grief. In this first part, i’ll discuss with you some of the stages we go through when we lose someone or something.
Loss is defined as the expereince of having something taken from you or destroyed.
Grief is the deep sadness we feel when we have lost something or someone, especially when bereaved.
The following are some of the emotions we go through when experiencing a loss.
1. Shock and denial
Denial means a condition in which someone will not admit that something sad, painful, etc, is true or real.
Shock is a sudden or a violent mental or emotional disturbance.
Shock and denial can help us through the time of the loss. It helps us dissociate ourselves from the pain of the loss at that particular time. Shock is experienced differently by different people. Some people are dazed for days without saying a word, some people loose sleep, some people scream and wail for days, and some people collapse and faint. At that particular moment, our minds cannot wrap itself around the news.
Denial on the other hand is the conscious choice our mind makes to refuse the current loss. We might refuse to agree that the relationship is over, or the breakup has happened, that it was probably a prank. We might refuse that the close person that we held dear is dead, or the doctors report was faulty. We move a head with our daily routine like nothing has happened. In times of loss, denial might help to forget and deal with say, burial preparations, or accomplishing our daily routines.
2. Anger, pain and regret.
Anger is a strong feeling of being upset or annoyed because of something wrong or bad
Pain means, mental or emotional suffering
Regret means, a feeling of sadness or disappointment about something you did or did not do.
We go through the pain of the loss. Sometimes the pain is so unbearable and it cannot be explained, it is unlike anything else. Sometimes we can see and observe it in tragic situations and looses that we have gone through. Imagine the pain felt by parents when their child dies, imagine the pain a person feels when they experience a breakup, imagine the pain a child goes through when they loose a parent. It is unlike anything else. It is like a death by a thousand cuts.
The pain is followed by anger. Anger is directed and focused in three ways. Anger can be directed towards God. During the time of loss we direct our anger towards God, we wonder why He could not protect the person we lost, or wonder why He could not protect the object we lost, or wonder why He allowed the disease. For this reason, it is not usually advisable to bring God in the conversation until later, because of the anger directed towards Him, unless the victim mentions it.
Secondly, anger is directed towards self. We might get angry at ourselves especially when we feel that we failed to play our roles to the best of out abilities. “I should have” “I could have” phrases consume our thoughts, and we feel guilty, that somehow we contributed to the loss. A person may feel angry at themselves if they turn HIV positive, feeling that they should have tested before having sex, they should have used a condom… A person may get angry at themselves when a relationship ends, feeling that, they should have been a better patner or should have not gotten into the relationship in the first place. A person may feel angry at themselves for not taking their loved ones to the best hospital when they were sick.
Finally anger may be directed towards others. We might blame the doctors or the hospital when we loose someone under the care of a doctor. We might blame the other person when a relationship ends. One might blame the other person for infecting them, and focus their anger towards them. One might blame the security agents when they become victims of a theft..
Regret comes in when we feel that we should have done better to avoid the loss but we did not. Because we feel guilty for somehow contributing to the loss, we are greatly consumed with regret. Imagine loosing a loved one in the hospital, one might feel guilty for not taking them to a private hospital, feeling that if they were in a private hospital with better facility they would be alive. Imagine a person who looses his/her phone in a downtown area, they may regret for ever going to that place. Imagine going through a painful breakup, one might regret ever dating that person. Regret comes when we feel like we should have done better to avoid the situation.
3. Bargain.
Bargain means, an agreement between people or groups when they say that they will do or give something in exchange of something else.
Bargain is wishing for an exchange of the current feeling of loss and going back to ‘as if’ it had never happened. Bargain may be directed towards God or to some, it is directed towards the universe. “God if you bring back so and so… Or if you bring back this and that… Then I will do this and that, or I will be a better person.” No one ever wants to go through loss and go through the pain of the loss. We become economists at this moment, exchanging with a higher power, taking away the pain for the exchange of better behaviour. Imagine a mother pleading with God to bring their child back to life, if He does, then she will give to the church. Imagine a young man who is just told that he is HIV positive pleading with God to make him negative, then he will stop abusing alcohol and he will stop having multiple sexual partners…
Most of the moments, the bargain does not pay off, the loss still continues, and that leads to depression.
Note: when most people go through a painful loss, and they blame God for the loss, directing anger toward God, then bargaining with God for an exchange and it does not happen, it has been known to lead many people to denounce their belief in God and many have become ethiests.
4. Depression and loneliness.
Depression is a serious medical condition in which a person feels very sad, hopeless, and unimportant and often is unable to live in a normal way.
Loneliness is a causing sad feeling that comes from being apart from a person or other people.
People experience depression differently. Some people may sleep for days without getting out of bed, some people may have suicidal thoughts, some people may become alcoholics or addicted to other drugs, some people may loose appetite or some may eat a lot, some people may be isolated from others and have a solitude life, and some may be unkempt and loose their hygiene… Depression comes when it hits us that the loss has happened and there is nothing we can do about it.
Sometimes depression is coupled with denial and this can lead to hallucinations. A mother may expereince a tragic loss of her children, after going through the burial and all, she might say that she is seeing her children, they came to visit her the other day, she went to visit them the other day or she can hear them tell her things. When one reaches this stage, an intervention either by a counsellor or a psychiatrist has to happen.
Loneliness comes in when we feel separated with the objects or the person we loved. When we are no longer with the loved one who we saw or talked to everyday we feel the loneliness, when we no longer have the objects that we were so attached to we feel lonely. For example, when a person looses their job which they have had for the last 10 years, then they may feel lonely. When a man or a woman looses a spouse they feel lonely. They imagine that they will never sleep together, they will never eat together, they will never shop together or raise the children together. This brings a great deal of loneliness.
Depreseion and loneliness comes in because of the attachment to the objects that we have lost. When we loose someone or something, a part of us goes with them, and it creates a void inside us that is sometimes irreplaceable.
5. Acceptance.
Acceptance is the final step. It may take different durations of times depending with the person, the social support, availability of help and their built in ressilience to deal and cope with a loss.
Acceptance comes when someone is no longer shocked, has accepted the loss, has dealt with anger, guilt and regret, is no longer bargaining and has dealt with depression. Acceptance is a daily process. It does not involve forgetting the person or the object you have lost, but remembering them without them eliciting the negative emotions. It involves celebrating who they were and the much they contributed to our lives. It involves us taking back the parts of us that was lost with them
In the next article, i’ll share with you how to overcome and deal with grief.
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