The loss of a child is one of the most painful events that can happen to a mother and father. In their loss there is no consolation, there are no words that can tell you that can help alleviate the pain they feel. The process of getting over your loss and moving on will involve grief and the only way to get over this grief. is to be able to feel it, understand it and accept it, in order to continue leading your life, because your life will here. For this reason, in this Psychology-Online article, on how to get over the death of a childWe want to offer you all the help that is in our hands to help you regain the balance between the past, which must always be remembered, and the future that awaits you ahead.
The loss of a child is one of the most stressful life events with the most emotional and personal impact that a person can suffer. Faced with this loss, all our projections towards the expected future are interrupted and an imbalance occurs in our lives. All the expectations we had about our life change with the
How to overcome the loss of a child? Overcoming the death of a child must go through a grieving process natural and it will be necessary understand the complexity of grief, the stages of it and the emotional reactions implicit in it. Faced with this, overcoming the grief must go through the acceptance of the circumstances, the creation of new projections for the future and the stabilization of the intense feelings produced by the lost. The phases or stages of the duel that must be passed are explained below.
1. Acceptance
The first difficulty that parents who have suffered the loss of a child must face is their acceptance, the reality of the loss. Accept the death of a child it can be very difficult and tends to provoke feelings that the loss is not real. At this stage of the grieving process, parents must become aware of the irreversibility of the loss, achieving both intellectual and emotional acceptance, which it can be very complex.
In the acceptance process the appearance of the “why” is very frequent and in many duels not so complex, look for a hypothetical why it may be conciliatory, even if it moves away from the reality. In this case, to this question there is no convincing answer that helps reduce the painful feelings, there is no answer that can be satisfactory. Faced with it, too not being able to give an answer must be accepted to these questions and it will be necessary to reflect on whether the answer to this question would help alleviate your pain.
2. Work of emotions and pain
In order to face the pain of loss, it will be necessary to work with the emotions that it has aroused. Facing loss feelings are experienced with great intensity, such as sadness, guilt, anxiety, fear and anger or rage, among others:
- Sadness: sadness will remain by your side for a long time, it will appear everywhere and will invade you in many moments. Avoiding sadness will not be a sign of overcoming, on the contrary, sadness should not be avoided, hidden or ignored, because if you force yourself to avoid it, sooner or later it will reappear. Sadness is an unavoidable feeling when a child dies and this pain must be dealt with. Faced with this, allow yourself to express all the pain you feel, mourn the loss, unburden yourself, not for that reason the pain will become more intense, on the contrary.
- Guilt: Why didn't I act differently, how did I not realize it, how could I let it happen, why didn't I tell him…? Countless questions will invade your mind and guilt will appear, a guilt that is related to the fact that you are still alive while a person so important to you has deceased, but this reality cannot be changed and therefore, the suffering experienced is already too great to add the burden of guilt, self-reproach and self-deprecation. On the other hand, as the grieving process progresses, it will be normal for you to experience guilt on those days that you feel better, but your joy is not a betrayal of your child, allow yourself to feel the good moments, in the same way that you give way to the bad. In the following article you will find how to stop feeling guilty.
- Anger or rage: experiencing feelings of anger is normal, it is part of the pain experienced at the loss of a child. Anger tends to be related to the irreversibility of the loss, for not being able to change things and can be located in oneself or in others. This does not mean that your character is different or that you are a bad person, because you have suffered a circumstance that is overwhelming and it is normal to experience all kinds of emotions. Feelings of anger will help you express your frustrations and these must be accepted and channeled. In the following article you will find ways to channel anger.
- Anxiety: feelings of anxiety tend to be more present at the beginning of the process, when acceptance is not present, as anxiety appears when the attachment figure is temporarily absent, but when this absence is permanently maintained, anxiety turns into pain.
- Afraid: Feeling fear in these circumstances is a totally normal emotion, because all the expectations for the future that you had devised have vanished with the loss and the future lies uncertain.
In this phase it is very important recognize and cope with pain, feel it and express it. Any loss with a person with whom an emotional bond was maintained will entail pain, although it appears in different forms and intensities and expresses itself differently in the different people.
3. Adaptation to a new future
The death of a child will involve a rethinking of our entire life, it involves a change in all future plans and expected expectations and in view of this, we must adapt to this new situation. Once the person has been able to accept the loss and has managed to understand, express and stabilize her emotions, she must embark on the path of rearrange your life and try to return to normality, achieving a balance between what he already had and the future that awaits him. The person must readjust his life adaptively towards a new world, without ceasing to forget the past, but keeping the attention on what life will be like from now on.
How to overcome the death of an only child? Adapting to a new future will be necessary in all losses, since it will not matter if the loss has been of an only child or in a family with more children, since the Expectations of the future change in both cases with the loss and in both cases it will be necessary to go through the three processes: acceptance, work with emotions and projection towards the future.
Finally, with the passage of time the family will be able to emotionally relocate the deceased son, managing to live without him and we must bear in mind that even if the loss is overcome, there will be many moments where the feelings will reappear intensely, as it could be on birthdays. Grief is a long process and it can involve many relapses and in the face of them, you must go back to work.
How to overcome the death of an unborn child? Losing a baby in the womb can be as painful as the death of an older child. Many people tend to think that because the baby had not been born, the link is not existent and in the face of it they are very wrong. The emotional bond of the parents with the unborn baby is established within a few weeks of being conceived. Faced with this link, a set of expectations are configured about what the baby will be like, what they will have prepared for him, how they will want to educate him,... a whole life revolves around the baby before it is born and therefore, the overcoming of your grief must go through the same processes than the loss of an older child, because the baby already occupies a large emotional space in the mind of her parents before birth.
How to overcome the death of a baby? In the same way that the loss of a child in the womb tends to be socially minimized, the loss of a newborn is not attributed the same importance as the loss of an older child. However, as we mentioned previously, the bond with the son had been established already before being born and with him great expectations. In addition to this, in this loss an enormous emptiness is added, because after waiting for her, after all the preparations for the day of her arrival, all the energy and time meant that when he arrived he would have everything he needed, suddenly they fade away and the parents find themselves alone again, having held their baby in arms. Faced with this, in addition to immense helplessness, all the feelings related to the loss and the processes of its overcoming must be the same.
This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online 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.
