I'm alone since my boyfriend died yesterday and getting in bad shape. Please help me

I got moved to the other, nicer unit. Staff here are very kind and have spent lots of time talking with me.

I think the medication helped me today. I figured out that my main problem is that when I get a grief-attack, I feel intensely agitated inside. That's so different from the lethargy that usually goes with depression, where I'm content to do nothing. Also, the grief-attack doesn't just come and go like a panic attack. I have gone hour upon hour feeling this desperate agitation that the hurt I feel will never subside . . . that I'm trapped in a living hell that there is no escape from. I think that I manage to distract myself from it transiently . . . but those flames just wait to engulf me, as soon as the distraction wears off. Today 2 hours after morning meds (Seroquel and Depakote) I kind of calmed down. So I have a little hope that medication that is sedating may help me.

So glad to learn that you are in the nicer unit Rose. This can give you a chance to focus more on your needs instead of feeling lost and misplaced like you were in the other unit.

((((( ROSE )))))

Rose, I am glad you are in a new unit. I hope meds are helping me too

Rose your words spoke to me “I feel intensely agitated inside”

Grief attack, desperate agitation and a feeling that it will never ease up and nothing will get better.

I am sorry. I lost people but not a partner so it’s not my personal experience but it rings a bell about intense desperation

I know it’s probably not helpful with comparisons but i think it’s a good description of what’s happening with intense attacks of grief. When my son in law died (and understandably it wasn’t a long marriage like yours due to their young age but there’s no closure as his death was under tragic circumstances), my daughter was convinced that it will never get better and she just kept repeating “life is shite, and from now on it will always be shite”. It went on first year and a half. Well grief still comes and goes but she doesn’t think life is sh...t anymore. My dad was in sheer agony first year after my mom died, the weight lifted at first death anniversary past winter. He came to accept it in some ways.

It does subside with time, not going away but intensity surely lessens.

You aren’t alone. Thinking about you. Sending you hugs.

Thank you all.

Thank you divine for understanding about the agitation. You seem get what I'm trying to describe. Thanks for telling me about others who have some recovery from the awfulness of fresh grief. I want to believe there's hope.

There is hope but fresh grief is definitely brutal. Keep taking care of yourself. Take one day at a time

PS just for recovery time reference: my daughter was on medical leave for 3 months unable to work, even when she went back to work she was often taking sick days first year. Your grief is so fresh. Hang in there Rose.

Grief pain is definitely different pain than other pains. That’s why sometimes nothing helps with it, but time. In my opinion of course

Dear Soul, you can get through this .. you are Not alone .. it might sound trite, but .. Time ..
my heart is with you ..

I second the idea of grief counseling .. I lost someone close and didnt know grief counseling existed .. ! (until then ..) and it takes Time .. but it Helps .. theres a place online IDK if its still around but your first Year is free .. its called griefNet .. LIU and HTH you : )

Thank you for the posts above.

I'm supposed to get discharged tomorrow. The psychiatrist here says grief cannot be medicated away. I agreed that there's probably nothing more they can do for me.

I feel such despair.

Worst of all, I'm losing respect for myself. This is not how an adult should hanfle this kind of loss.

There is no “should” in handling grief. There are many people who fall in a terrible despair when dealing with grief. It doesn’t make you inadequate or not strong enough. There are no rules and that’s not something you can control. It’ll get better. Respect yourself for simply facing this challenge the best you can. That’s all we can do, do our best with what we’ve got

You should not be ashamed that you are experiencing so much grief. First it’s only been a couple months and you were entering the worst stage of grief in the realization of absence causing deep despair and loneliness. (Spousal loss).

You did the right thing in reaching out for help.
Grief is no small thing either. Nothing to feel shame about.

I have seen terrible grief. There is just no predicting how people will react. Time will help but Open Eyes is right, it has not been that much time yet. I have a lot of respect for you Rose. What I see is that you are trying the best you can to handle everything. Despair and loneliness are emotions, there is nothing wrong with how you are feeling. You are stronger than you give yourself credit for.

I agree with you TunedOut yet, my concern for Rose is how she thinks that her grief means she is failing and is not strong, which is why she doesn't respond well to individuals telling her how strong and brave she is. I am thinking that because she is genuinely in this very hard stage of grief that she believes she is failing and is experiencing cognitive dissonance from this that tends to create a lot of anxiety.

Even when a person KNOWS death is imminent, it never prepares them for the grief they will experience once their loved one is gone. It doesn't even matter if it's considered normal for an aging person, be it 82 or 92, it's still going to be a loss and a process of learning how to work through the realization of absence that always takes place no matter how old a loved one is. This is especially true if the person was part of one's everyday life. No one is prepared for the change they experience once that person is gone from their everyday life. That is why the death of a spouse can be extra challenging in that often that individual has been part of one's life for many years.

