Types Of Grief And Their Characteristics

In the first instance, we will see the definition of duel according to the Royal Spanish Academy.

What is grief

As we find in the RAE, this term can have different meanings:

1. Pain, pity, affliction or feeling.
2. Demonstrations that are made to express the feeling one has for someone’s death.
3. Gathering of relatives, friends or guests who attend the mortuary house, the transport of the body to the cemetery or the funeral.
4. There is another sense of mourning, at least in Spanish, which refers to challenge, combat between two, which some authors have wanted to relate to the elaboration of mourning and the challenge posed by the organization of the personality of the mourner.

Next, we leave you a list with the different duels which an individual can experience and which, later, we will define in greater detail. However, it should be noted that any type of grief that does not follow a healthy process will be known as pathological grief since it causes the person who suffers it to develop a pathology.

List of types of grief:

1. Anticipated
2. Chronic
3. Absent or late
4. Frozen or inhibited
5. Unauthorized
6. Distorted
7. Ambiguous
8. Exaggerated or euphoric
9. Masked
10. In boys and girls
11. Psychiatric

The person who experiences this type of grief has begun to feel the pain of loss even when it has not occurred as such. The subject is aware that he is going to experience this loss irremediably within a short period of time, so he begins to experience all the psychological processes in an anticipatory manner. It is characteristic in subjects who have relatives with diseases in terminal phases.

Subjects carry the pain of loss for many years, causing feelings of hopelessness to be established within. They are characterized by being practically incapable of rebuilding their lives, but rather, they remain completely stuck in the past. His life revolves around the deceased person.

The death of the person with whom I know I am emotionally linked due to a unfounded hope of return. Subjects with this type of grief usually suffer intense clinical symptoms of anxiety since the evolution of normal grief is arrested in the first phase.

Also known by experts as postponed duel. People who have suffered a loss do not show signs of pain or affectation during the initial phases of grief. The person is considered to have seen their dull emotions presenting a difficulty in expressing them and reacting to said loss.

This grief is suffered by peers whose Babies have died during the perinatal phase. It differs from the rest of mourning in the temporal proximity between birth and death. People who experience this type of grief are usually characterized by behaviors of shock, insensibility, daze and difficulties in achieving normal functioning.

It manifests itself in individuals who suffer from it as a disproportionate reaction to loss Well, normally, it usually happens when the person has recently experienced grief and, unfortunately, finds themselves facing a new grief situation.

Within this duel, we can find two different manifestations:

• In the first of them, the subject is aware that the person is physically absent, but not psychologically. It is characteristic in those cases in which It is not known if the person is alive or dead but simply disappeared.
• It is certainly the opposite. People consider individuals physically present, but psychologically absent. Considered very common in relatives of older people with dementia.

This type of grief can be expressed or experienced in three different ways:

• Characterized by a intense reaction to loss of the loved one.
• Denying death of the person, so the individual will act as if they were still alive.
• Accepting the death of the person, but with the certainty that it has benefited his person.

Certain symptoms develop in the person who has suffered the loss (somatizations ) which produce difficulties and suffering, however, these are not associated by the person with the loss of the person with whom they had the link.

This type of grief It depends on the age of the minor, since, as a result, they will or will not have a certain understanding of the situation they are experiencing.

If they are around the two years the infant perceives the feeling of separation from the person who has died, however, they do not understand the meaning of death, since they do not have the concept of death as such in their resources.

Starting from four to six years old They, more or less, begin to develop a limited understanding of death. Many of these believe that a person who has died will be able to come back to life later. At this stage, a child who is grieving may regress in the control of some behaviors, such as toilet training.

Already between six and nine years old They can understand what death is and its consequences. However, we must act with caution because at this age feelings of guilt can develop at the slightest.

Here you can see the symptoms and treatment of pathological grief in children.

This grief develops true psychiatric disorders in the subject, which can be:

• Hysterical: the person identifies with the deceased, presenting the same symptoms that led to his death.
• Obsessive: They end up developing severe and prolonged depression which is based on the guilt that the person feels.
• Maniac: alternates symptoms of complete psychomotor excitement and explosive humor with depressive symptoms.

In the following article you will find more information about the grieving processes in the face of significant losses.

This article is merely informative, at PsychologyFor we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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