LECTURE 4
Sue Tinsley
Sue Tinsley
Introduction
It’s a privilege to be dealing with this subject – one that we as individuals often shy away from although we all deal with grief and loss throughout our lifetime both within ourselves and in dealing with others.
Last week we looked at the Nature of Loss, where we were reminded that Loss occurs in many differing ways throughout our lifetime and often these losses, although at face value may seem insignificant, lead to grief.
Lecture 2 set the scene in terms of looking at attachment, separation, and grief.
To be human therefore is to be a griever for all kinds of losses!
What Grief Looks like
Today we are looking at the Dynamics of Grief – or if you like, what grief looks like!
My Daughter Christine, who is married to an Anglican Priest, has just moved from the City of East London, to Hilton in the Natal Midlands. Richard and Christine had been in East London for 4 years. They were happy there and very settled.
Richard has been appointed as the Chaplin of Hilton College. It has been interesting to watch as they have made this move. Richard has settled in really well and is very busy and involved and learning all about his new role.
Christine however, has been finding it very hard as she has struggled to find a job, has left behind a number of really close friends and a number of interests she was really involved in. I am sure in time she will settle as well, but at the present she is going through a time of grief and loss and is understandable quite down, demotivated and a little angry and frustrated at times.
Last year, I saw a little boy of 4 years old in my practice, who had lost his best friend in an awful accident. He was angry, confused, could not understand where his friend was and why he could no longer see him. His parents had brought him for help as alongside this he was struggling to sleep, was angry and acting out and very emotional at times
Both experienced loss. However they were both grieving in different ways. So one of the first things we need to understand when we think about how individuals grieve is that no two experiences of grief are ever exactly the same.
Grief is always a particular response to the particular loss of a particular object.
So whatever may be said about the dynamics of grief must also include the particularity and uniqueness of each response to loss. However, having said that there are common themes that must and can be identified.
Definition of Grief
A definition of grief therefore, may be as follows:
Grief is the normal but bewildering cluster of ordinary human emotions arising in response to a significant loss, intensified and complicated by the relationship to the person or the object lost.
Some of these emotions which are experienced and which are common to all of us are as follows:
· Guilt, shame, loneliness anxiety
· Anger, terror, bewilderment, emptiness
· Profound sadness, despair, helplessness.
All are part of grief and all are common to being human.
In grief there is a clustering of some or all of these emotions in response to loss.
Theorists and researchers at times have tried to categorise and define grief as a disease.
However, it seems that no matter how we may look at grief, it is an ordinary inescapable, dimension of life. As human individuals we will experience loss and we will grieve.
Grief is a part of life, in a way that measles are not! To be wounded is not to be sick!
“Abnormal Grief”
However, what begins as a normal response to loss may of course become abnormal. It is difficult to decide what may be seen as “Abnormal Grief” as when we are making judgement calls as someone grieving for “too long”, or “too intensely” we are then being very subjective! The uniqueness of grief makes it difficult to determine abnormality – we all grieve according to our own timetables!
However, perhaps we could look at “abnormal grief” as being when the individual is ordering their lives by efforts to deny loss and hide pain. By doing that, the individual is not “doing the grief work” as it were, to work through and process their grief.
Mrs Haversham in Charles Dicken’s “Great Expectations “would be an example of this! (Wedding cake, dress etc) effecting her whole life from then on! This could definitely be viewed as abnormal grief!
Anticipated Loss and Anticipatory Grief:
Often enough grief is caused by an unexpected loss, but at other times it is possible to anticipate an approaching loss with such intensity that one grieves as if the object were already lost. Loss that occurs over a prolonged period of time may be particularly painful as it is prolonged. (Christine again)
The prolonged grieving process in anticipation of a final loss is common for the dying person who is leaving all the people and places that mean so much to them. The feelings that are encountered in these sorts of situations are not so much grief as relentless sorrow for the inability to continue to live life in the manner that one wants to, or used to! The terminally ill person is grieving in order to get ready to die, saying good bye to many things before the final loss. It is important that there be time to grieve for all that will be left behind.
