As I am approaching the end of my bereavement support course and facing the beginning of the Introduction to Psychology (a refresher I aim to take up this spring), I am summing up everything I have learned so far. I appreciate that my blog might be a bit depressing nowadays as I am posting a lot about death but here, in this post, I would like to mention a few books that aim to demystify this and sibling themes of our lives: solitude and time.

1. “The worm at the core” by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski – sometimes I wonder why we don’t read books like this as mandatory in primary or at least secondary school. I so wish I was given this book much earlier! Three academics decided to look at the idea of death being the source of most of our daily problems in private life but also on a societal level. This book contains results of their own dedicated experiments, but also a really good write up of other research done all around the world. Five years after I was born Ernest Becker wrote a monumental book “The Denial of Death” which according to him is our defense mechanism, the ultimate form of our survival instinct. It is also the cause of many mental illnesses and the birth of our need to transcend death through heroic actions. (see for more here). “The worm at the core” is the terror of death and the authors of the book examine various consequences stretching to most areas of our lives. I particularly enjoyed the part about our need for religion and culture, but the areas dedicated to the birth of nationalism stroke particular cord with me due to the most recent events in the US and Europe. In a strange way, I found the terror of death theory comforting, maybe because sometimes it’s easier if the root of a problem becomes visible? I am not sure. I strongly recommend this book.
2. “A philosophy of Loneliness” by Lars Svendsen was useful to me as I have experienced many forms of loneliness and I do find solitude extremely rewarding. I picked up this book from the library shelf on bereavement but I had selfish motives: I really wanted to learn more about the way we define and relate to our loneliness because I myself know for a fact there are happy and unhappy types of it. I found it interesting to learn about types of loneliness. There is the distinction between the chronic, situational and transient loneliness, for example. Chronic loneliness is something we suffer from for a long time. Situational loneliness is usually triggered by an event in life or loss of a person. Transient loneliness is more sublime and happens occasionally – we feel lonely for just a bit. There is also the distinction between social and emotional loneliness (Robert S. Weiss) where socially lonely personal lacks integration and seeks to be part of a community and emotional one is a lack of a close relationship with someone specific. All of those types of loneliness can occur separately and actually many people who are socially active still report feeling lonely. I also like the idea of defining various words related to loneliness. First of all, loneliness implies that we long for something we want and we don’t seem to be getting it – it’s a feeling of longing and waiting. But there is also being alone, solitude – the feeling of not being connected to others, but with no negative sentiment. And there is also abandonment – the state where we lose someone and sometimes also due to their own choice so the hurt can be stronger. Svendsen also talks about the underlying idea of trust in human relationships – something I think about a lot these days – and its role in loneliness. I found this book really helpful for myself but also for my future work with bereavement.
3. “Ten thoughts about time” by Bodil Jonsson – I almost do not want to disclose what this book is all about as it’s so precious! I don’t think we talk or think about time enough and in the right way and Jonsson managed to convey it in a very academic, logical way. It’s a very small, light, fun read with great ideas, simple to implement too. But it’s worth stopping at every chapter and really getting it right. For example, time is your best asset – well, it took me almost 40 years to understand that it’s not money but time that’s my most precious but also most rewarding currency. I can stretch it, run through it, forget it and create more of it if I wish too – it’s possible because time is as subjective as anything else. So if there is anything I took out of this book (apart from a lot of good small tips, of course) is the author’s story of her older friend pointing out that if she feels she’s losing the grip on events now she should wait and see at older age – “just wait till your older!” To this author observed: “If my older friend’s observation was generally true, then the acceleration of time passing, which I had just begun to notice, would never decrease. This it followed that life would end much sooner than I wanted it to, because I enjoyed living very much” I will leave you with that and encourage to read the rest.

All three books really helped me gain perspective on death and bereavement counselling, but I think they are generally really useful reads.

 

 

Today I would like to recommend three books with practical tips on how to approach bereavement – our own or someone else’s.

