Please don’t worry about this, grief takes so much out of us and I’ve been there as well, still am at times if I’m honest. Not wanting to see or speak to people. Hard days and awful days. No pattern, just the way it is. The rocky road that we are travelling, having lost our loved ones. I sometimes find reading Donna Ashworth’s work helps me. She has a book called Loss. It’s got lovely words to help bring comfort. It won’t bring my mum back, but picking up this book helps me understand how I am feeling when I’m low. And more importantly, allows me to give myself permission to be this way by showing that ‘grief is just love with nowhere to go’.
Please look after yourself, take care xx
Be gentle on you and take the time time you need x
I found this thread when I searched ‘denial’. I’m worried that I’m in denial, and that I’m going to have another shock when the denial disappears.
We lost my dad suddenly and completely unexpectedly, from a cardiac arrest, in November. The last day I’d seen and chatted with him was 2 days before the cardiac arrest. He was his usual bright, chirpy, wonderful self. I think it’s because of the unexpected nature of the loss that I have ended up in denial. I think that after the initial devastation, shock, pain and grief, I’m now in this state where I don’t allow myself to accept the reality. I don’t want to think about it the loss. But I want to, and do, think about my dad all of the time.
In my mind, my dad is just busy somewhere else, and I’m holding the fort, supporting my mum and my brother. I’m almost cheery and chirpy, as I go about my chores, many of which were previously my dad’s. Is it because I’m trying to protect my mum? Or me? It’s as if I know that I have to go along with it all (the belief that dad died), but secretly I know that it’s not true. Like, as if I know better than everyone else, and that my dad is really still here. I hope that he is still here in spirit, of course, but I’ve adapted this way of thinking that spares me the pain of the reality. 
I suppose it’s one to discuss in my next counselling session.
1 Like