My FIL lost my MIL unexpectedly she was 92 but still of sound mind, she was ill and had surgery and he did not expect her to suddenly pass the way she did after the surgery. He has been having a very hard time since she passed, often gets angry when others say he needs to move on etc. He says all the time that she was his sweetheart for 70 years and it's not something anyone JUST gets over. When I talk to him, I NEVER tell him to just move on or anything that suggests he should not be missing her. He talks about being so alone and lonely all the time, and I never tell him he should not feel that way. There is truely no JUST when it comes to slowly accepting the realization of loss period. And to expect self to JUST be ok after only a couple of months is being awfully hard on self.

Grieving is hard, it takes time, especially when a person or even a pet has been such a big part of a person's everyday life. Being an adult doesn't mean being able to not experience "grief" like this. There really is a substancial period of adjustment after a loss like this.

I just got home from the hospital 2 hours ago. It's not like my last hospitalization in June, where I came home feeling very good and ready to tackle things that needed doing. They asked me did I wish I could fall asleep and not wake up. I said yes, very much . . . but that I had no intentions of harming myself. The psychiatrist there told me that grief can't be medicated away. I agreed with him. I believe they did their best. Me staying any longer would have served no purpose. But, for now, I feel pretty calm. I'm watching the news.

Thank you for the posts above. No one has told me to just get over my loss. At the hospital, they couldn't have been more accepting that where I am is where I'm at. I said I was embarrassed to be back there so soon for a second admission. They told me not to be. Other patients were also very kind and nice - from some more than young enough to be my kids to others closer to my age. I'll miss that nearness of other humans. My sisters have been caring, offering to do anything they could. One of the police officers who took me to the ER said I was probably expecting too much of myself. So I can't say I've been badly responded to by anyone.

My dog died of cancer in 2006. It felt awful for a while. It took 5 years for me to stop having crying spells over her. This is a lot worse.

I have to not stay home alone too much, or I will keep getting horribly despondent. I have to find places where I can meet supportive others. I've thought of Al-Anon. Maybe support groups that are sponsored by churches. I have to stop being overly involved with the 3 friends that were kind of using me. They care for me in a way, and I appreciate that. But they are critical. They have serious issues of their own that they've never managed to grappled with all that well. The one I'm closest to is a compulsive gambler who has little food in her fridge because she spends so much at the casinos. Her apartment is squalid and heavily roach infested. If we go anywhere together, it's always in my car, never in her truck. Our conversations last a long time because I know how she loves to talk about her childhood and everything else that has happened in her life. So I ask questions that I know she'll enjoy answering. It's like I'm a talk show host, and she's a celebrity guest on my show. Another friend goes on and on about her abusive mother. She has 3 adult children whom she never mentions. I don't even know their names. It seems they stay away from her too. She calls and wants to stay on the phone delivering a monologue that would go on for hours, if I didn't interrupt her. I try to set a limit of 30 to 60 minutes. She had open heart surgery 10 years ago and claims she was badly treated by the hospital staff. She talks about one job after another that she's had in the past. Always her coworkers were terrible, and she did an outstanding job. She is an uncommonly hard worker. I think she's hungry for recognition and appreciation. She deserves some. I acknowledge what a good person she is in so many ways. I can't remember her ever giving me a single compliment. Then there's my neighbor, who goes to the gym a lot. I admire her strength and discipline. I know she loves when I stop by and listen to her. She's usually venting about how our new landlord neglects the property. She's right, sort of. Our landlord did a good job fixing and sealing the roof, which previous landlords allowed to leak and only put patches herr and there that didn't hold. However, the shrubbery oitside is not being trimmed properly. Dogs are now allowed, and pooper scooping has not been enforced. So I hear 30 minutes of lamentation over dog poop in the courtyard. It is lamentable, but being a renter means you don't have the control of your home environment that comes with being a home owner. She's poured out her heart about the 2 fathers of her kids who she says were domestic abusers. I believe her. She yawns and looks away, if I mention anything about the man who's been in my life. She has done that both when he was alive and now. Any mention of him is like a taboo subject with all 3 of these friends. Each will immediately withdraw from the conversation. They won't tell me not to talk about him. They know they don't have to. They know I'm sensitive enough to their discomfort that I will change the subject on my own, if they give any sign of disinterest. I'm sick of placating them, just to have a bit of companionship.

