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Overview
Children and teens who experience the death of a parent are never the same. Only in the last decade have counselors acknowledged that children grieve too, and that unresolved issues can negatively impact children into adulthood. Unaddressed grief can lead to depression, substance abuse, and relationship difficulties. For at least three generations of adults, these issues have been largely ignored. Having worked with thousands of families as Executive Director of the Dougy Center for Grieving Children, Donna Schuurman understands the dangers of unresolved grief better than anyone else. In Never the Same, Schuurman offers expert advice and encouragement to empower readers to reflect on their unique situation, come to terms with the influence of their parent's death, and live more healthful, peaceful lives.
The only book of its kind, Never the Same is an essential companion for those still struggling with the early loss of a parent.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466892712 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 03/24/2015 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 365 KB |
About the Author
Donna Schuurman speaks regularly in national venues in her role as Executive Director of The Dougy Center for Grieving Children (Portland, OR), the first peer grief support program in the world for children, teens, and families. She has directed The Dougy Center for seven years, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Association for Death Education and Counseling, the largest professional association of educators, counselors, and thanatologists in the country. She received her doctorate in counseling from Northern Illinois University in 1990, and has a masters in communication from Wheaton Graduate School.
Read an Excerpt
Never the Same
Coming to Terms with the Death of a Parent
By Donna Schuurman
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2003 Donna SchuurmanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-9271-2
CHAPTER 1
Feelings: Forget the Stages
Learn your theories well, but lay them aside when you touch the reality of the living soul.
— Carl Jung
If you pick up a book about grief or loss, chances are that it will include a section about stages, phases, or tasks of grieving. These may or may not fit your experience, but they're attempts by professionals to make sense of — to find patterns in — what happens to people when a death occurs. Theories are, as the developmental psychologist Erik Erikson said, "a jab at the unknown."
Part of the reason why clinicians and educators want to build theories and models is to help us assess ourselves against some standard. To help us know if our reactions are "normal," and therefore if we're okay. When we're talking about kids grieving a death, this benchmark of normal is important because one of the most common concerns of grieving kids is the fear of being different. Think about it. When your parent died, didn't you automatically feel different?
You were different. Through no fault of your own, you were suddenly thrown into a new and frightening existence. You had to deal, not only with your own feelings of loss and uncertainty, but also with the reality that the people around you — your friends, family members, neighbors — saw you as different. They didn't know how to relate to you. You wanted everyone to treat you like they always had, but that was hard for people to do. They were afraid they'd make you feel worse if they talked about what happened. Your family members were dealing with their own grief and hardly had enough energy left over to consider yours, though they wanted to. You just wanted everything to return to normal.
But what is normal? This is where theories can be of some help. Theories are attempts to help us understand where we are compared to the rest of the population coping with our experience. Theories may help us know when additional help from a support group or professional counseling is beneficial. But theories may also be overapplied. They are, by nature, a removed process, a representation. The word itself derives from the Greek theoros meaning "spectator." So theory is a spectator sport, so to speak. You know as a spectator at a sporting event, for example, you may cheer, curse, and scream; but you're not in the throes of the action on the field or court. You can describe and interpret what's happening (theorize), but the player's experience may stray from the bounds of your expectations and vary from your interpretation. Theories shouldn't be viewed as prescriptive boundaries we should try to fit ourselves into. They are simply attempts to try to make sense of common experiences and processes.
So let's take a quick look at three common theories about grieving, which take a "jab at the unknown."
Three Common Ways to Look at Grieving
Theories about grieving fall mostly into one of three kinds: stages, phases, or tasks. Stages have fallen out of favor, mostly because people latched on to them as if there were some orderly one-two-three way to grieve, and then be done with it. Perhaps the best known, least understood, and most misused theory about grieving is Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's pioneering model from her 1969 book, On Death and Dying. The model includes five stages of grieving: numbness, denial, anger, blame, and acceptance. But the model has frequently been misapplied from her original intention. First, the steps evolved from her attempt to make sense of the process of people who were dying, not something applied to those grieving a death. Second, she did not intend, even then, to prescribe that the stages were sequential, orderly, and mandatory. Over the years, I've had many calls from people who've said things like: "It's been a year since my mother died, and everyone told me I'd feel better in a year ... but I don't. Is something wrong with me?" or "I feel very sad about my father's death, and cry a lot, but I haven't felt angry. People are telling me that until I get angry, I'm not really dealing with it. What should I do?"
One of the consequences of the stages theories of grief is that people may be led to believe that they're grieving "incorrectly," that there's some prescribed way to do it. Forget the stages. Each person's experience is unique. When your father or mother died, you found your own individual way of coping. You didn't follow anyone's stages.
Phase theories are fairly similar to stage theories. One of the initial pioneers in the area of grieving was J. Bowlby and his work on attachment and loss. He was one of the first professionals to talk about grief and mourning as they affect how we relate to others. The first of four phases he proposed was a period of numbing, where you experience a kind of protective disbelief about the death. It's like a psychological parallel of the body's tendency to go into shock following a traumatic physical injury as a way of protecting yourself from pain. The numbness is followed by yearning and searching, where you feel intense longing, deep distress, and anger: I miss my dad. I feel terrible! Why did this have to happen to me? The third phase, disorganization, involves your search for the "how" and "why" of the death. Finally, there is reorganization, when you try to redefine yourself in relationship to the loss and to your deceased parent, both intellectually and emotionally.
