5 most common emotional reactions to losing your eyesight

What it’s like to lose your eyesight?

Kate has been working for the charity for about four years now. Over that time, she has seen the struggles that veterans face as they come to terms with losing their eyesight. They feel a whole range of emotions from fear to frustration to anger.

It’s similar to the experience of bereavement as described by Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. To explain reactions to change and loss, the Kubler-Ross model identifies five stages of grief:

Denial

It may be so hard to take the news of losing your eyesight that you would not believe it at all. It’s a common reaction to try to block it out, to think there’s been a mistake and to continue living just as you’ve always had. This is a defense mechanism that helps to stop you from feeling overwhelmed.

Anger

This may be triggered by the simplest things, like spilling coffee. You can fly into a rage because of the people around you, even family, friends or others who are trying to help such as your doctor. It’s natural, especially if you lose your sight suddenly, like in an accident.

Bargaining

This happens when you keep thinking of the past and the things you could have done differently. This comes when you try to gain control of a situation that cannot be changed. You start to think that you will feel better if you behave in certain ways.

Depression

You may find yourself crying inconsolably. It may be hard to concentrate, eat normally, go to sleep or to get up. If you feel you can’t get on with life normally, try and seek professional help.

Acceptance

This entails recognising what has happened and being open to the right kind of adjustments so you can continue living your life. It means managing a new sense of self and being ready to discover new interests and possibilities.

A non-linear process

Kate however explains, it’s not a linear process. “It’s not stages where you start with denial and then you move to anger. Some people will never ever move out of the first stage. Some will never get past being angry and stay there for the rest of their lives.

“Sometimes you can have all of those emotions in just one day. So it tends to cycle around. If they have a progressive or deterioration of a degenerative condition, then they could start that cycle all over again.

Little wins

Kate says: “We can try and get some sort of positivity out of each stage. Sometimes the early stages like denial and anger can be helped with information or by being a sounding board.

“Maybe when they come along to more of the bargaining aspect and the low mood, we can give them emotional support and start to focus on practical things that we can do to move them into that guided area of acceptance.

“My role as a rehab officer is to look at several components of a person that’s got sight loss. One is to look at their mobility. Next part is looking at their actual ability to see and read because reading is the biggest loss for most people. And then the final part is more of an emotional aspect. A lot of the time we’re doing a lot of emotional sympathetic listening and support. Sometimes we’re just there to signpost and give them an outlet to talk because they’re not ready to move on.

“We do sighted guide training as well with family members and with volunteers so that they are guiding our veterans safely.”