If you have lost a pet in the near or recent past, you may have noticed how much it affected you.  You may have also told yourself, he/she was just a pet.  This can be a big mistake, especially if you get as attached to your pet as many pet owners do.  Read on to find out why.

Pet Loss Can Be a Major Event

While not all pet owners grieve the loss of their pets, most do.  Many pets have a way of finding their way into our hearts, especially if we don’t have a lot of other close connections.  We lost one of our dear pets a few weeks ago, and it had a big affect on our lives.  The loss was significant not only because of how sweet and dear she was, but also because she was someone I took on walks several times a week.  Pets can have such a big place in our lives, and the bigger a space of our lives they occupy, the greater the potential to leave a hole in them when they go.  In fact, a recent article talks about how symptoms of grief from the loss of a pet can affect someone for up to a year on average.  

Why We May Minimize Pet Loss

This can be a coping mechanism some use to somehow lessen the blow of the loss.  “They were only a pet,” we may tell ourselves.  This statement, especially these days, serves to de-legitimize real feelings and impact of loss.  It sends a message to ourselves that we aren’t entitled to grieve the loss.  In that case, we may wind up stuffing very real feelings and this can lead to self-medicating to somehow offset the loss.  People can wind up using compulsive behaviors like overeating, drinking, or other binge behaviors to somehow ‘make up’ for the loss.  This winds up being self-destructive in the end.  People can also wind up getting depressed because they haven’t dealt with the grief.  

Why You Shouldn’t Minimize the Pet Loss

1. It’s a real loss, and can affect you more strongly than other more obvious losses.

2. It can lead to you trying to ‘replace the loss’ by going out and getting another pet before you’ve given yourself time to grieve.  

3. You wind up stuffing your feelings of grief, or wind up coping with them in unhealthy ways.

4. You put off dealing with these feelings and they can hit you harder later when you experience other losses.

5. Your grief is a way of honoring the memory of your pet.

6. You are more able to enjoy new pets if or when you decide to get another one.

7. You are better able to support friends and family with the loss of pets because you know firsthand how important they can be.

What To Do For Pet Loss Grief

There are so many ways to positively cope with the loss of a pet once you’ve recognized it.  Whatever you choose to do in coping with the loss, it needs to allow you to process feelings of sadness that go with losing a pet.  You can talk to friends or family members about it, listen to songs that help you feel your sadness, write in a journal about the loss, just to name a few.  All this requires time, which I hope you will give yourself to feel and express your feelings.  This will help to ensure you don’t turn to compulsive or addictive behavior to self-medicate and are less likely to wind up getting depressed, at least in part because of not grieving the loss.

What I Can Do to Help

I have been helping my clients in getting through and resolving grief for the entirety of my 11-plus years as a therapist, and I can assure you that your grief will be taken seriously with me.  I have a number of ways of helping people get through the loss of a pet, or any other loss for that matter.  Often just talking about it in session and getting in touch with feelings of sadness can go a long way towards allowing you to get closure on the loss of a pet. I offer free 20-minute phone consultations currently and would be happy to talk to you to help you get a better idea if I could help you with your loss issues.  Just call the number at the top of the page or fill out the inquiry form below and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.  Especially during this time of social distancing and relative isolation, our pets have added significance because of the lack of co-workers in our immediate environment.  Our pets can become our de facto co-workers and particularly in the absence of other real people in our immediate environment take a more important role than at any other time in our modern history as a civilization!

Visit our specialty page on grief counseling to learn more about how Scott can help you with grief and loss.

About the author:  Scott Kampschaefer, LCSW is a private practice therapist in Frederick, Maryland.  He has an extensive background in working with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder at a clinic for older adults with these disorders in Austin.  He now works with adults and adolescents 14 and up in private practice. His new e-book is entitled The 5 Pillars of Addiction Recovery and is available for purchase on Amazon.