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This is one of a series of articles supporting Lesson 3 in the Break the
Cycle! self-study course. This lesson aims to educate readers to healthy
grieving basics so they can spot and complete unfin-ished mourning of major
losses.
Typical survivors of childhood trauma (Grown Wounded Children - GWCs) never
learned these basics, and risk psychological, physical, and relationship
problems from incomplete mourning.
This Lesson requires major progress on
- reducing psychological wounds.
This article assumes you're familiar with...
children and
adults naturally form
bonds or attachments to
special living, inan-imate, and invisible things throughout their lives.
Eventually these bonds break by choice or chance, cau-sing minor to major
invisible and physical losses.
Nature provides an automatic reflex
to allow us to accept our losses and their impacts, and return to "normal" (focused, calm, stable, balanced,
purposeful) life again - mourning or
grief.
Healthy grievers move through predictable phases in two or three levels, as they
restabilize their emotions, thinking, and perhaps spiritual faith.
Behavioral symptoms of these phases allow gauging a mourner's progress - or
lack of it.
This concept suggests an answer to
"When is grieving done?" Though each griever has their own
answer, the general one is "When the mourner feels s/he has reached the
acceptance phase of each level, and is no longer significantly distracted
from living fully in the present and forming plans for the future.
|
A common stressor
in typical troubled families appears to be significant
incomplete grief in one or more people.
in this Web site offers practical ways to
assess for and
facilitate unfinished grief, and evolve a
family over time. |
Here is a simplified picture of our normal three-level mourning process. It begins on the left, when a
person (like you) first experiences a
significant loss (broken bond).
Some losses may be experienced before they occur ("I feel sure my sister and her husband will separate
soon").
To
fully appreciate this diagram, scan this
perspective on losses (broken
bonds). Then scan
these typical physical and
invisible things kids and adults can lose
from significant relationship and family changes.
If you know someone
who is grieving one or more significant losses now (including yourself), imagine where s/he is in
progressing from left to right in each of these three levels.
|
Emotional phases
of grieving can take many
months or years |
|
SHOCK
or numbness |
periods of
feeling and expressing unfocused or specific
|
periods of
feeling and expressing
sorrow,
apathy, and despair |
normal emotional
stability (acceptance) |
at the same
time, healthy people move through...
|
Mental phases of
grieving can take many months or
years |
| denial and/or confusion and "mind churning" |
initial
questions
coalesce; repeated venting |
clarity
grows on what was lost, and what the losses mean |
credible answers stabilize, and confusion and venting
abate |
no more questions or churning; stable focus
returns; occasional calm venting |
and people
with an initial faith in a
also may move through...
|
Spiritual phases
of grieving can take many months or years
|
| disbelief, denial, pleading |
searching:
"How could my God permit this loss? |
loss of
trust and faith in a Higher Power - cynicism |
acceptance of not understanding God's plan |
gradual return and stabilizing of personal faith |
Each child and adult will move through the phases in each level at different
rates, depending on their personalities + wholistic health +
environment
or anti-grief) + the
magnitude and meanings (im-pacts) of their losses. When
grievers of any age (a) are ruled
by
and
(b) lack too
many of these
they
can become "stuck" in one or more of
these phases, or reach "pseudo" accep-tance of their losses.
Notice that this diagram gives you a way to gauge where you or someone else
is in the grief pro-cess, if you focus on a specific loss or cluster of
losses. Validate this idea using a major loss in your life. Are you done
grieving yet?
Note that grieving significant new losses can start before
fully accepting prior losses on all three levels:
| Multi-year
mourning
for
original losses
- e.g.
from childhood
.... |
|
| |
Multi-year
mourning
for new losses - e.g. from death or divorce.... |
|
| |
Mourning
more losses - e.g. from
aging, cohabiting, and re/marriage...
|
The cumulative effects of many unmourned losses can increase the intensity
and duration of each phase above. (a) Knowledge of healthy grieving
basics and (b)
of kids' and adults'
losses and timings, and their personal mourning progress are vital parts of
family
Lesson 3.
Gaining this awareness is best begun
in courtship, for committing to partners before you or they and any
kids are well
along with these grief phases can promote
major conflict and later psychological and legal divorce. This is specially
true in average multi-home
Continue working on self-study Lesson 3!
+ + +
Pause, breathe, and reflect: why did you read this article? Did you
get what you needed? What did
you learn? Would you say you're living in a
family now? Is your partner, if any? Are your chil-dren? Who's
answering these questions - your wise, resident
or
Prior page /
Lesson-3 links
