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Summary PYC4805 Exam Answers: Question 12
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PYC4805 Notes for exams and assignments. Adult Development.
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Question 19: Chapter 13Discuss grief as an active process and point out which
factors will influence the grieving process. Discuss at least
four of these factors in detail and explain how they influence
the grieving process. (20)
13.4: Surviving the Loss
Each of us suffers many losses over a lifetime.
Whenever we lose someone close to us through death or other separation, like Bertha we
experience bereavement, grief, and mourning.
Bereavement is the state or condition caused by loss through death.
Grief is the sorrow, hurt, anger, guilt, confusion, and other feelings that arise after suffering
a loss.
Mourning concerns the ways we express our grief.
You can tell people in some cultures are bereaved and in mourning because of the clothing
they wear.
Mourning is highly influenced by culture.
For some, mourning may involve wearing black, attending funerals, and observing an official
period of grief; for others, it means drinking, wearing white, and marrying the deceased
spouse’s sibling.
Grief corresponds to the emotional reactions following loss, whereas mourning is the
culturally approved behavioral manifestations of those feelings.
Even though mourning rituals may be fairly standard within a culture, how people grieve
varies.
*The Grief Process
The process of grieving is a complicated and personal one.
Just as there is no right way to die, there is no right way to grieve.
Recognizing there are plenty of individual differences, we consider these patterns in this
section.
The grieving process is often described as reflecting many themes and issues people
confront that may be expressed through rituals (Norton & Gino, in press).
Like the process of dying, grieving does not have clearly demarcated stages through which
we pass in a neat sequence, although there are certain issues people must face similar to
those faced by dying people.
When someone close to us dies, we must reorganize our lives, establish new patterns of
behavior, and redefine relationships with family and friends.
Indeed, Attig (1996) provided one of the best descriptions of grief when he wrote grief is the
process by which we relearn the world.
Unlike bereavement, over which we have no control, grief is a process that involves choices
in coping, from confronting the reality and emotions to using religion to ease one’s pain.
From this perspective, grief is an active process when a person must do several things:
Acknowledge the reality of the loss Work through the emotional turmoil
, We must overcome the temptation to We must find effective ways to
deny the reality of our loss; we must confront and express the complete
fully and openly acknowledge it and range of emotions we feel after the loss
realize it affects every aspect of our life. and must not avoid or repress them.
Adjust to the environment where the Loosen ties to the deceased
deceased is absent We must free ourselves from the bonds
We must define new patterns of living of the deceased in order to reengage
that adjust appropriately and with our social network.
meaningfully to the fact the deceased is This means finding effective ways to
not present. say good-bye.
The notion that grief is an active coping process emphasizes survivors must come to terms
with the physical world of things, places, and events as well as our spiritual place in the
world; the interpersonal world of interactions with family and friends, the dead, and, in
some cases, God; and aspects of our inner selves and our personal experiences.
Even the matter of deciding what to do with the deceased’s personal effects can be part of
this active coping process.
In considering the grief process, we must avoid making several mistakes.
First, grieving is a highly individual experience.
A process that works well for one person may not be the best for someone else.
Second, we must not underestimate the amount of time people need to deal with the
various issues.
To a casual observer, it may appear a survivor is “back to normal” after a few weeks.
Actually, it takes much longer to resolve the complex emotional issues faced during
bereavement.
Researchers and therapists alike agree a person needs at least a year following the loss to
begin recovery, and two years is not uncommon.
Finally, “recovery” may be a misleading term. It is probably more accurate to say we learn to
live with our loss rather than we recover from it.
The impact of the loss of a loved one lasts a long time, perhaps for the rest of one’s life.
Still, most people reach a point of moving on with their lives in a reasonable timeframe.
Risk Factors in Grief
Bereavement is a life experience most people have many times, and most people eventually
handle it, often better than we might suspect.
However, there are some risk factors that make bereavement more difficult. Several of the
more important are the mode of death, personal factors (e.g., personality, religiosity, age,
gender), income, and interpersonal context.
Most people believe the circumstances or mode of death affects the grief process.
A person whose family member was killed in an automobile accident has a different
situation to deal with than a person whose family member died after a long period of
suffering with Alzheimer’s disease.
It is believed when death is anticipated, people go through a period of anticipatory grief
before the death that supposedly serves to buffer the impact of the loss when it does come
and to facilitate recovery.
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