5 tips to overcome grief due to perinatal death

Grieving the death of our baby is one of the most emotionally painful experiences a mother or father can face. In fact, managing these feelings can be very complicated and may even require psychotherapeutic support.

In this article we will see some of the key ideas to facilitate the proper development of grief due to perinatal death, starting by defining the most important concepts.

• Related article: "Grief: Coping with the loss of a loved one"

What is grief in psychology?

Grief is the process through which a person tries to readjust her emotions and expectations of her in a situation of loss of something significant, with which a bond of attachment or love united her.

This loss may have to do with leaving behind a material possession with sentimental value (for example, having forgotten on the train a watch that our grandfather gave us) or it may be related to the death of a being Dear.

Of course, the duel can present itself in different degrees of intensity, and although it always goes hand in hand with one series of negative emotions and a feeling of discomfort, in most cases does not lead to a disorder psychological.

The implications of grieving the baby's death

As its name suggests, perinatal death is the death of the developing baby or fetus in the perinatal stage, that is, the phase that goes from approximately 28 weeks of pregnancy to the first week of life after delivery. It is not just a special type of soil because this age group is the one with the highest risk of mortality in early childhood; Furthermore, it is because it has some qualitatively different characteristics from those of other forms of mourning for the death of a family member.

The most representative of the mourning for the baby's death is that we have barely had time to establish a bond in which both of you actively participate. We are faced with the experience of asking ourselves whether we have existed for our son or daughter, given the little development of her nervous system. The idea of ​​not having had time to establish a meaningful relationship makes it more difficult for some people to overcome this type of mourning, because they turn to the idea of ​​suffering from a mirage, just a project of a mother-child or father-child relationship.

In fact, in some cases they even feel bad because they believe that other people expect them to overcome this loss more quickly, and they experience guilt under the feeling that through the expectations of others, they remain as exaggerated or exaggerated (regardless of whether this social pressure is real or not).

The keys to preparing grief for perinatal death

These are several guidelines to follow to properly mourn the loss of a baby, although they do not replace the effectiveness of psychotherapy.

1. Don't force yourself to forget

Part of what makes mourning the death of a family member or loved one very painful has to do with the dysfunctional strategies we adopt to manage that discomfort. Many times, we actively participate in keeping sadness and anguish afloat even though we may not realize it.

Of course, it is impossible to perfectly manage these feelings and emotions, and fix this as objective would contribute to the problem because it would lead us to a state of hypervigilance before our own thoughts. However, we can have some guidelines in mind about what does not work.

And in this sense, something that is clear that does not work in any case is trying to block the thoughts related to the death of that person. If you try, you will only become more inclined to attract those thoughts and images to your mind. painful that you are trying to leave out of your consciousness, thereby favoring psychological rumination.

• You may be interested in: "Perinatal psychology: what is it and what functions does it perform?"

2. Put into words what you feel

In any experience of grief, it is important to have the opportunity to express emotional distress in words.

This is a psychological principle used in therapy: through what is known as "emotional labeling", psychology professionals help people to transform their feelings into phrases and phrases creating a more or less coherent setDoing so has been shown to help process that emotional pain. By specifying the emotional charge of what you feel using the lexicon that we have, We also limit the power that these negative emotions have on us and we learn not to avoid thinking in that.

In fact, this procedure helps to recover not only from grief situations, but also from trauma, and its beneficial effects remain in the long term.

3. Combine rest with involvement in activities that stimulate you

After the first days of recovery, it is a mistake both to spend all day in bed and to dedicate yourself to work obsessively as long as we don't have a minute to think about the death of our son or daughter.

It is necessary to be able to rest and sleep enough so that our body does not experience physical exhaustion (which weakens our immune system and makes us predisposes to anxiety and depressive-type symptoms), and not to depend totally on external sources of stimulation, but it is also important not to isolate oneself, because if our whole mental life is based on being alone with our thoughts, it is easy for us to fall into psychological rumination by turning it over and over again time to the same.

4. Close the cycle of your baby's life through a farewell ritual

Funeral rituals are a cultural universal, being present in almost all cultures, ethnic groups and tribes, and that is for a reason. It helps us to say goodbye to that person and to adopt a mentality in which we assume that that loved one happens to exist in our memories. That way, we don't constantly get frustrated at the expectation of not being able to interact with her as we do with living people.

Of course, the effects of these kinds of events are not immediate, but in the medium and long term, they tend to help. And by the way, it is not necessary that the ritual is linked to a religion or that it has to conform to the standards of a system of customs and beliefs. The important thing is that it allows you to say goodbye in your own way, or in the way of friends and family. It is also possible to have an event for the family and another more simple and private for you.

5. If you develop a difficult grief, seek professional help

Knowing how to prepare the duel also goes through knowing how to recognize the point at which you need psychotherapeutic support. Sometimes grief turns into complicated grief and threatens to lead to chronic emotional maladjustment. Therefore, if after several weeks you notice that you are still unable to lead a normal life, it is important that you go to the psychologist.

Are you looking for professional psychological support?

If you are interested in having psychological or psychotherapeutic assistance in the face of a grief experience, get in touch with us.

On Psychoconsulting We work serving adults and adolescents both in our center located in Barcelona and online through video call sessions.