Reply To: Loss of a Loved One

[JanSB]

Thank you for your reply. I have found that I was managing well, using tools from the This Way Up online course about worry. It is exhausting to do this work, the thought challenging and the written notes. However, it is a valuable resource and reinforces that behaviour change requires effort and a conscious commitment to sustain it. Last weekend I slipped back into a dark place, of intense grief. It was when I was going through this agonising mental pain that I started to realise that now that my husband is gone, that it is permanent. It clicked for me that it is a permanent loss of him from every aspect of my daily life, all the routines which have developed over more than 22 years, and that all of the plans and hopes that we had together would now not include him. It became clear out of all of the anguish that I really was grieving deeply as though he was dead or as if he had died. I started to analyse it a bit more rationally and I realised that my loss and pain were the same as if he had died. That helped me to cope. If I think of the death of our relationship and the irreversibility of that fact, I can cope with it more easily than when I was feeling earlier on that he had “gone” and when I had some element of hope or unrealistic thinking that he might come back. I am not saying that I don’t miss him and our life together. I am saying that my resolve to care for myself and my future has been assisted by the conscious thinking that he is gone permanently and our relationship as it was is now dead. I have rationalised to myself that I may slip back again into deep grief as the time comes near for him to take his things from our home and for the details of our separation to be formalised and enacted. Other things might also trip those sort of intense feelings again. The difference when it happens again is that I am not going to wallow in it and feel that I am unempowered. I feel this loss because I love my husband and had expected to live the rest of my life with him. You can only lose someone deeply if you love them deeply. So, my integrity is intact and I am reminding myself that I was honourable in my relationship and that I tried as hard as I could and was not the person to end it without notice. Somehow I am growing stronger in a new way and I am consciously not beating myself up like I was when he announced that he was going, weeks ago now. Thank you to the Grief Line counsellors who have assisted me greatly when I have called and when the pain was at the worst I experienced. You are an amazing team and a very helpful service.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by JanSB. Reason: Typing errors