Bereavement

Bereavement

The idea of death is usually unbearable, which is why we avoid thinking about it and we are always caught unprepared for it, no matter how old we are when we face it. When we lose someone we love, we feel sorrow, melancholy, loneliness, anxiety, lack of interest in doing what used to make us happy. We grieve for ourselves, for the disruption of our daily routine, for our inability to make plans for the future without being able to include in them the person that is no longer in our lives.

In the period just after we have suffered a loss, a simple stimulus can easily stir up memories and emotions. We easily submerge in other thoughts or start crying. We mourn over a part of our souls, a part of our lives. Mourning is much different than bereavement. Specific conditions, age and other factors play a very important role in bereavement. Bereavement includes the denial that we experience at first, the mourning for what has happened to us, fury about the person responsible (if any), about life or fate and finally, the acceptance of the fact.

Every person bereaves differently, which accounts for the difficulty in defining or analysing bereavement. It depends on different mental sensibility, perception and interpretation of death, even if it concerns the same social status. When bereavement exceeds anticipated limits and is the source of anxiety, depression, and phobias and in general prevents us from functioning like normal people, then we need to seek professional help, which will help us overcome our fear and concerns.