My dog has cancer in his liver and spleen, and learning this has strongly exacerbated some kind of predisposition towards being vulnerable to depression. He’s an old dog so it probably wouldn’t have changed his life expectancy THAT much, but it’s still really sad. If you’re not a pet person this might be counterintuitive, but to me it’s losing a friend, and the things people say to me are mostly unhelpful. Which is why I’m posting it here specifically: the typical coping memes about doggy heaven or death as some profoundly important part of Nature are ruined for me. So I wanted to ask how people here deal with this sort of thing. Especially on the cognitive end of things, what types of frames and self talk you used. I do already know the basics, like exercise and diet and meditation, but I sure wouldn’t mind a new insight on getting myself to actually do that stuff when I’m this down.
I’ve thought about cryopreserving him, but even if that were a good way to use the money I just don’t think I can afford it. All I’ll have is an increasingly vague and emotionally distant memory, I guess, and it sucks. I’ve been regretting not valuing him more during his peak health, as well, although maybe I’d always feel guilty for anything short of having been perfect.
I’ve been thinking a lot about chapter 12 of HPMOR, and trying play with and video and pamper him while I can. I don’t want to say “fuck, it’s too late” about anything else. It’s the best thing I can think of right now.
This whole business with seeking Slytherin’s secrets… seemed an awful lot like the sort of thing where, years later, you would look back and say, ‘And that was where it all started going wrong.’
And he would wish desperately for the ability to fall back through time and make a different choice...
Hide everything that reminds you of your dog. Keep it all, in a drawer somewhere, so that you can take it out and have a good cry sometimes, when you want to. But don’t put pictures or other triggers where they’ll keep making you sad.
You’re good at grieving. Nature did not design us to be crippled by the loss of friends. If you hide all the triggers you’ll forget to be sad quickly.
Your dog is unlikely to want you to be miserable after he is gone. Don’t do that for him if you don’t have to and he wouldn’t want you to. Imagine if the position was reversed. What would you want?
My roommate died from cancer 3 years ago. It never stops being a sad memory, except that the hard pang of the initial shock is gone after some time. I don’t feel guilty for no longer feeling that pang, because I know I still wish it hadn’t happened and it still marked my life in several ways, so I haven’t stopped doing what I privately call “honoring my pain.” The usual feel-good advice of forgetting it all and moving on sounds to me as dangerously close to no longer honoring my pain, by which I mean acknowledging that the sad event occurred, and giving it its deserved place in my emotional landscape, but without letting it define my life.
Several of my pets died when I was a kid, and at some point I just sort of integrated the implicit assumption that every new pet would eventually die as well. If I began with that assumption, the actual event would no longer be such a strong shock. I no longer have pets, though.
For some years I had problems with the concept of acceptance. It felt like agreeing to everything that happened, and I just didn’t want to give my consent to a series of adverse occurrences that it’s not relevant to mention here. Some time afterwards I found somewhere a different definition of acceptance: it’s not about agreeing with what happened, but simply no longer pretending that the world is otherwise, which to me sounded like a much healthier attitude. With that in mind, I’m more capable of enjoying the time with my friends while knowing that all living things die.
I don’t know whether any of my strategies will work in your situation, but this might: doctors specialized in the treatment of pain distinguish between the physical perception of pain and the emotional experience of suffering. Your dog has no awareness of its impending death; he only knows the physical pain. As strong as the pain may be on a purely physical level, he is spared the existential anguish that worries you. Perhaps making a conscious effort to not project your own emotional experience onto him may make the burden lighter for you.
I hope I haven’t said anything insensitive, and preemptively apologize if it sounded that way.
I’m very sorry to hear about your dog. It’s a very difficult thing to go through even without any predisposition towards depression.
This is probably an idiosyncratic thing that only helps me, but I find remembering that time is a dimension just like space helps a little bit. In the little slice of time I inhabit, a pet or person who has passed on is gone. From a higher-dimensional perspective, they haven’t gone anywhere. If someone were to be capable of observing from a higher dimension, they could see the deceased just as I remember them in life. So in the same way that someone whose children are living far from home can remind themselves that their children are in another place, likewise your dog is living happily in another time. English doesn’t quite have a tense that conveys the sentiment I want to convey, but I think you get the idea. Don’t know if that line of thought does anything for you—I find it a small but useful comfort.
