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This is one of a series of articles in Lesson 3 in the Break
the Cycle! self-study
The lesson aims to educate readers to healthy
grieving basics so they can spot and complete unfinished mourning of major
losses, grow a pro-grief family, and help to
the [wounds +
unawareness] cycle.
My experience with over 1,000 average therapy clients over 30 years is
that regardless of
age, life experience, and education, average
adults don't
know what they need to know about normal
bonding,
and healthy
That means...
Take a status check. see which of these describes you now:
"I
know [ nothing / a little / a moderate amount / a LOT ] about bonding
losses, and healthy mourning now.
Questions you should ask about healthy grieving
Before following the links, try answering each question out loud. See how
many you get "right."
1)
Why do typical adults need to know about
bonding, losses, and mourning?
2) How can I tell if I or other family members
need to learn anything about grieving?
3)
What do our family adults
need to know about
bonding
(attachment)?
4)
What do
our family adults need to know about
losses (broken bonds)?
5)
What is three-level
grieving,
how long does it take, and when is it "done?"
6)
What's required to grieve well?
7)
When grief gets slowed or blocked, what can
happen?
8)
Are there clear signs that a child or adult is blocked in mourning their
broken bonds?
9)
What are family
and "good-grief"
policies, and why are they vital?
10)
What can adults do to support a family
(or any) griever effectively?
11)
Is there any connection between a person's
childhood and their
ability to grieve well?
YES!
12) Does
gender have anything to do with
healthy grieving?
13) When do grievers need to
work
with a counselor or therapist, and/or join a grief-support group?
14) How can our family
adults help our children become
healthy mourners?
And
Stepfamily Adults Should Ask...
15)
Why is
it specially important for typical divorcing-family and
stepfamily adults and to learn and
practice "good grief"?
16)
What do typical
adults and kids lose from
stepfamily re/marriage and
cohabiting?
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If
you don't see your question here, please ask!
Q1)
Why do typical family adults need to know about
bonding, losses, and mourning?
Because...
-
starting in infancy, they automatically form
selective
(emotional attachments) to special people and other things throughout
their lives, and...
-
these bonds break, by choice or chance,
causing
-
If
significant losses aren't well-grieved, adults
and kids risk serious psychological, relationship, and physical
problems thruout their lives.
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Typical adults raised in
("dysfunctional") childhoods were not taught how to grieve well, and
develop toxic beliefs and
psychological
that hinder healthy mourning. This is amplified by our
pleasure-seeking media and culture, which trivializes the need for healthy
grief.
|
My clinical research since 1979 suggests that most Americans come from
low-nurturance child-hoods, and don't (want to) know that, or what it
Unless parents seek qualified education about losses and healthy grief, they usually
can't form
families and prepare their descendents to be self-aware "good grievers."
This relentlessly promotes the unseen
of wounds and
that is spreading and stressing many families and global societies. Could
this apply to your family and descendents?
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Q2)
How can I tell if I or other family members
need to learn anything about grieving?
Get
undistracted and take this quiz. Then imagine how your other
family adults and older kids would respond to it, and whether they need to
learn "good-grief"
basics.
If they do, they
probably won't know it until you alert them. Most Americans, including many
mental-health professionals, don't know they need to ask the questions you're
reading here for their and their kids' well-being.
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Q3) What do our family adults
need to know about
bonding
(attachment)?
Good grief starts with
understanding the range of things healthy kids and adults
bond with (Q4 below). Can you name them?
In this Web site, bonding
means "automatically forming a psychological / spiritual
'connection' with, interest in, and 'caring about' a physical or invisible
thing." Your bonds exist because they provide signifi-cant pleasure
and/or emotional, physical, and/or spiritual comforts -
i.e. your bonds help to fill primary
All normal infants are born with (a)
(discomforts) and (b) the instinctive ability to form attachments (bonds),
starting with their primary caregivers.
Needing someone or something
is not the same as bonding.
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Kids raised in very
families may be unable to form genuine bonds. This will
stress them and
their key relationships unless they
(often in mid-life) and commit to psycholo-gical-wound
The clinical name for an inability to bond is
Reactive
Attachment Disorder (RAD). Current mental-health professionals and
most troubled adults seem unaware of this tragic condition, what it
means, how to
prevent it, and what to do about it.
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Your and your kids' early
environments nurtured or hindered your natural abilities to bond and to
grieve. If you can bond, you may grieve well if you
have internal and environmental
to do so. These permissions will significantly improve or degrade your
relationships, achievements, and health until you die.
Notice your thoughts and feelings now...
Q4) What do
our family adults need to know about losses (broken bonds)?
Throughout
their lives, typical adults (like you) and kids who can
need to (eventually) grieve lost attachments to prized
physical things (people,
animals, plants, homes, places, mementos, etc.) and a wide range of
invisible things.
Most people learn to automatically associate grief with
death. They (you?) aren't aware of the wide range of things we all
bond with and must eventually say "goodbye" to across our years. Such
unaware-ness can promote incomplete grief in average people and families.
That can be freed up by
self-motivated education (Lesson 3), and
patient, courageous personal
(Lesson 1).
For more perspective on losses,
see this.
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Q5)
What is
three-level
grieving,
how long does it take, and when is it "done?"
