The Nature of loss

LECTURE 3

Margie Wilson

Introduction

Last week we introduced the subject of “All our losses, all our Griefs, explaining the origins of grief – the dichotomy of attachment and separation, the way in which human beings invest themselves in people and things, and why most changes in life carry with them a powerful sense of loss.

Loss and Grief

Today I would like to focus on the nature of loss – the various types of loss that we could experience during our lives and the varying characteristics of loss – some of the symptoms typical of the loss experience – and then in closing just touch on the responses we may have to those around us who are suffering loss.

My hope would be that through gaining a deeper understanding of loss, we may all become more alert to situations that incur a sense of loss and as a result may reach out with more sensitivity and grace than perhaps we have done in the past.

But first I would like to just share with you a few thoughts on grief and loss that will set the scene for what follows.

Grief is the natural response to loss. Grief has been described as the most patient and persistent of all life’s companions. It is an ancient, universal power that links all human beings together.

Loss and the subsequent grief come uninvited – they are not in a hurry to leave. To some measure they occupy a room in your heart for a long time  We are never the same after tragedy strikes us. At best, we get through it, but never over it.

We may have buried a loved one but we cannot bury our feelings. We need time to vent – and invent ways of coping with our loss. Intense loss has been described as being torn apart, broken open, dislodged from ordinary time and space, disrupted, interrupted, and set apart. As if one is in a place in between – a time of transition.

Discontinuity is experienced in the literal reality of one’s daily life. Daily habits are disrupted, activities associated with the valued roles are lost, and life plans are derailed in cases of significant loss. Intimately linked to these tangible experiences is the realm of imagination – and significant loss undoes the way we have imagined ourselves in the world, uprooting us from the ground of meaning that has supported our sense of inter-connected wholeness.

For many, the loss occasioned by death is the only loss worthy of significant attention– almost as if the sense of loss is justifiable and warranted, but it isn’t the only time that people experience loss. It’s almost as if we live in a society that says that loss, other then the brutal separation from those we love, isn’t worth worrying about.

We’re taught to acquire things, not lose them – and early on in our lives, we learn ways of coping with loss that are detrimental to our well-being – we bury our feelings, replace the lost object, grieve alone, believe that we should just give it time, regret the past, don’t trust, often feel pressured to pretend we have recovered – I’m fine – the happy face phase.

Mitchell and Anderson, the authors of the book on which our course is based, emphasise their conviction that grieving is a normal response to significant loss and is not, as some writers have suggested, evidence of sickness or disease. It is something to live through rather than cure. It is no more pathological than the rush of adrenaline experienced when one has narrowly escaped danger. It is a disservice to the grieving person to interpret their feelings and behaviour as if there were a warp in their psychological make-up, or a deficiency in their spiritual formation.

In reality, loss is experienced in so many ways, it is pervasive, it takes so many different forms, it varies so much in intensity, it may be temporary or permanent, avoidable or unavoidable, anticipated or unanticipated. And the losses we do not pay much attention to, may well have a more profound effect on us in the long run than we realise.

Early experience of loss dictates to a large extent, how we experience the death of our loved ones but also influences how we experience other losses – and how we regard the sense of loss attached to our own death.

Bowman defines grief as a consequence of loss as one of our most common life experiences – it is a part of life – grief also lingers. It hangs around like a homeless dog, an unanticipated guest or a guest that you know is coming by but you know not when Grief may come and go but the loss of a loved one is a constant reality – an ongoing absence initiated by death/loss.

The 6 types of loss

Losses possibly experienced during the course of our lives may be divided into 6 categories, each with its own specific meaning but not mutually exclusive. Not necessarily all are recognized as significant and worthy of respect, but each deserves recognition.

Some of the contexts in which loss occurs are the obvious ones of bereavement, retrenchment, unemployment, recurrence of illness – cancer, depression, divorce and remarriage, in our success-oriented society where social pressures and expectations can create a huge sense of loss if you don’t come first, if you don’t get the job.

