Reflectionsfrommyowngrieving. . 1......

According to Hart (2012), those people who are suffering from grief often seek help from the health care professionals. This is important for the clinicians to identify and address their own experiences in the clinical settings. The main aim of this article is to explore the facts about grief, the common themes of grief and the different ways in which the patient process of the clinicians can be facilitated.

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

Someone who is grieving will experience “major psychological, spiritual, social and physiological” changes throughout the grieving process (Hooyman & Kramer, 2006, p37). There are many theories and models that support these words. This essay will discuss Freud’s theory of grief work (Davies, 2004), Bowlby’s attachment theory (Walsh, 2012), and Worden’s tasks of grief (Worden & Winokuer, 2011). The major tasks of grief throughout the four different stages of life will be looked at, as well as common grief reactions, and ways to support people through these. In addition how children, adolescents, adults and the elderly understand and respond to grief will be examined. Finally how people at the various stages of life confront their own death will be looked at, including some personal examples.

Attachment, expectedness, and grief accumulation, are important variables that impact the way an individual experiences grief, further influencing the way they heal (Golden, 2000). Marilyn is experiencing circumstances that influence how she is grieving. Her son, who was a major part of her life, died unexpectedly in a car accident. Additionally, she is experiencing accumulated grief from a lack of closure after her father passed away. Golden (2000) reports that when an individual loses someone they are very attached to they will experience a greater degree of grief. Furthermore, if the loss was unexpected, such as a car accident, the grief will be significantly different than if it was expected. Another important factor in the grieving process focuses on the presence of accumulated grief. If grief isn’t acknowledged and/or dealt with, it can have an impact on everyday life and can affect the way an individual copes with other grief occurrences (Golden, 2000). Marilyn still has unresolved issues revolving around her parents’ divorce and subsequent death of her father.

Grief is a journey that serves a purpose to help regain balance and

Grief and its effects is considered in this paper with the purpose of better understanding how it affects a person. Grief is a natural reaction to loss and change which affects all aspects of a person’s life: the physical, emotional, psychological, behavioral, and spiritual. Grief is not expected but will be experienced in a variety of ways such as experienced, sudden, gradual or anticipated. While most people will experience loss at one time in their lives, not everyone responds in the same way or goes through the same process to recover and heal.

The work of grieving is an alternation between remembering and hoping. Remembering liberates the past by admitting the finality of death and hoping creates room for the future. People need hope to do the painful work of remembering. Finding hope is seldom a solitary experience. Sometimes we borrow that hope from a friend or a pastoral person whose empathic words confirm our grief and validate our grieving. In this way, hoping is an experience of mutuality. It is the experience of mutuality that transforms our dread of abandonment and our terrors of isolation into sustaining communities of hoping. Those who grieve the loss of someone they love are often isolated in their grief by our unwillingness to go with them to those places where

Shuchter and Zisook (1993) explored the concept that relationships exist on many levels, for example an actual relationship, a symbolic relationship, and imagined relatedness. When a death occurs, only the actual relationship ceases to exist, while the other levels of the relationship remain and may even become stronger (as cited in Klass, Silverman, & Nickman, 1996, p. 39). Many studies showed individuals making an effort to maintain attachment through various means, including speaking to the deceased, visiting the gravesite, or keeping meaningful objects (Corr et al., 2009; Klass et al., 1996; Wright & Hogan, 2008). These studies lead Hogan and DeSantis (1992) to explore their Grief to Personal Growth Theory, which conceptualized an individual progressing through their intense grief and experiencing a transformation or personal growth as a result of their pain (as cited in Wright & Hogan, 2008, pp. 352-354). This theory was originally based on qualitative studies of grieving children and adolescents but subsequent studies of grieving adults revealed similar results. First, the individual experienced intense grief involving periods of intrusive thoughts and feelings followed by periods of avoiding these intrusive thoughts and feelings. Once the individual successfully navigated their grief they reached a point

When I was about 5 or 6 years-old, I lost one of my grandmothers to Lung Cancer. She was my best friend; we were always together no matter what. I remembered when she passed away. Everyone cried but me. They said that she was my angel and would always be with me. I believed them, but I also knew that it would finally grow on me, and I would have to realize that she was buried and never coming back.

