Spiritual belief and bereavement

Question 1

What are the 4 phases of normal grief according to Bowlby’s stages of grief?

Answer 1

1. Numbness
2. Yearning/pining and anger
3. Disorganisation
4. Reorganisation

Question 2

What are different symptoms associated with grief?

Answer 2

1. Sadness, anger, guilt, anxiety, loneliness, fatigue, helplessness, shock, yearning, numbness
2. Somatic sensations: stomach, chest, throat, sensitivity to noise, depersonalisation, breathlessness, muscle weakness, lack of energy, dry mouth
3. Concentration impairment, preoccupation with the deceased, sense of presence, hallucinations, disbelief
4. Sleep and appetite disturbance, absent-mindedness, social withdrawal, dreams of deceased, avoidance of reminders, searching and calling out, sighing, overactivity, crying, visiting places or carrying objects/reminders

Question 3

What are Worden’s tasks of mourning?

Answer 3

1. Accepting the reality of the loss e.g. come to terms with the person being ‘gone’
2. Work through the pain and grief
3. Adjust to the environment in which the deceased is missing
4. Emotionally relocate the deceased and move on with life

Question 4

Factors affecting grief severity?

Answer 4

1. Obvious:
   - Closeness of relationship
   - Meaningfulness of relationship
   - Nature of relationship prior to death
   - Expectedness and manner of death
   - Age and developmental stage of griever
2. Non-obvious:
   - Individual resilience: neuroticism, introversion, childhood trauma, parenting
   - Attachment and dependency
   - Religious belief
   - Social support
3. Attachment and dependency:
   - Childhood attachment: the way you attach to primary care giver as a child, this affects your adult attachment and how you form relationships in adulthood
   - Dependent attachment vs secure attachment and extended/complex grief
   - Interactions between attachment, spirituality and feet of death - casual and mitigating

Question 5

What are different types of infant attachment?

Answer 5

1. Secure attachment
2. Anxious ambivalent/resistant attachment
3. Anxious avoidant attachment
4. Disorganised attachment

Question 6

What are key components of the impact of religious belief on bereavement?

Answer 6

1. Belief in the afterlife: the continuing existence of the loved one and possibility in meeting up again
2. Continued attachment: prayer as a means of continuing connection with the deceased
3. Defence against fear or personal death/existence
4. Religious funeral rituals that aid and progress the grief process
5. Religious funeral rituals that recruit social support

Question 7

Give some pyschological impacts of a ‘close death’

Answer 7

1. Loss of presence of person: emotional and functional role
2. Forced to confront own mortality: shattering of immortality myth and personal implications, younger person more likely to be impacted significantly
3. Traumatic undermining/crisis of the person’s view of the world