Video by RedandHowling. Some of the things that you might do or think while grieving may make you think you are having a permanent mental crisis.
This article will help you understand some of the common feelings, behaviors, and thoughts that may come with the loss of your dog. You may be surprised to have so much grief from the loss of your dog, or to be experiencing grief before your dog is even gone. This grief is completely normal, and may be misunderstood by the people around you.
They may accuse you of overreacting. Your grief will probably not be gone in a few weeks or even months. Because of the special relationship we have with our dogs, grief of a beloved dog can often be more intense than the death of a family member, and coming to terms with the change will take as long as it takes.
Mourning and processing your grief will allow you to change the relationship with the tangible dog of fur and drool to a relationship with a dog within your own heart and mind. Your dog will always be there, as will your love. The sharp and painful edges, however, will dull with a deliberate, mindful practice of mourning, and the joy in the connection will return. There are many losses that we grieve, whether we are aware of it or not. If you do not consciously process that grief, it can remain dormant until the next loss, and over time, you build up a big pile of losses as time goes on, and sometimes a loss is so strong that you are forced to grieve not only that loss, but others as well.
The idea that every loss is a multiple loss is one of the Seven Principles of Grief by J. Shep Jeffries If you want a giant overview of the grief process, I recommend you read that book. Here is his full list of grief principles:. You may wonder, yourself, whether you should be worried about your mental state.
