What is Pet Loss?

There is no clear line in what qualifies as pet loss. Some medical associations call it a pet loss if a person has simply lost their pet, and some others include the trauma and grief that follows.

In this post, we focus on the grief reaction that comes after losing a pet companion.

The Mental Consequences of a Pet Loss

According to research, the following are considered the effects of pet loss:

・Sudden and unstoppable tears
・Incapable of making progress due to self-hate
・Whitnessing shadows of their lost pet
・Prolonged anxiety and negativity
・Easily panicked
・Nightmares

Additionally to the above points, pet loss is known to cause physical symptoms such as loss of appetite and dizziness. Generally speaking, pet loss can create mental states extremely similar to depression and should be taken care of if symptoms prolong.

5 Ways to Cope With Pet Loss

Some suggest that getting a new animal would help with pet loss, but for some people, owning a new pet too soon still feels like a betrayal to their lost love. The most important step in overcoming the sadness is to first fully accept the loss of your beloved pet.

As a way to completely accept the death of your pet, you can try the following methods:

1. Cry Your Heart Out

To face pet loss, you must first accept the death of your pet. Tears may fall when you think of your lost companion, but don’t hold it in and let it all out. Crying relaxes the sympathetic nerves so that the parasympathetic nerves can become dominant. This lifts mental stress.

Tears will shift the brain back to normal from a stress-controlled state, and this will allow a calm transition into acceptance of death.

2. Share Your Sadness With Others Who Feel the Same Way

Even if you logically understand that your pet has passed away, sometimes it’s hard to accept it emotionally. In these circumstances, it helps to talk to others who are also going through similar experiences.

Typically, when a person passes away, there are funerals with family and friends that gather to mourn and reflect on past memories together. This helps people understand death, but with animals, a ceremony like humans are rare.

We recommend that you connect online with others who are also experiencing pet loss. Whether it be a group or an individual, share your sad feelings and ideas on how to overcome them. It’s encouraging to know that you’re not alone in the grieving process and sharing experiences will allow your heart to process the emotional aspects of the death.

3. Keep Yourself Intentionally Busy

One way to cope is by keeping yourself intentionally busy. It can be mentally tolling to constantly deal with sadness.

Whether professional or private, shift your focus to other activities. This can temporarily alleviate some of the stress felt through pet loss. Eventually, you’ll feel free enough from sadness to calmly accept the passing of your pet.

4. Create Closure

Once you’re able to accept death, we recommend that you organize your memories with them. Your pet’s toys, toiletry, and cage will always trigger a flashback in memories unexpectedly. This can bring back the negative symptoms of pet loss.

Try to organize and let go of some objects, frame certain memories that you cherish, or make a keepsake box to store special items that are dear to you. This will help you move on to a post-death new phase.

A pet memorial ceremony is also very helpful. You can plant a tree or place a gravestone where you buried your pet’s ashes as a way for closure.

5. Seek Pet Loss Counseling

If nothing works, in the end, you can always seek professional help. It can be a general therapist, but we recommend a Pet Loss Counselor that specializes in these matters. They can empathize deeply about your loss as they understand specific difficulties a person goes through during the loss.

If the issues you face are hard to share with people in real life, an AI can hear you without any restrictions on time schedule, or location. It’s an affordable alternative counseling method with a free trial period. Give it a try!
→SELF MIND

Move Forward With All The Great Memories

In some cases, people suffer through pet loss for more than 6 months. It’s a sign that you’ve poured your heart into caring for your pet, so there’s no need to try and ‘get over.’ Instead, we hope that you can embrace their departure and learn how to move forward with all the great memories you’ve created together!

References:

KIMURA, Y., KANAI, K., ITOH, N., CHIKAZAWA, S., HORI, Y., HOSHI, F., KAWABATA, H., & MAEZAWA, M. (2016). A Longitudinal Study of Mental Illness among Bereaved Pet Owners. Journal of Veterinary Epidemiology, 20(1), 59–65. https://doi.org/10.2743/jve.20.59

Kimura, Y. (2009). GriefReaction and Care Associated with Pet Loss in Japan. Japanese Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine, 49(5), 357–362. https://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/110007161315

Nikaido, C., Ando, T., & Kajiwara, H. (2019). The past and future of pet loss study in Japan: A literature review. Journal of the College of Education, Yokohama National University. The Social Sciences, 2, 11–22. https://doi.org/10.18880/00012307

The post The Hardships of Pet Loss: 5 Ways To Cope With Grief appeared first on SELF MIND.