Moving to another town, into a retirement village or frail care facility The sense of loss may reflect a gap in one’s life – “a living loss” - referred by some as a crisis of discontinuity when a couple remain childless. Try to consider some of these situations and the types of loss that are associated with each.

So whilst death is the most powerful form of loss, we learn about loss much earlier in our lives – in fact, often before we know or understand much about death.

Some losses are particularly associated with certain periods of our lives –any loss may occur at any point in life – can’t be seen to occur in a particular order but would seem that the loss most experience first is one of material objects.

1. MATERIAL LOSS: Refers to the loss of a physical object or familiar surroundings to which one has an important attachment. It includes the loss of possessions through theft

or loss of income. Some resist recognizing the importance of material loss – wrong to be too

attached to objects – makes you too materialistic/sentimental.

Children will much more easily confess their strong attachment to a particular object – and how painful the loss is. Extrinsic value: the object is important because of its origin – given by someone who is deeply loved. Intrinsic value: are invested in the object for some qualities of its own.

Loss of an object with extrinsic value likely to cause the most pain – often leads to irresistible urge to replace the object – very seldom that the replacement is quite the same as the original. Material loss is often the first form of loss experienced by a child, or of which they are consciously aware eg. the scoop of ice-cream that falls off the cone into the dirt, the favourite toy that gets broken and can’t be repaired, moving from one grade to the next, moving schools.

For the adult, such losses may well seem insignificant and easily dealt with by replacing the lost object – the child’s sense of loss isn’t taken seriously. Danger of this is that the child constructs a fantasy world where all lost objects can be replaced – obviously this is untrue and when child eventually discovers the fact, the sense of loss is compounded. Loss of a pet  is an occasion for grief for both adults and children  For many the intensity of relationships with their pets are charged with almost quasi-human qualities – how often have you heard pets referred to as being “our children”. And yet often grief over the loss of a pet is treated in the same way as a material loss – many replace the lost pet immediately, even whilst saying that the lost pet is irreplaceable.

2. RELATIONSHIP LOSS: The first conscious awareness of relationship loss is often experienced in childhood – loss related to moving, parents’ divorce, or change in personal friendships.

In this country, a common experience for children is the loss of close friendships to emigration – very traumatic for them Relationship loss is the ending of opportunities to relate oneself to, talk with, share experiences with, make love to, touch, settle issues with,fight with, and otherwise be in the emotional and/or physical presence of a particular person.

Relationship loss is an unavoidable component of human life – may be partial as in moving a distance away from the place of attachment, or total, as in the loss caused by death. Even when the loss is associated with growing up, it is painful and significant!

Death is generally the most painful form of relationship loss – a complete end to the opportunities to engage with that person. Neimeyer describes the loss of a significant relationship as an undoing of our individual and collective life histories. Loss changes our world, changes our relationships with others, and changes our sense of self.

What we once know is no more. We feel uprooted, homesick, estranged within and alienated from surroundings transformed by death, and our pain and anguish Not always recognised as such but nevertheless just a painful is relationship loss through neglect – where a parent/spouse has little time for the family. Example – working mom – runs her own business, two children to fetch and carry – youngest child always eager to tell her what he has learnt and she never has time. The elderly parent in an retirement home or frail-care facility, who rarely sees their family.

3. INTRAPSYCHIC LOSS: Whereas both material and relationship losses are likely to occur within the child’s experience before adolescence, intrapsychic loss is likely to happen

for the first time during adolescence. It presupposes an awareness of the self-present in a new way after puberty. Intrapsychic loss refers to the experience of losing an emotionally important image of oneself, losing the possibilities of “what might have been”, abandonment of plans for a particular future, the dying of a dream.

Although it is often related to external experiences, it is itself an entirely internal experience. What we lose exists entirely within the self.In this form of loss the grieving not only involves possibly confronting the absence of what was and what it meant, but also of what it seemed to promise.

