Numbness since my dad passed

On the 22nd of January it will be 2 months since my died and 1 month since we attended the funeral. I still feel numb about everything that happened and I haven’t cried much,I i feel guilty for not crying but I do think about him every single day. Most nights I will dream about him and in the last dream I had he told me he wishes he was alive. Usually when I have dreams about my dad i get stuck in them and I tend to wake up in the afternoon or I would have nightmares about my family rejecting me or ganging up on me.

I’ve been out of work for a couple of months since he passed and so due to me having time off work i have to attend wellbeing’s with my manager to see how i’m doing. I get asked how they can support me and i give them the same answer, they can’t. They can’t bring my dad back to life and they can’t do anything to change this. At this point in time I feel okay like i can do stuff but sometimes I just do stuff to distract me from thinking or just finding the words to explain how i feel escapes me.

I used to be able to pretend i was okay or even use my fake customer service voice but i literally can’t anymore. I find it so exhausting and it lend to point where I felt like everyday was pointless. I have a couple more weeks till I go back to work and I’m hoping feel some other type of emotion soon but i’m worried I won’t or I need more time off I’m concerned about how my job is going to react to it.

and due to the time of that I have to have wellbeing reviews to see how I am but i hate going to them be

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Everyone have different emotions when it comes to death. I also don’t cry when people die, but feel this strange feeling of ethier shock or not realizing they are gone or numbness that you are feeling.

It suck to go to work when you been off for a while, and get use to the swings of things. It okay to feel this way, it a lot to deal with

Feel better man

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Hey @princessookami,

Coming close to two months already is yet another step to go through in your own grieving process. Numbness is now part of it for you, and that’s okay. I understand that the lack of tears can be disturbing, but it is fine. It might be a way for your body and mind to simply shut down as the emotions felt right after his death were very deep and intense. At some point, we just lack of energy. It’s a protective mechanism. It has nothing to do with how much you love your dad. :hrtlegolove:

I understand your stress about work, both the need to go back there, but also just not feeling ready yet and knowing that feeling “better” doesn’t follow any specific timeline. It’s tough as our society tends to dismiss the importance of grief and pressure us to keep performing regardless. The first months after my brother passed away, I put mysef into work as a way to escape - it wasn’t done intentionally, but it resulted in being even more burnt out the following year. I had medical leaves and felt guilty for it, also for having to justify why I wasn’t coming back. Until other circumstances separated me from this workplace at the time.

I understand that it is an uncomfortable position to be in. However, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to take it easy, and how much you are in your right for being away from work as long a you need. Grief has this way to take a toll on us without it being necessarily obvious. I remember having for example a constant back pain for almost a year following my brother death. It’s only when I understood why it was there that I was able to feel better physically. Grief manifests in many ways, differently over time, both physically and emotionally. If you feel like you need more time: it is absolutely okay. Even if they might not completely understand at your workplace - hopefully they do though.

Do you think some kind of arrangement could be done later on with your manager? For example, to set up a way to be able to work, but in a less stressful manner than before. In some countries, if you are on a medical leave, you can negotiate some kind of smooth transition with less work hours for example during a given time/until another wellbeing review. It can be discussed and justified by a doctor. This could show both your willingness to work, but also to be wise in the way it is done. Managers - when they are smart enough and not just a robot with a list of trainings - generally view wellbeing as a priority, as it’s a huge part of what makes an employee effective at work in the long run.

On a different note, if you’d like to talk about you dad, share his name, share memories, feel always free to do it here. No pressure at all. Just know that it would be an honor to know who he was, and hopefully it could help you to keep reconnecting to the beautiful love that is between you, and will never cease to warm your heart.

You’re not alone. :hrtlegolove:

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Hey princessookami,

Megs_26 responded to your post today live on stream with some wonderful words of support and encouragement!

Here is a link to the video for you to watch her reply.

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Thank you for replying to my post.

The nightmares about my family are strange as they’ve never been nasty to me before and I don’t know why they started. My family have been so supportive and they would never do this in real life so It was strange. I haven’t had any since thankfully. I did speak to a councilor a couple of weeks ago and they asked when I wanted to start counseling session.
Sometimes I have trouble getting to sleep and then trouble waking up to the point where i slept the day away.

