The loss of a loved one has a psychological impact that is almost always accompanied by emotional pain. Even if you don’t react to the news of the death in the first few minutes by expressing your feelings in a very intense way, this will happen sooner or later in the next few hours or days.

This is all natural: feeling extremely sad about the death of a parent, sister or daughter is to be expected and does not indicate the presence of a psychological disorder. However, this discomfort can develop to the point where it becomes a real problem.

We will talk about this topic in the next paragraphs: about how to know when one passes from normal mourning to pathological mourning .

What is grief in psychology?

In the field of psychology, grief is a phenomenon characterised by a series of sensations and behaviours linked to psychological distress that appear after or shortly after becoming aware of the loss of something with which we experienced a strong emotional connection , affection or even love.

This means that although grief typically occurs upon learning that a friend or family member has died, it can also arise in a variety of situations: suffering an amputation, moving away and losing daily contact with friends, feeling that one is rapidly aging, being separated from a car that we have had since our youth, etc.

After a while, people get used to living in a world where that or those they miss no longer exist except as memories , turn the page and learn to have the capacity to feel joy and, in general, to be happy.
In this way, normal grief (the one that occurs in the vast majority of cases and which leads to a phase of recovery and disappearance of symptoms) can be expressed through these typical symptoms:

Crying crisis

It is very common to experience moments when you cannot stop crying for several minutes.

Nostalgia

The person’s thoughts focus on the recollection of past experiences with that person or object that has been lost and is missed. Many times memories are mixed with the imagination.

Low mood

In general, there is little motivation to get involved in tasks , even though some people try to focus on one activity to avoid thinking about what makes them sad.

Irregular sleep pattern

People who are going through a normal period of grief often have trouble sleeping on a normal schedule, either because they take a long time to fall asleep or because they fall asleep right away from exhaustion but wake up too early or several times during the night.

The transition from normal to pathological grief: how to recognize it

Now that we know in general terms what grief is, let’s look at a series of key ideas to recognize those moments when normal grief turns into pathological grief. We must bear in mind that these are only guidelines , and the true diagnosis can only be carried out by mental health professionals in both psychology and psychiatry.

In any case, it should be noted that although we refer to this phenomenon as “pathological crying, this does not mean that it is an isolated event in the person, as could happen with the bleeding of a real wound, nor that the person who suffers this emotional disturbance is a “crazy” person and much less a person who will remain so all his life.

1. Crying spells are uncontrollable and do not go away

When, after about two weeks, crying fits occur almost every day and are totally uncontrollable, so that they occur in an involuntary and unexpected way even at a company meeting or when picking up the children from school, we may be facing a pathological grief that requires professional attention.

2. Repeated sleep problems

If after two weeks there are problems sleeping every night, this may be damaging us physically and psychologically and therefore may be a sign that the grief is following an excessively intense and damaging course.

3. Suicide ideas appear

Suicidal ideation is always a warning sign that reveals the presence of possible psychological complications capable of evolving into mental disorder. Of course, this depends on the emotional charge of those thoughts : it is not the same to think of suicide as an abstract concept as to imagine oneself committing suicide, to fantasize about the different alternatives in which one can take one’s own life, and even to search on the Internet for ways to do so in order to make death quick and painless.

4. Social relationships begin to be damaged

Everyone understands that in a grieving phase it is normal to seek a certain degree of solitude (although in some cases the opposite is true). However, if this isolation lasts several weeks and the attitude towards others is one of indifference or hostility , we are facing one of the symptoms of pathological grief.

What to do?

The main recommendation to follow in case you suspect that you are experiencing pathological grief is to go to the psychologist . In fact, this is something that can also be done in the case of normal grief, taking into account that the benefits of psychotherapy are noted whether or not there is an emotional disturbance that can be considered a disorder.

But the importance of receiving professional help becomes more evident when grief intensely damages our quality of life and threatens to become a chronic condition. In these cases, quickly tackling this phenomenon helps to avoid us going through very painful experiences and our state of sadness and longing affecting other areas of our life for months.

At the Institute of Psychology, it is common to treat people who are going through too much grief, and that is why we know that the right tools are not enough to go from believing that they are condemned to unhappiness, at first, to accepting the loss and moving forward with a constructive mentality, after going through therapy.

Bibliographic references:

  • Worden, W.J. (2004). The treatment of grief: psychological counselling and therapy. Barcelona: Paidós.