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| The Crying Game
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| The loss of a loved one can feel overwhelming especially when emotions are raw. There is no time limit on sorrow. But sometimes mourning can be complicated enough to consume the mourner—at what point does grief become despair?
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Intense feelings of grief from which there seems no escape are familiar to those who have experienced death in its cruelest form. Someone who accidentally causes the death of a loved one, for example, may never know peace of mind again.
Any disturbing loss has the potential to produce complex grief, a clinical condition that affects an estimated 10 per cent of the population. These are the people exposed to murder, suicide, accident, or any extenuating circumstance associated with death.
Grief is more pronounced due to the traumatic nature of what’s transpired.
“You have extra issues resulting in more intense feelings,” says Helen Fitzgerald, director of training at the American Hospice Foundation in Washington DC
(www.americanhospice.org).
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“In the case of violent deaths, such as a murder, or a plane crash for that matter, people often find they have this picture of what happened in their head, and it keeps appearing. It’s a horrible problem. They try blanking it out, but it intrudes upon every aspect of their life. Eventually their relationships are ruined. Their spouse leaves them, and their children flee. There’s a lot of isolation for these poor folks. Complex grief can destroy a person.”
Complex grief is often described as a prolonged period of mourning, but that’s a superficial characterization. As suggested by its name, it’s about complications, such as those arising when feelings of guilt, anger, regret or shock are involved.
A nightmarish element is almost always present whenever a case of complex grief is diagnosed. Fitzgerald is quick to cite examples: The young man who backed his car over his four year-old brother killing him; the mother who lost her baby in a scalding tub of water, and the women who discovered the body of her brother a week after his death during a heat wave.
“She was sent to me by her psychiatrist,” reports Fitzgerald, “because she needed to talk about what she saw, and what she smelled…She had to purge herself of that image.”
Fitzgerald recommends those burdened with a horrifying image of a loved one’s death write about their feelings or draw a picture of what they see.
Taking a powerful, internal image and externalizing it has proven to be an effective but controversial means of therapy. Many psychiatrists consider it a dangerous tactic, one that may reinforce the image and further intensify feelings.
Fitzgerald thinks there are benefits to be derived from the retelling of traumatic experiences:
“I start from the beginning and have people tell me their story. Afterwards I look for some technique to resolve their problem. If they are experiencing feelings of guilt I might have them write a letter to the person who died. We might go to the gravesite and they’ll read it out loud. Occasionally I have people write on helium balloons and release their story, particularly if there is guilt or anger that needs to be released. The helium balloon acts in a very symbolic sort of way. Crying has always been regarded as a sign of weakness, but I teach people the opposite, that it takes courage to cry, and that it’s a sign of strength.”
According to Fitzgerald, verbalizing grief is the first step towards resolving it. She always acts as a listener whenever she’s counseling the bereaved. Her other mantra is to provide a calm, and warm environment for those desperate to unburden themselves.
Dead End:
The following is a sampling of symptoms Fitzgerald identifies as common to those suffering from complex grief:
- Recurring recollections of the death that disrupt your work, home life and leisure time.
- Recurring nightmares of the event.
- Flashbacks and hallucinations.
- Intense anxiety whenever you hear of a similar event.
- Avoidance of any activities or situations that would remind you of the death.
- Preoccupation with the death many months after it occurred.
- Extreme idealizing of the deceased.
- Lack of recall, blank spots in your memory.
- A significant decrease in your interest in normal activities at home or at work.
- Depression combined with increased feelings of sadness, loneliness and hopelessness.
- Detachment and withdrawal from other people in your life.
- Feelings of “survivor guilt” and perhaps self-destructive or self-defeating behavior.
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