Loss of a Pet – How to Identify Unhealthy Grief and Move Passed it

Experiencing grief in a healthy way allows you to move on and feeling grief in an unhealthy way will keep stuck in the past. So what causes a person to experience it in a different way is in the belief about what the loss ways. You see if you see this loss as a disconnection to a source of love, the grief will feel never ending.

Realizing that you are not grieving the loss of the pet as a pet you loved but the loss of the love this pet provided for you. You are most likely grieving as a lost wounded child rather than as a loving adult.

As a result, you stay stuck in your grief. You end up feeling like a victim - stuck in "poor me." Consider the possibility that you need to do the inner work to develop an adult part of yourself that could bring love to yourself and share it with others. If you are not able to provide that source for yourself you will feel lost, abandoned, and hurt and not much can ease that pain.

The root is that you are abandoning yourself, which only bring about feelings of being alone and despair. You might even feel angry at your pet for abandoning you and sometimes you might feel angry at yourself for not being a better pet owner. You might even experience many regrets that overwhelmed you, and a constant inner thought that questions that you might have done more, take better care of your pet, walk him more often, feed him healthier food my pet might still be here.

Experience grief in a healthy way might look like this, although you miss your pet terribly, you might miss your pets playfulness, its corks and demands on you. You might miss your pet's joy, their unconditional love. You miss your pet for him, you miss being able to walk, spend time with him. You do not feel any regrets because you had not been a taker. You loved your pet completely and you feel totally grateful for the time you had with him. So you really are fine, because your grief only comes in spurts, so you cry when they happen. You feel the emotions then it washes through you so you feel fine again.

This occurs because your pet was not the source of your sense of self. You can have a strong loving inner adult who is connected with a spiritual source of love and wisdom. That is your source not your pet. You need to a person that takes full responsibility for your own pain and joy. You cannot blame or make either one of these emotions about an exterior source.

This is how healthy grieving looks like and really it is about you not being abandoned by yourself, you can miss your pet and grieve for them without experiencing feelings of abandonment, totally lost, victimized and being alone.