Worden Four Tasks Of Mourning Analysis

During the sixth Tuesday that Mitch went to visit Morrie, they talked about emotions and detachment. Morrie tells Mitch about how he learned to detach himself from his frightening experiences so that he may accept his impermanent life, and embrace his death, which he knows may come at any moment. “Detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrates you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That’s how you are able to leave it.” (Page 96) In detaching from oneself, Morrie means that one can step out of his/her physical feelings and into one's own state of consciousness, so that he/she may gain perspective and composure during a stressful situation. This is how Morrie was able to find peace and relaxation within him even through his physical illness.

On September 11th 2001, 70 years old Rita Laser lost her brother. Along with Kelly, Colleen, David, Eva, and Amber who as well lost someone special to them in the attack. Many of the victims families hid in silence after the attack, full of sadness, the government was trying to get revenge for the victims that were lost in the attack. However Rita Laser had a different outlook, she and others did not want revenge by killing other, her, Kelly, Colleen, David, Eva, and Amber were all trying to install peace into the world not start a war. In Sue Halpern’s “A Peaceful Mourning” describes that in the aftermath of the attack they have all devoted their lives into advocating peace throughout the world, in their lost one’s name.

There are also many factors that influence these events and emotions such as personality, culture, religion, relationships, and the way in which the deceased passed away (Buglass, 2010, 44). Buglass (2010) refers to Stroebe and Schut’s “flexible” model of grief and explains that a person handling loss will experience lifestyle changes as a result of that loss. This is due to the dual manner of moving between grieving, and trying to come to terms with loss. This theory looks at grieving as a process that happens in everyday life. Other theorists, such as Freud, view grieving as a “solitary process” where mourners withdraw from the world around them and gradually deal with the loss they’ve suffered.

I chose the GriefShare support group because as nurses we will need to help our patients and their families with the grief process when a loved one passes away. On March 29, 2014, I met Claudette St. John, the group leader, at 6:45pm at Northwest Christian Church in Acworth, GA. Rick Baldwin also attended the meeting. The group meets from 7-8:30pm. Claudette shared that she has been doing grief support classes for the past 20 years and the past 3 years she has been doing GriefShare at Northwest Christian. She lost her teenage daughter in a car accident 20 years ago. She expressed that there really are not any rules, other than just respecting each individual. She tasks herself with keeping the meetings on track and has a democratic leadership style. GriefShare is a Christian based program consisting of 13 weekly session. Participants do not need to attend all 13 sessions, the sessions can also be done individually. A workbook is given to those that are participating in the program. GriefShare’s goal is to help those experiencing grief, work through the process and recognize the different aspects of grief that they may encounter.

The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance (Axelrod, 2017). She stated that

The third step is disorientation and disorganization. The appetite is poor, people lack motivation, have impaired judgment and experience insomnia. As the bereaved struggle to be relieved of disorientation there is a search to find the answer that feels right to them. A listening ear is the greatest gift to the bereaved. Society expects mourners to be healed quickly and support is often lacking after a short time. Others tend to avoid talking about the person who has died, when that is the thing that helps the bereaved most. During disorientation the self-image is lowered and the mourner often isolates himself from others.

In addition, the therapeutic value of working with grief in diverse groups is of particular interest to me based on the existential challenges in dealing with death, loss of relationships, career, or anyone or anything deemed to be of significance to individuals. Likewise, our society is frankly abysmal in recognizing and supporting those in need of support, therapy and long-term assistance in dealing with grief and loss. Additionally, group work can be a highly effective way to help grieving individuals expand their network of relationships thus helping them move forward in a health way (Corey el al.,

Death is a universally experienced phenomenon. In the United States alone, over 2.6 million people die each year (Center for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2015). For practitioners, it is of utmost importance to better understand the process of grief to develop better interventions for bereaved individuals.

The Cokesbury United Methodist Church grief support group follows a thirteen-week curriculum from GriefShare, however, new members can join in at any time as each week has a “self-contained” lesson. The topic for the week I attendee focused on the “why” of losing a loved one. Through following this curriculum, the group seeks to equip members with “essentials to recover from the hurt of grief and loss.” (GriefShare, n.d.) The group focuses on helping members rebuild their lives after they experience tremendous loss and grief through facing the challenge together. (GriefShare, n.d.)

In our bereavement, we spend different lengths of time working through each step and express each stage more or less intensely. The five stages do not necessarily occur in order. We often move between stages before achieving a more peaceful acceptance of death. Many of us are not afforded the luxury of time required to achieve this final stage of grief.

Grief is the act following the loss of a loved one. While grief and bereavement are normal occurrences, the grief process is a social construct of how someone should behave. The acceptable ways that people grieve change because of this construct. For a time it was not acceptable to grieve; today, however, it is seen as a necessary way to move on from death (Scheid, 2011).The grief process has been described as a multistage event, with each stage lasting for a suggested amount of time to be considered “normal” and reach resolution. The beginning stage of grief is the immediate shock, disbelief, and denial lasting from hours to weeks (Wambach, 1985). The middle stage is the acute mourning phase that can include somatic and emotional turmoil. This stage includes acknowledging the event and processing it on various levels, both mentally and physically. The final stage is a period of

The point of view was exclusively presented through Mitch. Mitch had the ability to communicate Morrie’s perception, how Mitch described himself, and how Mitch compared himself before and after Morrie’s death. Mitch described Morrie’s personality and how he had felt about things by describing most of his earlier experiences with Morrie and by describing his personality after Morrie had been diagnosed with ALS. Throughout the memoir, Mitch characterized his personality as being a person who “never [cried]” (51), “traded lots of dreams for a bigger paycheck, and… never… realized

In her seminal work on grief and grieving, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross introduced the concept now very well known as the Five (5) Stages of Grief, enumerated chronologically as follows: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In this concept, Kubler-Ross explored and discussed the normative stages that people go through when they experience the loss of a loved one and feel grief as result of this loss. It is also through these stages that people are now more aware of their feelings and thoughts when experiencing grief and the loss of a loved one. While the stages of loss are mainly developed for grief experienced with the death of a loved one, it is a generally accepted framework in understanding feelings of grief when an individual experiences the loss of a significant individual in his/her life. The discussions that follow center on the discussion of Kubler-Ross' 5 Stages of Grief, applied in the context of the Story of Job in the Bible.

One theory is by Kubler-Ross she identified five stages of grief which are Denial and Isolation, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Individuals can spend different amounts of time on these stages and these stages don’t need to be processed in order (www.ekrfoundation.org 2016).

(J.) William Worden’s Tasks of Grief model outline the major tasks or stages the KC described during her interview (Worden & Winokuer, 2011). KC discussed how she has to come to terms with the loss of the Chontay; her feelings of shock and disbelief; everything seemed surreal, as if in a dream. KC experienced intense pain, while her and her family worked through their feelings / thoughts of Chontay’s impending death (Worden & Winokuer, 2011). KC also experienced numerous emotions of intense sadness, emptiness, numbness, and anger (Worden & Winokuer, 2011).