Very often what we have lost has been a secret, a hope, a dream seldom if ever shared with anyone else – this means that the loss and subsequent grief is also a secret. Intrapsychic loss has been described a the loss of an anticipated future, the loss of one’s imagined picture of the way things were supposed to be – this is well illustrated in the following example - consider the young girl – matriculates and is accepted by the local prestigious ballet school – her dreams of becoming a famous ballerina starting to take shape.

Until a back injury ends the hopes of her dancing professionally and requires that she reinvents her ideas of a career. Reluctantly enrols at ‘varsity to study English and Psychology – intense grief process needed to be worked through before she was able to approach her studies with any enthusiasm and determination.

Example quoted in our book of reference for this course is of a newly married man

suffering intrapsychic loss following the couple’s first serious fight after several months of marriage. He had built an image of their marriage being perfect because they had had not conflicted before, but this image was shattered when they did have a serious fight and suffered intense sadness as a result.

One may experience intrapsychic loss in time of change or after a major task has been successfully completed. Buzz Aldrin, the astronaut, is reported to have experienced just this after the moon landing. For years his life had been aimed at achieving this and once completed enormous sense of loss. What else was there to do.

Loss of courage, faith and perception as described in this sketch: “I don’t know what kind of loss this is, but I feel it very vividly. An uncle of mine used to visit us regularly when I was a child. I adored him. He was kind, generous and wise. As an adolescent, I often sought his advice, and followed it, generally to my own good fortune. When I was 22, I discovered that when he was 22, he served a two year jail sentence. My sense of loss was devastating, and still is. He has not changed, nor has his wisdom. The change is in me.

4. FUNCTIONALLOSS: Refers to the loss of some neurological or muscular function of the body. Strongly but not exclusively associated with the aging process. Tend to react with horror and disbelief at young child losing their sight but is just as traumatic when older person loses any of their faculties. Memory loss is common loss in the elderly. Functional loss often carries with it a loss of autonomy – gone is the sense that “I can manage”. To lose sight/hearing/coordination is often to lose mobility.

May also involve occupational deprivation. Often are able to acknowledge the functional loss but not the loss of autonomy – may admit have cataracts but insist they are still capable of driving! When there is material loss, they can be replaced but with functional loss, coping requires finding a comparable “way around” the restriction or handicap. Sadly this isn’t always possible – can be overwhelming sense of loss. Amputation of limb, loss of breast, need for hearing aid, having to undergo a colostomy. The reaction is often one of grief – e.g. irritability when asked how hearing aid is, touchiness about enquiries about new guide dog.

5. ROLE LOSS: Loss of a specific social role or of one’s accustomed place in a social

network. The significance of the role loss is directly related to the extent to which one’s sense of identity is linked to the lost role. Retirement is perhaps the most familiar occasion of role loss – can be accompanied by traumatic grief. Can also be experienced with promotion – may mean loss of freedom, loss of relationships with work colleagues.

May also be experienced when single person marries, when married person loses their spouse.  Disorientation is powerful part of this sense of loss – is sense of not knowing how to behave in social situations – “how to behave” is often determined by the roles we have taken or have been given in particular social situations – if that role disappears, we are literally without a part to play – may feel we don’t know “the lines” anymore.

A student who had to undergo surgery summed it up in this way: “As a hospital patient you absolutely lose any control over your body and your living patterns. No matter how personal the care is in a hospital, you are fundamentally a patient, and that means that you are expected, required, to take on a particular role for the comfort and convenience of the staff.

Certainly taking on the role of the patient does not contribute to successful surgery or your recovery. It merely makes others feel comfortable or powerful with everybody in their own place. I was a person, a wife, a mother, a friend, a colleague and a lot of other things before I entered hospital. But when I became a patient I had to give up all those labels and the roles that go with them. I was just a patient.