As with stage models, phase theories provide helpful attempts for professionals to build models of grieving, but the model is not "the thing itself." You may or may not have felt numb, deep distress and anger, disorganization, or confusion, when your parent died. (Some kids actually report feeling relieved.) Most likely whatever you felt didn't happen in an organized way. More likely, some things got better, and some things got worse.
J. William Worden, a research psychologist and clinician, rejected stage and phase models as passive, and developed a four-task model that he believed better addressed the active nature of grieving. These tasks include accepting the reality of the loss, working through the pain of grief, adjusting to an environment in which the deceased is missing, and emotionally relocating the deceased and reinvesting in other relationships.
I view Worden's task model as an attempt to assist clinicians, and ultimately grievers, to understand and actively participate in the process of healing after a death, rather than considering themselves passive victims. These tasks may provide a helpful lens through which to view actions that may help in the healing process. On the other hand, they may be viewed as additional burdens and yet more work, more "shoals" in the already draining and difficult experience of grieving. For example, can you remember when you accepted the reality of your parent's death, if ever? Do you ever find yourself thinking perhaps it didn't happen, that he or she will call one day, will show up at your door, will write you a letter saying it's all a cruel mistake? How would acknowledging the fact of the death and accepting that it was okay differ? Is it wrong to wish it hadn't happened? Does "working through the pain of grief" place another layer of expectations on you? "Adjusting to the new environment" may take years, or a lifetime. And how have you — or have you? — maintained a connection with your deceased parent while at the same time reinvesting in other healthy relationships? This isn't something most people probably encouraged you to do. Rather, they more commonly urged you to "move on," to "put it behind you," and to "forget." Worden's model, as with other task models, has merit, but may also unwittingly place additional burdens on grievers to "get it right."
These common theories have been expanded upon by many experts in the field of death and dying, and are continually being refined and adjusted. But again, no theory is ever going to provide you with a magic bullet. It may be helpful to read about them, to know something about them, but don't try to fit yourself into anyone's mold. Your story is different from everyone else's in the world.
Getting Prepared to Look at How Your Parent's Death Has Affected You
Before we take a closer look at how your parent's death has affected your life, I'd like to ask you to consider doing something that sounds simple, but it isn't something most of us are accustomed to doing. If you make the commitment to do what I suggest, you will find yourself experiencing some radical positive changes in yourself and in your relationships.
As we begin to talk about feelings and relationships, you're going to find yourself alternately opening and closing your mind and your feelings. You'll open up when you read something that fits, confirms your experience, makes sense to you, or hooks onto a part of you. You'll close down when something feels too painful, embarrassing, or threatening. This is normal. We all do it. It's also automatic, or at least it seems that way. Over time, we build patterns of responding, and we tell ourselves, "This is how I am." It doesn't feel like we're choosing those patterns; it feels like they're choosing us. But we are actually choosing our thoughts, our feelings, and our actions all the time.
They are efforts on our part to protect ourselves. But one of the consequences of shutting down when we feel threatened is that we cut ourselves off from ourselves — we deaden ourselves. So what I'm asking you to do is treat yourself with the same kindness and compassion you would treat someone else through the following four actions.
Be Honest with Yourself
First, be honest, and allow yourself to look at and feel the hard stuff. It's there. Your avoidance of it does not make it disappear. You already know this. The reason we don't want to acknowledge painful issues is simple: it hurts, and we don't want to be in pain. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. If you place your hand on a hot stove burner, your automatic response is to pull it off (stop what is causing the pain) and then treat the burn (take steps toward healing). If you leave your hand on the burner, denying that it hurts, your denial does not change the fact that your hand is burning. If you take it off the burner but refuse to treat it, it will fester, possibly get infected, take longer to heal, and leave deeper scars. Yet we often leave our hand on the burner or refuse to treat our burnt palm when it comes to psychological pain. Take the radical risk of allowing yourself to be honest, even when it's painful.
Don't allow your usual patterns of avoidance to distract you from finishing this book. What are those patterns? Here are some common ones:
• I numb myself with alcohol.
• Alcohol is not my drug of choice — I use___________. (You might not want to fill in this blank in case you leave this book lying around.)
• I keep myself busy, often with tasks that don't really matter.
• I clean my house/office when I'm really avoiding something!
• I work, work, work.
• I get depressed and withdraw from my family and friends.
• I watch too much TV.
• I go shopping.
• I eat. And eat.
• I throw myself into compulsive exercise.
• I have a hobby that seems healthy but has actually developed into an obsession.
