Thursday's Therapy - 30 Major Reactions Physically Indicating Anxiety After Your Child's Traumatic Death ~Therese A. Rando, PhD, Complicated Mourning

Thursday's Therapy

30 Major Reactions Physically Indicating

Anxiety

After Your Child's Traumatic Death

~Therese A. Rando, Ph.D., Complicated Mourning, Part Seven

The following are just the physiological symptoms you may have in your Child-loss Grief that will lead toward Anxiety. (We will examine symptoms that lead to depression, etc. next week.) I have been shocked when I have exhibited many of these anxious-type symptoms, and yet, it stands to reason:

Never in my life have I been subjected to such torment as I have in losing my child, losing her suddenly, and losing her violently.

Why should I be surprised my poor body is reeling and anxious over such a tormenting experience?!

30 Major Reactions Physically Indicating Anxiety After the Traumatic Death of Your Child

Motor Tension

• Trembling, shaking, twitching, nervous energy, "jumpy," foot/leg shaking, finger drumming
• Muscle tension, aches, soreness
• Teeth grinding, clenched jaw
• Easily fatigued, exhaustion
• Headache
• Restlessness and searching for something to do

Autonomic Hyperactivity (Being "revved up")

• Anxiety, tension, nervousness
• Heart palpitations, rapid heartbeat
• Shallow and rapid breathing, shortness of breath
• Numbness, tingling sensations
• Smothering sensations
• Dizziness, unsteady feelings, faintness, lightheadedness
• Dry mouth
• Sweating or cold, clammy hands
• Hot flashes or chills
• Chest pain, pressure, or discomfort
• Nausea, diarrhea, other abdominal distress
• Frequent urination
• Tightness in the throat, difficulty swallowing, feeling of something stuck in the throat, choking
• Digestive disturbance (such as upset stomach)
• Stress cardiomyopathy (aka "broken heart syndrome" - when you feel all the symptoms of a heart attack but it is not an actual heart attack

Vigilance and Scanning

• Heightened arousal (hyperarousal)
• Agitation
• Sense of being "geared up"
• Easily startled
• Irritability, outbursts of anger
• Difficulty falling or staying asleep
• Impaired concentration
• Heightened awareness of surroundings in order to be "on guard" (hypervigilance)
• Physiologic reactivity upon exposure to events, stimuli, and/or internal or external cues that remind you of the loved one, the death, events associated with it, and/or other painful reactions to the loss

~Rando, 2011 (In Press)

Picture: http://www.fotosearch.com/photos-images/anxiety.html

From lecture of Therese A. Rando, Ph.D, BCETS, BCBT July 9-10, 2010 in "Clinical Interventions in Grief and Mourning," and "Intervening After Sudden and Traumatic Death: Contending with a Special Type of Complicated Mourning," used with permission of the author