Those 5 Stages of Grief: Does Mourning Really Unfold Like That?

a post by Bella DePaulo for the World of Psychology blog



Sometimes a psychological phenomenon becomes so well-known that even people with no training whatsoever in psychology are familiar with it. That’s true for the five stages of grief, as described by the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross back in 1969. When someone dies, she suggested, the first reaction of the loved ones left behind is denial. Anger comes next, then bargaining, then depression. Finally, after all those stages have passed, mourners experience some acceptance of their loss.

Originally, Kubler-Ross formulated the stages of grief to describe the reactions of patients who had terminal illnesses. But she never conducted a systematic study of people’s reactions to the death of a loved one, and whether those reactions change over time in the way she predicted. Over the years, researchers have stepped in to try to see whether Kubler-Ross was right.

They found that, with regard to the order in which various reactions peak over time, Kubler-Ross was spot on. She was wrong, though, about the frequency with which the bereaved experience different emotions. The most important conclusion of research on stages of grief, though, is that there is no one way to grieve. Different people mourn in different ways. Their stages may be different than the ones Kubler-Ross described, or they may not go through different stages at all.

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In Order to Have a Good Death, Doctors Need to Stop Doctoring So Much

a post by John M Grohol for the World of Psychology blog



It’s funny how people only start thinking about death when either a loved one has passed away, or they’re facing their own imminent mortality. But the time to talk and think about death is not at the end — but throughout your life.

Because unbeknownst to you, there is an entire profession aligned against you having a good death. And that is (nearly) the entire profession of doctors.

I was listening to “Fresh Air” on NPR yesterday with Terry Gross speaking to bioethicist Tia Powell about having a good death with dementia, among other topics. It made me think of my own dad’s recent death, and whether we provided him with a good death or not.

My dad died late last year. We tried our best to provide him with a good death, but it still wasn’t easy. What happens in Parkinson’s, along with dementias such as Alzheimer’s, is that the brain deteriorates. It stops functioning for other things, such as balance, which is so important for so many other activities. It also affects your muscles and we use muscles to swallow, so swallowing becomes extremely difficult.

So a lot of families face the decision about whether to use a feeding tube or not. Because if a person can’t swallow, they can’t take in new food and will eventually die due to that. It’s a decision we had to make for my dad, but for us it was an easy one since a feeding tube isn’t going to really help do anything for my dad’s quality of life — which had already deteriorated to the point where extending his life didn’t make much sense.

But for some families, a feeding tube seems to make sense because professionals — including nursing staff and doctors — recommend it. It makes their jobs easier, and they believe it helps to extend a person’s life.

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3 Things the Dying Taught Me About Living Well

a post by Cylon George for the Tiny Buddha blog


“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” ~Mahatma Gandhi

I am a hospice chaplain.

I provide spiritual care to the dying and their families.

I do this by being present with them. I listen to their fears, worries, joys, concerns, and regrets. I listen carefully to what is said, and attend thoughtfully to what is not said.

When people find out what I do for a living, the reaction is almost universal: “Wow, that must be hard. I could never do it.”

I totally get it. In fact, years before doing this work, I remember reacting to a hospice volunteer in a very similar way. I was terrified of death. I didn’t like thinking about it or talking about it. I certainly never thought I’d spend my days comforting the dying.

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OCD and Death Obsessions

a post by Janet Singer for the World of Psychology blog



As some of us know, obsessive-compulsive disorder can take on many shapes and forms, limited only by the imagination of the person with OCD. In general, OCD likes to attack whatever it is we most value: our families, relationships, morals, accomplishments, etc. In short – our lives.

So it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that some people with OCD are obsessed with death. What better way for OCD to attack what is most important to us than telling us our lives are all for naught as we’re just going to die anyway?