The family and friends of a terminally ill person participate in some of that grief. Every “last” is cause for grieving. However the prolonged grieving of the one who is dying and that of the survivors are not all the same. The one who is dying is letting go of valued and loved things and persons in order to get ready to die. Those who grieve need to let go of what has been lost in order to get ready to live again! Many of the dynamics will be the same, but not all. The two processes do not tend towards the same end!!
(Time for own reflection on manner in which grief has been dealt with!)
The common elements of grief
Firstly perhaps we may look at three main sources for the feelings associated with grief:
The contemplation of the loss itself (e.g. person, home, retirement, situation
The contemplation of a future without the lost object.
The rntemplation of the unexpected experience of grief itself – that is the feelings about grieving
These sources of grief may be coming at us singly or all in a cluster.
The one thing we can be sure of when we consider the feelings attached to grief is that it is not systematic. We literally swing through these different emotions and in many differing combinations.
There are a few factors which may influence the manner in which we grieve, for example the family attitudes towards grief (expressive, repressive etc)
Patterns of coping with stress
The specific kind of attachment we had to what we have lost
The social acceptability of the manner in which we express our emotions
Spiritual beliefs and practices
(Take some time to think about how you yourself grieve. Think about a loss you have gone through and how you grieved – just write this down for yourself so that as we go through the following you could perhaps see your own reactions and emotions falling in line with some of those discussed. Take a few minutes to write this down)
For convenience the emotions aroused and displayed may be grouped into 7 clusters:
1. Numbness
Traumatic loss is a shock to the system and when an individual is faced with such a shock they usually protect themselves from the full impact by entering into a period of numbness – in this state it seems as if the person is in fact feeling nothing and accompanying this state is often an insistence that the loss has in fact not occurred. In addition to this unreality, disbelief and muted feeling, shock may also cause aimless wandering about as if the grief stricken person were oblivious to walls or time or location. It has been found that the length of time of intense grieving is diminished if the process of grieving can begin close to the moment of loss. However there is no standard time between the first shock and sense of numbness and the pains the signal the beginning of grief work. (Medication??)
2 Emptiness, Loneliness, Isolation
Emptiness – e.g. a part of me is gone forever, a ship without a rudder, I feel so empty – this is a sense of being diminished from within, which brings with it a sense of self-depletion or diminishment of self. (A sense of not rushing to fill this emptiness but facing the pain of it)
Loneliness – the loneliness of loss is to be cut off from the people we love. The loneliness of grief is to be misunderstood, ignored and unheard (common after the funeral, and people not knowing what to say etc) When we lose someone we love, it is the world that is depleted and we are lonely (e.g.) Children leaving home both for family and homesickness!
Being alone is different to loneliness – those who intentionally choose to be alone, are seldom if ever lonely and they often restore their sense of self through solitude
Isolation – this is a necessary consequence of loss . The collapse of one’s world and the erosion of internal self-certainty require some time of retreat from the demanding social interactions. The grieving person feels vulnerable and we shrink from public scrutiny of our thoughts and feelings. We need a safe place to be and isolation creates a safe place. (e.g. When my Father died after a long illness, it was just before Christmas and I remember that I did not want to go out – I just wanted to be at home where it felt safe) There appear to be two warring needs - the need to be alone with one’s grief and the need to still feel supported by communities which care. Difficult place to be! Church should be a safe place to deal with grief where we can feel accepted even and possibly especially when we are emotional!
3. Fear and Anxiety
Fear and Anxiety are experienced as part of grief in 3 ways:
The dread of abandonment- to be abandoned is not to BE. There is a sense of utter helplessness and the feeling that the very ground we are standing on is caving in under us! It takes us back to our childhood where we often wanted to cry “Don’t leave me alone!”
The anxiety of separation – Because we are social creatures the loss of someone or something we love is experienced as a threat to the self. If the grieving person was excessively dependent on the lost person or object for self-definition then there may well be intense anxiety about oneself and how one will cope.
