Thanatology - Psychology - Chapter 2

Define Grief

An emotion or group of emotions caused by loss

Define Bereavement.

The act of event of loss that results in the experience of grief

Define Mourning.

An adjustment process that involves grief or sorrow over a period of time and helps in the reorganization of the life of an individual following the loss or death of someone loved.

Does every person require all the common needs to progress through their mourning period?

Any one person might not need all of them, but they do
require most of them.

What are the 10 common needs listed in your book?

• Confirm the Reality

• Express their Emotions

• Modify Emotional Ties with the Deceased

• Memorialize the Person’s Life

• Recognize and Complete Unfinished Business

• Receive emotional support

• Be Assured Feelings are Normal

• Be Accepted for Where They Are
• Establish Stability and Security

• Provide a Basis for Building New Relationships

Explain “Confirming the Reality of the Death”

• Talking helps by making it real and to understand what
happened
• Understanding as much as possible about death helps confirm its reality

• Deaths due to homicide, accident, or suicide can leave a survivor in a state of confusion as to why and how the death occurred
• These type of deaths can lead to a shock that cannot be capable of processing until weeks, months, or years have passed.

Emotions

Feelings such as happiness, anger, and grief created by brain patterns and bodily changes

Explain “Expressing emotions”

• Eliminate clichés – they usually suppress emotions
• Most grievers need to express their emotions
• This can differ greatly among people
• Can be crying, just quietly saying some words, etc.
• Doesn’t make any difference how emotions are expressed, as long as they are.

Explain “Modifying Emotional Ties with the Deceased”

• Grieving survivors must face the reality that their life has changed forever
• They must break ties of the old relationship and develop a new relationship without the person
• Also known as a physical relationship to a spiritual relationship

Explain “Memorializing the Person’s Life”

• We all want our lives to mean something.
• Most survivors want to acknowledge how they felt about the deceased and tell others about that person.
• This explains the need for the funeral/memorial service
• These symbolic deeds can be one method of transitioning to the new relationship.

• Other Ways to memorialize:
• Start a charity of Scholarship
• Building a wing of a hospital
• Headstone above the grave

Explain “Recognizing and Completing Unfinished Business”

• Most people have unfinished business with another person
• Death obviously can happen unexpectedly causing
complications to this
• Most people feel this ‘ends’ the unfinished business

• People may need to be shown different ways to complete the business.
• Talking to the deceased’s body at a wake
• Writing the deceased a letter
• Visualizing the dead person and telling them
• A counselor can be helpful in assisting people to recognize, acknowledge, and finish unfinished business.

Explain “Receiving Emotional Support”.

• Most people find love and attention given them by family and friends comforting
• Non-judgmental acceptance of people who really care about them helps tremendously.
• If it is not given by family and friends, it can come from
someone like the counselor

Explain “Assurance that Feelings are Normal”

• One of the most common things you will hear is survivors think they are going crazy
• Death is very foreign (especially in our death defying society), so the survivor feels they must be going insane because they have never felt that way before.
• You can assist in relieving the fear and anxiety by assisting them in knowing they responses are natural, normal responses to a major loss
• Even if they feel the loss isn’t “major”, the body may perceive it as such

Explain “Be Accepted for Where You Are…”

• No one should tell another person to “Get over it”, “This is not what you should do”, etc.
• A bereaved person needs to be accepted and supported wherever they may be in their grief journey
• A counselor can help a survivor clarify issues that may move them along, but should not tell the person they should be somewhere else.

Explain “Establishing Stability and Security”

• Death removes security and stability and grievers may feel out of control
• If grievers can meet most of the other common needs, stability and security will slowly return as time passes.
• Life will not be the same as before the death, but their new life may become more stable and secure

Explain “Providing a Basis for Building New Relationships”

• One of the ways people fill the void in their life left by the person who died is to strength existing relationships and develop new ones.
• This is not always easy, simple or fast.

• New relationships can be those of love, friendship, or both.
• In the event of a new relationship, it doesn’t mean that you forgot the person who died, but rather you learn to navigate pathways of relationship building and nurture love for a new person.