Death, despite being the most inevitable reality of human life, is one of the most difficult and painful experiences. Even though every individual lives with the awareness of their own mortality and that of their loved ones, this reality is often ignored or even suppressed in daily life. It is with the loss of a loved one that this truth reveals itself in all its harshness. This is because the individual knows that death is irreversible and is the most concrete loss they can experience in their lifetime (Bildik, 2013). This experience leads to major changes in the individual’s emotional, cognitive, and even social world.
Although the grieving process that emerges after death varies from culture to culture, it is the individual’s inevitable and most natural reaction to this loss. Grief is a multi-dimensional process that is not limited to intense sadness; it causes the individual to question their natural life, hopes, and expectations for the future, and perhaps requires them to restructure these values.
Psychological Dimensions Of The Grieving Process
The grieving process is experienced in various ways depending on the individual’s bond with the deceased, personality traits, emotion regulation processes, and even cultural contexts. While some individuals may react instantly, others may respond more quietly by withdrawing for days or even months. Precisely for this reason, it is not possible to speak of grief as a uniform experience.
Emotions and processes such as sadness, anger, guilt, denial, and despair are frequently seen during grief. The presence of these emotions indicates that grief is progressing as a healthy process. Although there are theories suggesting that grief passes through certain stages, it is not possible for the individual experiencing grief to maintain a linear progression. Even if the individual has accepted the loss, they may feel this intense pain at certain moments.
Individual Coping Mechanisms For Death
The difference between death and other separations is the impossibility of the deceased person returning. In other separations, people can speak again or may want to make an effort to compensate for a mistake; however, there are no alternatives in death. This situation increases the weight of grief even more.
A person going through the grieving process may create memories in their mind that never happened and may want to realize shared dreams they had with the lost person. Precisely because of this, loss does not only have an impact on the past. Loss extends into the future; it ends everything that could have been and everything that remained to be lived.
Although the social environment and society can have positive effects on the grieving process, they can sometimes make the process more difficult. Society, with the hustle and responsibilities of life, expects the grieving person to return to normal functioning. However, grief is independent of time and space; it is an experience so deep that it cannot be measured by anything. The passage of time, weeks, or even years does not necessarily mean the pain has ended.
Statements like “Life goes on somewhere, you must pull yourself together, you must be strong” may motivate the person toward life, but they can also cause the individual’s emotions to be ignored or even suppressed. Yet, this ignored pain does not heal; it only gets buried deeper, and grief, which could have been a healthy process, can evolve into very different states.
For this reason, for grief to be experienced in a healthy way, it is first necessary to accept the situation and then move forward by acknowledging and making space for one’s emotions.