Death is a normal cycle of life. Though this is a normal feature of life the way each person responds to it is different. So it is important to know the two responses to death?
These two responses help us to work with individuals in a different way. When an individual is handling death in a difficult way, it is important to help them process emotions by speaking about it. This will help them to deal with the loss of the person in a healthy manner.
If an individual is keeping their emotions to themselves and refusing to process, it will build and make the person bitter. On the contrary, if the individual processes these difficult emotions, it will help to identify which emotion the individual is struggling with. There are many ways that one can use to help them to open up perhaps time or perhaps an activity which is calming in nature. With individuals like this it is important to help them to talk or in some way express emotions.
For family and friends, it is important to recognize these qualities as it helps the people helpers to know how to deal with individuals that have different ways of expressions
Digging a little deeper with emotions:
When the news of a loved one dying comes to the ears, there are many emotional reactions that one can experience.
The first one that we will address is the shock. Shock over the death of the loved one. This shock could be because of various reasons.
Shock:
This emotion of shock means there is a physical and emotional reaction. This may result in feeling dizzy, numb, lack of emotions or feelings. There could be many thoughts coming into the mind of the individual, one being that the news is not real. So, this could be because there is a disbelief towards the news.
Shock can be there because the individual feels nothing when the news of the loss comes to their ears. This is normal however if this goes on for too long it can be unhealthy.
Disbelief:
Disbelief is an emotion of not believing what news has come to their ears. This could be because one wasn’t expecting the death. Disbelief comes from a denial of acceptance of the truth. Disbelief is coupled along with shock. This could lead to a sudden numbness of feelings.
Despair: This is an emotion that is unhealthy. The reason that it is unhealthy is that this is a maladaptive response to loss. This feeling or emotion comes with not knowing what to do in the future or how they will manage without the individual that has passed away. A feeling of loss that leads to meaninglessness.
Anger: When an individual dies, the close relatives will either be angry with the hospital or with God. It is a way of deflecting from believing that the individual is dead. Anger is an emotion where the mind is trying to make some sense of the issue that is happening. As these feelings are not explored or expressed, it builds up as anger. Sometimes there may be anger towards the person who is dead as well. They have left and gone and kept all the sadness for the individual to deal with.
Emotional outburst: Sometimes when the news comes to an individual, it will be an outburst of emotions that the person goes through. In the beginning, it may be shouting and sadness and tears; but then there may be out bursts of anger and shouting.
Knowing these stages help caregivers and family members have perspective when there is loss.
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