1. “The essential guide to life after bereavement” by Judy Carole Kauffmann and Mary Jordan – possibly the most practical book I read so far with the actual tips on how to talk about the news of death, how to talk to kids, how to manage guilt, about the impact of death on the complex family systems but also about memorials, managing anniversaries and moving forward. It’s a very short and compact book – I think more suitable for people who need to do it now and want to find out the “how to” more than underlying processes of grief.
2. “Working with bereavement” by Janet Wilson – Wilson is a nurse and academic with practical counselling experience so her focus is also very practical, but it does contain a little bit more dept. This book contains the best write up of all leading bereavement theories that I have seen so far (a real treasure for a student), then moves on to explain the process of death and what happens next. Wilson collects the practical tips of how to support the bereaved but she is also looking at specific important areas: context (culture, faith, spirituality), traumatic death and other specific circumstances and difficult, tabu types of dying (suicide, miscarriage, termination, neonatal and other child death). I think I appreciate the last two chapters the most: the unrecognised grief (for example dementia) and self-care for people who work with the bereaved – an area increasingly more and more important for counselling professionals. I think this book should be in the library of any therapist, really.
3. “We need to talk about grief” by Annie Broadbe is what it states in the title: it’s a call to encourage us all to open up and speak up about our grief. The main problem with death is the fact we really don’t want to, nor know how to talk about it without upsetting ourselves and others. So when it comes to those moments when we need support after losing someone close, the society is everything but prepared to hold us. Broadbe collected stories of people’s bereavement and closed each chapter with a few practical tips and notes so when you read her stories think of them as specific experiences but also overall themes.

All fo the above books are now on my shelf and if you are looking for first aid help in bereavement for yourself or a someone else, do start with those.

I read a lot of books about bereavement recently, but this one stands out for the obvious reason: I work in social media so I remember Sheryl Sandberg posting the first post after her husband’s death. I remember the collective reaction to her grief going out in ripples across Facebook and other social media channels. I remember feeling a bit empowered that I could post a note and send her my condolences – even though we don’t know each other as such, I could still feel the pain of her loss. Obviously, I have no idea how it was for her and so I am really happy that she has published her story of bereavement in the book “Option B“. Not much is said about the role of social media in support for the bereaved and I am really interested in it. I have been through difficult times in life – none of which can remotely compare to her loss – but I still have received a lot of support and energy from my online networks. We are humans – regardless of the screen we are looking at.

I really like the honesty of Sheryl’s book and her focus on resilience, on the future of her kids, on treasuring the memory of her husband. But most of all I like the fact that she had the ability to ask for help and accept it. I am sure her days were so very hard and yet, surrounded by lovely people, we also can feel lonely and we can feel extremely isolated in grief. It seems to me from my studies so far that opening up to help, to support and learning to ask for help too, is crucial. There’s no “getting better” in grief. Thigs change, they never remain the same and the loss leaves a terrible emptiness which in time we might learn to live with. Build around it, possibly. That work – the PROCESS of grief – is much easier and less burdening, if we learn to do it with or next to others. That’s what I got out of the “Option B”. Would love to know what others think of it.

 

 

Additional reads:

• The Guardian
• Forbes
• Financial Times
• Wharton talk

 

My favourite quotes:

“I learned that friendship isn’t only what you can give, it’s what you’re able to receive.”

“Let me fall if I must fall. The one I become will catch me.”

“Poetry, philosophy, and physics all teach us that we don’t experience time in equal increments.”

“Happiness is the frequency of positive experiences, not the intensity.”

“Psychologists have found that over time we usually regret the chances we missed, not the chances we took.”

“Self-compassion comes from recognizing that our imperfections are part of being human.”

“I am more vulnerable than I thought, but much stronger than I ever imagined.”

“A traumatic experience is a seismic event that shakes our belief in a just world, robbing us of the sense that life is controllable, predictable, and meaningful.”

(3P’s of pesimism): “(1) personalization—the belief that we are at fault; (2) pervasiveness—the belief that an event will affect all areas of our life; and (3) permanence—the belief that the aftershocks of the event will last forever.”

“Avoiding feelings isn’t the same as protecting feelings.”

“ When it’s safe to talk about mistakes, people are more likely to report errors and less likely to make them.”

“Blaming our actions rather than our character allows us to feel guilt instead of shame.”

“One of the most important things I’ve learned is how deeply you can keep loving someone after they die. You may not be able to hold them or talk to them, and you may even date or love someone else, but you can still love them every bit as much.”

“Let me fall if I must fall. The one I become will catch me.” Slowly,”

“Even in the face of the most shocking tragedy of my life, I could exert some control over its impact.”

“These aren’t personal questions. They are human questions”

“Post-traumatic growth could take five different forms: finding personal strength, gaining appreciation, forming deeper relationships, discovering more meaning in life, and seeing new possibilities.”

“Option A is not available. so let’s just kick the shit out of Option B.” Life is never perfect. We all live some form of Option B.”