Different Types of Stressful Goodbyes

According to the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale, which is a widely used scale to measure stress across the world, “death of a spouse” scores the highest on stressfulness. The scale looks at stressful life events with how much they affect individual health, and scores these life events based on “live change units (LCU)”, which indicate the weight a particular event carries on one’s stress levels. The higher the LCU, the larger the impact. In a study conducted across 5,000 patients, the following results were found for the topmost stressful goodbyes:
*The number in brackets indicates the LCU score.

1: Death of a spouse (100)
2: Divorce (73)
3: Marital separation (65)
4: Imprisonment (63)
5: Death of a close family member (63)

Four out of the top five stressors are “bereavement” or “separation” from close relatives, indicating that becoming separated from a loved one is a major stressor. Furthermore, there are differences in the stress and symptoms between separation by death and separation by breakups.

Separation by Death

A study of 40 bereaved people in the United States reported that most of them experienced depressed mood one month after the loss. The main symptoms are as follows:

• Loss of appetite
• Weightloss
• Poor sleep
• Waking up throughout the night
• Sleep disturbances (such as waking up too early)
• Shedding tears
• Fatigue
• Loss of interest in one’s surroundings
• Restlessness
• Sense of guilt

The reality is that many people who have experienced stressful goodbyes through death suffer from symptoms such as the above. According to the above survey, many of them particularly feel a strong sense of guilt, wondering if there was anything they could have done to prevent the loss, or what they could have done differently. This is different from the “guilt” felt by depressed people due to loss of self-esteem, or the “guilt of having committed a crime” felt by criminals, and is very harmful to those who have experienced bereavement.

Moreover, separation by death can be predictable, or unpredictable. The death of a loved one from illness or old age can be somewhat prepared for emotionally. On the other hand, the sudden death of a close person who you thought you could talk to any time, and whose presence in your life you took for granted, can cause immense emotional damage and a sense of loss. In order to avoid falling into a state of depression, including feelings of guilt, it is essential that the bereaved are not isolated and that they have the support of those around them who are devoted to them during these times of stressful goodbyes.

Separation by Breakup (Divorce or Heartbreak)

There are many possible cases of stressful goodbyes through breakups, including divorce, heartbreak, or separation due to moving away. Of these, the stress caused by divorce, which is ranked second in the Holmes and Rehe stress scale, differs in the type of stress felt before and after the divorce itself. The main types of stress felt before divorce are as follows:

• Whether or not to get the divorce: The feeling of wasting one’s marriage
• Inability to reach an agreement: The wife (or husband) wants the divorce, but the husband (or wife) does not consent
• Disagreement on terms: Can’t come to an agreement on property division, alimony, etc.
• Divorce mediation and lawsuits: These are expensive, time-consuming, and cumbersome procedures.

On the other hand, some of the types of stress experienced after the divorce are as follows:

• Loneliness: A sense of loss, and having lost the person you could turn to in times of sickness or unforseen circumstances
• Change in the environment: Changes in lifestyle such as moving house or changing jobs as a result of the divorce
• Dissatisfaction with the terms: Unhappy about the outcomes, in terms of money, parental custody, etc.
• Opinions of others: Feeling as if those around you are not sympathetic to your situation

Many people suffer from the above-mentioned types of stress, which often interfere with their daily lives, manifesting as insomnia, loss of appetite, or lack of concentration. Furthermore, some studies have reported that divorce lowers the immune system, making people more susceptible to physical and mental illnesses, as well as increasing the risk of getting into car accidents.

