National Grief Awareness Week

National Grief Awareness week is to raise awareness of all aspects of grief and loss. Losing a loved one can be a very traumatic and stressful experience. There are 3 main stages of grieving: shock, mourning and acceptance.

Shock/denial happens immediately following a death and can last a few hours or several days. You may experience feeling emotionally numb alongside the inability to accept or believe the death.

Mourning, this stage of the grieving process typically begins approximately one week after the death and can last for up to 6 months. You may experience a general sense of sadness, loss of appetite, tearfulness, anxiety, anger, poor concentration, tiredness and feelings of guilt alongside medically unexplained physical symptoms, aches, and pains. When the reality of the loss sinks in, a natural reaction is to worry about one’s own future and how the loss will affect you. You can feel overwhelmed that you cannot cope with life that you cannot cope with life, become pre-occupied with, and ruminate on negative thoughts, remember experiences that will not be shared.

Acceptance – is the third and final stage to the process. It is perhaps described as “recognition of reality”, say it is arguable whether we will every fully accept the death, loss of a loved one.

The intense grief related experiences may begin to lessen, however the anger and guilt can continue to loom in your minds and can get in the way of the natural healing process, you may blame yourself that you could have something that would have changed the outcome.

How everyone copes with grief will be different and it will depend on your personality, relationship to the person at the time and context of the death and support mechanisms. Initially, it is a good idea to turn to family and friends for support as they too need to work through the grieving process.

Support available and things you can try to help you with bereavement, grief, and loss

You can also seek help from your GP who can signpost you to support groups.

The College offers Inspire Counselling Service and can be contacted 24/7 by contacting telephone number 0808 800 0002 which will provide you with access to professional counsellors. Each staff member can avail of up 6, one-hour counselling sessions in your own time, either over the phone or face to face at a suitable location. To access Inspire factsheets for support these are available on the Inspire for details click here

Cruse Bereavement Care click here or contact the helpline on 0808 8081677 and to download booklets for support click here

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