Lesson 10: Loss through the Lifespan

Attention

Click HERE to view the 7 Stages of Grief

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this lesson's material, students will be able

• Identify changes in perceptions and attitudes toward death and dying across the lifespan.
• Evaluate specific theories on and approaches to death and dying.
• Understand a child's reactions to death and ways to offer support.
• Understand the reactions to death of children, parents, siblings, and widowed persons as well as ways to offer assistance.

Today’s culture is undergoing an unprecedented shift in beliefs about life and death, as just a few years ago most people tended to follow the same routines and rites if they were from the same region. The majority tended to have the same beliefs about life, death and religion. However, at this point in time, our culture(s) are full of diverse and very different points of view about rites, beliefs, life and death.

Teaching

The following is an Abstract to an important article:

Bereavement: Applying Erikson's Theory of Psychosocial Development to College Students.
by: Floerchinger, Debra S Publication Date: 1989-Nov

One of the developmental challenges that a college student may have to face is the death of a significant other, friend, spouse, relative, child, or parent. This article reviews the literature on the potential effects of bereavement on a college student with respect to Erik Erikson's stage six of psychosocial development (intimacy versus isolation.) Suitable interventions with college students are discussed. These include: (1) education of student services staff and others in relation to the grieving process for all types of losses; (2) encouragement of student interviews by faculty members who deal with death and dying as an academic subject; (3) acknowledgement by counselors that all losses are potentially devastating and significant; (4) establishment of a formal policy concerning death on campus or notification of a familial death; (5) creation of a support group for bereaved persons; (6) special education programs for groups experiencing death or having a bereaved member; (7) assessment of religious values of students and referral to a minister or religiously oriented counselor if religion is a focal point; (8) provision of printed materials for students; (9) awareness by counselors of how clients' death and bereavement concerns can rekindle their own unresolved losses; and (10) attempts by professionals to view the acceptance of death as a potentially positive event in the developmental process.

Understanding Grief and Loss through the lifespan presents the following ideas: All human beings experience loss and the profound feelings that accompany it. Losses come in many shapes and sizes and can include:

• Death of a person or a pet
• Separation, divorce, relationship breakdown
• Trauma
• Sexual assault
• Loss of the family unit
• Unemployment, retirement
• Loss of health, amputation, organ removal, chronic illness
• Loss of homeland and culture
• Loss of possessions, burglary, fire
• Disability
• Loss of youth, body image
• Infertility
• Miscarriage, abortion
• Missing person
• Loss of dreams, hopes or expectations
• Moving
• Aging
• Loss of freedom

The loss of health, or the loss of a limb, or the loss of a loved one, changes the way we see ourselves, and the way we see our world. We need to give ourselves and our friends the space and the support needed to understand what the loss means to our lives and to express feelings about the loss. One of the most important gifts you can give a mourning friend is the continuity of your relationship, the acceptance of their feelings, and a sense of hope that time, thinking and talking will allow them to HEAL.

H = Honor the reality of the loss (accept and respect it, it is important -- don't minimize)
E = Experience the pain & other emotions (feel & express emotions -- take your time)
A = Adjust to the new environment without the lost object (don't grasp at shrines)
L = Love the new reality (embrace, nurture, re-involve and reinvest)
General Guidelines about Grief Resolution

No hard and fast rules can be given when discussing a person's reaction to loss.

However, the following points are important to remember:

• Each individual's reaction to loss is unique
• Most primary losses cause major adjustments in the lives of older adults
• Primary losses are most always recognized as real by family, friends, and the community
• Secondary losses are seldom recognized as real by others as these are often more subjective and less tangible than primary losses
• The reactions to and the effects of secondary losses depend on the individual and the resources and coping skills he or she has learned from their family system and upbringing
• Loss can result in a wide range of physical, emotional, intellectual, social, familial, economic and spiritual manifestations.

As a friend of someone experiencing grief, there are things you can do to help with the mourning:

• Allow and encourage survivors to talk about their loss
• Help them identify and accept the many feelings that they are feeling
• Allow the person to grieve in their own way
• Be available to the person over time
• Reinforce that grief affects health and encourage self-care activities, good nutrition and moderate exercise

The Resiliency Factor

The study of resiliency and emotional thriving, like the study of death, dying and grieving, are relatively new areas of focus in psychology. How we react to unexpected difficulties is the subject matter of resiliency. Factors that contribute to resiliency are flexibility, creativity, optimism, sociability, ability to redefine loss or failure in terms that allow for continued learning ("you can't learn without making mistakes"), openness to learning, low need to always be right, and solid self-esteem.

Resiliency refers to the ability to return to a prior condition post-challenge or after an adverse experience. Thriving refers to the ability to return to a "better-off" condition after the adversity. Trauma and loss can give rise to personal transformations and growth.

Crisis is often thought of as a danger, but it is also an opportunity.

Review a series of guided contemplative tools “Liberation Through Resonance in the Bardo” and determine its usefulness to help someone that is dying or has died to move on regardless of their religious creed or beliefs.

What are your experiences with loss? Regarding death, have you had any experiences with activities such as prayer vigils, euthanasia, suicide, the use of music in healing, near death experiences?? Do you believe that living a noble life matter? Why or why not?

Read:
Chapter 14 in course text.

Watch: The Life After Death True Story

In philosophy, religion, mythology, and fiction, the afterlife (also referred to as life after death or the Hereafter) is the concept of a realm, or the realm itself (whether physical or transcendental), in which an essential part of an individual's identity or consciousness continues to exist after the death of the body in the individual's lifetime. According to various ideas about the afterlife, the essential aspect of the individual that lives on after death may be some partial element, or the entire soul or spirit, of an individual, which carries with it and confers personal identity. Belief in an afterlife, which may be naturalistic or supernatural, is in contrast to the belief in oblivion after death.

Lesson 10 Discussion

Identify changes in perceptions and attitudes toward death and dying across the lifespan, explaining your experiences and understanding regarding the reactions to death/loss of children, parents, siblings, and widowed persons, etc. Provide at least three examples of some ways to offer assistance to individuals at three different stages of Erikson’s developmental areas- use Erikson’s tasks to inform how you may support the individual at the level selected.  

Lesson 10 Quiz

1. Summarize the importance of Resiliency
2. Summarize the importance of Hope
3. Think about an occasion where a child you know experienced death. It could be your own memories of death, as a child. Share your experiences, and discuss how the developmental stage at which the experience occurred may have impacted the experience of grief. You may use another psycho-social, cognitive or developmental theory, but discuss the framework of the theory, as it applies to the child’s experience of death/loss.