Running Head: HEALTHY GRIEF A Comparative Study of the Grieving Process HLT 310 V Spirituality in Health Care May 21, 2010. A Comparative Study of the Grieving Process Grief is the natural reaction to a major loss such as the demise of a loved one. The grief has many components such as physical, emotional, social, mental, and spiritual. A person can feel grief during a serious, long-term illness or with an incurable disease. The symptoms can be a great level of depression, gloominess, guilt, and hopelessness. The common grief responses feelings include numbness, shock, anger, anxiety, loneliness, fatigue, and yearning. The other common grief responses to physical feelings such as not being able to sleep, tightness in …show more content…
In this stage, we feel the world around us turn out to be worthless and devastating, and we keep us in a state of rejection. She further describes that we attempt to get a way to overcome day by day. As we admit the truth of the loss and begin to ask ourselves question, we are unknowingly experiencing the healing process. We are becoming stronger, and the denial is beginning to fade. Anger is the next stage in the grieving process which is an essential phase of healing process. The truth is that anger has no limits. When a person is angry it can spread to our friends, our family, to ourselves and our loved one who died, also to God. In this situation, we may ask the question to ourselves, where is God? Through anger we gradually acquire an inner strength to cope with the situation, and we often feel the relation created from the strength of anger is something useful. Clearly, we feel that anger is another mode of showing the intensity of our love towards our loved ones. Bargaining is another stage in the grieving process in which the grieving person makes bargains with God. In this stage, the grieving person may ask, “God will you carry away my loss, if I do this?” Bargaining seldom give a permanent resolution, particularly, if it's a subject of life or death. Depression is the next step in grieving process in which the grieving person shows disinterest and will be reluctant from things of love and affection. In
Grief is defined as a type of emotional or mental suffering from a loss, sorrow, or regret (Dictionary.com, LLC, 2010). Grief affects people of all ages, races, and sexes around the world. Approximately, 36% of the world’s population does or has suffered from grief and only a mere 10% of these people will seek out help (Theravive, 2009). Once a person is suffering from grief it is important to receive treatment. All too often, people ignore grief resulting in deep depression, substance abuse, and other disorders (Theravive, 2009). Grief counseling is very common and can be very helpful to a person in need of assistance. Grief counseling provides the support, understanding, and
One of the concepts that people do not understand about grief and loss is the general idea of what it is and how it impacts people. According to Teen Health and Wellness’s article “Grief and Loss: Experiencing Loss,” is what happens when you no longer have something or someone that was extremely significant in your life, and the emotions that result are very real to you. You are entitled to these emotions. Many experts believe that the best thing for a person grieving to do is to let themselves feel sad. Lattanzi-Licht writes, common symptoms of grief are: “guilt or anger; restlessness; a sense of unreality about the loss; difficulty sleeping, eating and concentrating; mood changes; a loss of energy; constant thoughts of the
The book, Lament For a Son, written by Nicholas Wolterstorff talks about his pain and grief after losing his 25-year-old son (Joy, 2009). His son died while on a mountain-climbing expedition. Dr. Wolterstorff has several books published during his career as a philosophical theology professor in Yale Divinity. However, he wrote Lament for a Son with a different journal style since it is a personal thing for him. The book is similar to a journal as he narrates the events that happened before and after his son’s death. The emotions expressed in the book are common among people who lose close relatives. What matters is how a person handles the issue. Kubler-Ross invented the five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptancethat explain the escalation of grief when stricken by bad news (Axelrod, 2004). The paper looks into the book and its relation to the five stages of grief.
Death is a universally experienced phenomenon. In the United States alone, over 2.6 million people die each year (Center for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2015). For practitioners, it is of utmost importance to better understand the process of grief to develop better interventions for bereaved individuals.
The second advised step to experiencing a progressive grieving process is anger. Although anger is the suggested step after denial, many people do not experience it in this order or at all. Halperin defines anger, “when you wake up from the dreamy state of denial, you’ll find yourself in mile two . . . anger” (70); this explains the idea that people become very angry at the fact that something extremely saddening has occurred in their life. There is an instance when Walter Lee shows a form of anger, “WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE LISTEN TO ME TODAY” (Hansberry 399), illustrating the idea that he becomes frustrated at the fact that his father passed away. Walter Lee does not necessarily feel this stage second; he could have felt anger immediately after his father passed away. Many people deal with grief by showing numerous forms of temperament; however, not everyone in the stories go through this step second and some do not experience it at all. While anger is the second step that is wrongly proposed in order to undergo a normal grieving process, bargaining is the third.
