How To Deal With The Loss Of A Parent: Making Meaning Of Grief And Loss

The death of a parent or someone who played a parent-like role in a person's life can feel devastating and difficult to grasp, at any age. Experiencing grief after the death of a loved one, including a parent, is completely normal. While a person grieves, they often have a variety of mental, emotional, and physical experiences that might negatively impact daily life.

Sometimes, a person may struggle to work through their feelings of grief about a parent. Mental health counseling techniques may help when a person feels overwhelmed with grief, can't accept the death of the parent, or has been grieving for longer than normal. Although a person may never fully "get over" the loss of a parent, they can move through grief and grow in ways that help them make meaning of the loss.

What is grief?

Grief is a natural reaction humans have in response to loss, such as the death of a parent. The grieving process can impact each individual differently and impact the same person differently at different times. The grief someone feels after a parent's death may include a wide variety of experiences. While there is no right or wrong way to grieve, common elements of grief include:

• Strong emotions: Someone who is grieving may feel sad, in shock, numb, angry, helpless, guilty, irritable, or like they are yearning for their deceased parent. They may also feel multiple conflicting emotions at once.
• Altered thoughts: While grieving, a person may have thoughts that feel confused, struggle to focus on what they're doing, continually think about the loss they've experienced, or even hallucinate.
• Physical sensations: In addition to impacting the mind, grief also impacts the body. A grieving person may have shortness of breath, muscle weakness, abdominal pain, digestive issues, fatigue, or tightness in the chest.
• Changed activity: Grieving can lead to a person sleeping less or on a different schedule than normal. They may also lose interest in their usual activities or spend their time differently than before. Anger or irritation may cause them to act differently toward others.

Grief often impacts children differently than it affects adults. Children may experience more anger than sadness and struggle in school or not meet developmental milestones for their age group while grieving.

Potential complications of grief

Grief is a completely normal reaction to the loss of a parent, and the grieving process usually lasts between six months and one year. However, some people experience conditions called complicated grief or prolonged grief disorder. 

Complicated grief can challenge a person's mental health and leave them unable to accept the loss. With prolonged grief disorder, grieving extends beyond a year in adults and beyond six months in children. A person experiencing prolonged grief may also struggle to believe the death occurred, feel emotionally numb, avoid reminders of the death, and have their identity and relationships disrupted.

If a person's parent died in a traumatic way, such as through violence or a natural disaster, or if a person was present for the death and found the experience traumatic, they may also experience signs of trauma. Reactions to trauma may include flashbacks and intrusive thoughts of the traumatic event, major mood swings, difficulty with relationships, and physical symptoms, like nausea and headaches. 

Counseling has been found to help with complicated grief, prolonged grief disorder, trauma processing, and mental health issues like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Making meaning after the loss of a parent

Meaning making is one tool mental health counselors may use with someone grieving. After a parent passed, a person may struggle to understand what the loss means for them. They may also question the meaning of life in general, their spiritual beliefs, and their purpose in life. 

Meaning making is a process that helps a grieving person rewrite their life narrative to include this major loss in a way that makes sense. Although they may always miss their deceased parent and feel sad about their death, meaning making allows them to also feel at peace and no longer confused or in shock.

By rewriting their life story, a person can find ways the loss of their parent has meaning. A person may find spiritual meaning in their loss, learn to focus on positive life changes they made because of the loss, or feel at peace because they believe elements of the deceased live on within them.

Research suggests that making meaning of major losses isn't always easy, but it is worth it. Those who are able to find meaning amidst their grief have reduced feelings of grief, improved well-being, better immune function and health, and even happier marriages. The meaning-making process can occur through conversations with a mental health counselor, writing in a grief journal, talking with a grief support group, or talking things out with another support system, such as family members also processing the loss.

Experiencing post-traumatic growth after the traumatic loss of a parent

Even people who experience trauma surrounding a parent's death can experience meaning making. When meaning making occurs in the wake of trauma, it is often called post-traumatic growth. Therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder has been found to promote post-traumatic growth. 

When a person experiences post-traumatic growth, they often experience a new appreciation for life, improved relationships, and the recognition of increased possibilities in life. They may feel renewed personal strength and changes in their spirituality. 

Post-traumatic growth cannot be forced on a person, however. People do need to feel their pain and suffering and not have it minimized or have trauma processing and the grieving process rushed. But, even knowing that post-traumatic growth is a common occurrence can help a person move through the grieving process more smoothly, with assurance that, like many others, they are capable of coming out of this hard time strong, open, and at peace.

When to seek therapy for grief

Grief is a normal reaction to the death of a loved one. That said, grieving the death of a parent can be especially hard. If you feel like you are struggling to process your grief, therapy may help. Online therapy is the preferred choice for many people, because it offers both convenience and boundaries. Platforms like BetterHelp offer online grief therapy that you can attend from home or anywhere you prefer.

An analysis of nine research studies found that online grief therapy might be effective for adults dealing with the death of a loved one. Many of the studies reviewed involved a writing element. Writing is a tool often used in meaning making, as it allows grieving people to literally rewrite the narratives of their lives in a way that makes sense of the loss and promotes peace.