What is the Grieving Process Like in Complicated Relationships?

One of the characteristics of the psychological grief that people go through after losing someone they love is, as a general rule, the feeling that what you experienced with the other person is an unfinished story. That is, a narrative that has not had a true outcome.

And even the relatives of a very old person or someone who has been very ill for years tend to experience the death of that loved one as a false closure, a hasty and “artificial” way of ending the journey of that person. relationship.

However, when grief is caused by the fact of losing someone important to oneself but with whom one has had a complicated and emotionally ambivalent relationship, this distressing experience is even more intensified. This is partly why, although it may seem like a paradox, grief can be more painful when you lose someone with whom you did not maintain an emotional bond based solely and clearly on pure love.

In this article we will a review of the characteristics of psychological grief in complicated relationships and its implications in psychotherapy.

What is grief?

Let’s start by focusing on the concept of psychological grief. What is it? In short, it is the psychological state of discomfort that appears after an event that we interpret as a loss of someone or something that was important to us: a house, a job, the university environment, one’s own beauty, a pet, an object with sentimental value because of what it symbolizes, or, in the clearest cases, a friend, a family member or a partner.

Thus, it can be said that psychological grief is the consequence of “leaving behind” something or someone with whom we were united by a strong positive emotional bond. It is a consequence, in part, of the problems of adapting to a new reality in which we no longer have access to that person or element that is so important to us, and of the challenge of emotionally managing the memories of what united us with that loved one. , place, physical feature or object.

Some of the most common experiences linked to grief are the following:

In most cases, Grief produces intense discomfort, but as the weeks go by it becomes more bearable. until there comes a point where it no longer significantly damages the quality of life of those who have been suffering from it; However, in some cases it acquires psychopathological characteristics and it becomes necessary to go to psychotherapy.

Main characteristics of grief after a complicated relationship

Before we have seen that grief occurs when we encounter a situation in which we disconnect with a person, animal or aspect of daily life with which we felt very close, so that this loss overwhelms us emotionally because that bond was based on pleasant or exciting emotions that we usually associate with the “positive” side of life: the pleasure of having dinner with a boyfriend or girlfriend, Christmas with grandma, the experience of playing with our pet… However, this is only half true.

Sometimes, it is difficult to simply consider as “positive” the bond that unites us with a person who is important to us. This is very common when we have gone through an unsatisfactory or conflictive relationship, or when we have grown up in a broken family with parenting problems.

In fact, the experience of grieving the loss of someone with whom you had a complicated relationship is very common in the case of breakups: in many cases, this separation is experienced as a bitter moment that has been preceded by of a time of happiness with that person.

In cases like this, It is common for emotions towards the other person that are apparently contradictory to overlap. , since on the one hand you have felt excited about starting that dating relationship or that marriage, and on the other, a series of frustrating, sad or simply anxiety-inducing events have led to an outcome that, seen from the past, is unwanted. How do we feel, then, with that loss?

Thus, if practically all cases of grief due to leaving behind a complicated relationship have something in common, it is the clash between emotions that apparently pull oneself towards opposite sides, and that produce a feeling of sentimental and even intellectual instability ( since it is difficult to explain what has happened). Let’s see what the main psychological elements of this process are.

1. More pronounced feelings of guilt

The dissatisfaction between what the relationship could have been and what the relationship has finally been It makes many people feel very guilty for not having been able to turn the relationship with the person left behind into a positive one.

2. Anguish at the lack of a single way of interpreting the relationship

As in a complicated relationship there is usually some type of confrontation or clash of interests, It is difficult to be sure that our version of events is the correct one. This is very significant, taking into account that in grieving, human beings tend to look for a stable way of interpreting and narratively structuring our memories of what we experienced with that person.

3. Sensation of dissociation with respect to the person left behind

In grieving complicated relationships, it is more common for the person to notice that the person you have really separated from and the person you remember and recreate in your imagination are different and that the latter “is not reliable” because it is a resource for self-deception.

Do you want to have professional psychological assistance?

If you are going through bad times in your personal life, in a family relationship or in a relationship, we invite you to contact our team of professionals.

In Psychomaster We serve people of all ages, working in psychotherapy using effective therapeutic strategies and resources such as the cognitive-behavioral model, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and EMDR therapy. We also offer psychiatric services. You will find us in our center located in Madrid.