 

I am back to reading about bereavement and revising before the end of my Cruse course this January. Today I am researching the word “death” because I start to realise how hard it is for us to talk about those concepts. I read a few true stories written by bereaved people and I start to see a theme here: when talking to a bereaved person people tend to avoid the word “dead” – they would use synonyms, for example, “passed” instead thinking it is making matters easier, but actually oftentimes avoiding being specific can be more painful. So wondering what is it really that we have in English for those three terms, I had a quick look. It wasn’t easy to compile this list and I warn you: you might find many of the below listed words upsetting, but that’s the point: we find those words upsetting but oftentimes the facts are easier to handle for the people affected by loss than metaphors.

Google results:

 

 

Visualised:

 

Synonyms (134 words collated from here, here and here):

English

It’s my Nameday today which means I am celebrating the meaning of my first name. The importance of this day is close to my heart because of someone else, a person close to my heart, who also celebrates their Nameday the very same day and who had the most significant (and very positive) impact on my life. I have a little ritual on this day: I look for a black rose and bring it home, but oftentimes it’s quite hard to get. Black, in this case, stands for endless – endless love, endless family history, endless life. I have decided this year to switch to a white rose (white is the opposite of black and yet also equally endless and much more practical too).

I know, feel, experience the value of rituals in our life but today I looked into the research about it. For now, I did not find a good book or study yet, but I’m not going to give up.  According to this Scientific American article, rituals are known to bring relief in grief and I am studying a lot of cultural rituals surrounding death so I guess I think about it a lot. I hope that I can deepen my knowledge a bit later, as our new life in Bristol, still demands a lot of my energy at the moment. I want to study the history of mourning but also the impact and mechanisms of rituals.

The first thing I got wrong about grief is closure. In bereavement, there is no such thing. There is the process. There is gradual healing. But because things will never get back to the way they were there is no such thing as the typical emotional closure at all. I hope there would be. I was HOPING there would be and so many people do, but actually accepting that things will not get back to “normal” might just help the healing process.

I grief a lot nowadays myself. I grieve over Brexit. I grieve over the last 10 years in the small town (we are moving to Bristol in a few days, so I am reviewing the life in this small town a lot at the moment and the last few years are actually pretty depressing). I grieve the industry I decided to leave. I grieve the people I lost due to the changes in the way I approach life. I have reinvented a lot of areas of my life and it has gotten so much better, but there is a part of me which really misses the old, the familiar times. Managing change, if it is quite drastic, can feel a bit like grief. Things will never be the same and I am learning to let things go and embrace the new ways of living.

I really liked this paragraph in one of the articles about closure in bereavement, as it sums up how I feel at the moment and gives me energy and hope:

While there isn’t really “closure,” there is healing. Someone once said, “You don’t heal from a loss because time passes, you heal because of what you do with the time.” It is important to allow yourself to feel your feelings, talk about your loss, think about what has happened to you and your family, face fears that may test your courage, and try doing new things. It also is important to stay healthy by eating nutritious food, sleeping well, and with physical activity that helps to relieve stress or anxiety.

Something really interesting has happened to me this week. I prepared three out of four assignments for my course now, at its very early stage and put my heart and soul into it. I reviewed it and really did feel that it’s a good work – the best of me, really. But I have to be honest, so far I was one of those students who would deliver their best work last minute and feel that it could have been a bit better too. I know that studying with a full on life is a bit more challenging, but I feel something has shifted inside of me since I have learned about my top five character strengths and discovered that actually all of them are true. Just so you understand what I mean, let me explain. As I am working through bereavement course I am also still studying positive psychology. Quite recently I have learned about the VIA character strengths used for positive interventions (new habits supporting our resilience in preparation for challenging times or simply to maintain our wellbeing). I discovered that my top five are as follows and after a closer examination I have discovered that actually, at the moment, there are the values I do live actively, I feel in the flow in those and they do energise me (criteria for ensuring they are actually relevant to us):

#1 Curiosity and interest in the world

The awareness of those, however, made me more confident in those areas too. I do cultivate my curiosity through learning and now I know I should spend more time on it. I appreciate beauty (love flowers and gardening, for example) but also excellence – which is a new concept for me to practice (I used to pretty lazy, to be honest) but it does feel right and good. Life tested me enough for me to treasure gratitude and now I also revert to it in times of sadness and challenge. Hope and optimism were a bit of a surprise at first but the more I learn about optimism from Seligman and his team, I am actually discovering that even in more challenging times my optimist side prevails, I might just not see it this way all the time. I am ever so glad that I found out about the character strengths and I strongly recommend the survey to anyone. You can take theVIA Survey of Character Strengths test here for free (just register) : https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/testcenter

Below all of them in one handy visual:

I am familiar with reflective writing since early years of schooling but now, as I am starting the work on bereavement support, I find it useful to go back to the basics of everything. What really is reflective writing? Are there processes one could follow? What is the goal? For many years I was convinced that reflective writing is really writing down all my thoughts as they come, but never consider the basic truth behind it: it is an analytical exercise, not a form of creative outlet. A writing is reflective is we describe an event, but also our emotional reaction to it and oftentimes also include follow up an action, commitment or learning of some kind. So it’s not just writing for the sake of writing but a form of analytical journaling, really. And yes, there are models worth checking out. Below are the two I am using for my Cruse course at the moment:

• What do you think might happen?
• What might be the challenges?
• What do I need to know or do in order to be best prepared for these experiences?

• What’s happening now, as you make rapid decisions?
• Is it working out as I expected?
• Am I dealing with the challenges well?
• Is there anything I should do, say or think to make the experience successful?

• What are your insights immediately after, and/or later when you have more emotional distance from the event?
• In retrospect how did it go?
• What did I particularly value and why?
• Is there anything I would do differently before or during a similar event?
• What have I learnt?

• Description – what happened?
• Feelings – what were you thinking and feeling?
• Evaluation – what was good and bad about the experience?
• Analysis – what sense can you make of the situation?
• Conclusion – what else could you have done?
• Action plan – is it arose again what would you do?

I combine both and sometimes follow them, on other occasions mix some steps as long as I feel that at the end of the writing process I have actually learned and grown from the experience. I find this part of my studies really easy but I do have to work on the actual habit of regular writing: making time and space for it, sitting down and doing it no matter what state I am in. The point is to capture thoughts and learnings daily, really, and I am yet to get there. Soon;)

Before I started the Cruse course on bereavement listening (now I know that officially we will not be counsellors, so I will try to avoid the term) I did go back to my summer reads and read the remaining three books by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler (“On Death and Dying“, “On Grief and Grieving” and “Life Lessons“). Kübler-Ross developed a model for grief stages called “Five Stages of Grief” by conducting interviews with terminally ill patients so it’s worth remembering that the origin of the theory is quite specific and might not apply to all. Additionally after her first book she also made a clear statement that the stages do not have to appear in the order described by her, might vary and the stages model is really only orientational. Of course, a lot more research is needed to even call it a solid theory, but it is a really good start of one. It is still often used for reference with that sidenote though, simply because the society we live in still considers talking about death, grief, bereavement as tabu. We have very few models to work with and so even this is a great start really.

Here it is as described on Wikipedia:

he stages, popularly known by the acronym DABDA, include:

1. Denial – The first reaction is denial. In this stage, individuals believe the diagnosis is somehow mistaken, and cling to a false, preferable reality.
2. Anger – When the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue, they become frustrated, especially at proximate individuals. Certain psychological responses of a person undergoing this phase would be: “Why me? It’s not fair!”; “How can this happen to me?”; “Who is to blame?”; “Why would this happen?”.
3. Bargaining – The third stage involves the hope that the individual can avoid a cause of grief. Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made in exchange for a reformed lifestyle. People facing less serious trauma can bargain or seek compromise. For instance: “I’d give anything to have him back.” Or: “If only he’d come back to life, I’d promise to be a better person!”
4. Depression – “I’m so sad, why bother with anything?”; “I’m going to die soon, so what’s the point?”; “I miss my loved one, why go on?”
   During the fourth stage, the individual despairs at the recognition of their mortality. In this state, the individual may become silent, refuse visitors and spend much of the time mournful and sullen.
5. Acceptance – “It’s going to be okay.”; “I can’t fight it; I may as well prepare for it.”
   In this last stage, individuals embrace mortality or inevitable future, or that of a loved one, or other tragic event. People dying may precede the survivors in this state, which typically comes with a calm, retrospective view for the individual, and a stable condition of emotions.

Even just looking at the list I can imagine that everyone is different and might not travel exactly through all those specific stages, but as a linguist I am happy that someone even attempted to investigate grief and name some of the typical reactions to death at all. It’s a great start for me and for the course too. Glad i read the books.

I really, really enjoy browsing around Pinterest in my free time to find little things related to psychology or specific topics I might be studying. Today I came across a visualization of cognitive biases which completely opened a new world to me. Fair enough, I have worked with biases most of my adult life and studied them in more detail in foundation studies recently, but this is a really impressive list of things I need to look into. Fascinating! Check it out below and here. (Now that we have signed the contract for the new house in Bristol I might as well learn about the IKEA effect for example;))