What can Grief do to a Person?

It may not always seem it, but it is a natural thing for people who face death and the people they leave behind to experience moving through various stages of grief. But unlike most conventional models of stages, such as the stages of development, stages of grief do not necessarily occur in order. We do not complete one and then move on to another one either. We can hop around, moving from one stage to another or maybe even experiencing segments of one for an extended period of time and never even experiencing other stages at all. Grieving is an extremely personal, individual, and unique experience.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a psychiatrist and pioneer in the studies of grief established a model of five stages to grief that has been expanded on by some but essentially stood the test of time.

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance – and as each stage’s name implies, the emotional and physical effects are as varied as the people who experience them and the intensities in which they go through them.

Grief is actually a form of acute pain connected to a loss that we experience. However, it goes beyond that since it may seem as if it completely overtakes because it is about the loss of what we love. If the ‘thing’ that we have lost was someone we have strong feelings for, say it can and often gets much more involved when we lose a loved one. Other strong emotions may be linked to the relationship we had with the person we lost. We call the ‘add-on’ of other strong emotions that link to grief complicated grief.

Below is a listing of physical, emotional, and behavioral things grief can do.

Physical symptoms of Grief: Hyperactive or underactive, Feelings of unreality, Physical distress such as Chest pains, Abdominal pains, Headaches, Nausea, Change in appetite, Weight change, Fatigue, Sleeping problems, Restlessness, Crying and sighing, Feelings of emptiness, Shortness of breath and tightness in the throat.

Grief: Numbness, Sadness, Anger, Fear, Relief, Irritability, Guilt, Loneliness, Longing, Anxiety, Meaninglessness, Apathy, Vulnerability, Abandonment.

Behavioral symptoms of Grief: Forgetfulness, Searching for the deceased, Slowed thinking, Dreams of the deceased, Sense of the loved one’s presence, Wandering, Trying not to talk about the loss to help others feel comfortable, Needing to retell the story of the loved one’s death.

**Adapted from Bereavement and Support, Marylou Hughes, LCSW, DPA (1995), 88