What is the grieving process like in complicated relationships?

One of the characteristics of the psychological grief that people go through after losing someone they love is, as a general rule, the feeling that what was experienced with the other person is an unfinished story. That is, a narrative that has not come to a true outcome.

And it is that even the relatives of a very old person or someone who has been very ill for years tend to experience the death of that loved one as a false closure, a hasty and "artificial" way of ending the journey of that relationship.

However, when the duel is produced by the fact of losing someone important to oneself but with whom a complicated and emotionally ambivalent relationship has been maintained, that distressing experience still intensifies plus. It is partly for this reason that, although it seems a paradox, grief can become more painful when it is he loses someone with whom he did not maintain an emotional bond based solely and clearly on pure love.

In this article we will a review of the characteristics of psychological grief in complicated relationships, and its implications in psychotherapy.

• Related article: "The 8 types of duel and their characteristics"

What is grief?

Let's start by focusing on the concept of psychological grief. What is it? In short, it is about the psychological state of discomfort that appears after an event that we interpret as a loss of someone or something that was important to us: a house, a job, the university environment, one's own beauty, a pet, an object with sentimental value for what it symbolizes, or, in the clearest cases, a friend, a relative or a couple.

Thus, it can be said that psychological grief is the consequence of “leaving behind” something or someone with whom we were united by a strong positive emotional bond. It is a consequence, in part, of the problems to adapt to a new reality in which we no longer have access to that person or element so important to us, and the challenge of emotionally managing the memories of what united us to that loved one, place, physical feature or object.

Some of the most common experiences related to grief are as follows:

• Uncontrolled crying when vividly remembering experiences we would like to return to
• Tendency to focus on the past and not so much on the present.
• Constant comparisons between the reality that takes us through our memories and the one we experience in the here and now.
• Feelings of guilt for not having acted otherwise before that loss occurred.
• Feeling that we will not be able to live life the same way again.

In most cases, the grief produces intense discomfort, but as the weeks go by it becomes more bearable until there comes a point where it no longer significantly damages the quality of life of those who have been suffering it; However, in some cases it acquires psychopathological characteristics and it is necessary to go to psychotherapy.

• You may be interested in: "5 aspects that can complicate the grief when losing a loved one"

Main characteristics of grief after a complicated relationship

Before we have seen that grief occurs when we encounter a situation in which we disconnect with a person, animal or aspect of the day to day with what we We felt very close, so that loss overwhelms us emotionally because that bond was based on pleasant or exciting emotions and that we usually associate with the side "Positive" of life: the pleasure of having dinner with a boyfriend or girlfriend, Christmas with grandmother, the experience of playing with our pet... However, this is true to tights.

Sometimes, it is difficult to consider simply as "positive" the bond that binds us to a person important to us. This is very common when we have gone through an unsatisfactory or conflictive relationship, or when we have grown up in an unstructured family with parenting problems.

In fact, the experience of mourning the loss of someone with whom you had a complicated relationship is very common in the case of women. breakup of a couple: in many cases, this separation is experienced as a bitter moment that has been preceded by a time of happiness together with that person.

In such cases, it is common for emotions towards the other person that are apparently contradictory to overlap each other, since on the one hand he has felt illusion for the fact of starting that dating relationship or that marriage, and on the other, a series of frustrating, sad or simply anxious events have led to an outcome that, seen from the past, is unwanted. So how do we feel about this loss?

Thus, if practically all cases of grief have in common for the fact of leaving a complicated relationship behind, it is the clash between emotions that apparently they pull oneself to opposite sides, and that produce a feeling of sentimental and even intellectual instability (since it is difficult to explain what has occurred). Let's see what are the main psychological elements of this process.

1. Heightened feelings of guilt

The dissatisfaction between what could have been and what has finally been the relationship It makes many people feel very guilty for not having been able to make a positive relationship with those who are left behind.

• Related article: "What is guilt and how can we manage this feeling?"

2. Anguish at the lack of only one way to interpret the relationship

As in a complicated relationship there is usually some kind of confrontation or clash of interests, It is difficult to be sure that our version of events is the correct one. This is very significant, taking into account that in grief we humans tend to look for a stable way of interpreting and narratively structuring our memories of what we lived together with that person.

• You may be interested in: "Self-concept: what is it and how is it formed?"

3. Feeling of dissociation from the person left behind

In grief over complicated relationships, it is more common for the person to notice that the person you have really separated from and the person you remember and recreate in your imagination are different, and that the latter "is not reliable" because it is a resource for self-deception.

Do you want to have professional psychological assistance?

If you are going through bad times in your personal life, in a family relationship or in a relationship, we invite you to contact our team of professionals.

On Psychomaster we serve people of all ages, working in psychotherapy based on strategies and resources effective therapies such as the cognitive-behavioral model, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and EMDR therapy. We also offer psychiatric services. You will find us in our center located in Madrid.