Re actually doing exercise/positive self-talk when you’re down, setting up little conditionals that I make into automatic habits by following them robotically has sometimes worked for me. “IF notice self getting anxious—THEN take five minute walk outside”. Obviously setting up those in the first place and following through on them the first n times only works when in an OK mood, but once they become habits they’re easier to follow through on in more difficult states of mind. I’ve also found the Negative Self-Talk/Positive Thinking table at the bottom of the page here to be useful.
But hard things are hard no matter what. Sounds like you’re doing the right thing now by making the most of the time you have together. Best of luck to you.
It’s unlikely that someone is going to say something that will take away your pain. Death sucks. Losing someone you love sucks, and sadness is a normal reaction to that. There are emotionally healthy ways to deal with grief. Give yourself more self-care than you think you need throughout this process to counter the planning fallacy and better to err on the side of too much than too little.
If you do find yourself depressed, seeking professional help is not a sign of weakness and I would encourage you to seek it out. Summoning motivation can be an impossible effort when you are depressed and sometimes someone outside your un-motivated brain is the best thing to stop you from falling down an emotional spiral. If money or something else prevents you from doing that, there are other things you can try here and some more here.
I tend to view depression as an evolved adaptation and a certain state which it is natural for humans to move into in certain situations. I think that it can be helpful to recognize that dysphoria, sadness and grief are all natural reactions. It is ok to be sad. Although, like with all conditions if it becomes chronic or persists for an overly long time then you should probably get some help to deal with it. See here for more information.
For general advice for dealing with grief, see this article and apply whatever you think is applicable or would be helpful. Excerpt:
Establish a simple routine
Regular meal and bed times
Increase pleasant events
Promote self-care activities
Regular medical check-ups
Daily exercise
Limited alcohol intake
Provide information about grief and what to expect
Grief is unique and follows a wave-like pattern
Grief is not an illness with a prescribed cure
Children benefit from being included and learning that grief is a normal response to loss
Compartmentalise worries
List the things that are worrying
Create a ‘to-do’ list, prioritise and tick off items as they are completed
Use different coloured folders for the paperwork that needs to be finalised
Prepare to face new or difficult situations
Graded exposure to situations that are difficult or avoided
Plan for the ‘firsts’ such as the first anniversary of the death – How do you want it to be acknowledged? Who do you want to share it with?
Adopt a ‘trial and error’ approach; be prepared to try things more than once
Challenge unhelpful thinking
Encourage identification of thoughts leading to feelings of guilt and anger
Gently ask the following questions – What would your loved one tell you to do if they were here now? What are the alternatives to what you thought? Where is the evidence for what you thought?
Provide a structured decision-making framework to deal with difficult decisions e.g., When to sort through belongings? Whether to take off the wedding ring? Whether to move or not?
Base decisions on evidence, not emotions
Avoid making major, irreversible decisions for 12 months
to prevent decisions being based on emotion
Identify the problem and possible solutions
List the positives and negatives for each potential solution
Determine the consequences for each solution – can they be lived with?
I guess, and it sucks. I’ve been regretting not valuing him more during his peak health, as well, although maybe I’d always feel guilty for anything short of having been perfect.
I would try to stop doing this. It will gnaw at you and we can always find something that we could have done better in the past. The better thing to do is learn from the past, appreciate it and experience, to the utmost, what is happening now.
You may want to spend some time thinking about how you can give your dog the best end of life experience that you can.
Losing a dog is painful. However, and I’m only speaking from personal experience here, you will probably have the opportunity to control to a great extent how your dog dies, its relative level of pain / discomfort, and in what situation and setting the death takes place.
