Understanding When Grief is Complete
Kathryn Patricelli, MA, edited by Mark Dombeck, Ph.D.It can be difficult for someone who is grieving to know when grieving will be completed. Grief can be an extended process. It has no set timeframe for finishing. Though the passage of time provides little clue as to whether or when grieving will be done, there are several signs that indicate when people are starting to complete the process.
During the deepest stages of grief, people may feel that there is nothing to live for and that all of life is negative. Grieving people also often feel tremendous loyalty for their lost relationship and resist anything that they perceive will take them away from honoring that lost relationship. They are likely to feel very sad and lost. They are likely to be psychologically oriented towards honoring events that occurred in the past rather than events that are presently occurring, or which they might look forward to under other circumstances in the future. Important signs that grief is winding down therefore include the slow return of the ability to feel pleasure and joy again, the return of a present or future-facing orientation (e.g., looking forward to things in the future again), and the return of desire for reaching out to others and re-engaging in life.
The transition from a sad focus on the past to a re-engaged hopeful focus on the present and future does not happen all at once. Rather, it occurs in bits and pieces in a back and forth manner. Grieving people may start to feel guilty when they realize that they are not wanting to remain in a grieving state. They may see their recovery from grief as an abandonment of their past relationship and resist this perceived abandonment. Of course, it is not disloyal or dishonorable to a lost relationship for grieving people to find new ways to feel happy again ? but it can feel that way. In time the guilt feelings tend to subside too as life continues.
A final sign that grief is ending occurs when grieving people are able to think about their lost person, place or thing more as a happy past memory and less as a painful present absence. They may still feel pain at the loss, but it is not as acute as it once was.
More About Coping With Grief
Resources
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Articles
- Introduction to Grief and Bereavement Issues
- Grief is a Normal and Natural Process
- Stage of Grief Models: Horowitz
- Stage of Grief Models: Kubler-Ross
- Stage of Grief Models: Rando
- Symptoms of Grief
- Coping With Your Own Grief
- More About Coping With Grief
- Understanding When Grief is Complete
- Helping Other Adults Cope With Grief
- Helping Children Cope With Grief
- What To Tell Children About Grief Depends on Their Age
- Cultural and Religious-Spiritual Implications of Grief
- Understanding Pathological Grief
- Grief Resources
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- Is a friendship possible after dating/living together for 3 years
- Children's role-play after loss. Is this an instance of denial?
- How do I help my grieving, substance abusing daughter?
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- Should I ask for closure 4 months after a break up?
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- Complicated grief has left me feeling numb
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- How can I help a grieving sister who is angry with me?
- how do i deal with the fact that my therapist is dying?
- Death of both parents
- How to Help My Grieving Mother?
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- My Fiancee Can't Get Over His Late Wife
- My friend cant get out of love
- love rejection
- I am the product of a rape
- i can't seem to get over any of this
- Lingering Feelings for my old affair partner
- one year out and just starting to deal with grief
- Finding It Very Difficult To Forgive
- Embarrassed and Ashamed of My Weakness
- Grieving All The Time
- Longing For My Son
- Why Did He Back Away?
- Grieving and Clueless
- Sudden Loss
- Bereavement and Grief
- Smoking To Remember Mom
- Trauma/Tragedy
- Broken Heart
- The Aftermath of Suicide
- A Recent Loss
- Losing a Father
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Book & Media Reviews
- 12 and Holding
- 3 NBS of Julian Drew
- After You'd Gone
- All Alone in the Universe
- All Rivers Flow to the Sea
- All Seasons Pass
- Bereft
- Bodies in Motion and at Rest
- Catalyst
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- Comfort
- Death of a Parent
- Don't Go Where I Can't Follow
- Driving My Father
- Emma Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree
- Feather Boy
- Fortress of My Youth
- Going Through Hell Without Help From Above
- Good Grief
- Goodbye Rune
- Healing Conversations
- Honoring Grief
- How We Grieve
- I Remain in Darkness
- I Wasn't Ready to Say Goodbye
- Is There a Duty to Die?
- It Takes a Worried Man
- Liberating Losses
- Life after Loss
- Lost in the Forest
- Love Is a Mix Tape
- Love That Dog
- Michael Rosen's Sad Book
- Name All the Animals
- Nobody's Child Anymore
- Remembering Georgy
- Saving Grace
- Saying It Out Loud
- Seeing the Crab
- Speak to Me
- Still Here
- The Bad Beginning
- The Carnivorous Carnival
- The Color of Absence
- The Dead Fathers Club
- The Death of a Child
- The Hostile Hospital
- The Lovely Bones
- The Measure of Our Days
- The Miracle
- The Scar
- The Truth About Grief
- The Undertaking
- Understanding Grief
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- Wild Awake
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Links
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Videos
- The Journey Through Loss and Grief
- Acute Grief: The Initial Response to Bereavement
- We don't "move on" from grief - We move forward with it
- Complicated Grief: Q & A with Dr. M. Katherine Shear
- Grief through a Child's Eyes
- The Adventure of Grief: Dr Geoff Warburton
- The Grieving Process
- 12 Suggestions for Dealing with Grief and Loss
- Dealing With Loss and Grief
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More Information
- An Interview with George Bonanno, Ph.D., on Bereavement
- An Interview with Holli Kenley, MA, on Surviving Betrayal
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