So I have to get out in my community and broaden my network of acquaintences, looking for people to be around who are not so preoccupied with their own unmet need.

Ugh your friends sound like emotional vampires Rose
And that’s awful that they shut down like that when you try to share things important to you.

No wonder you like the nicer facility. The staff and others are willing to listen and have patience and compassion. Have you looked to see if there are grief support groups around you. I know it’s harder with the social distancing rules however people still meet outside. Yes there might be some alanon meetings that are held outside. That’s what they have been doing around my area where they are having AA meetings outside.

People are getting creative in an effort to socialize despite the COVID social distancing challenge. Even if you find an alanon meeting you may find individuals that have other groups they are involved with that meet in creative ways.

I think one thing you learned in this experience is that you do better with people that are different than these women you know around you.

I thank you, O.E., for that last sentence above. It's a pithy distillation of my preceeding, long post. I will keep that sentence in the front of my brain. I'll recall it as I make my way through the days coming up.

Watching a news program on PBS, a segment came up that had me near crying. It was just something in the news that my s.o. had been very interested in. (He was a close follower of the news.) I wished he were here watching the news with me. Doing that together had been part of our daily routine that we looked forward to. Our evenings were our cozy time together. So a snippet came up that was a replay of something he and I had watched together. It made my memory of him and me being together seem so sharp and clear. I could almost feel him near me in front of the TV, and remember the comments we exchanged . . . and how I'ld try to catch how his dementia might cause him to have difficulty following what we were watching, and I'ld point things out to him to keep him on track following what we watched. It felt like we should be doing that now, but he's gone. Grief started to well up in me. But I decided not to break down. It would have been just me jumping down into that black hole. So I pulled myself together. I'm not stuffing my emotions. But I don't think honest grieving has to mean I let every passing thought that tugs at my heartstrings throw me into a tornado of emotional pain. I can choose not to entertain a mental impulse. I cried enough today. At the hospital, a counselor sat with me while, evaluating my state of mind and giving discharge advice. I broke down pretty badly deveral times talking with him. Now I want to give myself a break this evening from swimming in a river of sorrowful pain.

Next I neef to get myself supper and take tve meds I was put on at the hospital. They may, or may not, prove helpful. For now I will stick with them.

Ok that’s a little improvement Rose. What you just shared is the realization of a absence stage I described. You are just starting to figure out how to better manage the emotions that swell up each time you have one of these experiences. It’s so normal Rose and it takes time for the mind to slowly accept these moments you are experiencing.

It’s actually worse when in the environment you spent so much time in with a person who is no longer present. My FIL would actually see his wife sitting in her chair. He would get so upset he had to get up and leave the room. It was his mind expecting to see her sitting there so much that he saw her. This lasted for a while and gradually lessened with time.

I could relate in that it took me time to adjust to my little dog not following me to the stairs at night to go up to bed with me. I still can feel weepy thinking about it but I don’t think about it every time I head up to bed anymore. My mind has finally accepted his absence.

It takes time to get past this stage Rose. It improves with time.

"Criticism and lack of support in peer-reviewed research or objective clinical observation by many practitioners in the field has led to the labels of myth and fallacy in the notion that there are stages of grief."

The statement above comes from Wikipedia's article on grief.

So, O.E., where did you get this "realization of an absence stage" you refer to above? Is this part of a bigger theory about grief that you read, saw a video on or heard from some therapist. Or have you made a study of grief and come up with a theory of your own, structured around "stages?"

You say "it is worse when in the environment you spent so much time in with a person who is no longer present . . . " That's a big statement. You base it on your FIL's behavior. So you think he would have felt better, if his family took him out of that house?

I wished I could have stayed longer in my s.o.'s apt, but that wasn't an option. Anyone I've ever known who lost a spouse or a partner was in no hurry to leave the space they had shared with their partner.

I appreciate you wanting to "explain" all kinds of things to me. But you are cranking out "explanations" that you have little basis for.

You talking about your grief over losing your little dog was real. I appreciate that sharing of your actual experience. That is one of the things you can legitimately claim expertise on. You are an expert on what O.E. went through and how she felt going through it. You can speak with authority on those two things as long as what you present isn't contaminated with a bunch of psychobabble someone fed you.

You certainly mean well and have the best of intentions. However, in your enthusiasm to be helpful, you go into this "I know. I know." mode. It's okay to not know. Often that's the beginning of wisdom. There's a lot you do know - based on your experiences in this world, which you've spent years and years accumulating. There are no short-cuts to wisdom. You can't just fabricate insight based on what you think sounds like stuff you've read, or heard or seen a video on.

