Loss

Author of the text: Sandra Zaimović

Every loss is difficult and, for us, an unpleasant experience.

Throughout life we face various kinds of loss. With each loss we lose a part of ourselves, a part of our identity and one of our roles. We cannot prepare for loss. We can anticipate it, but that anticipation also brings uncertainty and unpredictability, because we never know when, or whether, it will surely happen. No matter how much we prepare for a possible loss, when it comes it is once again a new, painful and overwhelming experience for us.

Loss/defeat is the loss of our idea of how something should be, and it is very often accompanied by a feeling of suffering, pain and disappointment. All our wishes and hopes are directed toward returning to how things were.

At that moment we find ourselves in the process of adaptive depression, and we begin to think about what can be done to restore the life we had and the values we believed in. Then we glue back together what has been broken within us. Sometimes it succeeds, but it is hard to live on with such effort.

It is necessary to search for new solutions, but also to accept the emptiness, as a place where we seem to give up and withdraw into our own world, a world in which there is nothing. If we do not give in within that emptiness, and manage to believe that staying in that moment is neutral, it becomes the only possible option for us.

The phases we must go through with loss are the phases of grieving:

• Denial

• Anger

• Bargaining

• Depression

• Acceptance

We go through these phases in different ways, each characteristic of us, and in our grief we try to find a reason and meaning for existing in the world despite the loss. The course of grieving is unpredictable and long.

However long and difficult the grieving process may be, people mostly manage to overcome their sorrow, adjust to the reality of the loss and continue their lives.

We can thank our own inner strengths for a successful end to grieving, but also the support of our closest ones, doctors and specialists who support the bereaved in various ways.

If such support is absent, a person may remain stuck in a process of chronic grief, which brings on some pathological-depressive features.

That is why it is essential to recognize such states and provide appropriate support: counselling and psychotherapy.

Through psychotherapy, the bereaved are encouraged to express in their own words all the facts about the loss, to talk about the questions that trouble them, and about their uncertainty, confusion and fears. When they voice their thoughts and feelings, they will find it easier to understand, and thus accept, the sad event. In this way they will see its meaning and create the first precondition on the basis of which the bereaved will again form an idea of the future.