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Oh the lies that mental illness tells us. Food is an enemy, I am worthless, I am a terrible mother, nobody loves me – our wise minds tell us that these statements are not true. However, trying to find the wise mind when the illness is filling our heads with lies is very hard,

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3 Things That Are Helping Me Deal with Stress, Pain, and Loss

a post by Joshua Kauffman for the Tiny Buddha blog


“Being on a spiritual path does not prevent you from facing times of darkness; but it teaches you how to use the darkness as a tool to grow.” ~Unknown

Life has not been kind lately.

My aunt passed away in October. She had been suffering from cancer, but her family kept the extent of her illness to themselves, and hence I did not have a chance to see her before she passed away. I felt bad about that.

My father followed her a month later, just after Thanksgiving. He had been ailing from Parkinson’s Disease, but his death as well was not expected when it happened.

Two weeks after him, a friend of mine who lives abroad informed me of her diagnosis with a rare form of incurable cancer. She has since passed away before I had a chance to visit her. She was not yet fifty years old.

Right after that happened, the veterinarian diagnosed my dog with heart failure, and his days too are numbered.

In mid-January, my mother, who had been depressed after my father’s death, collapsed with a seizure. A tumor was discovered in her brain. Though easily removed, it was traced back to her lung. She too has a rare form of aggressive cancer and though outwardly healthy, her life will probably be limited to months or a couple of years.

The whole ordeal until diagnosis unfolded over the course of an extremely stressful month, and the future is both frightening and terribly uncertain. Because of this uncertainty, I have needed to change my life plans—I had been ready to relocate and change jobs.

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8 Ways to Support Yourself Through Bereavement

a post by Julia Samuel for the World of Psychology blog

As we age we are inevitably bereaved more often, and it is at a time of our life when we are more vulnerable. Research shows that the generation that are in their 60’s and older are the least likely to access or receive appropriate support when someone dies, and this is particularly true of men.

Through my work as a bereavement psychotherapist for the last 25 years, I have learned from my clients what can help them at such a difficult time, and I have developed the concept of “pillars of strength” – these are active things we can do to help us manage the pain of loss, and build an internal structure when we feel there is a terrible black hole inside us.

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Hazel’s comment
As the eldest person in my immediate family I have been through the loss of those older than me. Now I'm having to cope with friends around my own age (only 74) dying as well as the loss of those younger. It is still a struggle to get through the grieving process.

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A Most Difficult Lesson: People Are Just Doing Their Best

a post by Joshua Kauffman for the Tiny Buddha blog


“People are doing the best that they can from their own level of consciousness.”
~Deepak Chopra

My father passed away suddenly and not so suddenly several weeks back.

He had been sick for a long time, but it was a gradually progressing illness and not what ultimately caused his passing. So, it did come as a shock, and the last few weeks have been filled with all the random things you need to do when someone dies – change the names on insurance policies and automobile titles, call social security, etc.

The list seems endless, but now that the tasks are winding down, the silence that is settling in is leaving both my mom and I alone with our feelings.

I knew this silence would come, and I dreaded it. I was afraid I’d think terrible thoughts about him, and that in turn would make me feel like a terrible person. It’s a long story…

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Millions Now Living Will Never Die: Cultural Anxieties About the Afterlife of Information

an article by Grant David Bollmera (Digital Cultures, Department of Media and Communications, University of Sydney, Australia) published in The Information Society: An International Journal Volume 29 Issue 3 (May-June 2013)

Abstract

This article examines cultural anxieties surrounding the life and death of online data.

Through the examination of a wide range of discourses, including “lifestyle” news articles, online user comments, essays and books by novelists and engineers, and the websites of information management services, I argue that death online – defined as the persistence of informatic remainders after the death of the human user – reveals how networked data are constructed as both an authentic duplicate of identity and as a threat to personal identity that must be managed.

Because humans are understood as finite and mortal, while data are immortal and everlasting, the “life” formed out of online data is understood as beyond any possible control of the user. With the death of the user, the perceived connection between the user and data is revealed as a contingency rather than a necessity. Information is produced as autonomous.

It is nearly identical to yet separate from the user; it belongs to nobody except, perhaps, the network itself.

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