Coping with Grief after a Sudden Death

I don’t think there is a hierarchy in grief but there are deaths that are more complex than others. Sudden death is devastating. The person you love dying suddenly, coming out of a clear blue sky on an ordinary day is incomprehensible. All the emotions of grief are intensified, grief with the volume turned up is a common phrase.

Often people want to go back and have control, change the story — often caught in endless ruminating and regret so that it is very hard to actively grieve.

People who are bereaved by suicide are a high risk group for alcohol, drug abuse and suicide.

What can help:

• Recognising the shock, the sense of it being surreal, lasts a long time.

• Working to actively recognise the limit of your control, their life wasn’t in your gift.

• Not conflating the feeling of guilt with the fact of guilt and imprisoning oneself in the guilt.

• Don’t turn the fury and pain you feel against yourself, again be actively self-compassionate. It is hard but vital.

• The single biggest predictor of your outcome is getting support at the time and following the death.