Meaning making The term “meaning making” is commonly used in constructivist counseling, psychology, and psychotherapy methods, particularly in bereavement, where people assign some kind of meaning to an encountered death or loss. Many people usually have to form a new sense of their loss with the experience of a demise. Interventions encouraging meaning making can be helpful to grievers, as specific interventions have proven to improve mental and physical health as well. However, according to other studies, "for some people from difficult backgrounds, efforts after meaning may not be psychologically healthy"
because those efforts are "more like rumination than problem- solving." Some researchers also claim that meaning making alleviates depression symptoms and increases adaptation e to loss. Conversely, the inability to attribute sense to death leads some people to enormous long-term suffering. There are different strategies that people could use in meaning making. Of these techniques for meaning making, the categories most commonly used include personal development, family relations, faith, life appreciation, negative effects, impermanence, lifestyle changes, compassion and relief from suffering (Neimeyer, 2015).
CHAPTER 2 - UNDERSTANDING THE MOURNING PROCESS
In this course, the term mourning has been used to indicate the process that occurs after a loss by which a bereaved person comes to terms with the loss. Grief, on the other hand, refers to a person’s reaction to bereavement comprised of thoughts, Stages One way of looking at the process of mourning, similar to the grief process, is to interpret it in stages. Many authors who write about grief have listed up to nine stages of mourning, and at Phases Psychologists: Parkes, Bowlby, Sanders, and others who have proposed the concept of phases as an alternative approach to the stages. Parkes et al. describe the following four phases of mourning: Phase I: Numbness . This period occurs close to the time of the loss and is experienced by most survivors. The Numbness phase allows the mourner to forget the reality of the loss for at least a short time. Phase II: Yearning . The yearning subject longs for the return of the lost loved one and continues to deny the loss' permanence. Anger plays a significant role. Tasks of mourning Whereas phases suggest a certain passivity, something that the mourner must pass through, the concept of tasks, on the other hand, is far more in line with Freud's theory of grief work and suggests that the mourner must act and can do something. This approach also means mourning may be affected by outside intervention. In other words, the mourner will see the phases as something to go through, while the tasks approach will give the mourner a sense of control and hope that there is something he or she can consciously do to respond to a loved one's death (Worden, 2018). The role of the funeral director is to support the mourners as they approach these tasks, without being unnecessarily overbearing and controlling. Freud’s theory of grief work emphasizes on the idea of personal attachment. According to Freud, a grieving person is always in search of an object of attachment, which he has lost. He further defines the state of mourning as detachment or disconnection from a loved one. Task I: To Accept the Reality of the Loss Even if someone anticipates the death of a loved one, they may still struggle with accepting the reality of the situation after the loved one passed away. They may experience a new feeling that they did not previously feel. The first step of mourning is to come face to face with the fact of the person being dead, the person is gone, and not coming back. Part of realizing this is believing that reunification with the lost loved one is unlikely, at least in this lifetime. The searching conduct, about which Bowlby and Parkes wrote extensively, relates directly to the fulfilment of this task. Many people who have lost a loved one may find themselves crying out for the missing person, and often, they appear to misidentify others in their environment. They may be walking down the street, see somebody who reminds them of the deceased, and then have to tell themselves that the person
feelings, and behaviors experienced after the loss that changes over time. Because mourning is a process, various scholars have interpreted it in different ways — primarily as phases, tasks, and stages.
least one author has listed 12. One of the disadvantages of using the stage model is that people do not similarly follow stages. Often, the beginner tends to take the stages too literally.
Phase III: Despair and disorganization . The survivor has a hard time working through despair and disorganization in their particular environment. Phase IV: Phase of reorganized behavior. The bereaved person begins to pull his or her life back together (Parkes & Prigerson, 2013). As with stages, the different phases overlap, and they are rarely distinct.
they see is not actually their loved one as their loved one has passed (Worden, 2018). As an initial step, funeral directors should help mourners come to terms with their loss. This entails helping them acknowledge the reality and permanence of death. Task II: To Process the Pain of Grief Acknowledging and working through the pain associated with loss is essential, or it may manifest itself through physical symptoms or some form of abnormal behavior. According to psychiatrist and researcher, Parkes, anything that helps the bereaved to escape or minimize the pain of grief prolongs the grieving cycle. This is because it prevents the survivor from completely going through the pain of grief. (Parkes & Prigerson, 2013). Not everybody experiences or feels the same amount of pain, but it is almost impossible to lose someone you have been profoundly attached to without experiencing any kind of pain. Often the newly bereaved are unprepared to deal with the sheer force and nature of the emotions following a loss (Rubin, 1990). A variety of interrelated factors decide the type of pain and its severity. On the other hand, recent studies on attachment styles indicate that after death, there are specific individuals who do not experience much, if any, pain. One explanation is that they do not allow themselves to become attached to someone and show an avoidant style of attachment (Kosminsky & Jordan, 2016). Task III: To Adjust to a World Without the Deceased Three adjustment areas need to be addressed after a loved one's loss to death. There are the external adjustments, or how death affects one's daily functioning in the world; internal adjustments, or how death affects one's sense of identity; and spiritual adjustments, or how death affects one's convictions,
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