Grief Psychology
Grief can be described as a natural human reaction. It is universal regardless of culture, even though the intensity and expression it takes differs widely.
Social mammals, birds and young children show a similar response to separation from one to whom they are attached and to permanent losses. The reaction can be in the form of active distress or passive depression. Human adults also show a more complex or sometimes modified version of expression to loss and death.
Grief is a natural phenomenon; it has never been classified as a medical condition, though there are certain kinds of complicated grief which may cause post-traumatic stress, exaggerated forms of grief, anxiety or depression. Some kinds of grief, often linked with the patients own previous experience of loss, do not resolve with time and need medical or psychological intervention.
There may be some link between grief and a decline in physical health but it is very hard to assess. A decline in the immune system might indeed be due to the vulnerability of a person mentally or it may be due to a change in lifestyle or diet brought on by the death of a member of the family. It is worth assuming however that there may well be physiological effects as well as psychological after a close bereavement.
Understanding grief in the context of human evolution is complex as it is usually a debilitating experience. It may, however, be understood as part of the emotional responses which are essential for us to maintain relationships, for example love. The emotional attachment of love, which has been so crucial to the evolution of the human race and its following development, continues on after the loved one is no longer there and becomes felt as grief. Grief is the cost we pay for being able to love. The power of the grief is likely to vary according to the strength of the lost relationship.
When we grieve it involves a rich array of feelings and thoughts. Many are higher order mental processes such as hallucinations, grappling with a change of identity and trying to defend our minds against the most distressing aspects of grief.
It is thought that as individuals we possess a complex representation of our loved ones in our brain. These stored memories have an expectation of certain consequences when in a relationship with someone. Our brains’ set off an alarm system when what we expect is different from what we actually experience. For example, not getting our usual feedback because someone is not there will set off an alarm reaction within us. It is there to trigger us to search for what is missing and re-establish communication. However when the outside world is different from what our brain tells us it should be like, based on its previous experience, ie a death has occurred and therefore there is a missing relationship, then the alarm reaction is futile as it cannot regain the contact and it simply continues to trigger again and again and again without the appropriate response to calm it down.
Loved ones are a part of our own sense of self and therefore a gradual change of expectation within our stored memories has to come about for the signals in our brain to respond more appropriately to the new real situation presented; i.e. as a result of our life experiences, we develop a rich set of ideas about who we are, our identity. This identity is intimately connected to areas of life which have been important to us, such as close personal relationships. These ideas are highly emotionally charged and very resistant to change and very central to our individual self-esteem. They govern assumptions we make about ourselves and the safety of our personal world. Therefore when they are challenged by loss, our very identity is challenged and our capacity to plan for our own future is diminished as our internal world is no longer stable. Our inner world cannot change and adapt as quickly as the outer world is forcing us to do.
The process of mourning is vital for our inner world to begin the process of changing to match the outer world that has been forced upon us. Mourning is a way of our identity learning to adapt to a new identity which has adjusted to our loss. We need time to recreate the stability and security which the relationship gave to us and to rediscover other relationships which can help with our own central self-esteem. We need time to heal.
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Coping with Bereavement in an Active Way
Dealing with bereavement can be helped by the following steps:
- The acceptance in your head of your loss.
- The acceptance in your heart of loss at an emotional level.
- Discovering your new identity; changing your own outer environment to match the inner truth that the one you love is no longer physically within it.
There is another step which you can actively engage in helping your own recovery and healing grief:
- Begin to reinvest in relationships which you have already and in new friendships which match your new identity as well.
When someone you love dies, your own sense of security is shaken.
Support in the initial days of bereavement is essential to help diminish levels of anxiety but what is most important of all, is the long term support. This does not just mean the support you are given, but even more importantly the support you seek out and allow others to give you. And it may sometimes be a mutual sort of support such as a friendship with another who has had a similar loss.
We know that many who are able to rediscover a sense of security, find their new identity and continue with some pleasure in life recover quicker. We know that those who actively seek out relationships with family, old friends and new friends find stability more quickly
The role played by others and perhaps even more importantly the place you allow others to have in your life is vital to recovery. Those who withdraw from family, or are reluctant to re-engage with the lives of their families, often continue to remain in the depth of distressing grief for much longer. There are many past and present reasons why this may happen and the email course covers help for more complicated grief.
Freud was very aware that in some senses mourning is never over; “we find a place for what we lose. Although we know that after such a loss the acute stage of mourning will subside, we also know that we shall remain inconsolable and will never find a substitute. No matter what may fill the gap, even if it be filled completely, it nevertheless remains something else.”
