What if I Don't Feel Sad After a Loved One's Death?
Not necessarily. Everyone responds to loss in a different way.
Sadness is the feeling that most people commonly report after someone dies, which might be why it feels peculiar to you if you don't feel sad. But be mindful that grief and loss evoke a number of different feelings, not just sadness. You may also feel numbness, relief, anger, guilt, fear, remorse, peace -- or perhaps even joy. None of these feelings are right or wrong. They're just feelings.
The circumstances of the loss and your relationship to the person who died are likely to influence the emotions you feel. If the person was in excruciating pain, was suffering a prolonged illness, or demanded a lot from you, you may feel more relief than sadness once he or she has died. For example, if you cared for your mother during a long, final battle with cancer, you may feel comforted that she's no longer in anguish; you may also feel happy to be freed from the constancy and uncertainty of caring for her. And if the person who died wasn't nice to you, you can't really expect to feel terribly sad. These are all normal responses.
Also, some people go through more sadness before a death than after it. If you've done a lot of this type of anticipatory grieving (while caring with someone with Alzheimer's or another debilitating disease, for example), you might be surprised that you shed fewer tears once the person is gone. That's normal, too.
Finally, be aware that we're all capable of feeling a number of different emotions at the same time, which can sometimes have confusing results. For example, fear, relief, and anger may vie for top billing when someone you love has died after a long illness. Fear could be about the medical bills. Relief could be about the end of the person's physical suffering, or about the enormous stress and self-sacrifice you experienced as a caregiver. Anger could be about the kind of medical care the person received. It can be almost impossible to feel sad when all of those other feelings are swirling around. Sadness may surface at some later time when the more immediately demanding feelings have been addressed -- or it might not.
If it still strikes you as odd or unsettling that sadness isn't registering when you think about the person who died, that's worth exploring. Since sadness is an extremely hard emotion to weather, maybe your psyche is somehow holding you back from letting you feel it. Ask yourself, "What would be the worst thing that could happen if sad feelings started to surface?" Explore further by asking, "If that worst thing happened, would I survive it?" And if it doesn't feel like you'd survive it, ask, "Is there anything I could do to make that worst possible outcome more tolerable?"
For example, a lot of people express concern that if they tapped into their sad feelings, there'd be an avalanche. They fear they'd never be able to stop crying. This fear is extremely common, but usually unfounded. Emotions come and go -- and they go more swiftly when they get airtime. So if you fear an avalanche, you might ask someone to be your safety net -- to act as your witness, or simply to be available to you should you need companionship.
You might discover that the more you look into the absence of sadness, the more you see it really as just that -- an absence of sadness. If it's an absence of feeling altogether, then your task is to keep yourself safe while numbness persists. It's easy to give numbness a bad reputation, but it really is your psyche's best attempt to protect you from big feelings or reactions until you're ready to have them surface.
If the numbness lasts for many months, however, consider treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as this is one of the disorder's most common symptoms. If it turns out that numbness or PTSD is blocking you from feelings of sadness, getting treatment can help you identify and understand the how and why of your emotions -- and help get you back to feeling like yourself again as quickly as possible.
after the death fo someone we've been caring for, i don't think it's at all unusual to feel relief, or just kind of numb or at a kind of loss because the central part of caregiving is suddenly over -- and it's always sudden, no matter how expected it might have been. often, you might have lost sleep over many months, been last on your own care list, been living with ongoing exhaustion. all of this interrupts or delays the grief process. besides which, after caring for someone close, being there in the dying process, there can sometimes even be a deep sense of the joyfulness of having done it all more or less right, having walked all the way with them to the gates of death, having shared extraordinary moments of radiance, of having done a great task well.
it also takes a while to truly know what you might feel. loss after caregiving has many different aspects, feelings and responses. keep a journal, maybe, so you can follow your own journey of discovering life after loss.
something wrong with you? i doubt it. there's no roadmap for loss, nothing to say what or how you should feel. give yourself all the time you need for recovery and renewal and see. i've had friends who lost dearly loved husbands who went along kind of numbed for six months until they woke up one morning and suddenly it hit them, as in "Oh my God, my husband is dead!"
so, sleep, eat and recover at your own pace.
There's nothing wrong with you. My saddness often turns into something I don't understand. I've lost my mother, father, and several others in the last 10 years and each time I seem to feel bad only when I reflect one what happened other than "when" it actually happened... I also will cry at the drop of a pin when someone dies at the end of a movie but not at all when one of my loved ones passes away. I used to think there was something terribly wrong with me until I found myself wondering about it. There it is, no matter how you react, what you feel, or what you show... To be here right now, reading this, contemplating anything to this sort, well there you go. You're okay, just realize that not all are normal and just because we're not it doesn't make us awful, just different. I know if you're like me you feel fine, like nothing is wrong. That's okay too... Doesn't feel like it is but it for sure doesn't make you someone bad. Again, you're here aren't you?
well i kinda feel the same, I've lost my dad 7 Days ago, yes 7 DAYS! and i cried when i heard the news, or i made myself to cry, i feel hypocrite, that was it, just cried for few hours, and tears where gone!!
i am so angry about my self, i luv dad, and he luvs me, but i can't feel any thing any more, nothing at all!! not sad not joy NOTHING! am i a bad person?, or i am not person at all,
and he was sick but only for 3 weeks before he gone, and he never made us struggle with him, he spent all the 3 weeks in the hospital, so no i don't think its relief for me, he didn't bother us from the first place.
and to make it worse i made him reach this situation, i mean i am to blame for raising his blood pressure and his health crashed down because of it, because of me,
and to make it much much worse is, i cried over my cat for 3 days but cried 3 hours over my DAD !!
wow, i want to puke on my self, i am disgusting by myself,
(if any one know whats wrong with me, plz use simple English, cuz its not my language as you may already noticed, thank you)
My father died three weeks ago. I have been so beating myself up emotionally for the fact that I feel free and relieved since his death. I had a complicated relationship with him, and my sibling has taken the loss so hard that I have been feeling like a terrible, ungrateful and unloving daughter, especially by comparison. It has been so helpful to me to see these postings and see that I'm not alone in my feelings, and that how I am feeling is okay and should not be condemned. I did love my father very much, and I know that he loved me. I think that I grieved the relationship and the father I wished he could have been (he had mental illness) decades ago. It's okay that in this moment I have no tears.
Thank you all so very much.
I am grateful to be able to read these postings. My parents are still living but are physically and mentally declining and I am an only child. I feel a tremendous burden. I am physically and mentally drained. I don't know how I will respond when they pass away, but I think I will feel relieved. I feel guilty for even thinking that but we are all human. Human beings are complicated. Relationships are complicated. Maybe it would be helpful if we just accepted ourselves where we are at and stopped comparing ourselves and asking ourselves if we are normal or if we are grieving enough. I think our society puts way too much pressure on us to behave a certain way instead of realizing we are all individuals and we will grieve in our own way and process things in our own unique way and that's okay. Blessings to all of you.
So glad i just read all these comments as we are going to the funeral of my hubbys sister this afternoon.he was saying to me only a couple of days ago that he feels bad because he doesnt think he feels sad enough.she died a week ago today after a battle with cancer,but peacefully and pain free thanks to the wonderfull care of the hospice. i will show him these comments later thanks.
