The 4 Types Of Grief We Face

We human beings live life emotionally connecting ourselves to people who, when they abandon us, plunge us into painful grief.

Grief is a feeling of pain, a feeling that comes when that person is gone and inside us a battle of wanting begins, but I can’t.

the reality of loss

When we are immersed in a deep loss, we find it very difficult to get out of it. To begin with, we will likely have to deal with an internal battle: one party accepts the loss, but another refuses to accept it.

This is something completely normal, something we must understand and must understand. Never blame yourself for it or feel bad. The reaction you are having is totally normal, and the ups and downs are a characteristic of grief. There are days when you can feel yourself moving forward and others when you step back a little;  the important thing is your progress in general terms.

Now that we know what grief is, we need to know the different types that exist.

Knowing this will allow us to analyze whether we have already experienced any loss, if in the future we have to face it, or if you have the opportunity to help someone who is going through it. In this way, we will better understand what is happening to us, we will accept it and thus we will be able to overcome it.

1. Pathological grief

In pathological grief the part of accepting the loss does not occur at any time. Only negation is present in front of it.

In the mind of the person who is suffering this type of grief, certain mechanisms come into operation that protect him from this reality that hurts so much. It is as if the person has created a kind of phantom terrain on which he walks through the abyss, without paying the price of the fall, but also unable to return to solid ground.

Phrases like “nothing happened here”, “nothing has changed”, etc. appear in your mind. This only causes the pain to seize her, but little by little, like the rain that seeps into her bones.

2. Denial of grief

It looks similar to the previous one, but it has nothing to do with it. In denial, the person immersed in grief cannot express what he feels, which causes him intense discomfort.

Swallowing and repressing was never good. Sometimes crying allows us to let go of all that is hurting us.

This type of grief arises in people who feel that crying or suffering will make them show their weaknesses to others. That’s why they keep everything to themselves… until they can’t take it anymore and explode in a totally unpredictable and usually uncontrolled way.

3. Intensified grief

In intensified mourning, the person who goes through it releases everything that he/she carries within, without repressing anything at all. It may happen that you cry, scream, express your anger…

It may seem beneficial, but such an expression of pain, which one lives perhaps in a deeper way, sometimes causes these people to fall into depression.

It’s good to express what you feel, but choosing the right form and channel. It also doesn’t make sense to look for a diversion within the suffering itself, in the form of atonement for guilt.

4. Ambiguous grief

Ambiguous grief occurs whenever it is not known whether the person we love has actually died or not. It usually happens to people who are missing, kidnapped, etc.

It is a type of mourning also known as “frozen mourning”, as it remains in uncertainty, waiting for news. The feeling of not understanding what is happening, and not knowing anything, makes it perhaps the worst kind of grief one can suffer, until there is news…

None of us are free from the terrible grief. It’s something we’ve all gone through at some point in our lives. Grief is a painful situation, but also one of overcoming.

Knowing these mournings will allow you to understand what you are going through and will open your eyes to a future of greater hope. It’s normal to suffer, but all storms will pass… and you, sooner than you think, will go back on.

Images courtesy of Matt Wisniewski.