This will always be true for most people who lose someone close to them but it is also true that mourning is not something that just passively happens to you. You can interact with your own mourning to help its path. In what way you can do this is likely to be affected by your own previous inclination and experience, but it is important to be aware that your own behaviour can help you with your distress or reinforce your grief to repeat itself.
Being determined that nothing will change, engaging in your social life without estimating the change within yourself and making no changes in companionship, can be as self-destructive as withdrawing altogether from your previous relationships. Death bed, or even lifelong instructions by a parent or partner about how to behave after they are gone, can prevent you mourning in a way that works for you. Adherence to someone else’s plan can hinder recovery.
There is an old English tradition that the official period of mourning is a year and a day. Each and every anniversary will have been lived through and the intensity of the first Christmas, first thanksgiving, first workday without the one you miss will have been survived and the obsessive thoughts which come to one on these days will be a little calmer the next year around.
Mourning is an active process in which some self awareness can help you engage with your own forward journey.
The path you choose to help you find out who you are now is not important so long as you feel that your bereavement is lessening in the intensity of distress. Finding ways to realise who you were and who you are now and what is different are important steps.
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Dealing with Bereavement
Recovering from Bereavement Takes Courage, Effort and Time.
If you lose someone close to you, especially a spouse or a partner, you are very unlikely to return to being exactly the same person as you were before. You do not forget the past and start a new life.
To help the recovery process, it is important to recognise that change has taken place. It is a change that cannot but help affect you in ways small and big. Some of these changes within you may only come to light as time passes from the event.
There are things which mark recovery, or perhaps more realistically, help you to get used to a different way of life with a key relationship missing:
- The acceptance in your head of your loss.
- The acceptance in your heart of loss at an emotional level.
- Discovering your new identity; changing you own outer environment to match the inner truth that the one you love is no longer physically within it
Here are some suggestions for helping the above things to happen in your life.
Acceptance in Your Head
Telling yourself the story helps you move from a traumatic state into being bereaved.
To make sense of your loss in your head it helps to develop an “account”, ie the story, of what happened. Think through what led ultimately to the death and put it together in a story of the final few hours, weeks, or even years if it has been a long drawn out illness.
We know that allowing the question ‘why did it happen and how did it happen?’ into your thoughts however unbearable it feels does actually help people immensely. Even if there is no actual answer as it was a random event, or due to human frailty the narrative told by yourself to yourself, or to another person, enables you to deal with your bereavement, rather than deal only with the moment of death again and again and again. It helps bring acceptance in your head.
Acceptance in Your Heart
Try not to avoid reminders of your loss, it helps brings acceptance in your heart.
One sign of acceptance in your heart is when you don’t feel the need to actually avoid reminders of loss in case you should break down in grief. This acceptance usually comes after unavoidable confrontation again and again with reminders of the person you love. Each reminder hopefully brings a slight lessening of intensity of distress. Emotional acceptance of loss is rarely ever complete and perhaps it would be sad if it were as the person has been a part of our own lives and journey. This shared journey is the place to start. When you feel strong enough, go places that were jointly important to you, try not to avoid them, it will lead to shared memories rather than constant painful reminders.
Who are you now? Discovering your new identity.
Reassessing who you are is important. You may become aware that the way you describe yourself no longer works, but when you say something different you do not yet recognise it. “I am Jane’s husband – or am I – I am not sure how to describe myself anymore”.
The special familiar name you were called by your mother may never be used again. It symbolises the loss of being someone’s child even if you are 50. A realisation you are yourself a step nearer death is frightening.
What you own may be different, more or less, symbolising your role in the family.
There are different ways to start to feel comfortable in your new identity. For many it is simply time and practical arrangements which help. For others it is religious ceremonies. You can Set aside time to talk to the person you have lost, for example a time by the grave, telling them what is different now. The tradition of wearing black is to give a period without pressure before having to ‘wear’ your new identity.
Discovering your identity after the death of someone close is vital to dealing with bereavement.
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Grieving Steps and Bereavement Stages
Grief is not a linear process with clear boundaries. Some find it helpful to think about grieving steps. Others have broken things down into 5 steps of grief. In reality bereavement stages vary from person to person.
Mourning is hugely important. Those who cannot mourn for whatever reason, or deny themselves the right to mourn are much more prone to breakdown and unresolved complicated grief at a later stage in life. Do not be afraid to mourn and to allow your family to mourn with you.
The mourning stages below are meant to be guidelines only. They do not prescribe what you ‘ought’ to feel, or when. There may be many overlapping feelings, and like waves, grief comes and goes and then floods back in at unexpected moments. It is natural to mourn, not a weakness or an illness.
I have chosen three key phases which you are likely to recognise over the next hours, months and years.
Shock and disbelief.
First, there is an initial period of shock and disbelief, even open denial.