During my interview with Mrs. Edwards we discussed questions related to my research as well as her personal life. I began by making sure Mrs. Edwards had personally experiences grieving in children as a result of death from a loved one. After confirming that she was a qualified candidate we continued to discuss how children of different age groups reacted to death and the effect death had of children individually. The interview with Mrs. Edwards focused more on the differences within children rather than their similarities. We focused on topics such as: the differences she noticed in children’s grieving in relation to their personalities, how popular television shows and peer influence how they grieve, how mental capacity affects a child’s

The process of dealing with grief after a loved one has passed away is proven to be complicated and chaotic. Loss creates a shattering of the regular routine and dissolves any meaning of regular life that was once held. Psychologists have released a commonality chart in order to aid people in grieving; providing a linear process to work through. People utilize these guidelines in hopes that the pain caused by the loss of the departed will end quickly. This convention of mourning typically includes five stages: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance. Mourners tend to look for a way to articulate and release their grief: some do this through extreme measures, and others look towards art, music, or writing for a release. John Clayton argues that this act of expression is a gesture of healing- although it may not fall under the stereotypical five stage: “any expressive art is as an attempt to end discords in its creator- to express that experiences and so gain control of it” (Clayton, 4). Donald Hall, in his book Without, articulates his grief over his late wife through writing poems. Within these poems, Hall engages with the process of mourning. Although he does not participate in all five of the conventional stages of grief, it is evident that Hall engages with denial and isolation, depression, and anger. Without expresses how Hall choses to confront the grief and the

Human life narrative is incomplete without talking about grief. Man goes through moments of mourning and grief when faced with terminal illnesses, death of a close relative or friend or animal. We respond differently when faced by challenging situations, some will outwardly, in tears when thoughts of the experience runs in their mind while others will hurt from the inside. Our role is not to judge how a person griefs (Axelrod, 2014, p. 1) but rather to offer support in these moments.

The term bereavement refers to the experience or process of losing a loved one to death whereas the term grief refers to the multiplicity of responses to bereavement; cognitive, affective, behavioural, and physiological-somatic responses (Zisook & Shear, 2009). Examples of normal grief responses are intense sorrow, frequent crying, persistent longing, denial, anger, guilt, depression, fatigue, hopelessness, shock, loneliness, (Margaret Stroebe, Schut, & Stroebe, 2007). While grief is a normal, natural human experience, it is unique to each person and the intensity and duration of grief is highly variable with states of grief ranging from barely noticeable to intense suffering (Fujisawa et al., 2010; Zisook & Shear, 2009). Notably,

One of the ways we can prepare ourselves to experience loss and grief is by understanding it. Kubler’s infamous stages of grief are traditionally where we should start as it is the most well-known theory of loss. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in 1969 studied people who were dying; witnessing that each person went through the same five stages. From her observations she developed the ‘stages of loss’ model: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Still today theories of loses reflect on Kubler’s original five stages, but have either expanded or narrowed them depending on the theory. Personally, I find these stages comforting as each time I experience a loss of relational context I find myself going through each stage. It’s comforting because they remind me that everyone experiences what I’m experiencing; that I’m not alone.

Theories and models that have been developed to explain how or why we feel what we do and ways of working through grief. Many professionals have expanded on Freud’s model of bereavement, which emphasises that grief about personal attachments and the process of experiencing pain, detaching from the deceased and rebuilding a new life with them (Walsh, 2012). Margaret Stroebe and Hank Schut’s model attempts to explain how people alternate from intense pining and normality for the dead person (Walsh, 2012). Psychologist J. William Worden’s stage-based model outlines four tasks of grief, to: accept, work through, adjust, maintain and move on (Worden & Winokuer, 2011). Therese Rando’s model outlines how people proceed through six phases of mourning in order