TV news anchor Ana Orsini, 28, and the trauma of a sudden death
Some TV viewers and social media users are feeling rattled following the death of 28-year-old Arizona news anchor Ana Orsini. She died of a brain aneurysm.
“This is such a sad story,” one social user reflected. “My deepest condolences go to the entire news team & staff for the loss of Ana Orsini," another wrote. "From the clips I saw, she was a very vibrant young lady!”
A story on the 13 News station's website read, "Ana's friends and coworkers remember her as someone with bottomless empathy who always stood up for 'the little guy.' She was a smiling face most especially for all her newest and youngest coworkers, and she is known in all the newsrooms where she worked for taking them under her wing and being a strong mentor for both work and life."
When someone dies unexpectedly, people's worlds shift. Without warning. Without time to process. What's left is substantial trauma.
"When people experience sudden loss, they may feel shocked, disbelief, confused, and even in denial," Shavonne Moore-Lobban, licensed psychologist, previously told Paste BN. "The suddenness of the loss may be too much to process and feel too unreal for a person to immediately grasps."
Grief is different for everyone, experts say, and the trauma of an unexpected death only compounds that grief.
"Sudden loss can be more shocking and people can feel less 'prepared' than they might with expected loss," Moore-Lobban adds. "However, it is still hard to prepare for anything that is life-altering, whether a person knew it was coming."
Sudden death or not, everyone grieves differently
Behaviors around grief vary among individuals, communities and within family units. "How people grieve is influenced by the relationship they had with the person they lost, also what our religion taught us, what our culture taught us, and what our family taught us," grief expert David Kessler previously told Paste BN.
Moore-Lobban adds: "Youth and adults grieve differently based on the resources and developmental abilities that they each have. There are also gender-role stereotypes that impact people's understanding of how they are 'allowed' or expected to grieve and show emotion, based on what has been deemed 'acceptable' in society."
Regret is another powerful emotion that accompanies grief.
"Even when the last interaction was positive, there can be regret that the last interaction may feel incomplete," Moore-Lobban says. "Of course, there can also be sadness and anger as a response to sudden loss. Both of those can be connected to a need to make sense of something that may feel nonsensical."
And don't underestimate shock.
"Based on the literature, we see that the more common emotions experienced when someone dies suddenly are sadness, anger, shock and surprise," Jonathan Singer, director, Grief and Responses to Illness into Late Life Lab at Texas Tech University, previously told Paste BN. "These emotions can then lead to other experiences, such as yearning for the person who has passed away."
Sudden death, according to some research, can lead to more intense grief reactions, in addition to "higher rates of post-traumatic stress after the loss, especially if they witnessed the death or if they were told the details about the death," Singer adds.
How to help someone grieve
If you're trying to comfort someone going through such a loss, don't try and minimize their loss nor put a timetable to the grieving the process.
"There is no limit to grief and because it is a cycle or process, it will continue as long as it needs to for the person who is experiencing it," Moore-Lobban says.
Don't expect the person to bounce back to who they were before, either. They've changed. But they can also be OK.
"Over time, we do see that most people are resilient, meaning that they can continue working and living life with no significant effect on their functioning," Singer says. "This does not mean they are not experiencing a strong emotional grief reaction at times. They just are typically able to work through it over time and still manage to do the things they previously did."
If you're going through loss yourself, talk about it. This "might mean acknowledging it and being open with someone you trust, about how you are feeling," Moore-Lobban says. "It might also include engaging in therapy with a mental health provider, which can be individual or group therapy. Talking about it can also occur by writing, meaning a person can journal about how they feel and what they are thinking."
Also consider activities that might be beneficial. Maybe "going to play golf with friends and telling stories about the family member who has passed may be good for some people," Singer says. "For others, perhaps it looks like going to do an activity that they used to do with the person."
There's no right way to grieve.
"I like talking to bereaved individuals about accepting their grieving process rather than comparing it to what they think they should be feeling or thinking," Singer says.
Above all, take care of yourself.
"Grieving is normal, understandable, and expected," Moore-Lobban says. "We should grieve the loss of another person, which also honors the memory of that person."
Contributing: Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic; Alia Dastagir, Paste BN