Dealing with Grief as a Teenager
Being a teen is hard enough without any awful things happening to you. Many times you are dealing with a lot of stress. You might have stress from your parents, friends, school, just making it through day to day. Adding losing a loved one on top of that can feel like it’s too much to handle. You now have added stress by grieving for your loved one. Your relationship to the person who died could have been a close connection, or could have been someone that you really didn’t spend a lot of time with. They could have been a best friend or a relative who you didn’t really communicate with (even if you saw them often). The kind of a relationship you had with the person who was killed will affect how you grieve for them and how it will impact your life. Sometimes the person that was killed leaves a huge void in your life, especially if he or she was close to you. The people around you may not realize how close you were to the person who is now gone and may not see why this may be affecting you so strongly. Sometimes our closest friends are really like family and sometimes our family members aren’t really even as close as our friends. If a family member died that you weren’t that close to, it might feel like you should be feeling more pain than you are because people expect it of you. People often do not understand that most everyone grieves in different ways. Often your parents, friends, siblings or teachers might expect you to react toward the death of a loved one in a way you may not react. Know that if you grieve differently than what people expect that doesn’t mean it is a bad
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