By Beth Erickson, Ph.D.

When a loved one dies, your whole world may go topsy-turvy. You may feel bereft and lost. You may feel just “not yourself.” 

You may feel like aliens have taken you and left a stranger in your midst. You find yourself flying off the handle at the slightest provocation, or crying at the drop of a hat.  You can’t sleep, or you can’t wake up.  Food has no appeal, so you starve your body, or, alternatively, you gorge yourself in an attempt to fill the gaping hole inside you. 

You can’t concentrate.  You pine for and are preoccupied with your lost loved one.  You alternate being angry at God and then fearful because you are.  You are in a frenzy to change the emotional subject, so you run willy-nilly from one activity to the next.  Or you feel like you have lead in your shoes and can scarcely move.  Everything requires amounts of energy you simply cannot muster.  You are surprised by the laziness of grief.  Even the most mundane activities take effort beyond your capacity.

Normal Grief=Nothing is Normal

It is normal that while grieving, nothing is as it was.  It is a time of emotional volatility, uncharacteristic behavior, and irrational thoughts. 

If you are processing and resolving your loss, you may notice disturbances in three categories:  behavior, thoughts, and emotions.   Even if you know your responses to situations are inappropriate, you may not be able to stop yourself. The wisdom is to learn to expect such reactions and to not get down on yourself about them, as long as you do not act inappropriately on every impulse.

Examples of Normal Behavior when Grieving

• atypical aggressiveness
• sleep disturbances
• increased susceptibility to physical illness
• appetite disturbances
• crying
• raging
• atypical inefficiency
• isolating yourself

Examples of Normal Thoughts when Grieving

• difficulty concentrating
• feeling like you are the center of the universe
• being in a daze
• irrational thoughts
• numbness
• denial
• anger at God

Examples of Normal Emotions when Grieving

• survivor’s guilt
• the conviction that more could and should have been done
• hopelessness
• helplessness
• loneliness
• emptiness
• resentment

When your loved one dies, nothing seems normal.  And that is normal.  So please don’t be too hard on yourself when you are not yourself.  Sometimes, you don’t recognize anything that was a part of your former self.  You wonder if you ever will ever be the same again.  No, you won’t ever be completely the same. 

Nor should you be, because that would mean you were unaffected by the loss.