Grief Process and Coping Guide

Mourning Process and Coping Guide

Mourning is a process consisting of a number of rituals in which people feel the most painless, helpless, saddening pain of separation from not being able to see the person they lost again. While a person gets over this process with different rituals in different cultures and is expected to continue his life after a certain period of time, prolonging the mourning process should be considered as a pathological situation and support should be provided. will explain the stages of the process.

Terms:

• Loss – losing someone you love

• Grief, pain - our psychological reaction to loss

• Grief - the social image of grief

After all kinds of losses, people He can grieve, the most painful and heaviest of these is the loss of loved ones. While spouses, friends, relatives, mothers, fathers and children are added to this list, in many cases losses due to premature birth or miscarriages can be ignored and the person is not even allowed to grieve. In such cases, while the mother, who cannot grieve, is expected to recover immediately, the woman is also expected to recover due to the effects of hormones. He/she may experience psychological problems without realizing it. However, if the mother who is faced with this situation is supported to go through a normal mourning process, the process will go through more naturally and smoothly.

Since people, cultures and mindsets are different, not everyone's reaction to the mourning process will be the same. But the stages of an average mourning process are generally as follows:

• Surprised by the sad news – disbelief!

• Emotional numbness – the person cannot feel anything at that moment! Maybe he/she prepares with relatives for the mourning ceremony or retreats to a quiet corner!

• Longing – After a while, the feeling of numbness passes and is replaced by longing. This feeling of longing may be accompanied by anger.

• Anger – In this process, the person begins to develop anger towards doctors, nurses, or just anyone who is held responsible for the death.

• Guilt – blaming oneself for everything one does or does not do

• Extreme anger, irritability and explosiveness – this peaks about two weeks after death, and is soon replaced by sadness or depression.

• Depression and sadness are expected to peak within four to six weeks. Sudden crying spells, withdrawal from others and decrease in activities are part of the normal mourning process in these weeks.

• Thinking – The phase of thinking about the memories spent together one by one

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• Getting rid of reminders – this is the final stage of grief and can manifest itself differently in different people. It is expected that all reminders will cease to hurt, on average, within a year or two and the person will be able to 'let go' of the deceased and continue their life where they left off.

 

Children and Adolescents

Although children do not fully understand the meaning of death until the age of 3 or 4, they can also feel the mourning process experienced by adults. Starting from infancy, children feel pain and can be exposed to severe stress. While children can go through this process faster compared to adults, a child in school age may feel responsible for death or loss. Adolescents, on the other hand, generally prefer to remain introverted and not to talk.

It is important to include children and adolescents in a possible mourning process. He should mourn with everyone else and never go through the process alone. Even though their goodness is considered, this may be unfair to them. When a family member dies, it is very important to involve children and young people.

How to support the bereaved person?

• Always be there for them. work should be done and the person should not feel alone. It may be the right decision to provide an environment where he can relax instead of talking and making him talk.

• As long as he wants to talk, share his pain and cry, this should be allowed.

• Generally, people want to talk about their pain and the same things over and over again. It is very important that we support them when they do this, because the more often they do this, the faster the process will go.

• After mourning, a person generally hesitates to take part in fun activities such as weddings, engagements, anniversaries, etc. It is important to make an effort to support the person during this period.

• When the responsibilities of the deceased fall on someone else's shoulders, this can make the mourning process more severe. The person needs to be helped to alleviate this.

• It is very important to give the person time to get over the mourning process.

When should support be sought?

Psychologically, it is recommended to receive support at every stage of grief, because it will help keep this process under control and prevent the person from developing pathological symptoms. If support is not received in time and the person continues to experience pathological grief, it is recommended that the person receive support as soon as possible. For this, it is recommended to pay attention to the following symptoms:

• If the person has developed a psychiatric disorder

• If the person is getting worse instead of getting better

• If he has difficulty returning to his life after 4-6 weeks

• If he continues to mourn the deceased in a pathological way even after 1-2 years

Kumru Şerifova

 

References:

Royal College of Psychiatrists, Bereavement leaflet

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