It is up to us to prevent ourselves from letting negative thoughts take over and make us sick, or become distracted and endanger ourselves as a result of stressful goodbyes. For this reason, it is important to diffuse negative thoughts as much as possible and avoid accumulating stress by talking to someone you can trust or keeping yourself busy with something you are passionate about.

By the way, our app “SELF MIND” contains many helpful tips for dealing with stress and stressful goodbyes. If you’re looking for more tips on how to care for your mental health, check out some of our past blog posts!

Ways of Coping with Heartbreak

Breaking up with your romantic partner or experiencing heartbreak through an unrequited crush are also types of stressful goodbyes that should not be taken lightly. In Japan, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare in 2018, suicides due to depression are most common among people in their 20s, with the most common motive being heartbreak. Many people in their 30s and 40s have also taken their own lives due to similar motivations, and the presumed reason for this is that people lose the will to fall in love as they age, or they are driven to this extreme action through damaged pride and sense of self-doubt.

Let us now take a look at “interpersonal stress coping”. Interpersonal stress coping is a coping method used to reduce the stress caused by interpersonal relationships. There are three main types of interpersonal stress coping: regretted coping, rejected coping, and avoidant coping. An experiment was conducted to measure the stress response of university students by applying each type of coping to cases of heartbreak.

• Regretted coping: Regret towards your separation from the object of heartbreak.
• Rejected coping: Resentment towards the object of heartbreak, or deliberately trying to forget about them.
• Avoidant coping: Positive interpretation of the heartbreak, replacement with another love interest, finding distractions, etc.

The results showed that “regretted coping” and “rejected coping” tended to increase the stress response and delay recovery because people were too conscious of the other person as a negative entity. On the other hand, “avoidant coping” was found to be more effective since the subject interpreted their lost love in a positive way and were less likely to experience stress reactions.

Accepting the time you spent in love in a positive way can give you hope for the future, and starting a new relationship can help you make up for the stressful goodbyes experienced through the loss of love. In addition, distractions can help you to vent your thoughts and recover from a broken heart. This type of avoidant coping, which could be referred to as “heartbreak coping” is an effective method that can help you recover from the pain of heartbreak more quickly.

Maintaining a Healthy Mind in Stressful Goodbyes

Separation from someone you were close to can be a significant cause of stress. Moreover, if the stressful goodbyes are sudden, they will leave their mark as a strong negative experience, and may even develop into trauma.

Of all the stressful goodbyes, the most impactful stress response on one’s health is the sense of loss. As mentioned above, when something that we took for granted is no longer around us, we feel loneliness like a gaping hole in our hearts. In order to alleviate this feeling, it is important to maintain a sense of gratitude on a daily basis. By feeling and expressing gratitude toward your spouse, parents, romantic partner, and friends, you can strengthen the recognition that they are important to you, no longer taking their presence for granted.

Humans are creatures of habit. While habituation is one of the most important factors that lead to improved performance and personal appeal, it also makes it difficult to adapt to changing situations, causing us to become distracted. Gratitude is something you can start practicing now. Being grateful and compassionate to those around you is essential for maintaining a healthy mind.

→ Looking to improve your mental health? Try the SELF MIND app FREE for 1 week!
If you’re looking for more tips on how to care for your mental health, check out some of our past blog posts!

Image: Unsplash
References:
Clayton, P. J. (2007). Bereavement. In Encyclopedia of Stress (pp. 317-323). Elsevier Inc. doi: 10.1016/B978-012373947-6.00053-2

Kato, T. (2005). The Relationship Between Coping with Stress Due to Romantic Break-Ups and Mental Health. Japanese Journal of Social Psychology 20(3), 171-180. doi: 10.14966/jssp.KJ00003724999

Kawano, T. (1993). Diseases After Bereavement: Bereavement Stress and Health Disorders. Shinshin-Igaku, 33(1), 35-38. doi: 10.15064/jjpm.33.1_35

Tsukawaki, R. (2014). Types of Romantic Breakups and Stress-Coping Styles on Stress and Recovery Period After Breakup. Bulletin of the Psychological Counseling Center, 10, 23-27.

The post Stressful Goodbyes: How Heartbreak Affects Our Health appeared first on SELF MIND.