grief and the mouring process

🏵️'Meaning reconstruction' & 'meaning-making' are the central processes in GRIEF

When unanticipated or incongruous events occur, a person needs to redefine the self & relearn ways to engage with the world considering the loss experienced.

Usually, the person does not return to a pre-loss level of functioning but instead learns how to develop a meaningful life through adaptation

The experience of grief is unique for each person. however, research has shown some commonalities in normal grief placed in 4 general categories:

🔹Feelings
sadness, anger, blame, helplessness, shock, pining, emancipation, relief, numbness.

🔹Cognitions
disbelief, confusion, preoccupation, sense of presence, hallucinations- visual & auditory.

🔹Physical sensations
hollowness in the stomach, tightness in the chest & throat, oversensitivity to noise, sense of depersonalization, breathlessness, weakness in muscles, lack of energy, dry mouth.

🔹Behaviours
sleep & eating disturbances, distracted & absentminded behaviour, social withdrawal, dreams of the loss, avoiding reminders of the loss, searching & calling out, sighing, restless hyperactivity, crying, visiting places or carrying objects that remind of the loss, treasuring objects that belonged to the deceased. 

⚠️Please note that not everyone will experience all of the symptoms.

🏵️The mourning process

Many authors have listed up to 12 stages of mourning. The Kübler-Ross model is the most popular which outlines 5 grief stages.

🔹denial
🔹anger
🔹depression
🔹bargaining
🔹acceptance

🤔 The problem with the stages is that research shows that grievers do not progress through these stages in a stepwise fashion. However, people believe this is how they "should" grieve and it becomes self-critical, exacerbating some of the difficult symptoms experienced during the mourning process. 

✳️There is more than only one healthy way to grieve.

🔆The tasks of the mourning process

Psychologist J. William Worden proposed a different model. He believed there are 4 main tasks a griever needs to do for “the process of mourning to be completed” & “equilibrium to be re-established”. This task model puts the person in an active role instead of a passive one, giving the griever some sense of control in their own process. .

​🔅Tasks:

🔹To accept the reality of the loss
🔹To process the pain of the grief
🔹To adjust to a world without the deceased/loss.
🔹To find a way to remember the deceased/loss while embarking on the rest of one’s journey through life.

⚠️ People may need to revisit certain tasks over time because grief is not linear

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