Loss Of An Adult Child

Grief is a natural response to a major loss, though often deeply painful and can have a negative impact on your life. Any loss can cause varied levels of grief often when someone least expects it however, loss is widely varied and is often only perceived as death. Tugendhat (2005) argued that losses such as infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, adoption and divorce can cause grief in everyday life. Throughout our lives we all face loss in one way or another, whether it is being diagnosed with a terminal illness, loss of independence due to a serious accident or illness, gaining a criminal record (identity loss), losing our job, home or ending a relationship; we all experience loss

Loss is something we all share and experience in life. There are different types of loss which affect our everyday lives, emotions and relationships. If our attachment is strong then we will feel stronger emotions. The complexity of our attachment will also dictate how we move through our grief.

The Two-Track Model of Bereavement is a model that states loss is conceptualized along two axes. Track I pertains to the biopsychosocial functioning in the event of a loss and Track II pertains to the bereaved’s continued emotional attachment and relationship to whoever is deceased. The effect of Track I is seen through the bereaved’s functioning, including their anxiety, their self-esteem and self-worth, and their depressive affect and cognitions. Noting the ability of one to invest in life tasks after experiencing a loss indicates how they are responding to the loss of the deceased. This Track is seen as an expression similar to one of trauma, or crisis. Track II holds that the bereaved has difficulty physically separating from the deceased. This can be seen in emotional, interpersonal, or cognitive ways. It is shown through imagery and memories that the bereaved experiences surrounding the deceased, whether positive or negative, as well as the emotional distance from them. These pictures in the bereaved’s head explain both the cognitive and emotional view of the person who has died (Rubin, 1999).

Life involves many losses. There are small losses: losing a football game, failing a test, or forgetting an assignment. At some point, though, all of us will experience a major loss: the death of a close family member, a major illness, or a divorce in the family. Loss is inevitable for all of us. If you have ever experienced grief and loss, or if you are currently experiencing it, then you might be trying to recover the wrong way. You might believe that you have gotten over it, but it could come back even years later. When it comes to grief and loss, there are a lot of components that people do not understand, but today there are many methods to coop that will lead you down the path of healing.

The loss of an adult child is devastating, just as is the death of a younger child. However, there are differences as to how both the parents react to such losses. In this case the paper focuses on the loss of an adult child and how the parent copes with the situation. The paper will give insight into the situation that precedes the demise of the child such as the trajectory of illnesses. A review on how the parents deal with the loss after it occurs will be discussed as well as the various issues the parent faces. The impact on the parent after the child’s loss will also feature. There will be a summary of the findings, then a section that will give the implications of the research and its importance to the field of psychology, and finally an as well as focusing on the bigger picture of loss with older parents who have lost their children.

Loss is a phenomenon that is experienced by all. Death is experienced by family members as a unique and elevated form of loss which is modulated by potent stages of grief. Inevitably, everyone will lose someone with whom they had a personal relationship and emotional connection and thus experience an aftermath that can generally be described as grief. Although bereavement, which is defined as a state of sorrow over the death or departure of a loved one, is a universal experience it varies widely across gender, age, and circumstance (definitions.net, 2015). Indeed the formalities and phases associated with bereavement have been recounted and theorized in literature for years. These philosophies are quite diverse but

Loss can mean something very different, depending on who you ask to define it and what their history is with it. However difficult the obstacle may be, Tim O’Brien’s words can help alleviate someone’s conscious, because he points out the importance of all those stories lived with that certain person or thing that was lost. Even with my personal losses, I can relate to O’Brien’s views of loss and the importance of all the memories of the lost thing. Loss would not be so impactful if it weren’t for all those sentimental memories and emotions that come with it. It’s necessary to sometimes remember the happy times lived before the loss, to slowly fill up the hole that it created in the heart. It’s true, losing something is rarely anything to be happy about, but if anyone has something that makes saying goodbye hard, they would be considered

The experience of a person losing a loved one is very difficult to accept and then cope with. “He gets all teary telling about the good times they had together, how her brother made the war seem almost fun.” pg. 67-68 (Tim O’Brien). Losing someone close to you is hard to accept because once their gone things don’t feel the same anymore and you just can’t stop thinking about them and the memories you guys shared together. It’s also very hard to cope with because you’re so used to having that person around and when their no longer there you feel so empty and that feeling is so horrible. Having to deal with the fact that someone who was so special to you is no longer there isn’t easy to accept.

