Grief Essay

The book, Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy, is a handbook written for the mental practitioner to serve as an aid toward counseling people who are going through a period of grief, loss, and bereavement. The mourning process is different for every individual causing complicated mourning and grief therapy to be administered based on terms like “chronic grief,” “delayed grief,” and “exaggerated grief” as a form of diagnosis. Among them is disenfranchised grief, a term coined by Ken Doka, which refers “to loses in the mourner’s life of relationships that are not socially sanctioned.” An example to this would be “someone with whom the mourner is having an affair.” This happens when unbeknown to everyone else, this individual had a secret intimate life with a person that later passes away but causes for him to be unable to attend the funeral service due to their kept secret. I’m amazed that this type of grief exists but I can see it happening. Therefore, a deeper understanding of the process of grief would be of much use to anyone counseling someone going through the process of grief.

The author states that the impact of a loss has to do with the attachment theory. This theory “provides a way for us to conceptualize the tendency in human beings to create strong affectional bonds with others and a way to understand the strong emotional reaction that occurs when those bonds are threated or broken.” This attachment occurs out of the need for security and safety; is developed early in life, and is towards specific people who usually partake a long time in that person’s life. This theory makes a lot of sense. I’ve been to funerals of friend’s relatives that had no emotional connection with me, making it difficult to express grief because I was not attached to them. Consequently, the question that arises is if grief is a disease or a natural human emotion. In this matter, I highly disagree that grief is a disease but natural process that an individual goes through for healing from the sadness that a difficult event brings. At the same time grief is expressed in various ways depending in the person. Some will experience feelings of sadness, anger, anxiety, loneliness, fatigue, and even helplessness. The most common is sadness and may not necessarily be manifested by crying behavior, but often it is. Anger also is expressed after a loss. This is usually by people that regret the lack of appreciation that they did not show towards the deceased. In once circumstance, I attended a funeral where a family member started to punch and kick the coffin where the deceased was. Everyone ran to stop him while others where shocked. Now it makes sense why he would express that. The after effect of grief that I find most difficult people go through is depression. The mourning process is complicated as is and anyone who wants to give council must understand the mourning process.

The morning process can be view in different ways – primarily as stages, phases and tasks. The step to council someone experiencing a grief is to lead them to accept the reality of a loss. The denial that a person is gone and will not return can hinder the mourning process. This is by accepting the reality that reunion is impossible, at least in this life. My young cousin passed away about a year ago and at times I see my sisters cry to the fact that he is gone. They took a hard hit since they were closed to him and don’t believe that he had to pass away at such a young age. The following stage is to process the pain of grief through a process that would help the most. Some people use travel to find a place to find relief and cure from their emotions. Changing their atmosphere helps think through their emotions, as opposed to allowing themselves process the pain with memories of that specific geographic setting. I find this step difficult to do for the less economically able. My aunt had barely enough funds to burry my cousin, making it impossible to use travel as are source to process grief. The last would is having to adjust to a world without the deceased. Internal adjustments, or “how the death affects one’s everyday function in the world”; internal adjustments, or “how the death affects one’s sense of self; and spiritual adjustments, or how the “death affect’s one’s beliefs, values, and assumptions about the world.” I agree to the fact of having to adjust in these three areas. In the spiritual arena some people leave their faith and question why their loved one had to die and for others the opposite effect happens. Their faith becomes a lot stronger as they cling to their faith for comfort and refuge. A big attribute that helped my aunt cope with the death of her son was her faith in God. Instead of wavering it grew stronger.