Grief therapy: most effective psychological treatment for loss

Sooner or later we go through the painful experience of losing a loved one. We know, but that does not subtract pain, anguish and sadness from the situation. We know it, but we are not really prepared for the death of a person we love. We then enter a delicate moment that will lead us to overcome that death, that goodbye or that absence, but not before overcoming the duel itself. Grief therapy in psychology consists of a series of strategies that will help us get out of the path of pain towards complete overcoming. In short, it is the most effective psychological treatment for loss. In this article we tell you what it consists of.

Grief and the need for psychological treatment to overcome it

• Getting over someone’s death is not forgetting it. Go ahead with this idea because many times we ourselves insist on clinging to the pain of loss, we get stuck in mourning because it seems to us that overcoming grief or overcoming the death of a person is equivalent to forgetting it. And it’s not like that at all. We must not forget anyone; we must learn to live without the physical presence of that person.
• When we lose someone, everything we feel is normal, no matter how much those feelings and emotions are unknown to us or seem too intense to us. We face a tremendous emotional blow, so it is not uncommon for this death to become a traumatic experience in our lives and not let us continue.
• That the mourning period is heartbreaking or we know it or we imagine it perfectly. These are delicate moments in which we have to rearrange our emotions and also our daily routines. We have a void in our lives and we must learn that this void does not become a lacerating wound for life. It is the difference between normal mourning and pathological mourning.
• Because many people, caught up in this devastating experience of losing a loved one, stay in the grief, do not allow themselves to get out of it or cannot do it without help. It is when that pain becomes chronic, when some time has passed after the death of that person and they have not been able to recover their life, their routines, their daily activities. When they get trapped in pain, in anguish, in despair, in a state that, if prolonged in time, leads directly to depression.

The stages of grieving after the death of a loved one

The duel must be passed. They are complicated moments and without a limited duration because each person takes a different time. These are moments in which sadness mixes with anger, despair with confusion, anguish with impotence. Anxiety will be present at all times, as well as physical and mental exhaustion.

The objective of mourning is to restore ourselves, to recover from the blow that we have just received with the death of a loved one. And, for this reason, you have to go through all the stages of mourning. And because it is something so complicated, it is not strange that we have to ask for help. Do you know what stages the duel has?

• The first reaction to the death of a loved one, even in cases where we might expect it after a long illness, is disbelief. We deny it because we cannot accept it yet, because we are not ready to face reality.
• anger _ Anger, anger or rage make their appearance in a kind of internal fight. Because the loss seems unfair to us, because it seems unfair to us that that person has left our lives.
• In the midst of all this hurricane of emotions, a curious reaction appears in which we try to imagine different scenarios with a different ending. We look for solutions to avoid the inevitable, because we can no longer do absolutely anything to change what has happened.
• Depression comes when we begin to be aware of the loss and the impact it is having and will have on our lives. The idea of ​​moving on without that person is unbearable and sadness is present 24 hours a day. It is very important to overcome this phase of mourning with professional help so as not to stay in it.
• When leaving the phase of depression comes acceptance. A loved one has died and there is no going back. The situation is not reversible and we begin to understand that we must move on, but how? The search for solutions can keep us busy until we find the key.

What is Grief Therapy and what is its effectiveness?

1. We insist that, so that grief does not become pathological, professional help is necessary. Rogers defends that “given some basic conditions by the therapist, the client enters into an introspection of himself and finds the necessary resources to face his conflict” (mentioned in Jordi Gil Baquero’s Doctoral Thesis ‘ Mourning in a society globalized ‘ for the University of the Balearic Islands). But what is the most effective psychological treatment for loss? Grief therapy.
2. The objective of Grief Therapy is that we do not stay in any of these stages, especially in that of depression. And that we come to accept the death of that person. We still have a long way to go, but the most difficult part, that of going through a healthy duel, we already have it done.
3. There is one aspect to work on in particular and it is the feeling of guilt, which can appear in any of the phases of the duel and also later, once the duel is over. It is inevitable to think that we could have done something more to avoid that death, that if we had done or said such or such a thing, that person would continue with us.
4. And you also feel a lot of guilt for all those things that were left unsaid, for thinking that we could have spent more time with that person, have said “I love you” more times, or have made better use of the relationship. Grief Therapy also helps us overcome that feeling of guilt.
5. Grief Therapy works with different strategies to help us get rid of the pain and so that we can transform the pain of loss, which blocks and paralyzes us, into a memory that accompanies us the rest of the way. A memory that can serve as motivation to move forward and welcome it as a non-physical company but one that is found in the heart.
6. We have to readjust to normal life in an exceptional circumstance. That absence does not limit us, that loss does not prevent us from functioning with a certain normality. Although all in due time and all gradually. Gradually we will also begin to incorporate activities into our daily lives, perhaps discovering new hobbies, but in any case, we are on our way to feeling capable of doing rewarding activities.
7. This therapy emphasizes the right we have to be happy despite the death of that important person. Therapy will help us express what we feel at all times in relation to the loss and in relation to ourselves and it is also the moment to resolve doubts, to relate to other people who have also suffered the loss, to support each other and to gradually recover the normal rhythm.
8. Nothing will be normal after that loss, but we must recover the functioning of our lives. With Grief Therapy we can integrate the memory of the person who has died as part of our personal history and turn that memory into something positive. And from there, we still have a little more to go until we manage to overcome the duel, which will be when we can once again enjoy the day to day without regrets, make plans again and believe in the future again.