This may last from hours to weeks. It can be in varying degrees depending on your relationship with the person who has died or on the circumstances surrounding a death. Feeling numb, even paralysed so you cannot think is very common. Then there is a moving on to a yearning for reality to be different, and protest when the truth comes into your mind.
The gathering of the family and friends and the rites of passage for the person who has died, all help individuals to move through this stage into a time of mourning.
Acute Mourning.
Second is a time of acute mourning, when intense emotional pain floods your whole being.
This intense feeling often occurs in waves and can be accompanied by bodily discomfort as well. Your distress may be accompanied by a desire to withdraw socially and it is very common for the person who has died to be on your mind all the time.
If you are very close to the person who has died you may find that for a while you adopt some of their habits, mannerisms or role in the family and indeed even some of the illnesses from which they suffered.
You may well feel afraid, lonely, upset that others in the family do not appear as affected as you. You may have short bursts of energy which suddenly end in the middle of a conversation. Your own death becomes uppermost in your thoughts.
No one likes to mention it, but if the person who has died is your partner in life, then you may well feel intense sexual feelings which come as a surprise at this time. Yet along side this life feels grey. Living is like moving through treacle. Food has no taste. Sleeping is difficult and the transition from sleeping to waking brings on depression.
Acknowledgement of Grief.
Thirdly, the acknowledgement that you are grieving, to yourself and others, is the beginning of recovery. You can start to experience some pleasure, seek companionship and spend more time with others you love. You may well be lonely but you can begin to share memories with fondness and sadness rather than with agitation, barriers or breakdown.
For you and for everyone else who is grieving as well, the time that the shock, the mourning and the recovery takes will be different. It will depend so much on your relationship with the person you have lost, whether your actual daily life was entwined with theirs, whether you have experienced death before, your own past, your own capacity to permit yourself to mourn and whether you share your grief.
Do not push yourself to move through the bereavement stages. Mourning takes time, there is no right or wrong time. For some it is weeks, for others grieving steps are a lifetime of change. Grief flows and ebbs, into your mind and out, into your aches and pains and out, into your life and out. Do not expect to be in control of it, nor to be in control of the way others mourn for the same person you are grieving.
Whatever grief you feel, whenever and wherever you feel it, it is important to acknowledge it to yourself in private or to another in companionship. It is this acknowledgement of the flow and ebb of grief, more than anything else, that helps the flow and ebb to become gentler for you. Listening to another’s acknowledgement of a bad, angry, or sad moment or of a memory of joy springing to their mind, is key to the restitution of life over death.
Most people, though they continue to mourn, find a way through the intense grief, and look not just to death but to life again. Most people are resilient and seek life, even if their life will never be the same, the desire for life returns.
If, however if you feel these very natural stages of grief are in some way on hold or if you feel that your grief remains unresolved so that you cannot lift your mind from death, then do not hesitate and do not be ashamed to seek out help.
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Funeral Ideas and Thoughts for Those Suffering Bereavement
A funeral marks the close of a human beings time on earth. It is the opportunity for family and friends to express their grief at the loss they feel, to tell something of the person they knew and to give thanks for the life lived. As far back into history as we can see, people have felt the need for a ceremony to say goodbye to the one they love.
It is a part of who we are, acknowledging the importance of other people in our lives. When they die, finding a way of leave-taking helps us to continue to live our own lives. We have put together some funeral ideas for you to consider and help you at this difficult time.
It is a difficult time to put your mind to organising something which has appropriate memories for a whole family and when there may be many pressures for other life. There appear to be decisions to make all around.
It is important not to miss the opportunity for a funeral which is meaningful for you. It is part of the process of mourning, for you as an individual and for those who are the wider body of family and friends.
Practical Arrangements.
1. Look at the will of the person who has died, or talk to the person closest to them, to find out if there is any information to hand about the funeral the person wanted.
2. Think quietly about whom you would like to help you choose hymns, readings, and other music which will be at the funeral. It may help to involve close members of the family. Do not, however, involve too many people or you will find that it becomes very complicated and you may not be able to fulfil all their wishes. Make your choices carefully and be clear about whom you want involved.
3. Make sure you have the legal death certificate.
4. Contact, or ask someone to contact for you, those who can help with the funeral arrangements. Each country has its own laws around funeral arrangements. You may also have a preference for the type of funeral you would like. You may want to contact your local religious leader to take the funeral, a funeral director to make some of the arrangements, your local government or community representative for funeral information. Do this early on so that you know the parameters within which you need to think. They can help with arrangements for the body and the ceremony as well as with taking care of yourself at this time of bereavement.
5. There will be financial implications that you will need to think through. The above people will help you with this information.