The fear for the future – panic and sometimes fear, may well be evident with regard to the financial situation, looking after children or self or house, just generally a sense of “how will I cope?”when I think of the future.
4. Guilt and Shame
Guilt – is a common component of grief. Guilt may come from 3 combined areas – assuming responsibility for an individual loss.
Decisions that may have contributed to or hastened the loss
Residue from the relationship with the lost person or object.
Sometimes there may even be guilt about being the “one who survived” or the “one who is left behind”. If the relationship had been difficult, there is often guilt about the sense of relief that it is finally over. There is also often a sense of guilt over being relieved that a long lingering illness is finally over. Guilt is often punctuated by “if only’s” Sometimes what looks like guilt, is really shame: shame at being a griever! C.S. Lewis put it candidly
“An odd by product of my loss is that I’m aware of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet ..... Perhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers.”
Grief has a habit of erupting as it were at awkward moments and often in unexpected places. People often feel shame about this. There also is very often a sense of grieving in the “right way” and according to other’s expectations, and if this is not happening then there may be a sense of shame.
5. Anger
Anger is an inevitable, immediate and common response to grief! When the loss is a death, the anger is usually directed away from the deceased and towards family members, medical personnel and even God.
Sometimes this anger is directed towards ourselves. In other loss the anger is often much more visible and much more often aimed at the lost object (e.g. divorce) Traumatic loss upsets our illusion that we live in an orderly world. If we can find something or someone to blame then we can continue to avoid the fact that life is uncertain and precarious.
It is most times very difficult to make sense of our loss, and that is often when we rage against and question God. Read through some of the psalms of lament to see how people really let God have it, as it were. C.S. Lewis in his grief over the loss of his wife, talked about God as a “cosmic sadist”.
However, God is neither the cause of our suffering nor a capricious sadist planning our pain. But the mystery of loss is part of the pain of grief. Loss is a mystery and anger as part of grief, is not contrary to faith or faithfulness, but an inescapable response to loss.
Anger is definitely part of grief and needs to be so!
We have 2 responses with Anger which are inappropriate – One is to become so preoccupied with it that it feels and becomes all consuming
The other is to refuse to consider that we are angry at all and to reject it as abnormal.
In both cases we are being dominated by anger and this then causes us not to deal with our grief in a constructive manner.
6. Sadness and Despair
Sadness is a normal healthy response to any misfortune. This sadness at times may be very intense, but a sad person knows who or what has been lost and yearns for things to be as they were.
Sadness can range from momentary distress over the loss of a sports game or an election to the deep consuming sadness over the loss of a spouse. E.g. When sorrow is coupled with fear and a sense of futility over the future that is despair. Both sadness and despair are normal healthy responses to loss and a part of the grieving process.
7. Somatization
Physical components are also commonly experienced as part of the dynamic of grief.
Symptoms such as sleeplessness, headaches, fatigue, loss of appetite, nausea, and indigestion are all common in grief. At times especially at the beginning of grief there may be a sense of shortness of breath, a constriction in the throat, a need for sighing, an emptiness and a hollowness within one’s abdomen, and often muscular lethargy and joint pain.
All these are normal, as when we are grieving the whole of our being is grieving and so there will be physical symptoms.
Conclusion
In conclusion perhaps we could read a portion out of the book of Job. Job may be seen as an icon of grief and suffering. He suffered a loss of virtually all. He went through most of what we covered this evening.
(Read Job Chapter 29 and 30 various verses. I read from the Message a paraphrase by Eugene Petersen. Just to get a sense of the anger, frustration, pain etc)
We can see from this reading that Job went through his own loss, and had his own way of grieving within his own situation, but, there was
· Emptiness, isolation, loneliness (think of his friends!!)
· Sadness, despair, anxiety
· Guilt, anger, bargaining,
· Diminishment of self, vulnerability
BUT
Job tried to hold onto his faith and his hope; he tried to find meaning and to understand the mystery of suffering and the “IS-ness” of God with us. Perhaps sometimes when we look back we understand that suffering and grief are also partly a “Gift!
Use the comment link on the right side of your screen to contact the editor.with feedback
