Kami Huyse talks about the 4 emotional stages of crisis management although this is about public relations the discussion about the psychology can help widows.
Psychologists call the emotional stages of survivors the Four Phases of Disaster:
1. Heroic Phase: This phase usually occurs directly after the disaster, when heroic actions are taken to help people recover from and/or survive a disaster. The media may be just arriving on the scene or not yet arrived at this phase. I definitely went through this stage – I appeared fine, dealing with everything and the friends who came around. For some reason I felt …read more

As people we are used to problems and trying to solve them. The loss and bereavement process is difficult because the problem you are trying to solve has no answer. That is what confuses us and causes depression. We are used to finding solutions and we need to understand that mourning and grief is one emotion that cannot be “mended”. The solution that you want – your loved one by the side of you- will not come back.
The solution to beat this depression, is to understand that it is about survival skills…surviving the crisis and then learning to live and love again.You …read more

I was reading an article that said that for a human effective support system you need
25% self support
20% partner support
55% support from outside the home
This is important. Often when a crisis hits us, we try and cope by ourself. This is not the best support. When you lose a loved one, you lose 20% of your support system and that needs to be relaced. This 20% needs to be shared between yourself and support from outside home through groups, friends, family. Of course, your emotional survivial needs your commitment to your health but don’t ignore the friends of others to …read more

What is strange is that when a “crisis” happens in your life, this can lead to greater clarity. I don’t know if you are the same but when you suffer loss, you start to think about what you really want out of life. Suddenly, life seems short to be unhappy?
That happened to me and the losing of someone you love can have a positive side effect of getting you to really think about what you want from life. For me, it caused me to rethink my career as I had not been happy for a while – I loved the …read more