Knowing that my dog—who my parents found abandoned a few weeks before I was born, who I grew up with, and who died in my early adulthood—died at home, surrounded by her family, having spent her last days lovingly attended and not in great physical pain, makes remembering her whole and relatively joyful life more pleasant for me now. It may help you too.
t;dr how do you cope with death?
My dog has cancer in his liver and spleen, and learning this has strongly exacerbated some kind of predisposition towards being vulnerable to depression. He’s an old dog so it probably wouldn’t have changed his life expectancy THAT much, but it’s still really sad. If you’re not a pet person this might be counterintuitive, but to me it’s losing a friend, and the things people say to me are mostly unhelpful. Which is why I’m posting it here specifically: the typical coping memes about doggy heaven or death as some profoundly important part of Nature are ruined for me. So I wanted to ask how people here deal with this sort of thing. Especially on the cognitive end of things, what types of frames and self talk you used. I do already know the basics, like exercise and diet and meditation, but I sure wouldn’t mind a new insight on getting myself to actually do that stuff when I’m this down.
I’ve thought about cryopreserving him, but even if that were a good way to use the money I just don’t think I can afford it. All I’ll have is an increasingly vague and emotionally distant memory, I guess, and it sucks. I’ve been regretting not valuing him more during his peak health, as well, although maybe I’d always feel guilty for anything short of having been perfect.
I’ve been thinking a lot about chapter 12 of HPMOR, and trying play with and video and pamper him while I can. I don’t want to say “fuck, it’s too late” about anything else. It’s the best thing I can think of right now.
Hide everything that reminds you of your dog. Keep it all, in a drawer somewhere, so that you can take it out and have a good cry sometimes, when you want to. But don’t put pictures or other triggers where they’ll keep making you sad.
You’re good at grieving. Nature did not design us to be crippled by the loss of friends. If you hide all the triggers you’ll forget to be sad quickly.
Your dog is unlikely to want you to be miserable after he is gone. Don’t do that for him if you don’t have to and he wouldn’t want you to. Imagine if the position was reversed. What would you want?
My roommate died from cancer 3 years ago. It never stops being a sad memory, except that the hard pang of the initial shock is gone after some time. I don’t feel guilty for no longer feeling that pang, because I know I still wish it hadn’t happened and it still marked my life in several ways, so I haven’t stopped doing what I privately call “honoring my pain.” The usual feel-good advice of forgetting it all and moving on sounds to me as dangerously close to no longer honoring my pain, by which I mean acknowledging that the sad event occurred, and giving it its deserved place in my emotional landscape, but without letting it define my life.
Several of my pets died when I was a kid, and at some point I just sort of integrated the implicit assumption that every new pet would eventually die as well. If I began with that assumption, the actual event would no longer be such a strong shock. I no longer have pets, though.
For some years I had problems with the concept of acceptance. It felt like agreeing to everything that happened, and I just didn’t want to give my consent to a series of adverse occurrences that it’s not relevant to mention here. Some time afterwards I found somewhere a different definition of acceptance: it’s not about agreeing with what happened, but simply no longer pretending that the world is otherwise, which to me sounded like a much healthier attitude. With that in mind, I’m more capable of enjoying the time with my friends while knowing that all living things die.
I don’t know whether any of my strategies will work in your situation, but this might: doctors specialized in the treatment of pain distinguish between the physical perception of pain and the emotional experience of suffering. Your dog has no awareness of its impending death; he only knows the physical pain. As strong as the pain may be on a purely physical level, he is spared the existential anguish that worries you. Perhaps making a conscious effort to not project your own emotional experience onto him may make the burden lighter for you.
I hope I haven’t said anything insensitive, and preemptively apologize if it sounded that way.
I’m very sorry to hear about your dog. It’s a very difficult thing to go through even without any predisposition towards depression.
This is probably an idiosyncratic thing that only helps me, but I find remembering that time is a dimension just like space helps a little bit. In the little slice of time I inhabit, a pet or person who has passed on is gone. From a higher-dimensional perspective, they haven’t gone anywhere. If someone were to be capable of observing from a higher dimension, they could see the deceased just as I remember them in life. So in the same way that someone whose children are living far from home can remind themselves that their children are in another place, likewise your dog is living happily in another time. English doesn’t quite have a tense that conveys the sentiment I want to convey, but I think you get the idea. Don’t know if that line of thought does anything for you—I find it a small but useful comfort.
