Loss and Grief
You’re grieving. Or someone you care about is grieving, and you want to understand what that person is going through and learn how to support him or her. You’re hit with powerful emotions and other reactions that you don’t know what to do about. You may wish all the painful emotions would just go away and you could get back to your normal life.
In this part, we look at what grief is and the kinds of things, such as loss, that cause us to grieve. We touch on misconceptions about grieving and how they can hurt or inhibit your grieving process. We expand on various kinds of loss and the way they affect you. We also explore trauma, because a traumatic experience sometimes causes grief as well as traumatic reactions—or something that causes you grief may also feel traumatic. Knowing about the effects of trauma enables you to take better care of yourself if you’re in this situation.