Grieving
or mourning is an instinctive emotional + mental + spiritual
process triggered
by broken bonds. Healthy grief occurs on two or three
simultaneous levels (mental + emotional + spiritual). Each level has an
observable
sequence of normal phases.
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Moving through the phases eventually
produces stable acceptance of key losses on each level. This
allows grievers to gradually refocus their life energy and develop selective new
bonds if
and a
(low nurturance) environment don't
hinder that.
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How long the loss-acceptance process takes depends on...
-
a person's
(pro or anti grief),
-
the number and nature (minor > major) of their losses,
-
the personal and social impacts of their losses, and
-
whether the
"loser" has all
to grieve well.
So
it can take days
to years to reach stable acceptance of losses and their impacts on all three
levels. In some cases, mourning gets "stuck," and remains incomplete
unless the mourner intentionally frees it up.
To grow a
high-nurturance family
living by a healthy grieving
your members need to clearly understand good-grief
basics (
and be consistently
by their
(Lesson 1). In-tentionally learning the
basics and modeling and teaching them to your kids is a powerful
way to reduce toxic personal and family
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Q6)
What's required to grieve well?
Typical adults and kids
need seven things for full mental + emotional + spiritual acceptance of
their broken bonds (losses).
-
Significant progress in
any
false-self
and...
-
Awareness of...
-
healthy
grieving
-
their family's
grieving
-
their specific
tangible
and invisible losses, and...
-
the impacts of
these losses on them and key others;
And typical grievers need....
-
Confidence in surviving
significant losses and their impacts; and...
-
Steady personal and family
to healthy grieving;
and...
-
Consistent
inner and outer
to
(a) feel and (b)
express
shock, confusion,
and sadness.
These permissions come from a family's (usually unspoken)
grieving polices.
And healthy-grievers need...
-
Motivation to meditate, sort out,
feel,
and move through the phases of each grieving level at their own pace; and
they need…
-
Time, compassion, encouragement,
forgiveness, patience, and faith in the normal grieving process.
Absence of some
or all of these
requisites can slow or
block effective
mourning, causing significant health and relationship
problems (Q7 below).
Recommendation: family adults should help each other with
if (a) their
are solidly
and
(b) they're progressing on reducing any adult-teamwork
If these aren't
true, work patiently together on
this self-study
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Q7) When grief gets slowed or blocked
on any level, what can happen?
There can be
a group of significant effects in typical adults and kids, like:
-
trouble forming and/or maintaining stable,
healthy relationships - tho the real cause may be significant false-self
wounds; and...
-
crying or
anger outbursts
they can't control, and feel ashamed, guilty, and anxious about that. Such outbursts
concern and/or scare kids and adults close to the griever, which cause
secondary rela-tionship stresses and reactions. Such outbursts are usually
caused by a dominant
And incomplete grief can...
-
promote or increase one or more self-soothing
addictions; and/or...
-
cause difficulty
concentrating and/or sleeping; and/or...
-
promote recurring bouts of
and reduce zest for living;
and/or promote...
-
a range of physiological problems (e.g. obesity) and possible
premature death.
These
and
incomplete-grief symptoms
combine to cause webs of problems in the griever's
and family
members.
These compound everyone's stress, and often obscure the primary
problems (Q6 above).
The effects of incomplete grief often lower the
of grievers' homes, which promotes false-self
These effects justify
family adults helping each other and
their kids to (a) learn and apply grieving basics,
(b)
and
facilitate incomplete grief, and (c) become a
family by
working patiently at
together.
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Q9) What are family
anger and "good-grief"
policies, and why are they vital?
A policy is a set of rules
(shoulds,
oughts, musts, have-to's, etc) and right-wrong, good-bad values and
guidelines about how to do something. All kids and adults evolve
semi-conscious policies about a wide range of private and social
behaviors (e.g. grooming, hygiene, dressing, eating, worshipping, sex,
socializing, asserting, etc.) to guide them in private and social
situations.
Premise - all families (like yours) evolve and live by
policies about (a) bonding and (b) grieving - i.e. adapting to broken
bonds (losses). These policies always include unspoken rules about
feeling and ex-pressing significant shock, confusion,
anger, depression, and
sadness.
Can you describe your personal and family policies about each of these?
The personal and family effects
from these combined policies range from
to
toxic.
Depending on their mourning policies and behaviors,
families range
from "pro-grief" (encouraging healthy three-level mourning in
all members) to "anti-grief" (hindering or blocking healthy grief). Pro-grief
families consistently promote genuine
(encouragements) to grieve well to all adults and kids. Does this
describe your family?
Note that "No
grieving policy" is a policy.
See
this sample family grieving
policy
for more perspective. Is there anything preventing your family members
from evolving and using such a
policy?
in this non-profit Web site focuses on healthy personal
and family grief, and facilitating "good grief."
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Q10) What can adults do to
support a family (or any) griever
effectively?
Aware adults can do many things to help each other and their kids
reach full acceptance of their losses. The key first steps are to (a)
all
family adults thoroughly for false-self
and
(b) take
appropriate
- i.e. help each other do
over time.
As you do, use
to intentionally grow a pro-grief family environment! In particular, see
this and
this for options.
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Answers
to good-grief questions continue on page 2
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