Facing the death of a loved one can be the most challenging experience a person ever confronts.
The sorrow and sense of loss may feel unbearable at times. There may be complicated feelings such as sadness, anger, and regret mixed with relief that your loved one is now beyond suffering. Most of all, you may suffer loneliness in their absence and worry about how you will manage without this important person in your life.
Our sense of loss and all the complicated and mixed feelings that accompany grief can overwhelm us. But we don’t have to face this trying time alone. Often it helps to have a listening ear or a helping hand.
CHP Home Care & Hospice offers monthly bereavement support groups in Archbold, Defiance, and Van Wert. These groups are free and open to anyone dealing with loss (you don’t have to have used our services).
How do you know if you need help?
Here are some questions to ask yourself that might help you decide to reach out for help. All the situations below happen in grief. The problem is when such feelings persist many months after your loss.
- Do you have people with whom you share your feelings or do you feel isolated and alone?
- Are you still rerunning all the details around the beloved’s life, illness, or death months after they died?
- Is anxiety getting in the way of your life? Are you unusually irritable or angry?
- Are you avoiding relating to people or avoiding including new people in your life lest you lose them?
- Do you consider any of your behavior self-destructive, like drinking too much, or doing anything you know is unsafe?
- Are you having any new health problems since your loss?
- Does your preoccupation with loss interfere with your everyday functioning?
- Are some feelings still too hard to bear or acknowledge?
- Are you preoccupied with distressing thoughts about your loved one’s death?
- Do you feel stuck in your grieving?
These questions can help you gauge where you are in your grieving process. They can help you pinpoint where extra help might benefit you.
It’s essential to understand and make sense of what happened, and expressing your story in a safe, supportive, group can help you achieve some clarity. Support groups supply a platform for bereaved individuals to share their stories, especially when friends and family no longer want to listen and desire for them to “move on.”
Grief support can offer you relief from walking this tough road of surviving your loss alone.
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