Understanding your feelings

No matter what age you are when someone important in your life dies, it is difficult to sort out your feelings and it doesn't help when people say you should be feeling a particular way. The simple fact is that whatever you feel is how you feel at that time. It may be difficult for others to understand you, but it does help if you can learn to recognise these feelings for yourself even if you cannot explain them to other people.

Tanya was 10 when her brother Teddy died from a sudden illness -"It was just total anger; you couldn't explain it. It was to nobody and about nothing, it was just anger and it was building up inside you..." (from the DVD Someone Died: "It happened to me" )

John, whose grandmother died when he was 11, said nine months later: "I wish someone had told me that feeling sad and angry would last so long and was because I missed her so much". He had not been able to go to the funeral because it was held in America so he had gone to school as though nothing important had happened. Gradually his family stopped talking about her but he had gone on feeling 'down in the mouth' and had become very moody and grumpy. He didn't know why he felt as he did until his doctor thoughtfully asked his father, who had brought John along to surgery to be checked out, "Has John lost a friend or someone he cares about?" To John's dismay, his eyes filled with tears and a big sob came up. He knew instantly who he was missing. John was lucky because his father was eager to talk about his mother, John’s grandmother, and share with John how much he was missing her. So in this family a place and a name was found for the feelings they shared.

What are some of these feelings?

Numbness
Simply feeling nothing when you think you should be very upset is scary. After her Dad was killed in an accident, Sarah said: "I didn't really feel anything for the first three months. I thought Mum needs me, my brother needs me. I’ll feel sad later". This happens sometimes and can be replaced by very strong feelings. "For the next 6 to 8 months I just went a bit mad. I couldn't really handle myself or my feelings, so my behaviour reflected that." Then she realised that she could calm down. Sometimes it's nature's way of letting us take things in slowly until we are ready to manage how we feel. Sometimes it can be because it's hard to take in that being dead is forever, is permanent, that you will live the rest of your life without the person who has died.

Worry
You may worry about the future, which you never did before, and about things like “Who will be there to look after me?” You may feel a bit weird if you find yourself talking to the person who has died or think that you heard or saw them - these are things that lots of people go through when they are grieving ...adults too.

Anger
If you are angry or grumpyand don’t know why, it can be difficult to deal with because people might also get angry with you for being like that. Things can go from bad to worse. It is a help to know that it's natural to feel like this when someone close to you has died. You may feel angry for no particular reason and just not know what the matter is, because so much has changed for you. It's normal.

Here are a few things other children have said:

• It's not fair when someone dies who you need to look after you.
• Sometimes I want to blame the doctors or nurses, after all they should have made Mum better.
• Why didn’t Dad try harder to get better? He made it happen because he smoked.
• I thought it was my fault because I didn’t really like my brother all that much.

 Sometimes you blame yourself. Did you cause the person to die? Was it because of something you thought? Was it because you argued, stayed out late or were untidy or noisy? You did not cause the death however naughty or badly behaved you think you have been. Death has many causes but is never caused by the way you think or behave. However feeling this can make you angry with yourself and everyone around you.

Hating or feeling irritated with someone close to you is not unusual, especially when families are bereaved. In most families having a row happens at least once a week!

Sometimes you feel angry because no-one explained to you what happened. It's hard to make sense of something as huge as death – even harder when you haven't been told the facts and you are too worried to ask questions.

Feelings about suicide
If an important person in your life takes their own life – this is called 'suicide' -  it's very hard to understand why and not to be angry with them for doing what they did. It's natural to ask 'Why?' 'What did I do wrong?' 'How could they do it?' 'It must have been my fault' 'They didn't want to be with me.' Family can feel it's their fault and start blaming each other. It's no-one's fault, because a person who takes their own life is as ill in their mind as someone who is sick  with a disease is ill in their body. Nobody takes their own life when they are well in their mind. Not all illness can be cured, whether it is in our mind or our body.

If your Mum or Dad, brother or sister has died by suicide, it's natural to feel frightened that someone else important to you might also die.  Suicide can be even harder to talk about than other deaths, people try to keep it secret, and this may leave you feeling very alone. It can help to find someone you trust to talk to about what happened.

For further information, you may like to read our article 'Bereavement by Suicide'  There's also a booklet called 'Beyond the rough rock' produced by Winston's Wish for families who have been bereaved through suicide, and the Charlie Waller Memorial Trust website, which contains support for young people affected by depression.

Guilt and Regret
When someone dies for whatever reason, it is very normal to feel “if only I'd been there", "if only I hadn't gone out", "if only I'd done this or that".

Ruby wished she had been nicer to her brother; Rowan, before he died.

Matt and his brother hated visiting their Dad in hospital because there was nowhere to sit and nothing to do. When he died suddenly they were so sad that they hadn't realised he was so ill. It was not their fault. It can happen to any of us.

12 year old Finella agreed to go and stay with a friend on the very weekend that her mother died. She couldn't have known this was going to happen, her mother had been very ill for several weeks but she still felt guilty and sad that she was not there.

Geoff, whose Mum died suddenly, said 'I felt angry because I didn't get to say goodbye, to say sorry for anything I had said in the past. I don't remember that morning whether I kissed her goodbye."

Sometimes when you are alone at night, these thoughts fill your mind and you forget the times when you did your best. If this happens, it helps to think of times when you were together having fun, laughing, planning and talking together.

Confusion
Adults may confuse you by talking about the dead person being 'lost' (so why can't we look for them?) or 'passed away' or ‘in heaven' (where's that?). Confusion can also mean feeling all mixed up or feeling everything at once.

You may feel muddled about the way everything in your life has changed. Different people may be looking after you; they will do things differently and nothing feels the same any more. There may be some times when you feel like laughing or giggling which can be awful. You may want to get back to school but it can be very hard to find that you can't concentrate and then you get told off.  Then you come home only to find that the family is sad and everybody there is still thinking about the person who has died. You may find that you are not missing the person who died as much as other people in the family and that can make you feel that you didn’t care. Then suddenly you find that you miss them terribly when everyone else seems to be forgetting.

Nathan, who was 7 when his Mum died, said that when his Dad started going out with another lady, he felt that he must be the only person in the family still missing his Mum. He couldn't understand his feelings because he felt so angry with everyone, He didn't want to blame his Dad because he liked the lady, so he took his feelings out on friends at school and got into trouble!

Sometimes all you want is to go out to play or be with your friends as though nothing has happened. This is natural. It is perfectly OK to need to play, have a good time and be normal again, have fun and feel happy.

Loneliness
Finella still remembers how different and alone she felt particularly after school when her Mum would have been at home getting the tea. It is equally difficult if your brother or sister has died even if you only used to fight each other. It's especially hard when a twin dies; after all they have been part of your life since the very moment you started to grow inside your Mum. It can feel like you lost a part of yourself.

One way of dealing with this is to fill your spare time playing with friends, going out to other people's houses all the time and being with their families. Friends are very important; they can never replace the person who has died but they can help fill some of the lonely times. Finding someone to talk to about the person who has died helps fill this lonely space; trying to pretend that they never existed just makes it worse.

So - whatever your feelings are when someone dies, they're natural for you at that time, whether they are sadness, numbness, worry, fear, anger, guilt, regret, confusion, loneliness or something else. It can help to talk to someone you like and trust.