BY

THOMAS G RICHARDSON MBATH, MNCH

The death of someone we love is something we are all going to have to face in our lifetime. How we deal with death varies from person to person. Often we will have to find a new balance within our lives to replace the one we love. Coming to terms with death is one of the most difficult problems we shall ever face. No one is immune doctor, sailor, soldier or sailor or for that matter a Hypnotherapist like myself.
After a death most people will experience a period of mourning. This can last for between 18 months and 2 years. You may have feelings of guilt; despair, anger against all and sundry including God for taking away the one you loved. Often people who are looked upon as confident and able to deal with any problem however difficult are hit the worst. They tend to repress their feelings and weeks or months later they may go into deep depression and become suicidal.
You should never hold back your feelings. If you want to cry then do so. We who live in the Northeast are in what is commonly known as a macho area. This means men are not suppose to cry or show emotions. Bereavement can therefore hit men much harder than women who will do the natural and sensible thing and cry. The sooner you begin the grieving process the sooner you will get through it. Hold it back and you could be visiting a doctor in 18 months time suffering with deep depression and unable to understand why.
Patients never expect Doctors, nurses or Hypnotherapist to be ill. Perhaps they believe that we have some strange magic that stops us from experiencing the things others do. I am sure you will understand that this is nonsense and that we do indeed get ill and we also suffer when bereavement occurs within our family. To illustrate let me tell you how I re-acted when my father died 9 years ago.
I always had great respect for my father but I cannot really say we were close. I loved him and I am sure as a father he loved me but like most men of that era he found it hard to express emotions so it always was left unsaid. Heart attacks tend to run in my family so although it was a shock when my father had a heart attack at the age of seventy it didn’t really come as a surprise. Fortunately he made a complete recovery and it was as if he had got a new lease of life. He started shooting and fishing again going off to Scotland on a regular basis to catch salmon. He had the energy of a man of much younger years. I was pleased that he was coping with the heart attack in this manner because he must have known that at some point he would have another. Statistically he could expect another heart attack within 5years of the first one. And this was to prove the case.
One Saturday morning in 1989 I answered the phone to be informed by my parents next door neighbour that my father had died of a heart attack during the night and would I come immediately as my mother was in a state of shock. I had the terrible burden of informing my sister who was very close to my father as are most eldest daughters. I knew her reaction would be one of total disbelief and that she would find it extremely difficult to cope. As the eldest son I did as I would expect most eldest sons to do and started to sort things out. I was calm, confident and fully in control. I knew someone had to hold things together and that someone had to be me. I arranged for the funeral, sorted out the will, comforted my sister and mother and generally tried to keep everyone on an even keel.
About six weeks after the death I started waking at 4 or 5 0 clock in the morning thinking of my father. I would then break down and start sobbing. This went on for almost a fortnight. My wife had never seen me like this and tried to comfort me but couldn’t succeed. Every time my sister rang I couldn’t talk to her. If she mentioned my father on the phone I would hand the phone to my wife and go to the bathroom and cry. At the same time as this was going on I had to keep on working. Like most people if I don’t work I don’t eat and bills don’t get paid. However I felt that it was not fair to my patients to be seeing them when I was not in the correct mental state myself. One of the good things my father had always taught me was to save a little each week for a rainy day. At that moment it was pouring and I decided to take at least a two week break or longer until I felt well again. It was obvious to me as a therapist that I was showing the typical signs of clinical depression. I went to see my doctor and with his help and the use of self-hypnosis I started to get back to normal. It was six weeks before I felt able to see patients again. For months afterwards when I went to visit my mother I fully expect to see my father’s car parked outside the house or to spot him through the window pottering away in the garden. Eventually I had to accept that my father was gone and that life had to go on. Although not religious I do believe in God and life after death and I consoled myself that my father was in a much better place than us and probably wouldn’t want to come back any way.
One of the good things that did come out of this experience was that I could not only sympathise with a patient who was depressed because of a death in the family but more than that I could emphasise with them. I knew almost exactly what they were experiencing and as a result was in a much better position to try to help them get through their bereavement. Hopefully the above will help you, if you are suffering a bereavement to understand that you are not alone and that you will in time get back to normal.