Many women are faced with unplanned pregnancy news post-break-up with they partners. This situation can be incredibly stressful because there are two layers of grief that must be dealt with. I was reminded of this "which is first, the chicken or the egg" counseling scenario recently while working with a college-aged client. She was barely able to function when we met. A tornado of destructive emotions were swirling around, so much so her psychiatrist had her on a pretty high dosage of meds.
The initial intake was concerning the sadness she was feeling post the abortion. This overwhelming grief threw her off-guard. She had no idea she would be blind-sided like she was. Relief was what she thought she would feel. Instead she had been in bed with the covers pulled over her head after the procedure.
Exploring deeper, there was a double layer of angst for her. Just four weeks earlier she had broken up with the baby's father. She was trying to work through that loss because they had been together over five years. She was shocked when she discovered the pregnancy and with the natural knee-jerk reaction went immediately for termination.
Terminating the pregnancy was like experiencing the loss of the relationship with her boyfriend all over again. Clearly, there were layers of grief to address. Doing a real in-depth grief inventory helped her work through all the layers. Besides the pregnancy, the loss of the relationship, the loss of dreams...all the what-if's were needing addressed.
I am telling you this because as therapists we need to be very intentional about exploring all the aspects and components of an abortion termination. Losing "the guy" can often over shadow the pregnancy choice. Grief can be complicated and this is certainly an example of complicated disenfranchised grief. My client had absolutely NO support group or anyone she could go to. Both losses were minimized and misunderstood by anyone close to her who did not understand why she wasn't completely relieved to be "rid of her crisis."
Basically, we needed to address both issues in order for her to go through the grieving process.