Re actually doing exercise/positive self-talk when you’re down, setting up little conditionals that I make into automatic habits by following them robotically has sometimes worked for me. “IF notice self getting anxious—THEN take five minute walk outside”. Obviously setting up those in the first place and following through on them the first n times only works when in an OK mood, but once they become habits they’re easier to follow through on in more difficult states of mind. I’ve also found the Negative Self-Talk/Positive Thinking table at the bottom of the page here to be useful.
But hard things are hard no matter what. Sounds like you’re doing the right thing now by making the most of the time you have together. Best of luck to you.
It’s unlikely that someone is going to say something that will take away your pain. Death sucks. Losing someone you love sucks, and sadness is a normal reaction to that. There are emotionally healthy ways to deal with grief. Give yourself more self-care than you think you need throughout this process to counter the planning fallacy and better to err on the side of too much than too little.
If you do find yourself depressed, seeking professional help is not a sign of weakness and I would encourage you to seek it out. Summoning motivation can be an impossible effort when you are depressed and sometimes someone outside your un-motivated brain is the best thing to stop you from falling down an emotional spiral. If money or something else prevents you from doing that, there are other things you can try here and some more here.
I tend to view depression as an evolved adaptation and a certain state which it is natural for humans to move into in certain situations. I think that it can be helpful to recognize that dysphoria, sadness and grief are all natural reactions. It is ok to be sad. Although, like with all conditions if it becomes chronic or persists for an overly long time then you should probably get some help to deal with it. See here for more information.
For general advice for dealing with grief, see this article and apply whatever you think is applicable or would be helpful. Excerpt:
Establish a simple routine
Regular meal and bed times
Increase pleasant events
Promote self-care activities
Regular medical check-ups
Daily exercise
Limited alcohol intake
Provide information about grief and what to expect
Grief is unique and follows a wave-like pattern
Grief is not an illness with a prescribed cure
Children benefit from being included and learning that grief is a normal response to loss
Compartmentalise worries
List the things that are worrying
Create a ‘to-do’ list, prioritise and tick off items as they are completed
Use different coloured folders for the paperwork that needs to be finalised
Prepare to face new or difficult situations
Graded exposure to situations that are difficult or avoided
Plan for the ‘firsts’ such as the first anniversary of the death – How do you want it to be acknowledged? Who do you want to share it with?
Adopt a ‘trial and error’ approach; be prepared to try things more than once
Challenge unhelpful thinking
Encourage identification of thoughts leading to feelings of guilt and anger
Gently ask the following questions – What would your loved one tell you to do if they were here now? What are the alternatives to what you thought? Where is the evidence for what you thought?
Provide a structured decision-making framework to deal with difficult decisions e.g., When to sort through belongings? Whether to take off the wedding ring? Whether to move or not?
Base decisions on evidence, not emotions
Avoid making major, irreversible decisions for 12 months to prevent decisions being based on emotion
Identify the problem and possible solutions
List the positives and negatives for each potential solution
Determine the consequences for each solution – can they be lived with?
I would try to stop doing this. It will gnaw at you and we can always find something that we could have done better in the past. The better thing to do is learn from the past, appreciate it and experience, to the utmost, what is happening now.
You may want to spend some time thinking about how you can give your dog the best end of life experience that you can.
Losing a dog is painful. However, and I’m only speaking from personal experience here, you will probably have the opportunity to control to a great extent how your dog dies, its relative level of pain / discomfort, and in what situation and setting the death takes place.
Knowing that my dog—who my parents found abandoned a few weeks before I was born, who I grew up with, and who died in my early adulthood—died at home, surrounded by her family, having spent her last days lovingly attended and not in great physical pain, makes remembering her whole and relatively joyful life more pleasant for me now. It may help you too.
Well, I actually try to emotionally distance myself every day a little bit.