The Mourning process Flashcards
What are the needs of the bereaved?
-Confirm reality
-Establish stability and security
-Receive emotional support
-Express emotions
-Modify emotional ties to the deceased
-Provide a basis for building new interpersonal relationships
What are Freud’s stages of mourning (from Mourning and melancholia)
- Must detach or break ties with the deceased
- Form a new identity without the loved one
- Confront the reality of the loss
- Grieving person may be preoccupied with loss, but this is a normal precursor to detachment
Freud’s stages are all about detachment
What are Lindemann’s stages of grief work?
- Emancipation from the bondage to the deceased
- Adjust to life without deceased
- Form new relationships
Lindemann’s grief syndrom fits in here
What are Bowlby’s phases of grief?
- Display shock and numbness
- Yearning and searching
- Despair and disorganized
- Reorganization and recovery
Grief is health and adaptive
Defines how one adapts to mourning
-considered the most comprehensive view on grief
-do not need to be in a specific order, but there is a point to how they are ordered
-experienced differently based on each specific loss
-tasks can be revisited and worked through again and again over time
-various tasks can be worked on at the same time
-grief if fluid and is influenced by certain facotors
Dr. Worden’s tasks of mourning
What are Dr. Worden’s tasks of mourning?
- Accept the reality of the loss
- Process the pain of grief
- Adjust to a world without the deceased
- Find enduring connection with deceased in midst of embarking on a new life
What are some issues that can arise if someone doesn’t go through Dr. Worden’s first task accepting the reality of the loss?
Issues within
1. Deny facts (mumification)
2. Distortion
3. Deny the meaning of the loss
4. Deny through spiritualism
this is how the funeral relates
What are some issues that can arise if someone doesn’t go through Dr. Worden’s second task processing the pain of grief?
This is a hard one to accept and gravitate towards, feeling bad and moving on. Issues that can happen as a result of avoiding task two are:
1. geographical cure
2. drugs and alcohol
3. working
4. shopping
any type of compulsive behavior
What are some ways that someone can complete Dr. Worden’s third task adjusting to the world without the deceased?
Adaption and finding skills inside/ outside of self to get through
1. External adjustment - develop new skill
2. Internal adjustment - self, self esteem, self efficacy
3. Spiritual adjustment - “Something greater than ourselves”
What is a more indepth look at Dr. Worden’s fourth task find enduring connection with deceased in midst of embarking on a new life?
Here is where a lot of guilt can be felt and new relationship obstacles can feel like a betrayal.
-Hallmark of healing: being able to remember without intense feelings emerging
-duration typically 6 to 12 months
When are the tasks of mourning complete?
No definitive answer but the intensity will subside over time. It is never truly complete and new situations can bring up complexity of our grief
What is the checklist to see if a person is healing
- Does grief interfere with your ability to care for yourself?
- Do you find life to be meaningful?
- Do you find yourself withdrawing from society and people in general?
- Do you have physical/ emotional symptoms you don’t understand?
- Have you noticed changes in your personality?
- Do you have the internal sense you are not healing?
What are Wolfet’s six reconciliation needs of mourners?
- Acknowledge the reality of death
- Embracing the pain of the loss
- Remembering the person who died
- Develop a new self identity
- Search for meaning
- Receiving ongoing support from others
