ABSTRACT
While chronic sorrow per se is a non-pathological response to a continuing loss, circumstances can considerably complicate that response. Complications can result in decompensation of prior levels of functioning and may lead to: major depression, regression to earlier, more primitive coping, affective overload, immobilizing guilt, and anger dyscontrol. It also includes increased number and severity of stress-related physical ailments with decreased efficiency of the immune system, emotional numbing and dissociative symptomatology, protracted individual and interpersonal systemic disorganization, and psychotic states. A lifetime of chronic sorrow is a lifetime of stress, both chronic and episodic. The source of stressful events includes not only major disruptions but also the routine hassles of day-to-day living. Guilt, survivor- or otherwise, can be a major complication in chronic sorrow. It can overshadow mood, decision-making, resilience, health, and even potential resolution after the person who is the source of chronic sorrow is gone.
