Understanding the Grief of Prostate Cancer

Grief is a type of emotional suffering that can occur following nearly any negative event, but most often is associated with a significant loss of some kind.
When you or someone you love has been diagnosed with, has experienced a relapse from, or has passed away from prostate cancer, grief is a very common and normal response.

How to Understand Your Grief

Grief is not simply sadness. You may experience a multitude of emotions and you may find that you swing very quickly from one to the next.
Anger, anxiety, and guilt are very common feelings that may accompany sadness while you are grieving. These are all normal parts of the process of coping with your situation.
Your grief may pass faster or last longer than you initially expect. There is no set amount of time that you should grieve. Every individual deals with this issue at his/her own pace.

Should You Even Deal With Your Grief?

There are two basic approaches that you can take with your grief. You can actively try to understand it and work through it or you can ignore it and try to pretend that it does not exist.
Denying your grief and attempting to brush it under the rug will only temporarily alleviate your pain. Working through grief is the only way to get back to some semblance of normal life.

How to Work Through Your Grief

Because grief is dealt with differently by each person, there is no sole way that must be used to get through your grief. Each individual must deal with it in his own way.
With that being said, you can take certain basic steps to help yourself along.

• Try to mentally work through all of the reasons why you are grieving. This may seem obvious, but there are usually many reasons why someone is grieving and it is important to understand each.
• Lean on your support systems during this time. Most people find that they deal with the stress and emotion of their grief better if they share their feelings and thoughts with family or friends.
• Stay physically healthy. Continue all your daily healthy habits. Eat right, continue to exercise, and pay attention to your personal hygiene. Physical healthiness will only help you to think more clearly and to more effectively deal with your grief.