It would be difficult to provide an exercise for this section so here is a short guide to the four stages of mourning. Hopefully, people who are
experiencing difficulties can decide whether they need to see a counsellor to
help them if they are suffering abnormal grief reactions or are finding it
difficult to move on.
We all suffer loss in our lives, whether loss of a loved one, a loved pet,
our health, a way of life or anything that we held dear and which made us happy
that we then lose or believe that we have lost. It is known that there are four
main stages or tasks involved in mourning any loss: -
1. To accept
the reality of the loss
Even
if we know that someone we love is going to die or leave us, it is still
difficult to come to terms with and to believe that it’s happened. Stage One is
the slow realisation that it really has happened and that the person isn’t going
to come back. Many people think they see or hear loved ones and this is a very
normal part of the process of coming to terms with the reality that you’ll never
see that person again. This first task can sometimes go wrong and people get
stuck in denial or they may try to diminish the feelings by rubbishing the
importance of the person. It only becomes a real problem if the reality is
denied for years or if the person grieving doesn’t move onto the next stage.
2. Coming to terms with the pain of grief
The pain of grief can be absolutely unbearable and people often feel that it
will never end. Very often, it’s the fear of this intensity of grief that holds
people in the first stage. However, if this stage of grieving
isn’t undertaken, the grief can leak into other behaviours or pop up when least
expected. It can manifest itself in symptoms of illness or depression. Very
often, others around the bereaved will unthinkingly try
to hinder this stage because seeing someone else’s pain can be very difficult
and a lot of people want to avoid it at all costs, so they might try to jolly
the bereaved out of their sorrow or hint that they should be getting over it by
now. This could lead to the bereaved feeling guilty or thinking that they
shouldn’t be feeling what they feel and they may start to suppress what they
feel rather than be working through it.
3. Adjusting to life without the deceased
Very often, the realisation that the bereaved person is having to cope on their
own if, before that, they had the
support
and presence of the deceased person, creeps up gradually.
Relationships often define the people within them i.e. a wife may feel that she
is only her
real self as a wife or a son may feel
that he has no sense of who he is as a man when his father dies. This adjustment
has to happen but it may throw the person into feeling like a helpless
child again and that society doesn’t recognise or respect them without the
cloak of their previous role. It can be very scary if you’ve always been
loved and protected to suddenly feel that you’re on your own and that whatever
decisions that are made in future belong to you alone. It can also be a positive
experience, of course.
4. Emotionally relocating the deceased and moving forward
The final stage or task of grieving is when the deceased person becomes part of
the bereaved person’s
past life and is given an appropriate place within the emotional life of the
bereaved but not one where they are interfering with the person moving on.
Unless
this is achieved, mourners would not feel they could move on with their lives in
case they forget the person that they have lost. Wives or husbands might feel
they are betraying the previous spouse if they meet someone else and children
might feel that they couldn’t move on to become adults without being guided and
supported by their parent.
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