• Other: ____________________
It takes honesty to admit your patterns of avoidance, and it takes courage not to give in to them. So hang in there and be honest with yourself when you're tempted to run. I don't mean to suggest that all avoidance is necessarily bad. There are also times where you will need to put your thoughts or feelings on the back burner, and you can choose to postpone or take breaks from looking at this material. Just know that whatever you're avoiding will be there, waiting for you.
Build Awareness of How You Avoid
Knowing your patterns of avoidance leads right into the second action for your consideration as you explore the affects of your parent's death, and that is building awareness. You already have some awareness, or at least curiosity, about how your parent's death affects you, or you wouldn't be reading this book. But some parts of it may strike too close to home and may bring up painful memories or feelings. That's when you'll find yourself wanting to engage in your avoidance behaviors. When you feel yourself wanting to engage in your avoidance patterns, recognize that behavior. Allow yourself to be aware: Oh, I want a drink. Another pint of ice cream. I want to get out of this house. I need to work late tonight. Just five more pairs of shoes, and I'll feel better. Once you notice, you can make a decision about whether or not to continue the pattern. For example, I've realized that when I want to avoid something, I develop a strong desire to sleep. When I have a pressing deadline, or feel pressured by something, I can sleep for twelve hours. So when I find myself wanting to sleep irregular hours, I ask myself whether I might be avoiding something. On the other hand, I may be needing extra sleep, or I may be engaged in healthy avoidance by permitting my conscious mind to take a break. If I'm aware and notice my behavior, I can make choices about it. Avoidance energy actually saps a lot of our strength from us, and if these patterns are left unacknowledged, they may leave us feeling chronically tired and unmotivated.
Suspend the Judge
This may be your hardest action to take because, for most of us, our self-critic is a fully developed judge, jury, and executioner. Your third task is to suspend your self-judgment. It's a natural reactive human phenomenon to judge ourselves and others around us. We do it all the time. I like those shoes. That was a stupid remark. I should have been nicer. What the heck is his problem? But one of the reasons we keep our feelings stuffed inside us, and therefore experience self-alienation and the uncomfortable sense that all is not well (which we quickly squelch with our avoidance behaviors), is that we don't want to feel pain. When we reflect on painful experiences, relationships, or actions, it hurts. It hurts more because of what we tell ourselves about those experiences, relationships, and actions. I was a fool. I should have known better. He was a jerk, I'm smarter than that. It's an act of self-protection to place blame on ourselves, on someone else, or both, when relationships don't work out as we'd like them to.
Imagine that someone you love seeks your counsel and comfort. Imagine that she comes to you describing a painful loss, the ending of a relationship. Because you love her, you want to encourage her, but you don't want to lie just to make her feel better. (Okay, you're tempted to lie to help her feel better, but you recognize that's not really loving.) Would you say to her, "You were a fool. You should have known better! You're smarter than that. What in the world were you thinking?" And yet we tell ourselves messages like this all the time. Begin to see how many times your internal critic gives you messages that are not loving. When our internal critic tells us we're stupid, rude, thoughtless, foolish, and whatever other slurs we slap on ourselves, no wonder we want to run away!
What if ... you could notice yourself with compassion, without judgment? I'm not suggesting you dismiss morality, or that there aren't helpful and hurtful actions and ways of being. But sometimes our quickness to judge ourselves harshly prevents us from making changes that could actually help us live healthier, happier, and more productive lives. Although it doesn't always appear that way, our feelings, our thoughts, and our actions are purposeful. We choose them. What we tell ourselves about an event colors the corresponding feeling. Sometimes it seems as if our feelings are mysterious bursts of energy that strike randomly and without reason. But in actuality, we create our feelings by what we tell ourselves about what happens.
Here's a simple illustration. About an hour ago, I was happily typing along and the screen on my computer froze. I've had this happen a few times and have lost paragraphs or pages as a result, an extremely frustrating experience. The only recourse was to push the off button, reboot, and try to reconstruct whatever was lost. As I sat waiting for the computer to restart, my initial response was frankly, well, not printable here. I told myself a terrible thing had happened, that I'd lost not only my valuable words, but my thought process and time as well. I wanted to throw the computer through the window. I almost worked myself into enough of a frenzy that I could've used it as a great excuse to stop writing and do something else. Like sleep. Like eat a pint of Starbucks's Java Chip ice cream. So my thought (this is terrible) was followed by emotions (anger, frustration) that led to possible actions (avoidance under the guise of self-reward).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Never the Same by Donna Schuurman. Copyright © 2003 Donna Schuurman. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Acknowledgments,
Introduction,
Chapter One: Feelings: Forget the Stages,
Chapter Two: Was I a Normal Grieving Kid?,
Chapter Three: I Didn't Just Lose My Parent ...,
Chapter Four: How Others Influenced Your Grieving,
Chapter Five: What Kind of Kid Were You?,
Chapter Six: What We Know About Children and Resiliency: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,
Chapter Seven: How Your Parent's Death in Childhood Affects You Now,
Chapter Eight: What You Can Do Now to Address Your Parent's Death,
Chapter Nine: Ten Practical Suggestions,
Appendix: Limitations of Studies: How to Know What to Believe When You Read a Study's Findings,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Copyright,