Hurricanes hit; cancer strikes; drunk drivers run over loved ones. Real calamity characterizes life. These losses can devastate, leaving a lifelong impact. We might ask how we will be able to go on, or how to fill such a hole as has been left in the wake of a particular loss.
Anxiety is so appropriate because it reflects real, seemingly unspeakable loss. Only the grieving process allows us to slowly restabilize our shattered senses of self.
The kind of loss always shapes the anxiety. Sibling loss can set in motion guilt for the surviving siblings. Not only does one lose a sibling, but one also has to struggle with the actualization of what had been a prior fantasy at times: the natural wish to murder the sibling. These feelings can leave one feeling deserving of punishment and lead to depression, a real punishment.
Siblings may then attempt to compensate by becoming hyperresponsible. The death of a parent can also bring people to treatment because it leaves them feeling that they do not know how to go on. Despite their chronological age, they can psychologically return to feelings of child-hood vulnerability and of needing a parent so deeply.
As a function of grieving, a person can both let go of the lost parent or sibling as well as incorporate the most treasured aspects of that loved one into one’s own personality as a way to move on. The anxiety of death, loss, or separation can be devastating; it can also pro-mote psychological growth in mysterious ways.