I work in customer service and during the time my Dad was in hospital it just affected my anxiety so much and I found it hard to concentrate with my Job. So when I spoke to my doctor about it and told them my dad was in hospital and he had covid she put me on the sick for stress. I went back to work for 1 day but my dad died the next day so I went back on the sicl.

My job wanted me to go back to work after 2 weeks and I didn’t feel that was enough time off to enough process his death, at that time it still didn’t feel real. If my job wasn’t so customer focused where I had do everything perfect I would have gone back but If i do something wrong or my stats are off I get asked why. I just didn’t want the added pressure of work after my dad had died :confused:

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I just didn’t want the added pressure of work after my dad had died

You did the right thing, @princessookami. It is the kind of decision that is hard to take as you are pressured to come back, but, listening to yourself is never a mistake. It’s actually very wise, and is better even for your workplace. Especially, as you’ve said, as customer services are also a specific type of environment.

I hope you know that there is no shame nor guilt for feeling how you feel. We are, objectively, expected to be and do a lot of things while grieving. But it is still a very personal journey, one that has to be respected. Right now, you are also learning to identify and respect your limits in the context of a loss. You’re doing as you can. You’re doing enough. :hrtlegolove:

I always used to feel guilty but it got to the point where I could tell I was losing myself, this was way before my dad even passed. I was trying to grip onto what was left of me. That caused to be have blepharitis for 3 weeks and well work wasn’t happy about that.

I’ve just found the last few month’s have been out of my control and I hate it. Today is the first day in a week that I got kinda early.

Thank yoy supporting me through this is appreciate it so much :heart:

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This is some pictures of my dad :heart: the tiara picture i have in a locker and I wear it everyday so he’s with me



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These pictures are absolutely lovely! Thank you so much for sharing, @princessookami. The tiara picture is such a gem! I hope it brings you even just a bit of a smile and warmth whenever you look at it. This is incredibly precious. What an honor. :hrtlegolove:

Losing someone so close to you can change a lot of things internally/spiritually/philosophically, beyond the sorrow tied to the lost itself. I was 100% of a self-guilting person before my brother passed away. Workaholic, constantly burnt out, not respecting my limits - you name it! But when the grief started to really hit me, it felt like was really another level of stress and sadness, one in which guilt shouldn’t be invited, because it was only about being human after all. A special circumstance in life during which the rules that apply before couldn’t apply anymore. Somehow, his loss has brutally forced me to reconsider a lot of tings in my life and how I was functioning. I never thought it would have such effect on me/my life as a whole, but it did.

There is truly a before and an after, not only regarding the hole it creates in our life, but also regarding who we are and have still yet to become. For so many reasons that are, of course, always very personal. It seems that you have a really good understanding of how you tend to function, how you feel, what is fair and unfair in the way you perceive yourself/in what you demand of yourself. This awareness is really going to serve you in the long run. But one step at a time, always.

I hope you’re hanging in there and giving yourself as much grace as possible. :hrtlegolove:

I got him a princess cake for one of his birthdays and we surprised him with it, I still have the tiara and I used to use it in my baby yoda photoshoots but I’ve put it away in a special box with some other stuff of my dad. He is an amazing person, he was always willing to help everyone. He helped people put aerial dishes up and helped people with there tvs. When I moved out and got my own place he did a lot of stuff here for me so when I look around it reminds me of him :heart:

Losing him made me view the world differently and it made me dislike my life more. I think at one point we just take the crap from others but then we hit a point where you just say no that’s enough.

I’m the kind of person that if someone upsets me I jist keep it to myself or I would just continue on without speaking up on if I didn’t like something. I hated myself for this but I’m not very confident but I decided a few months that I was important too and I’m not a machine which can keep going.

I’m feeling like an over whelming sadness so for the couple of days I just slept because I didn’t want to feel. But Sunday I went to dinner with my mum and my best friend (the person I live with). I didn’t like being awake because I felt this weird feeling of overwhelming sadness but it was nice to get out.

I have an update on work as well, i’m going bsck on the 1st February and I thought I’d have to work 8 hours shifts straight away but I’ll only be doing 1 hour 30 minutes a day and attempting a phone call if I feel up to it. My manager is even willing to arrange a charity event to raise some money for the British Lung foundation for my dad (he had copd) honestly I nearly cried

Thank you for being so supportive with this, you’ve been so amazing. You’re so wonderful and I appreciate you :heart:

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