Non-death loss & grief

Question 1

What is the assumptive world?

Answer 1

• worldview grounded in experience
• “assumptions or beliefs that ground, secure and orient people, that give a sense of reality, meaning or purpose to life”
• perception of reality
• world is benevolent, meaningful or the self is worthy
• loss can shatter a person’s assumptive world
• grief can be a process where that world is rebuilt

Question 2

What are some examples of categories that affect someone’s assumptive world?

Answer 2

• everything happens for a reason…maybe it doesn’t
• innate resilience… you can overcome anything if you try hard enough
• things are in control…i can control my reality
• things will get better with time…false understanding

Question 3

What are non-death losses?

Answer 3

• loss & grief are typically associated with death-related loss
• we suffer many more non-death losses in our lifetime
• these can provoke a sense of identity crisis
• non-death losses are often disenfranchised
• impact is frequently unrecognized
• no rituals associated

Question 4

How is grief connected to non-death loss?

Answer 4

• grief is distress that occurs when an individual’s existing assumptive world is lost because of a significant life-changing event
• may grieve sense of safety, identity, familiarity, our hopes for the future, loss of connection with another
• non-death losses can be very difficult to name, describe or validate
• ex: infertility

Question 5

Define tangible and intangible losses

Answer 5

Tangible: a death, the loss of a job, the loss of a home, a relationship
Intangible: the loss of hopes and dreams for the future, change in self-worth, sense of safety or control

Question 6

Describe grief

Answer 6

• highly personal, individual experience
• can have emotional, psychological, physical manifestations
• can be associated with increased risk of illness
• may lead you to seek the familiar as a form of reassurance

Question 7

What is nonfinite/living loss?

Answer 7

• losses that are enduring and experienced (physically/emotionally) in an ongoing manner
• original event precipitates additional tangible and/or intangible losses
• not necessarily related to a loss within a relationship
• ex: accident or illness

Question 8

What are other characteristics of nonfinite loss?

Answer 8

• ongoing uncertainty about what will happen next
• magnitude of the loss is frequently unrecognized (disenfranchised)
• may precipitate an ongoing sense of helplessness, powerlessness, dread

Question 9

What is chronic sorrow?

Answer 9

• describes the affective condition of grief related to an ongoing loss
• ongoing discrepancy between what was expected/hoped for and the reality of the situation
• often disenfranchised
• uncertainty around the end/no foreseen end
• the loss is ongoing, so the grief associated is ongoing
• ex: grief experienced by a partner when the significant other receives a diagnosis of dementia

Question 10

Define nonfinite loss and chronic sorrow

Answer 10

Nonfinite loss: ongoing loss itself
Chronic sorrow: the affective (emotional) response to the nonfinite loss

Question 11

What is ambiguous loss

Answer 11

• “loss that defies closure in which the status of a loved one as ‘there or not there’ remains indefinitely unclear…the uncertainty makes ambiguous loss the most distressful of all losses”
• physically absent, psychologically present
• ex: missing person
• physically present, psychologically absent
• ex: person with dementia

Question 12

What are other characteristics of ambiguous loss?

Answer 12

• uncertainty is what is most difficult
• situation is ongoing, indeterminate
• lack of rituals, social validation, ways of responding (person is just gone or they are still ‘there’)
• people feel frozen in grief
• conflict between hope and reality
• often disenfranchised

Question 13

How can you help people experiencing ambiguous loss?

Answer 13

• recognizing and validating the loss that has taken place, the person’s feelings about loss (respond to the disenfranchisement)
• do not try to fix what cannot be fixed
• be present, supportive
• validate feelings (including ambivalence)
• community support, grief groups

Question 14

Describe missing persons in Canada

Answer 14

• 2020: 29,645 missing person reports
• 37 abductions by strangers; 2774 ‘wandered off’; 4955 runaways; 18,329 unknown
• 61% of missing adult reports in 2020 were removed within 24 hours, while 89% were removed within a week
• inquiry into MMIWG found thousands of Indigenous women and girls in Canada have gone missing or been murdered in recent decades

Question 15

What is a missing person?

Answer 15

• usually, there is a focus on the events (attention to finding the missing, responding to violence)
• little attention to the ongoing experiences of grief, loss of family and friends
• loss is often not recognized
• families may experience guilt, self-blame
• constant and ongoing anxiety, fear, sadness, anger, numbness
• can lead to conflict in the family
• feeling may not ease with time
• families feel pressured to accept that a death had taken place, without evidence

Question 16

How is migration tied to disappearance?

Answer 16

• each year thousands of migrants disappear and die while making the journey across borders
• estimates in CA/MX/US corridor that +70,000 people have disappeared

Question 17

How does long term disappearance effect families?

Answer 17

• catastrophe of meaning “disappearance undermines meaning-making”
• ambiguity & uncertainty: not dead, not alive, not knowing
• present absence (the disappeared constantly present in the families mind)
• no grief rituals
• emotional and physical effects

Question 18

Why should you build support groups?

Answer 18

• sharing similar experiences reduces feelings of isolation, can come to identify this as a social problem
• validation, support, space to share stories in a supportive environment
• build capacity to ‘live with grief’ not ‘get over grief’
• loss is recognized as significant, not just something that a person gets over