Others had a right to touch me, move me, take me away from important companionship, leave me lying on a gurney in the middle of an unfamiliar hallway with no explanation, and do anything else they may decide was  convenient for them. If you are a patient, you have nothing to say about any of that. Your thoughts, feelings and opinions don’t count”

6. SYSTEMIC LOSS: Must understand that we belong to interactional systems in which patterns of behaviour develop over time. Even without strong personal relationships to

others in the system, one may come to count on certain functions being performed in the system. When these functions disappear or aren’t performed, there may be systemic loss experienced by individual members.

Happens in a family system when a family member dies, when a child leaves home, in the event of retirement or retrenchment, ill-health. The impact is on the functioning of the entire family - The system must adapt to the loss. “Our family life will never be the same” Happens in a work dept. if one member leaves – eg one who has always had cartoons on her wall. In such cases of loss, are often intellectually prepared but not emotionally prepared.

7. TRAUMATIC LOSS: Follow such events as 9/11, the tsunami and earth quake in Japan, the earthquake in Christchurch. Events that are sudden, unanticipated and totally outside the normal range of experience. These losses profoundly overwhelm resources of the bereaved, leaving them feeling totally helpless and horror struck.

Grief in response to such events differs from “normal” grief – there is no time to anticipate death, there is generalized sense of horror, helplessness, loss of control – lives feel disordered and disjointed – the world has become a v. dangerous place. There is huge struggle to make sense of what has happened – why did it happen? Why my loved one? How did it happen? What can I do to prevent it happening again? Grief is compounded in events like 9/11 by the fact that deaths resulting from terrorist attacks are violent and mutilating, most are out of sequence in one’s life-cycle, there is ambiguous loss because few bodies are recovered. The initiating agent was man-made and intentional.

There is an additional loss of the taken-for-granted sense of security predictability, trust and optimism. “I feel like I have lost my sense of innocence. I used to believe that people were basically good, and that God was watching over us. But now I know that the world is filled with predators, and no god is going to protect us. In less intense times, the family usually serves a the primary source of confirmation of the reality of experience of its members but with traumatic loss, it may not be able to fulfill this role – there is differential grief – each family member will be grieving in a unique way, at a unique pace – the family itself is in disorder, is disrupted – needs to reorganize and re-establish stability whilst shifting various responsibilities amongst those members that remain.

General Comments on types of loss

Almost any specific loss will be a mixture of more than one type of loss as mentioned. One type may be predominant but more than one type may be felt. E.g. to be widowed, obviously means relationship loss – but could also mean role loss as widow discovers that her social life has changed. She is no longer “a wife” in her community. If she has not been adequately provided for, there may also be material loss. If her sense of identity was dependent

on being her husband’s wife, there will also be experience of intrapsychic loss.

Children and loss

In the same way as no two people will experience loss identically, nor can there be a formula as to how much loss will hurt or how long grief will last, the way in which children may experience loss and express their grief may differ quite markedly from that of adults. Children’s losses may be viewed by adults as mundane or routine changes in life, but for the child the loss can be devastating – moving from their childhood home with all the associated treasured memories, moving from one grade to another and leaving a special teacher – how often is our comfort “ but you can go back and see her!!” Then lose a favourite toy/security blanket and there is total devastation – can’t sleep/eat! Children’s reactions to loss may also seem illogical or disproportionate to adults – they may have lost a parent but will not appear to grieve openly – will want to go and play! Won’t display their feelings as openly as the adults – won’t withdraw .Often want to immerse themselves in activities. This reaction can so easily be misinterpreted as they really don’t understand – or they are over the loss.

Other variables of loss.

When one considers the grief process, the type of loss is relevant but so also are other variables. The way in which loss is experienced varies according to circumstances and ways in which one has learned to deal with powerful emotions. But there are variables inherent in the loss itself – this adds to the unpredictability of grief and highlights just how many ways loss is experienced.

