Anticipatory Grief

Anticipatory grief, when a loved one is dying

Dealing with Anticipatory Grief Dear Dr. Neimeyer, My question is about anticipatory grief, the distress that family members can feel when a loved one is receiving end-of-life care. I work in a palliative care unit of a large hospital, and we often have families who are overwhelmed with the reality of the patient’s impending death, […]

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Anticipatory Grieving: mourning the living

Dear Dr. Neimeyer, Your recent reply to the woman widowed over 25 years ago resonated with me, even though my husband is still alive.  I am a member of the Well Spouse Association, a national nonprofit organization which provides peer support to those caring for chronically ill or disabled spouses. “Chronic sorrow”…”bleaching out of emotions”…”surviving but not thriving”… “sense of not fitting

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Anticipatory Grief: my daughter’s fate

Dear Dr. Neimeyer, If you have been experiencing anticipatory grief for a loved one, once they die do you still experience normal grief? Or is it all combined within the anticipatory? I have a daughter who is a medical guinea pig, and as far as we can tell she is the oldest surviving person in

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Anticipatory grief, when a loved one is dying

Dear Dr. Neimeyer, My question is about anticipatory grief, the distress that family members can feel when a loved one is receiving end-of-life care. I work in a palliative care unit of a large hospital, and we often have families who are overwhelmed with the reality of the patient’s impending death, to a point that

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Unfinished Business: Adult Children and Parents

Dear Dr. Neimeyer, I’m a clinical psychologist.  I work with many adults who have very difficult relationships with their parents.  Some say they anticipate they will feel relief when their parents die.  Then they feel guilty for feeling that way.  Do you have any advice/thought for people whose grief or anticipated grief is complicated in this way?

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Anticipatory Grieving and Parents: somatic symptom disorders

Dear Dr. Neimeyer, I’m a physician and psychiatrist, and I have a question for you given your decades of work in both the theory and clinical practice around grief/bereavement. I am trained as a pediatrician, and also as an adult + child/adolescent psychiatrist. I now work as a psychiatrist, embedded with the pediatric palliative care

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Anticipatory Grieving: mourning the living

Dear Dr. Neimeyer, Your recent reply to the woman widowed over 25 years ago resonated with me, even though my husband is still alive.  I am a member of the Well Spouse Association, a national nonprofit organization which provides peer support to those caring for chronically ill or disabled spouses. “Chronic sorrow”…”bleaching out of emotions”…”surviving but not thriving”… “sense of not fitting

Anticipatory Grieving: mourning the living Read More »

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