Question : I am 13 years old and my mother passed away 2 years ago. I also have dark patches on my skin and unhealthy eating habits. I am constantly being bullied in school, but at home, my nana-nani and maasi, love me a lot! But I still feel lonely, negative and have lost interest in studies. Please help! Teentalker , 13-year-old
Dear Teentalker,
Thank you for reaching out and sharing your concerns.
It’s truly wonderful that your aunt and grandparents care so much about you. However, that does not negate the fact that you suffered a major loss at a very young age. Losing a loved one as it is very painful and losing a parent, especially a mother at the tender of age 11 can be even more difficult. Typically, everyone tends to cry a lot and be extremely sad after a loved one’s death for the first few days and after sometime when the crying stops, routine resumes and the persons starts living in a new setup, everyone assumes that you have moved on, but that is not necessarily the case.
Clearly, your eating habits, skin issues and negativity is a clear indicator of the fact that there is a lot of underlying grief and trauma that still needs to be processed. All of this is going to take some time, so utmost patience will be needed. Here are a few suggestions/tips I would like to put across to help you get through this phase:
1.Please understand going through the grief and loss cycle, entails going through a couple of stages such as denial, depression and anger.
2. You are welcome to reach out to us to address your health concerns, but it would also be better if you went for some face to face counseling sessions. That would surely benefit you a great deal.
3. To address the surface level concerns, it is better if you consulted a skin specialist working in a hospital. A lot of times, grief related issues manifests in the form of skin and skin related infections.
4. As time goes by, learn to look at the bigger picture and seek out new and positive experiences. This could be through taking up new courses, being active in extra-curricular activities or even travelling whenever you have the opportunity to do so. Through this you will learn more about the different aspects of life and also come to realize that no matter what, it is possible to live your life and that too very well!
Hope this helps, if you have any other query do connect online for chat between 11am-8pm or drop us an offline message.
Regards,
Expert Teentalk India