1. Avoidable and unavoidable loss

Loss is an unavoidable part of the universal human experience – but some losses are avoidable, because they stem from having chosen to follow a particular life-style. It is often tempting to be unsympathetic with those whose loss stems from such choices. The choice of a life style that pays off in terms of power, influence or financial gain carries with it comparable costs in terms of human relationships eg. those who choose to be rich are often intensely lonely. In other cases, grief cannot be expressed because the relationship that has

been lost was a secret – the “other” woman/man in an affair may have to hide the grief from everyone Is a challenge to support those who grief when their grief is as a result of choices they have made but which you disapprove of.

2. Temporary and permanent loss

Some losses, while excruciating in their emotional effect, may be only temporary. To be able to foresee regaining what has been lost, or to know that one will eventually regain it, shapes the way in which we live our lives, and may so sharply focus attention on the lost object that other parts of life are neglected. E.g. woman who waited for her husband’s return from World War 2 – he wasn’t involved in active combat so she could be reasonably confident that

he would return. –defined her real life as her longing for him and the writing of 2 letters to him every day – the rest of her life, what her boss and family saw, was unreal – went about my daily work in a perpetual fog. Knowing a particular loss is temporary may dull some of the pain – this woman’s pain was different from that of a wife whose husband had been killed but no less powerful.

Temporary loss is complicated by fantasies about how life will be after “restoration” – reality can be very different to the fantasy! Permanent loss brings with it a very real sense that something has ended – may resist or avoid the acknowledgment of this but its finality brings the necessity of making a new life without the lost person or object. The cruel part of this is that if you imagine that the loss is only temporary – creates a situation where there is no end to a recurring sense of loss. Since we can imagine reunion, the intensity of longing for the person is increased by the fantasy of regaining what we have lost. When a permanent loss seems only temporary, healthy grieving is impeded.

Example of well-loved pastor drowning whilst on holiday – took some weeks for his body to be recovered – in that time fantasies developed amongst friends that he wasn’t dead – the grief process was distorted by the fantasy that he wasn’t dead – the loss wasn’t established. Although extremely painful, seeing the body of the dead person may assist in the

development of a realistic and healing grief process.

3. Actual and imagined loss

Is possible to imagine a loss where actually no real loss has occurred. This is not the same as intrasychic loss where the loss is known only to the grieving person. Imagined loss involves self-deception. Eg. an elderly woman may complain at her children have abandoned her. But it may well not be true – they are simply behaving in ways that are not in accordance with her wishes. May claim that they never visit but in fact they do but just don’t concede to her every wish. She sees it as a relationship loss – isn’t this but could well be

intrapsychic loss if she has always seen herself as someone whose wishes are carried out.

More complex imagined loss is the loss which we fear may take place. Lovers who are separated endure a real but temporary loss. But if one starts imagining that the other no longer loves them, this is imagined loss – can be just as painful and problematic as if the loss was real. Such imagined losses often arise out of earlier loss of self-esteem – previous experiences of abandonment lead to situation where is tragically easy to imagine being

abandoned again by an unfaithful lover.

4. Anticipated and unanticipated loss

Sudden death of a loved one may have impact quite different from a death after long, difficult illness. May be some relief that there was no suffering in case of sudden death

Anticipated death brings with it the possibility of doing some important parts of grieving before the actual loss occurs – is the opportunity to settle any unfinished business, to renew or mend broken relationships, to express our pain to others including the one about to be lost. Is a myth that to express this pain to the dying person is a burden for them – the dying do not experience it in that way at all!

5. Ambiguous loss

This refers to cases where the loved one is physically present but is psychologically absent – consider the Alzheimer sufferer – he’s not the person he used to be. My mother doesn’t recognize me – it’s like she has already died. Or cases where the loved one is physically absent but psychologically present – missing persons, kidnapped/missing soldiers.Is a devastating from of loss because it is so unclear

6. Leaving and being left

On the supposition that the experience of being left may be different from that of leaving, research has looked at this. Appears that those who characteristically experience separation and loss as “being left”, discovered that either openly or covertly, they are angry and hurt, and tend to blame the person who leaves.

