What is a Healthy Connection to Your Deceased Loved One? A Closer Look at Continuing Bonds.
- Lisa S. Larsen, PsyD
- Jul 20
- 5 min read
You might wonder if your relationship with your deceased loved one is “normal” or healthy, especially if those around you expect you to “move on” and act like the deceased no longer has an impact on your life. But as any mourner can tell you, there is a continuing bond that you feel towards someone who was close to you while they lived. Whereas previous psychiatric thought was that breaking bonds was necessary for healing, current understanding is more nuanced. This post will help you evaluate the bond you have with your loved one and suggest ways to keep a healthy continuing bond alive.
Psychologists Phylis Silverman, Dennis Klass, and Steven Nickman[i] proposed that the relationship you have with those you’ve lost evolves with grief. You don’t necessarily resolve or get cured of grief; it’s more of an accommodation to a new reality. This is supported by the work of Dr. Mary Frances O’Connor, who penned The Grieving Brain.[1] As you get used to the absence of your beloved person, your bond to them becomes less preoccupied with physical presence (because that is impossible, in the state you remember them in). The bond shifts to a symbolic, abstract, and sometimes spiritual connection.
Many mourners have told me that when they see an animal or natural phenomenon that reminds them of the deceased, it makes them feel better because they believe their dearly departed is symbolically communicating with them. For example, a bird, butterfly, or rainbow might feel special to a mourner for this reason. This is one of the ways your mind might try to make sense or meaning of the death. Your cultural background, religious or spiritual beliefs, and family history all influence your bereavement. There is much variation within the human response to grief. All this complexity might lead you to ask, “how do I know whether my connection is healthy?”
Signs your continuing bond might not be healthy
Some of the ways your bond might be unhealthy include avoidance strategies (which denies the relationship now that the person is deceased); clinging to the past (which doesn’t adapt to the loss appropriately); and ruminating about the death and worrying about it.
Avoidance can harm your continuing bond.
If you refuse to allow yourself to think about the deceased, or stifle your impulse to feel emotions when you do think about the person’s death, you are probably avoiding the mourning process. This may be necessary in short amounts of time, for example if you’re at work and need to perform your duties. However, as a blanket strategy for grief, it has poor outcomes for mourners’ long-term psychological health.
Avoidance is a popular choice for unpleasant feelings and mental states, and may be easier for people with avoidant attachment styles to adopt. You might have learned that no one cared about your vulnerable feelings growing up, so you adopted a hyper-independent approach to things that troubled you. That has probably served you in some ways, but may not help with grief.
Are you pushing away any thought of the loss or deceased?
As I’ve discussed elsewhere, abusing drugs or alcohol can also impede healthy mourning. All these avoidant strategies might feel better short-term, but they don’t allow you to accommodate the new reality of the deceased’s death. They also deny the importance of that person to you. You don’t get to honor them and their importance to you, because you’re investing so much energy in running away from the emotions.
Instead, confronting the death with the support of understanding friends, family, your spiritual community, or professional grief counselling can help your grief proceed naturally. You can gradually accept the reality of their absence and establish a more realistic heart connection to the deceased.
Do you insist that the deceased still be here physically?
It’s natural to want the person you lost to still be here, in the flesh. You might go through a period of time where you long for their company. You might even think you see them in a crowd, or passing by in a public place. This is part of your brain adjusting to the person’s absence.
It becomes more problematic for you if you feel as though you can’t go on living without the person. You might feel like life isn’t worth living because they’re not there, or want to join them “on the other side.” Often, such thoughts are fleeting and pass with time, but they are concerning. If you feel that way consistently and think you might act on that desire to join them in death, I urge you to seek psychiatric care immediately. If people around you are also worried about you for this reason, please get help ASAP. Sometimes, in the throes of grief, you might lose sight of what’s healthy.
If you think about the death all the time for more than six months and have trouble accepting that your person is gone, and still need to see them “in the flesh,” your grief might be blocked. You might have trouble accommodating the new reality and need grief therapy to adjust your relationship to what is realistically possible.
What are healthy ways to continue your bond to the deceased?
Your deceased loved one will always have a place in your heart and mind, but it will evolve over time. You may not believe that now, perhaps because it’s too painful to accept they’re gone. But it’s still important to honor the impact they had on you while they were on this earth. Some of the ways to honor them are:
Bring them (symbolically) into celebrations and special occasions. Something as simple as setting a place at the table for them, keeping a spiritual tradition alive, or serving a dish they would have liked at a meal, are all ways to weave them into your daily life.
Speak with them, but don’t expect a reply. You still have a living connection with them because you’re still alive, thinking about them and feeling them. You can still express your feelings and thoughts to them, or chuckle about what they might say in a situation. They are symbolically living on in your heart and mind. Some spiritual traditions and cultural groups believe you can speak to your ancestors, and they take comfort in this. I don’t know what you believe, but it might be worth a try.
Discuss your memories, shared experiences, and their importance to you with others who knew them. This is a way to keep their memory alive, such as going on a vacation to their favorite place.
I realize that it will probably take time and processing of the grief before you can do any of this, but I urge you to find small ways that can remind you of the person you lost, not just their death. Ultimately, it’s very important to have that ongoing connection, for your wellbeing. If you’re having trouble adjusting your relationship with your deceased loved one, please don’t hesitate to call me at 661-233-6771 or click the button below.
[1] O’Connor, M. F. (2022). The grieving brain. New York, NY: HarperOne Publishing.
[i] Klass, D., Silverman, P. and Nickman, S., Eds. (1996). Continuing bonds: New understandings of grief. Washington, DC: Taylor and Francis.