6. Decide if you would like people to join you for refreshments afterwards. Decide who can help you.
7. Take care of yourself and mourn for yourself; try not to feel embarrassed to do so. It is important to take time and allow the grief to be present in you and in others.
8. All families, even the most harmonious, find funeral arrangements and coming together a strain. Be clear with anyone about how you would like them to help. Try not to give two people the same responsibility. Consult about key issues and do not hesitate to ask your religious leader or another professional to help with family relationships and mourning.
The Ceremony.
The funeral service should reflect the personality of the one who has died and the circumstances of their death. Choices of music and words can do this. You can ask someone to talk about the person, or the leader of the funeral to talk for you.
It is important for you, both at the time, and afterwards to have something personal in the service about the person who has died. At a funeral dignity may feel important to you but funerals are for farewells and tears. Do not feel you have avoid things which cause others public grief. Funerals have a purpose. At a funeral bereavement will be all around you. Sharing this together can help everyone.
People close to the one who has died sometimes like to take part in the ceremony. This can be both healing and moving for those involved and those listening. Be careful, however, not to overburden yourself or others if they do not feel up to it, especially children. It is sad when people, although present, miss the sense of the funeral as they are so nervous about the part they must play in it. It is a perfectly valid decision to simply be at the funeral of one you love and grieve.
Feelings of grief, gratitude, joy and sadness often intermingle.
After the Funeral.
People who have lost someone close to them are often so busy with practical details and arrangements between the death and the funeral that they do not experience the full sense of their loss until later.
Grieving is a natural and important part of coming to terms with and healing this loss and it may continue for several months or indeed much longer. People grieve in different ways. There are many ways to find help and emotional support after a funeral.
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Children and Grief: How to Give Help and Support
Listening carefully to a child’s questions is more important than answering in a perfect way.
Children always have questions when someone dies, even if they don’t know how to ask them. In dealing with children and grief, many of the questions won’t have obvious factual answers. This can be difficult for many adults, especially if they are grieving too. They would rather not deal with a child’s questions as they are afraid of giving the wrong answer, showing their own grief, or simply not having an answer at all.
It is really important to realise that listening and taking children seriously and trying to answer in a simple and honest way is more important than having the right answer. To ignore questions can lead to anger or loneliness in the child. Children’s questions can be the key that unlocks the door to understanding their grief, so you can help them.
Sometimes it is helpful not to answer the question directly if there is no obvious answer but to ask the child what they think, giving him/her a space to express their worries, which you can then start to address with them.
A question by a child who is grieving might be:
“Why did my brother die?”A good answer is:
“Why do you think?”
Commonly a child will express a belief that they are the cause of a death. Young children live in an egocentric world in which they believe they are the cause of everything. Allowing them to express this self-blame out loud enables you to help them understand that not everything is in their control and help them to understand some events are random.
Children re-grieve at different developmental stages.
It is important to allow children to re-grieve as they grow mentally. They need to integrate their understanding at the time a loved one dies with their new understanding as an older child or later an adolescent. If they are openly discouraged from exploring their new understanding of mourning, they may get stuck in their childhood grief.
Children are curious by nature. They often want and need the facts.
It is important to give children information at an age-appropriate level. Withholding all information, or changing the truth, does not spare them the pain. They create their own stories internally which may create more pain than the truth. Children hear and pick up more than adults anticipate but do not always interpret it correctly without help. What they imagine from snippets of information may well be considerably worse than the actual truth; however sad or terrible.
Children often start to wonder if they will die too.
Children can become very scared for their own safety. They may wonder if another person they love will also die and what will happen to them if there is no one to look after them. Their assumption that adults protect them can be shattered and might manifest itself in nightmares, sleeplessness, anxiety, withdrawal or problem behaviour in school or at home.
They need a lot of reassurance, perhaps a real health check if psychosomatic illness is presented. Children’s fears, real or imagined, should be taken seriously in front of them. Help them to feel safe in their own body again. They may become younger than they are in their behaviour while the grief is acute. Extra time for them from teachers in school, a friend who stays with them in the playground, lots of cuddles at home is all part of giving reassurance that they are still cared for. This will enable them to regain a sense of composure within themselves, especially if the death was traumatic. Find ways, or find others who can help the child to express their fears. If problem behaviour is ignored it can grow or if responded to in anger can make their environment less safe rather than more safe. This adds to the grief.
Help find an appropriate way for your children to be part of saying goodbye.
Exclusion from the process of saying goodbye can lead to unresolved grief. Showing your own grief to a child and sharing your grief together can be a positive thing for you all. It can help for the child and you to be sad together, then move on to play together showing something of life can continue safely, then later be sad together again. Children dip in and out of grief. Finding a way to say goodbye can help this for both of you.
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