Teen's Feelings example essay topic

Death is a difficult situation for anyone to deal with, but it seems to be harder for adolescents to overcome. Loss is something teens feel when they are separated from something or someone they care about, however life does continue. With death, teens experience a grieving process. Everyone grieves differently, just as every teen grieves differently depending on who died, how they died, and other situations surrounding the death. Grief is not a disorder, a disease, or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical, and spiritual necessity that comes along with loving someone.

(Rofes.) There is no cure for grief, but to grieve. Buried grief can cause a war within an individual and at times it can feel like a bomb ticking underground. Most teenagers when dealing with death have a tendency to feel that the pain is so powerful that no one can understand. The pain that hits the adolescent dealing with a loss is not in one location of the body but throughout the entire body. According to the poet from the nineteenth century, Henrich, he stated, "Grief is like a toothache of the heart".

(Grollman 6) No one can measure the length of grief. There is no correct way for a teen to grieve. The suffering as a result of a death varies from person to person. Unfortunately there is no easy way out when dealing with death, but a person must try to remember that they will eventually feel better. When dealing with a loss it is important for teens to remember not to compare their suffering with that of others because each individual's pain is different. The grieving process depends on many factors surrounding the death.

Grief depends on the relationship one had with the person who died. Another is how they may have handled stress in the past and their coping strategies with other types of losses. Also the individual dealing with their loss depends on the support they have from family and friends. Finally the grieving process depends on circumstances around the death such as the way the person died, their religious background, age, and sex. (Schleifer) Dazed or shock is another feeling that is felt after loss.

Ones' body is no longer connected with their mind. This is part of the grieving process. Numbness is all that is felt. When teens are dazed their emotional system shuts down before the reality of the death sets in. Emily Dickinson called this shock "the hour of lead".

Teens may start to feel like a robot. They may function mechanically but not emotionally. This is how the human body protects itself from having to deal with something very tragic. The body requires a cushion of time before the reality of loss can be dealt with. When life seems unbearable, disbelief intervenes. Teens try to believe that the death hasn't happened.

This is the time where they need to let their emotions catch up with what the mind is telling them. Disbelief can last a few hours, a few weeks, a few months, or even as long as years, depending on the certain individual. Eventually the teen must face the truth that his / her loved one is dead in order to overcome the situation. Another part of the grieving process is anger. Many teens become angry at others. They may have a sense of irritation towards their friends for saying the wrong things or the medical community for not being there to help their loved one.

Teens may become outraged at God for letting this happen or their family for not giving the right support. Adolescents may have a feeling of hate to anyone who may have caused the death such as a drunk driver or murderer. Teens may begin to feel anger towards their loved one who died because he / she left them and feel abandoned. Also teens may be mad at themselves for feeling the way that they do. Anger is like a fire. Young adults need to burn it out before it burns them out.

It will start to burn them out physically with tiredness, headaches, digestive problems, or symptoms their loved one may have experienced. They may have a loss of friends due to withdrawal or anger that may have lashed out towards them. Also teens may lash out at themselves and cause physical suffering to themselves. To deny anger is to deny healing. Dealing with rage equals forgiveness towards others and within one's own self. Adolescents dealing with death may feel a sense of envy, panic, relief, or loneliness.

They may feel jealously at other happy people. Teens may panic and lose concentration and become tense. They soon become helpless, hopeless, and disorganized and a result of panic. Usually when a loved one dies from a long term illness a teen may have a sense of relief. (Rofes) This emotion is a result of the end of responsibility of taking care the sick. Young adults may start to feel lonely also.

No one understands their feelings. Other people they know may be in their own grieving process. People must realize the difference between being alone and being lonely. Alone becomes loneliness when separation caused sad and rejected emotions.

There is probably no crisis more stressful than the death of a loved one, which can take a dramatic toll on a person's body. Physical reactions to the body include illness, change in sleeping pattern, nightmares, eating more or less, emptiness, nausea, headaches, dizziness, light-headedness, giddiness, difficulty breathing, tight throat, or becoming afraid of a serious illness. These reactions usually occur periodically. They may appear alone or combined with others. One's pain is not imagined.

The period following a death triggers the human immune system: "Seventy-five percent of routine doctor visits have stress related disorders". (Grollman 26) These symptoms can also be another component to the grieving process. Teenagers may think that they are losing their mind. They are starting to go nuts. Results of this may be losing their way, hearing stuff, talking aloud to the deceased, believing they can see their dead loved one, calling out to their loved one, dreaming about them, and even forgetting their own name. Teens wish and daydream to try and bring the loved one back to life.

They want to bring the past to present. Absence becomes the greatest presence. These strange actions and thoughts are only temporary; they fade and disappear. When a teen starts to feel torn apart from everyone and everything they may start to fall into depression. Depression begins when a teen feels worthless, powerless, helpless, and unprotected. A teen's anger turns inward towards themselves.

Depression is part of saying good-bye to someone. It's not a weakness. Some teenagers get stuck in a state of depression. If teens become trapped in depression they should seek advice and comfort from others to avoid hurting themselves physically. Regrets and guilt are another part of the grieving process. Teenagers start to think of all the things that they should or could have been done.

