Suddenness and lack of anticipation affects the mourner’s inner world and coping abilities so adversely that trauma is created regardless of whether the actual death was traumatic.  Raphael (1983) has termed this the “shock effect” of sudden death.  With no time to gradually anticipate and prepare for the loss, getting this tragic news all at once is overpowering. Your coping abilities are assaulted.  As in the terrorist attack on our nation many families do not have bodies to bury. Without the viewing of a body to confirm death, the mourner is at additional risk for complications. 

What Can Complicate our Grief Process after a Sudden and Tragic Death: 

1. The suddenness of the trauma overwhelms the person’s coping abilities and leaves him or her in shock. 

2. Our commonly held beliefs about the justice, orderliness, safety and our ability to control our destinies, is violently shattered. 

3. We experience intense reactions of fear, vulnerability, helplessness, and loss of control. 

4. We experience a profound loss of security and confidence in the world. 

5. We have relatively more intense emotional reactions, such as greater anger, ambivalence, guilt, helplessness, and an obsession with the deceased along with strong needs to affix blame . 

6. Unfinished business, and not being able to say goodbye make it difficult to complete the mourning. 

7. Leaves the victims with profound feelings of mistrust, shattered beliefs, and inability to reattach to a future with hope and meaning. 

8.  Creates many post traumatic reactions of a physical or psychological kind. Shock, numbing, headaches, sleep disorders,  inability to feel loving feelings, depression, anxiety, flashbacks, fatigue, tension, weakness, difficulty in concentration 

Quite often failed attempts to cope lead to addiction, avoidance, phobias, chronic depression, compulsive- destructive behaviors, and failed relationships. Failed attempts to cope may lead to the mourner getting stuck, or suffering from a complicated grief reaction. 

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