This is a pitfall lots of therapists fall into. It was behind things that therapists said to me in the hospital, and I hated it. "So you were busy doing things after your s.o. died and you haven't "allowed yourself to grieve." That was a counselor taking what she believed was a shortcut to understanding. She had read and heard about the "not allowing oneself to grieve" theory and decided to slap that label on my situation. Well I'm here to tell you that you can pack boxes to put in storage and cry at the same time. I didn't "stuff" my grief. She said to me "You haven't allowed yourself to deal with your grief." I said to her, "So what would I have to have been doing that would constitute dealing with my grief?" She meant well, but she was looking for a short cut. Maybe - by chance - she was even right. But she wasn't doing any real thinking . . . just looking in her bag of tricks for a lablel to slap on what I was going through.

Despite all of what I've just said, I'm very grateful that anyone would even bother to follow my thread at all. It's getting dreary.

I have this big basketul of psych meds. I just put together a combo for starting the day: Seroquel, Depakote, Ritalin, Baclofen, Synthroid. If I still feel paralyzed in an hour, I can throw on more of the above, or add Buspirone and/or Vistaril. The P.A. at the psych hospital, who was the original prescriber of all this stuff, reached into her bag of tricks and came up with a label that she liked - "schitzoaffective." I had to look that one up. I have no idea of her basis for coughing that one up. I was disinclined to even ask. I cite these examples of things I was told at the hospital to try and illustrate why I feel the need to challenge conclusions that are rushed into. It's not just to be argumentative.

In 2004 a psychiatrist diagnosed me with "nacissistic personality disorder." In 2002 a psychiatrist who had diagnosed me as dysthymic for 6 years suddenly got a new, bright idea. He said on the phone, "Why Rose, I do believe you're bipolar!" Then he refused to ever see me again. (We had both gotten a bit heated, arguing over how I could/should handle a particular challence I was facing.) I'ld gone to this guy for 6 years - all financed out of my own purse . . . never by insurance. I wanted him to have all the time necessary to get to know me. No 15 minute med management appointments. I paid for 30 to 90 minute appointments. It added up to several thousands of dollars I spent over that 6 year period. Next I saw a female psychiatrist, using insurance that a new job provided. In the midst of our first meeting, she abruptly led me to the receptionist desk, saying she was referring me to another doctor in her group practice. She said I should be seen only by male psychiatrists because she diagnosed me as someone with a high propensity for becoming violent. She said it would be too dangerous for a female psychiatrist to be in a room alone with me. (All of this seemed to be based on me expressing to her that I was angry about that doctor dumping me after 6 years.) I wasn't homicidally angry or behaving in an agitated, hostile way. Toward the psychiatrist - who after 6 years rejected me - I felt peeved and exasperated. I blamed myself for losing my cool during the argument we had. He had been nice to me for 6 years, which made me regret my role in causing the rupturing of our relationship. He knew I was using my new health insurance to seek a second opinion about what psychotropics might, or might not, help me. I suspect that hurt his feelings, which I felt sorry for. I should not have even told him I was seeking input from another psychiatrist. It hadn't occurred to me that doctors are liable to feeling rejected themselves and that he may have felt hurt by my telling him I had an appointment with another pdoc. My telling him that was the basis on which he was able to withdraw from further contact with me, without being guilty of "patient abandonment."

Years later, I ran into the pdoc who judged me as violent. My agency sent me to do some shifts at a psych facility for children. I saw this pdoc in action there. She told me to give a shot of thorazine in the butt to a 9 year old boy who she said was about to become violent. He was a very sweet, mildly retarded boy who did get physically hyper at times, just running around more than could be allowed. Instead of giving him the shot in his butt, while staff held him down, I read him a story, and he was fine. What she wanted me to do was a little too close to rape for my taste. Staff there told me she was always labeling kids as "high potential for becoming violent" and often refused to be alone in an office with one child or another, due to her habitual fear of the children. Funny how life or Providence allowed me to see what this pdoc was about and relate it to my original encounter with her.

That's an awful lot of stuff I've churned up and put down. I guess my point is that psych professionals are overly inclined to take a small amout of contact with a client and parley that into a big deal theory that they're actually pulling out of their arses. The pros do it. Then lay people, exposed to the psych infrastructure, copy this behavior. So every 2nd person who's been in therapy sees or hears about someone else with a psych issue and is quick to say "Oh, oh . . . I know, I know . . . I recognize this pattern . . . I heard about this." A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. People, both pros and lay people, are way too eager to spin off a bunch of "explanations" based on not enough insight to justify thinking they actually figured anything out. Sometimes I just get frustrated by that; other times it can have real consequences that cause harm.