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Project
of
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evolve a healthy family grieving policy |
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Q&A
about Bonds, Losses, and Healthy
Grieving
- p. 1 of 2
By Peter K.
Gerlach, MSW
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 The Web address of this
two-page article is http://sfhelp.org/qa/grief-q.htm
Links in this article and series will open a new browser window or an
informational popup - so please turn
off your browser's popup blocker, or accept popups from this nonprofit Web
site.
These questions and brief answers about healthy grief are part of a
series aimed at increasing adults' awareness of vital personal,
relationship, and family topics. The series exists because a most average
women and men (like you) don't know what they need to know about key
topics, despite
formal education and life experience. To validate this premise, try these
Premise: regardless of
age, life experience, and education, average
adults (like you) don't
know what they need to know about normal
and healthy
That means...
"Co-parents" means (a) both bioparents and other significant caregivers in
an intact or
biological family,
or (b) all adult stepfamily caregivers.
Becoming a
family is
the goal of co-parent
in this divorce-pre-vention Web site. Scan the
Project-5 index for links to all related articles and
work-sheets.
The answers to the questions below are included in two chapters of the guidebook for family
in this site -
Stepfamily Courtship - make three
right re/marriage choices (Xlibris.com, 2002).
Much in these chapters apply to any family.
Questions you should ask about healthy grieving
1)
Why do typical family 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 personally and
environmentally 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?
+
+ +
If
you don't see your question here, please ask!
For more perspective, see the Project-5
link index or
these selected titles on grieving
Q1)
Why do typical family adults need to know about
bonding, losses, and mourning?
Typical adults and kids need to learn about healthy
grieving 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 ignores the need for healthy
grief.
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My clinical research since 1979 suggests that most Americans come from
low-nurturance childhoods, 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?
top
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.
top
Q3) What do our family adults
need to know about
bonding
(attachment)?
Good (healthy) grief starts with
understanding what 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 reliably provide
significant pleasure 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
them and
their key relationships unless they
(often in mid-life) and commit to psychological-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 (a) bond and (b)
grieve. If you can bond, you may grieve well if you
have internal and environmental encouragements
to do so. These permissions will significantly improve or degrade your
relationships, achievements, and health until you die.
Notice your
now...
top
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
unawareness can promote incomplete grief in average people and families.
That can be freed up by
self-motivated education, and
patient, courageous personal
For more perspective on losses,
see this.
top
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 which is triggered
by significant broken bonds
(losses) if allowed to. Healthy grief occurs on two or three
simultaneous levels (mental + emotional + spiritual), which each have a
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 mourning 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 full 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.
How
does this compare to your definition of grief? Have
you ever tried to describe grief or mourning to the kids in
your life? Can they and your other family adults describe...
-
the three levels of
normal mourning, and...
-
the several phases in each level; and...
-
the seven requisites for healthy grief
(Q6 below), and...
-
when grieving is "finished," and...
-
common
that a
child or adult isn't "done" grieving?
To grow a
family
living by a healthy grieving
your members' need to clearly understand
good-grief
basics, and be consistently
by their
Intentionally learning the
basics and modeling and teaching them to your kids is a powerful
way to reduce toxic personal and family
in this nonprofit Web site offers specific, practical ways adults can
co-create
families
for themselves and their kids.
top
Q6)
What's required personally and
environmentally 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…
-
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.
Recommendation: family adults 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
and
top
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
and...
-
crying or
outbursts
they can't control, and feel
and anxious about. Such outbursts
concern and/or scare kids and adults close to the griever, which cause
secondary relationship stresses and reactions. Such outbursts are usually
caused by a dominant
And incomplete grief can...
-
promote or increase one or more self-soothing
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 outer families.
These compound everyone's
and often obscure the primary
problems (Q6 above).
The causes and 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 (c)
facilitate incomplete grief, and (d) become a
family by
intentionally working at
together.
top
 Answers
to good-grief questions continue on page 2
+ + +
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Updated
August 04, 2008
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