When Grief Looks and Feels Like Depression
When my cat died, I thought I was depressed
A few weeks ago, I had to put my 18-year-old cat, Yoshi, to sleep. Since then, I’ve been in mourning. All my coping mechanisms have disappeared, and the slightest thing — a picture, a smell, or even a clicking sound, will be a painful reminder he’s no longer here.
I’m not holding it together well.
Grief has taken over my brain function as a conductor on a train, and at any minute, it may drive me over the edge of a mountain.
My mental health is suffering — my thinking isn’t rational, my emotions erratic, and when I try to imagine a world without Yoshi, I don’t want to be part of it.
I cry the kind of tears which start of nowhere and escalate until I’m screaming at an unseen enemy.
My body feels like it’s burning from the inside out and trying to purge itself of sadness.
Some days I feel nothing and have no energy.
I’m sad and filled with hopelessness, but it’s not clinical depression. I’m grieving, and it’s a disturbing kind of grief known as Complicated Grief (CG) or Persistent Complex Bereavement Disorder. But knowing it’s not technically depression doesn’t help me feel better.
