“I can't stop thinking about my mom since she died”
After a death, thoughts of the person can fill the day: waking up to them, cooking with them in mind, lying awake going over the last weeks. In the early months this is very common, and it tends to come in waves with gaps in between. Some thoughts are warm memories, and some go round the same few questions. What matters most is what the thinking circles, how long it has been, and whether any part of ordinary life has room left beside it.
What to check first
It helps to check how long it has been since the death. In the first months, constant thoughts of the person are part of ordinary grief for many people. If sleep, eating or work have stopped for weeks, a doctor is worth seeing, whatever the cause turns out to be.
What could be going on
Grief (complicated, disenfranchised, anticipatory): Fits if the thoughts come in waves of longing, with some easier hours in between.
Dual process model of coping with bereavement (Stroebe and Schut): Check whether you swing between the loss and ordinary tasks, and whether the ordinary side ever gets any time.
Rumination and worry: Fits if the thinking goes round the same questions, such as why it happened, without ever settling.
Bereavement guilt and regret (Li and Stroebe): Check whether the thoughts keep landing on something you did or didn't do near the end.
Traumatic grief after a sudden or violent death: Fits if the death was sudden or violent and the thoughts are images of how it happened.
Prolonged grief disorder (ICD-11, DSM-5-TR): Could be this if a year or more has passed and the longing hasn't eased at all, with life still organized around her absence.
Telling them apart
Grief (complicated, disenfranchised, anticipatory): The thoughts come in waves, with yearning for her voice, her face, her habits. Between the waves there may be hours of ordinary life, and some memories bring warmth as well as pain. The pull tends to loosen slowly over months.
Dual process model of coping with bereavement (Stroebe and Schut): The person may swing between facing the loss and dealing with life: the funeral, the bills, work, the children. Both sides take up time, and the swinging itself is part of coping. Trouble may show when one side has crowded out the other entirely.
Rumination and worry: The thinking may circle the same questions: why it happened, what the last words meant, what could have gone differently. It feels like working something out and seldom ends in an answer. Sadness tends to grow heavier after a long spell of it.
Bereavement guilt and regret (Li and Stroebe): The thoughts may keep returning to something done or left undone: a call missed, a short temper, a decision about treatment. The person may run the scene again looking for where it went wrong. Memories of the good years can get crowded out by that one moment.
Traumatic grief after a sudden or violent death: If the death was sudden or violent, the thoughts may be images of how it happened or how she was found. These can come unbidden, with a jolt of fear, and reminders may be avoided. Warm memories may be hard to reach past them.
Prolonged grief disorder (ICD-11, DSM-5-TR): A year or more on, the longing may be as strong as at the start and life may still be organized around the absence. Disbelief, a sense that part of the self died too, and trouble taking up plans tend to go with it. Day-to-day life may have narrowed a lot.
Questions to carry
- The last time she came into my mind today, what was I doing right then?
- When I think of her, which thoughts do I go back to most, and which do I steer away from?
Also said as
- can't stop thinking about my mom who died
- she died and she's all i think about
- thinking about my dad all day since he passed
- my mind keeps going back to my nan
- obsessing over someone who died
- is it normal to think about them constantly after a death