Every sane person will experience grief or bereavement at one stage of their life. Bereavement is defined as a state of intense grief, such as after the loss of a loved one. In this essay we will explore the various causes of bereavement and the effects it can have on an individual’s life.

The purpose of this study is to review literature related to the effects of parental death on children. Children who experience the death of a parent is considered an at risk population for psychological, behavioral, and social problems. There are many factors relating to the way children adjust to parental death. Some of these factors include the age of the child,

Coping with a parent being seriously ill or the death of a parent can be extremely hard for children. They go through the feelings of loneliness, depression, and grief. When children are a witness to an ill parent or a deceased parent it causes an extreme amount of stress according to Buchwald, Delmar, & Schantz-Laursen (2011). Buchwald et al., (2011) also mentions that children may lose a sense of security when confronting a parent’s illness or death. Because of this, the child’s relationships are changed dramatically as well. The child must reestablish a relationship with the “healthier” parent since the other may be seriously ill or deceased. Like Buchwald, Koblenz (2015) also believes that maintaining a healthy relationship with the surviving or “healthier” parent will ultimately produce more positive results for the child that is coping.

In addition, cause of death was noted in this article, to have an influence on the coping process. Those who lost parents

Relationships are wide ranging and make up fundamental aspects of our lives. Some of the most important relationships are those that parents have with their children. These relationships strengthen marriages and society, as adults are responsible for raising their children to be productive members of society. However, what happens when either a parent or child is lost, why does such mayhem ensue? The truth is that parents and their children grow so close to each other, that the death of one member impacts the identity of the other. When looking at developmental psychology, is becomes apparent, that a child needs the full support of his or her parents to be successful adults.

Nader and Salloum (2011) made clear that, at different ages, children differ in their understanding of the universality, inevitability, unpredictability, irreversibility, and causality of death. They believed, despite the increasing understanding with age of the physical aspects of death, a child may simultaneously hold more than one idea about the characteristics of death. However, factors that complete the determining nature of childhood grieving across different age groups may be a difficult task for a number of reasons including their environment in means of the support they have available, the child’s nature in terms of their personality, genetics, and gender, coping skills and previous experiences, the developmental age, grieving style, whether or not therapy was received, and the relationship to the deceased (Nader & Salloum, 2011). Crenshaw (2005) found that according to our current understanding of childhood traumatic grief and normal grief, thoughts and images of a traumatic nature are so terrifying, horrific, and anxiety provoking that they cause the child to avoid and shut out these thoughts and images that would be comforting reminders of the person who died. The distressing and intrusive images, reminders, and thoughts of the traumatic circumstances of the death, along with the physiological hyper-arousal associated with such re-experiencing, prevent the child from proceeding in a healthy way with the grieving process (Crenshaw, 2005). McClatchy, Vonk, and

An “off-time” family life cycle transition is a non-normative event that happens outside the expected life cycle and may cause trauma or a conflict to the family of the child with the disability. These events that happen are known as unexpected transitions which are experienced at an unanticipated or unusual time during the life cycle transition of a family who have a child with disabilities (Turnbull, Turnbull, Erwin, Soodak, & Shogren, 2011). For example the demise of an older person may be considered a natural part of the life cycle because as one grows old, it is expected that the individual will die eventually. Though, death at whatever age may cause families to struggle emotionally as the passing of a loved one is still hard to bear and accept. But though in grief, the family celebrates the life of a person who has lived to a ripe old age as they leave behind numerous memories which are shared among the family members. These memories have the effect of comforting the family and relieving stress. But the passing of a child is hard to accept, causing a lot of stress to the parents and the family Turnbull (2011), as such a death is generally regarded as cruel twists of fate. Meaning, this was not expected in the family cycle. The parents of the deceased child will be in denial, face heartbreak and loneliness. Society might look at the passing of such a child with disabilities as a relief to the