COLUMN: You need help with grief if you "feel stuck"

IN the Victorian era, if someone were bereaved, everyone would know. They would dress in black or at least have a black armband. The only symbolism we have left today is the poppy. This isolates those in our community who are grieving and seems to make us less aware of the subject of death.

I recall when my grandparent and mother died, we called a lady in the street to come and ‘lay the dead out’ washing the body and preparing it for burial. I recall clearly seeing gran and my mother in the coffin in the house with curtains drawn to keep the room cold. Today all of this aspect of death has become professionalised, leaving individuals less experienced to handle loss issues.

Grief is hard work; we are simply having to do so many things to adjust.

Emotionally, we have to handle an anxious plethora of emotions all swirling around at the same time. Psychologically, we are trying to find our new identity.

Behaviourally, we have to find a way of living with a gap that can’t be filled. We need to find new ways of doing things.

Physically or biologically we have to secure ourselves afresh with a secure home and daily food and wellbeing.

Socially, we have to find new ways of receiving and giving friendship and affection.

Intellectually, we grapple with the big questions of life, about suffering, death, and meaning.

Finally, spiritually, we find a way of adjusting our story of our life, of placing the deceased securely, and seeking peace and hope for the future.

How do we do this? Historically Freud, suggested we need to break with the ‘object loss,’ recover and get on with life as a quickly as possible. During the Second World War, Lindemann became aware of all the somatic symptoms of loss such as heart palpitations, loss of appetite, digestive problems, dizziness, nightmares, constrictions of the throat, muscular pain, impeded concentration, poor memory, damp hands, dry mouth, and insomnia.

In the 1970s, Colin Murray-Parkes researched how individuals coped with the loss of their partner. He found people went through phases of shock, numbness, yearning, disorganisation and finally reorganisation. Imagine grief as a train journey that takes you to stations called numbness, anger, despair and finally ‘getting on with life.’ Here you only need help if the train breaks down at one of these stations. Otherwise, grief is not an illness but natural and with support most recover well.

Then in the 1980s, Worden wrote about ‘grief work.’ Here you don’t move on unless you do something with your grief. This involved accepting the loss, expressing the feeling of loss and readjusting to the new life. Here, grief is seen as less about loss and more about holding on to the old life, which we eventually have to relinquish. Think of this rather than a train journey, as a car journey. The difference is that you are now controlling where the car goes and where it lingers. You can choose to drive straight to guilt or anger or self pity and stay there for the rest of your life if you wish. In this theory, the bereaved is required to gradually withdraw their emotional energy and reinvest it into new relationships.

At the turn of the millennium Klass and Silvermann suggested a very different way of looking at loss. They noticed throughout the world people were not letting go or forgetting but were still religiously visiting the graves and having memorials. They suggested a continuing bond theory where part of our attachment with the deceased remains with us. This is more of a picture of a life long country walk, where we still experience the pain and difficulty of loss but where we learn to integrate the loss within us, so that we take the deceased with us. In this situation, it is not about getting over loss but more about helping our lives to still develop and blossom, while still acknowledging the pain of loss. Here, holding on to special objects of remembrance is seen more positively. I think of my aunty who is 94 and widowed for 30 years, but still has my uncle’s trilby hat on the sideboard for all to see. Yet she is the most modern up to date 94 year old I have ever met!

There are several more theories. The problem with them is that they are only theories. Everyone has there own unique story to work through. There are so many different components that make our loss characteristically our own.

But it is helpful to reflect which theory more relates to your experience and to identify if your train, car or walk has got stuck somewhere.

Next week we will look at child loss.

Bill Merrington is a therapist, bereavement specialist and book writer on loss issues (yorkbereavement.com).