How Losing A Parent As A Child Can Affect Your Life & What You Can Do

No matter how many people you choose to be with or meet in your life, nobody can replace the value your parents hold in your life. Your primary caregivers are wired to love you unconditionally. Their ethics, actions and practices literally mould you to become the person you are right from childhood.

So, it is natural for you to look up to or become like them when you become an adult. There are also several studies that denote how a parent-child relationship can impact the kid on many levels, including health and development, academic progress, and eventual life choices.

What are the psychological effects of losing a parent early in life?

Losing a parent, who is an idol as a child at a young age, can have severe psychological effects on you as an adult. As per a 2016 study titled "Maladaptive coping in adults who have experienced early parental loss and grief counselling. Journal of Health Psychology", children who lose their parents at an early age can start showing signs and symptoms of depression, anxiety and substance use disorders. They also use maladaptive coping strategies, including increased levels of self-blame, self-medication, and emotional eating.

Another study titled "The long-term impact of early parental death: lessons from a narrative study" by the Journal Of Royal Society Of The Medicine concluded, "how discontinuity (or continuity that does not meet the child's needs), a lack of appropriate social support for both the child and surviving parent and a failure to provide clear and honest information at appropriate time points relevant to the child's level of understanding was perceived to have a negative impact in adulthood."

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Here are all the possible effects there may be as per the study:

Difficulty in forming relationships

Children who have lost their parents can constantly fear losing the people they love due to the loss of their parents at an early age. This can lead to them being wary and not completely trusting someone to be in a relationship. This can also lead to a sense of isolation and loneliness.

Low self-esteem

Children who have lost their parents can also have low self-esteem even as adults. This can be because they may feel that they are not worthy of love and affection from anyone since they didn't receive it during childhood.

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Bad at expressing feelings

Difficulty forming relationships and low self-esteem can lead to difficulty expressing feelings. They may fear losing people if they say something the other person won't like. When expressing a difficult situation, being vulnerable can be hard for them since that was not something they can do or share during childhood.

There may be behavioural changes

When a child loses their parents, they can tend to show a lot of changes in behaviour. They may become withdrawn, angry, or exhibit signs of rebellion. They may also experience changes in their sleeping or eating habits.

Likely to develop depression

Chinese researchers (The Simbi et al. 2020) published a review looking at parental loss in childhood and later depression in adulthood. The studies included 716 young people who had experienced parental loss before the age of 18 and 2,068 individuals who had no similar experience. According to the study, it was found that any kind of parental loss showed an increased risk of depression as adults by 2.16 times.

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What can one do to tackle the loss?

There is absolutely nothing one can do to tackle the loss of a parent. Death surely is irreplaceable and the void created after that can take a long time to fill. However, there are a few things one can do to continue their life:

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Now taking therapy can be the best way one can let out there or get professional help to tackle all the insecurities, fears and mental health problems. However, the best way to tackle this is via cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for grief. CBT is basically a form of psychotherapy that focuses on the relationship between a person's thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. The way it works is that it helps individuals identify and change negative or unhelpful patterns of thinking and behaviour that may be contributing to mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, or phobias.

Grief support groups

Fortunately, you are not the only one who may be dealing with loss alone. There are several people who might be going through the same fears and feelings as you and meeting those people and relating with what they are going through can be helpful. Through these groups, one can find shared understanding, along with validation of the emotions you feel unable to express to anyone else. It gives a sense of relief since even though people around you may be supportive, one can't truly understand you unless they have lived it themselves.

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Taking support from family and friends

While nothing is worse than not having your parents to support you, you can definitely have a group of friends who can get you when you need them. There are various benefits of having close friends. They can not only help you see the right direction but also help you get out of misery by bringing up your morale.

Talk and share their memories

Talking about all the things you did with your loved ones who aren't there anymore may be a little hard in the beginning, but you may understand that talking about them can subside the grief slowly. However, if you have not processed what has happened even as an adult then it can be difficult talking about them. One can start bit by bit by speaking about it to a therapist first.

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There is no timeline or a fixed way in which grief should be tackled. While one person can get over it in a sufficient amount of time, for some it can take years rather than decades to get out of it. Children will experience these effects in the same way, and some may not experience them at all. So, giving time and learning every individual's process of going through this can be a way of helping