Grief and Loss

Grief and Loss

Many people will experience loss at some point in their life; Grief is the psychological reaction to loss. Bereavement is a type of grief involving the death of a loved one. Bereavement and Grief can encompass a whole range of emotions ranging from sadness to anger.

Freud described grieving as a process in which the bereaved person adjusts to the reality of their loss, enabling them to disengage and reinvest in new relationships (Klass et.al.,1996: 3-16). Bowlby argued that our emotional bonds ‘arise out of deep seated innate mechanisms which have evolved in order to ensure survival’ (Parkes, 1993: 246). Infants also posses a motivational ‘attachment system’ ‘designed by natural selection to regulate and maintain proximity between infants and their caregivers’ (Fraley and Shaver, 1999: 736). The theory implies a cause-effect relationship between early attachment patterns and later reactions to bereavement, arguing that ‘whether an individual exhibits a healthy or problematic pattern of grief following separation depends on the way his or her attachment system has become organized over the course of development’ (ibid., 1999: 740).

Grief is experienced by; sadness, guilt, yearning, anger, regret, relief but it doesn’t have to be the absence of joy, contentment and humour. Grief can be surprising in strength and can often be confusing. Grieving takes many form; talking, being alone, exercising, writing. Socialising and self-care can be vital to recovery. Just because someone may feel occasional happiness it does not mean that a person is done mourning.

Grieving the loss of a loved one can be difficult whether the loss is due to a death, break up or other circumstance. One of the hardest challenges can be adjusting to life without your loved on. Adjusting may require a person to create a new daily routine or re-thinking their plans for the future and this may mean adopting a new sense of identity. 

There are two main styles of grief based on thoughts, feelings and behaviours;

Instrumental: this takes on the form of problem solving by controlling or minimising emotional expression. The second is Intuitive, which involves a heightened emotional experience including the sharing of feelings, exploring the lost relationship and considering mortality.

There is no right or wrong way to grieve and the time that people grieve for varies amongst everyone. Grief can also be intertwined with depression; the person’s level of dependency on the dependant can also cause complications.

Silverman and Klass do not see bereavement or grieving as ever fully resolved, culminating in ‘closure’ or ‘recovery’. They propose that ‘rather than emphasising letting go, the emphasis should be on negotiating and renegotiating the meaning of the loss over time. While the death is permanent and unchanging, the process is not’ (ibid., 1996: 18-9).

Complicated Grief:

People never fully recover from the experience of grief, but with time the intensity decreases. 15% of people who have lost a loved one will experience ‘complicated grief’. This is when one has a persistent form of bereavement, lasting for one year or more. Complicated grief would mean that someone has had no improvement from their grief symptoms for an extended period of time. Complicated Grief symptoms are often severe and dominant the person’s life, interfering with their daily functions.

Broken Heart Syndrome:

Grief cannot kill someone but when someone experiences a shocking event their body fills with stress hormones. These hormones can cause part of a person’s heart to briefly swell and stop pumping. The rest of the heart continues beating and so causes blood to flow unevenly. A person may feel intense chest pain, similar to a heart attack but this feeling is only temporary. This condition can be experienced after any shocking event; positive or negative and is more likely to develop in women than men.

Bereavement and Culture:

Certain aspects of death are universal. Most cultures have a mourning after death in which crying is common. However, the bereavement processes can very dramatically depending on one’s culture including attitudes toward death: Many Western cultures display death-denying traits seeing death as something to fight or resist. Whereas, Eastern cultures tend to view death as part of life, a transition to an end. Research shows that people in death denying cultures then to have more anxiety over death than death-accepting cultures.

Theories of Grief:

Five Stages of Grief: In 1969, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross identified five linear stages of grief:

- Denial

- Anger

- Bargaining

- Depression

- Acceptance

Kubler-Ross originally developed this model to illustrate the process of bereavement but then adapted the model to account for any type of grief. Kubler-Ross noted that everyone experiences at least two of the five stages of grief. She acknowledged that some people may revisit certain stages over many years or throughout life.

Four Tasks of Mourning: Psychologist J. W. Worden also created a stage-based model for coping with the death of a loved one. He divided the bereavement process into four tasks:

- To accept the reality of the loss

- To work through the pain of grief

- To adjust to life without the deceased

- To maintain a connection to the deceased while moving on with life

Dual Process Model: As an alternative to the linear stage-based model, Margaret Stroebe and Hank Schut developed a dual process model of bereavement. They identified two processes associated with bereavement:

Loss-oriented activities and stressors are those directly related to the death. These include:

- Crying

- Yearning

- Experiencing sadness, denial, or anger

- Dwelling on the circumstances of the death

- Avoiding restoration activities

Restoration-oriented activities and stressors are associated with secondary losses. They may involve lifestyle, routine, and relationships. Restoration-oriented processes include:

- Adapting to a new role

- Managing changes in routine

- Developing new ways of connecting with family and friends

- Cultivating a new way of life.

Stroebe and Schut suggest most people will move back and forth between loss-oriented and restoration-oriented activities.