It's a process that has to be dealt with. Another symptom that people experience is the feeling of numbness. People become so sad about their loss that nothing seems to matter to them anymore. The feeling of joy is gone and nothing brings happiness anymore. People go through their day without feeling anything. Their sadness spreads all over them and they can't control it. Grief is an immediate feeling. It can have various results such as pain, depression, and sadness. Our weakness begins to show more now than ever when we are grieving. We Losing a loved one is different for every person. Every person is different but there is definitely a clear pattern. In total, there are three outcome patterns. The first outcome pattern is chronic grief. Chronic grief is when someone becomes extremely depressed and a high level of grief. This type of grief can last for many years. The second type of grief is called the common grief pattern. This is when a elevation of symptoms such as depression, stress, and anxiety occur but last about a year or two. The third type of grief is when a person is not affected at all by the death of someone. This is very common for people. People may still be sad but they just are not emotional about it and grieve in different ways.
According to American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, the five common stages of grief include denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance respectively. However, humans are quite fascinating creatures as we might alter the order in which every stage hits us. Nevertheless, one thing is for certain, in every stage of grief of any kind, we must come to terms and accept the cards that are casted in front of us; and it’s entirely up to us how we choose to play them.
Answer: People deal with loss in different ways. Painful emotions take place when the reality of the loss sinks in and the numbness of the loss wears off. This is when a person starts to face their feelings. Mrs. G. has been experiencing many different emotions including withdrawing from other people, feeling alone in the situation, not having the desire to eat, losing weight, having trouble sleeping, looking sad, feeling tired, and feeling depressed (American Cancer Society, 2014).
In our bereavement, we spend different lengths of time working through each step and express each stage more or less intensely. The five stages do not necessarily occur in order. We often move between stages before achieving a more peaceful acceptance of death. Many of us are not afforded the luxury of time required to achieve this final stage of grief.
Grief is the act following the loss of a loved one. While grief and bereavement are normal occurrences, the grief process is a social construct of how someone should behave. The acceptable ways that people grieve change because of this construct. For a time it was not acceptable to grieve; today, however, it is seen as a necessary way to move on from death (Scheid, 2011).The grief process has been described as a multistage event, with each stage lasting for a suggested amount of time to be considered “normal” and reach resolution. The beginning stage of grief is the immediate shock, disbelief, and denial lasting from hours to weeks (Wambach, 1985). The middle stage is the acute mourning phase that can include somatic and emotional turmoil. This stage includes acknowledging the event and processing it on various levels, both mentally and physically. The final stage is a period of
In the first stage that I will discuss is denial. In this stage people may deny the reality of the situation by blocking out the words and hiding from the facts ("5 Stages of Loss & Grief | Psych Central," n.d.-a). For instance, someone could be diagnosed with some form of cancer. That person may not want to know because it might overwhelm them. So they would not want to know the reality of
In her seminal work on grief and grieving, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross introduced the concept now very well known as the Five (5) Stages of Grief, enumerated chronologically as follows: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In this concept, Kubler-Ross explored and discussed the normative stages that people go through when they experience the loss of a loved one and feel grief as result of this loss. It is also through these stages that people are now more aware of their feelings and thoughts when experiencing grief and the loss of a loved one. While the stages of loss are mainly developed for grief experienced with the death of a loved one, it is a generally accepted framework in understanding feelings of grief when an individual experiences the loss of a significant individual in his/her life. The discussions that follow center on the discussion of Kubler-Ross' 5 Stages of Grief, applied in the context of the Story of Job in the Bible.
When someone’s going through a grieving process, they have a natural tendency to feel angry, frustrated, helpless
Anger is the next stage when the individual is starting to experience pain. This anger starts to be aimed at objects, strangers and friends and family. The anger that is faced is aimed at the individual who has died but we know it’s not their fault but it causes upset as the person has left, this then causes guilt which makes individuals angrier (businessballs.com 2016).
For example some people may get angry first then acceptance and depression. It depends on each persons living circumstances.it is different for each person. The same way grief can occur in a caregiver’s life too, especially during end-stage care.it is necessary to identify the signs and integrate these normal response to life Grief is not only about pain. Even in grief it can be mixed with joy. In an uncomplicated grief process, painful experiences are intermingled with positive feelings, such as relief, joy, peace, and happiness that emerge after the loss of an important person (Zisook &Shear 2009). Frequently, these positive feelings elicit negative emotions of disloyalty and guilt in the bereaved.