What is “Normal” Grief?

Reader’s Question

My father recently passed away. While we were on vacation at the beach and my sister and cousins started to drown, my father went in after them and never came back out. No one knows for sure what happened since he was an excellent swimmer, and it was a shock to the entire family and community when he died. It took me a long time to finally accept it and incorporate it into my life. Recently however, I’ve been getting the feeling that I or my mother will die soon. I keep dreaming about it and just have this sense, every time I go out. I think such things as: “This is the day I’ll crash my car and never make it home.” Is this normal? Are all these things a normal part of the grieving process?

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

Some mental health experts distinguish between relatively “normal” or “uncomplicated” grief and more “complicated” or “traumatic” bereavement. Sometimes, no counseling at all is necessary to work through relatively uncomplicated grief, although some individuals find grief counseling (as opposed to more specialized grief “therapy”) to be helpful even in relatively uncomplicated situations. But other times, especially when death is sudden, occurs at critical developmental stages, or is accompanied by disaster or other forms of trauma, sorting through the wide range of accompanying feelings can be a relatively complicated matter that often warrants highly specialized professional attention. Some survivors of trauma experience unconscious feelings of guilt, sadness, and rage that cannot be expressed directly without causing additional emotional pain and therefore express themselves in a myriad of other psychological symptoms. It might be best to seek the counsel of an experienced grief therapist to help determine your individual needs and the best course of resolution.