How To Know If You Have Gone From Normal Grief To Pathological Grief
The loss of a loved one carries a psychological impact that is almost always accompanied by emotional pain. Even when in the first minutes after hearing the news of the death one does not react by expressing feelings in a very intense way, this ends up happening sooner or later in the following hours or days.
All of this is natural: feeling extremely sad about the death of a father, sister or daughter is something to be expected and does not indicate the presence of a psychological disorder. However, this discomfort can develop so much that it ends up leading to a real problem.
We will talk precisely about this topic in the next paragraphs: about how knowing when you go from normal grief to pathological grief
In the field of psychology, grief is a phenomenon characterized by a series of sensations and behaviors linked to psychological discomfort that appear after or shortly after after becoming aware of the loss of something with which we experienced a strong emotional connection emotional or even love.
This means that although grief typically occurs when learning that a friend or family member has died, it can also arise in a wide variety of situations: suffering an amputation, moving and losing daily contact with friends, feeling like you are getting older. quickly, when parting with a car we have had since our youth, etc.
After a while, people They get used to living in a world in which that or those they miss no longer exist except as memories , they turn the page and learn to have the ability to feel joy and, in general, to be happy. In this way, normal grief (which occurs in the vast majority of cases and leads to a phase of recovery and disappearance of symptoms) can be expressed through these typical symptoms:
crying crisis
It is very common to experience moments in which you cannot stop crying for several minutes.
Yearning
The person’s thoughts are focused on the remembrance of past experiences with that person or object that has been lost and that is missed. Many times memories are mixed with imagination.
To feel down
In general, little motivation is experienced to engage in tasks even though some people try to focus on an activity to avoid thinking about what makes them sad.
Irregular sleep pattern
People who are going through a normal stage of grief frequently report problems sleeping within the normal schedule, either because they take a long time to fall asleep or because they fall asleep quickly due to exhaustion but wake up too early or several times during the night. .
The transition from normal grief to pathological grief: how to recognize it
Now that we know in general terms what grief is, let’s look at a series of key ideas to recognize those moments in which normal grief transforms into pathological grief. It must be taken into account that These are only indicative guidelines and the true diagnosis can only be carried out by mental health professionals in both psychology and psychiatry.
In any case, it must be specified that although we refer to this phenomenon as “pathological crying”, this does not mean that it is an event that occurs in isolation in the person, just as it could occur with bleeding from a real wound, Nor does it mean that someone who suffers this emotional alteration is a “crazy” person, much less a person who will remain that way all their life.
1. Crying attacks are uncontrollable and do not go away
When after about two weeks the crying attacks occur almost every day and are totally uncontrollable, so occur involuntarily and unexpectedly Even in a business meeting or when picking up the children from school, we may be facing pathological grief that requires professional attention.
2. Recurring sleeping problems
If after two weeks there are problems sleeping every night, this may be harming us physically and psychologically and therefore may be a sign that the grief is following an excessively intense and harmful course.
3. Suicide ideas appear
Suicidal ideation is always a warning sign that reveals the presence of possible psychological complications capable of evolving into a mental disorder. Of course, This depends on the emotional charge of those thoughts : Thinking about suicide as an abstract concept is not the same as imagining oneself committing suicide, fantasizing about the different alternatives in which one can take one’s life, and even searching on the Internet for ways to do so so that death is quick and painless. .
4. Social relationships begin to be damaged
Everyone understands that in a phase of grief it is normal to seek a certain degree of solitude (although in some cases the opposite is sought). However, if this isolation lasts several weeks and the attitude towards others is one of indifference or hostility we are facing one of the symptoms of pathological grief.
The main recommendation to follow in case you suspect that you are experiencing pathological grief is that you go to the psychologist In fact, this is something that can also be done in the case of normal grief, taking into account that the benefits of psychotherapy are noticeable whether or not there is an emotional alteration that can be considered a disorder.
But the importance of receiving professional help becomes more evident when grief intensely damages our quality of life and threatens to become chronic discomfort. In these cases, Quickly tackling this phenomenon helps us avoid going through very painful experiences and that our state of sadness and longing affects other areas of our lives for months.
At the Psicode Psychology Institute it is common to provide treatment to people who are going through too intense grief, and that is why we know that without the right tools it is perfectly possible to go from believing oneself condemned to unhappiness, at first, to accepting the loss and continuing. forward with a constructive mentality, after going through therapy.