The underlying thought is that the person, who has left, even one that has died, has chosen to leave and is deliberately abandoning them. “They wouldn’t leave us if they really loved us, would they?” Predominant feeling of being abandoned persists whether the “leaver” realistically had a choice or not.

For those who leave, there is often a subtle or not-so-subtle sense of guilt. Some people will rearrange their lives in a significant way simply to avoid the guilt of leaving. May want to resign but arrange to be fired. Want to leave marriage but seek to manipulate partner into filing for a divorce. May even be a distorted sense of abandonment in this – if you really loved me, you wouldn’t let me go! This variable can be very powerfully felt in the case of the adolescent/young adult leaving home – is a necessary drive towards individuation but can be experienced as loss on many levels – relationship, systemic, intrapsychic, material, role. Makes leaving home one of the most powerful and critical loss events any human undergoes.

Possible symptoms suffered by those experiencing loss and grief

1. Feeling of tightness in the throat/heaviness in the chest

2. empty feeling in the tummy and loss of appetite

3. feel guilty at times – anger at other times

4. feel restless and look to be active but can’t concentrate

5. feel as if the loss hasn’t happened – isn’t real

6. sense the loved one’s presence – expect to see them come through the

door, hear their voice

7. wander aimlessly, forget, neglect to finish things

8. difficulty sleeping

9. develop intense preoccupation with what has been lost

10. Feel need to change for those around them who seem uncomfortable –

won’t talk about their loss

11. Need to tell and retell and remember things about the lost one and

their death

12. Cry at unexpected times.

Theological comment

Whilst it is not for me to comment from a theological point of view on the nature of loss and how we express it, our authors, Mitchell and Anderson report that there are some theological grounds to suggest that the loss of a person is more significant than the loss of other things.

It is the human creature that God made, just a little lower than God’s self. In matters of life

and death, the sacredness of human beings must be primary. To value things more than people, or role more than personhood is a violation of God’s intent for creation.

Our attachment to places and things should not disrupt our commitment to and within the human community. However, from a psychological point of view, the unconscious does not make this distinction. Loss derives its psychological power from the primordial loss experience. Any form of loss is at root experienced as a loss of part of self. A portion of the very fabric of our existence is ripped.

The community is disrupted. The patterns of relationships that order our lives are altered. And our society doesn’t recognize or encourage the awareness of powerful loss other than that following death. The writers of this book see this as a stoic position – represents one of the most powerful anti-Christ stances in present-day society. It is apathy or indifference which breeds a callous disregard for the sacredness of all life. Loss is inescapably painful precisely because attachment is a human necessity.

Our attachment to objects other than human beings is a recognition not only that the unconscious continues to be indiscriminate throughout adult life – it is also an affirmation of our linkage with the whole of creation that God has given us as a sacred trust.

To be human is to be a griever for all kinds of losses. Hopefully as we become more aware of the process of loss and grief, we will be able to respond more compassionately and sensitively both to ourselves and others.

The emotional impact of loss can so easily be compounded by misunderstanding, blame, or simple inattention of those close to the griever – inadvertently adding a burden of private anguish, secrecy or shame for those whose mourning is hurried up, disallowed, trivialize or unrecognized.

In times of darkness, one must simply stop searching for the light, and become the glow for others to follow.

Every human being must find his own way to cope with severe loss, and the only job of a true friend is to facilitate whatever method he chooses. Freud : We find a place for what we lose. Although we know that after such a loss, the acute stage of mourning will subside, we also know that a part of us shall remain inconsolable and never find a substitute. No matter what may fill the gap, even if it is completely filled,

it will nevertheless remain something changed forever. When life makes us face difficult situations, such as a personal loss, we have to understand that eternity is taking one more step. Helen Keller – What we have once enjoyed, we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

Use the comment link on the right side of your screen to contact the editor.with feedback