They can start to feel survivor's guilt, or feeling of guilt for being alive. They may feel guilt for having fun and laughing at such a tragic time of their life. Teens should think of what was done and not what could have been done. They must realize they can't change the past, but they should avoid the same mistakes in the future. (Rofes) The grieving process and effects of it depend on many things surrounding the death. One is the relationship with the person who died.

How well a teen knew them and how much they depended on him / her will deeply effect their grieving process. A grandparent is usually a teen's first experience with death besides a pet. A teen and a grandparent have a special relationship. They have one common enemy-the parent.

A grandparent has few demands and more gives such as advice and gifts. This creates a special bond with the grandparent. Also the closer a teen was to the grandparent the harder it will be for them to cope with. With the death of a parent a teen's life changes.

An issue most teens become concerned about is what will happen to them if their other parent passes away. Their sense of security has diminished. A teen must learn to become more independent in most cases. They must now participate in crucial decisions and take up much more responsibilities. When a sibling dies, most people will go to console the teen's parents. This leaves the teen alone without other's comfort.

Their loss depends on the sibling's age. If it was an older sibling, the teen may have lost a role model or someone they looked up to. It they were close in age, a friend and companion may have died. If the sibling was younger, the teen could have lost someone they took care of and someone that looked up to them. The parents may become overprotected and enforce stricter rules and less freedom.

This only creates extra stress on the grieving teen. (Schaefer) Sometimes worse than losing a relative is losing a close friend. People start to worry about the dead one's family and parents. The teen is left alone to grieve and emotions are bottled up. They may be scared to become close with others or even try to make new friends. They have to learn to hurt more right after the death and hurt less later.

The circumstances of death affect the way teen's respond to their loss. Whether the death was sudden, suicide, AIDS, murder, or death after a long illness will effect the grieving process. An important factor affecting a teen's feelings will be the way the special person died. An accident is something that is unfortunate and unforeseen resulting from carelessness or an unavoidable cause. And accidental death is something unfortunate and unforeseen as a result of carelessness or an unavoidable cause.

This is unfortunate. One moment someone is fine and then the next they aren't. There is no forewarning and everyone is totally unprepared. It is unforeseen. Perhaps the death could have been avoided if someone wasn't so careless at the time.

There may have been unavoidable cause such as natural disasters. The impact of a sudden death is overwhelming. The psychological term is "unexpected loss syndrome". Survivors feel an overpowering shock because life is taken away so quickly and they are powerless. A self-inflicted death can be more dramatic. Teens may feel as if they didn't love enough.

They can feel ashamed, embarrassed, or a greater sense of failure within themselves. They may start to wonder if they could have prevented it. There are questions, doubts, and guilt all over inside one's head. Teenagers may feel abandoned or rejected, but they must learn that they cannot control the lives of others. A death through violence like a murder or drunk driver, can cause a large trauma and shock within a teen. If another individual caused the death the court system could take years to end.

This brings on a much longer grieving process. A teen may feel robbed of victimized if the verdict is soft. Hatred, bitterness, and revenge are emotions that a teen may feel towards the one who cause their loved one's death. A death after an illness is unprepared even though it may not seem like it. Death is something no one is prepared for even if some one knows it will happen.

A teenager may feel a sense of joy due to the fact that their loved one is no longer suffering. The loved one's suffering may be over, but not the teen's suffering. (Grollman) The length of grief is unsure. Teens must grieve for the person who died and the person they were before the death. There is no time limit on grief. Time does not completely heal a broken heart; it only teaches someone to live with it.

Time does not heal pain, a teenager's willingness to touch pain, work with it, accept it, understand their change of moods and behavior, and start to reorganize themselves does. Healing happens when one allows it to happen. An old Chinese Proverb is "Journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step". (Grollman 91) A teen's must first step is to learn to accept the pain of dealing with death.

They can not heal what they don't feel. They must allow themselves to mourn. They may not fully believe the death but must start to face the facts. Reality may hurt for a while, but denial hurts even longer. Teens have to let out their emotions in order to get over the death. Ways to help deal with death are crying, talking, laughing, writing, reaching out to others, joining support groups, taking care of themselves, helping others, and if needed they could get professional help.

Getting over it doesn't necessarily mean a teen is the same person they were before the tragedy. Getting over it doesn't mean they forgot the person who died. An old spiritual saying is "It's so high you can't get over it. It's so low you can't get under it. So wide you can't get around it. You must go through the door".

(Grollman 124) No one gets over a loss; they go through it. Grollman, Earl. Straight Talk about Death for Teenagers. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1993.

Rofes, Eric E. and the Unit at Fayer weather Street School. The Kids' Book about Death and Dying. Boston, MA: Little Brown and Company, 1985. Schaefer, Dan and Christine Lyons. How Do We Tell the Children? New York, NY: Newmarket press, 1986.

Schleifer, Jay. Everything You Need to Know When Someone has been Killed. New York, NY: Rosen Publishing Group Inc. 1998.