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Transition to motherhood
Published in Alison Brodrick, Emma Williamson, Listening to Women After Childbirth, 2020
Alison Brodrick, Emma Williamson
Some women who experience a birth that is very different from how they have hoped, or expected it would be, describe a sense of grief in response to this. The act of birth, and those early hours, days and weeks with a newborn are felt to be acutely fleeting, and impossible to get back once they are gone. When women feel this has been taken away from them, they may experience what is known as ‘non-finite grief’ – a term used to explain how we can grieve even when there has been no tangible loss. Women may not even realise they had hopes and fantasies about their birth experience until their reality is different and they are confronted with a painful discrepancy. An interesting study by De Groot and Vik (2017) included a thematic analysis of the comments on a Facebook post linked to an essay referring to a ‘failed’ birth plan. They called the loss of the dream birth experience a ‘disenfranchised grief’, which can be responded to in different ways: other people reinforce the sense of exclusion by processes such as ‘one-upping’ or are supportive through a sense of camaraderie and empathy. In our experience, the loss may be felt for the whole experience of birth, or for one of a myriad of aspects of the experience: women have described a sense of loss due to having a caesarean section, rather than a natural birth, for their baby being taken away for medical investigations after delivery and missing out on the ‘golden hour’ of bonding straight after birth, for being unable to give birth at home, or for many, many other reasons. In a model which has influenced traditional perspectives on grief counselling, grief has been described as ‘work’ by Worden (2008). He explained that there are four ‘tasks’ that a grieving person needs to complete in order to work through their grief, including accepting the reality of what has been lost, processing the pain of grief, adjusting and finding an enduring connection with what has been lost. When thinking about the losses a woman may feel as a result of her childbirth experience, these tasks do not easily fit: finding an enduring connection with what has been lost is challenging when it was not a material connection initially. A helpful alternative framework for understanding grief is the Dual Process Model of coping with bereavement by Stroebe and Schut (2010). This model posits that healthy grieving involves a process of oscillating between a ‘loss-orientated’ state, where grief may be intrusive, and a ‘restoration-orientated’ way of being, which is more focused on attending to life changes and developing new roles, identities and relationships. Oscillation between the two states is a necessary part of the grieving process, and another challenge for some women as they try to work through feelings of loss relating to birth experiences.
“Neither a wife nor a widow”: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of the experiences of female family caregivers in disorders of consciousness
Published in Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 2018
Sonja M. Soeterik, Sarah Connolly, Afsane Riazi
Participants experienced an intolerable position that the DoC was not a true life and was worse than an actual physical death (Cipolletta et al., 2016) further compounded and complicated by a post-injury life full of multiple new medical challenges and instability persisting for prolonged periods. This constant threat of medical complications and further losses increases the experience of ambiguous loss and makes coping with loss confusing as what is to be coped with and adjusted to is unclear (Boss & Couden, 2002). They were full of uncertainty about the prognosis and the future. Whilst challenges with uncertainty in DoC has been described before (Schembs et al., 2018) the participants struggle with so much uncertainty meant it was very frightening to look forwards and too painful to look backwards, leaving them living solely in the moment and may be perpetuating their grief. The Dual Process Model of coping with loss (Stroebe & Schut, 1999) observes that people adopt a present moment focus to facilitate carrying on with the tasks they have to do and oscillate to managing their emotional struggle with their losses in a dose effect that they can cope with, which mirrors the description of how these women coped with uncertainty.
Development of a Bereavement Group in a Geriatric Mental Health Clinic for Veterans
Published in Clinical Gerontologist, 2018
Elizabeth A. Mulligan, Michele J. Karel
Theories about the course of grief describe overlapping reactions and tasks such as accepting the loss, finding some meaning from the loss, and adjusting to a new life (Neimeyer, Prigerson, & Davies, 2002; Worden, 2009). One theory, the dual process model of coping with bereavement (Stroebe & Schut, 1999, 2016) suggests that the process of coping with a loss involves an oscillation between: (1) a loss-oriented focus, which includes allowing oneself to accept the reality of the death by experiencing the pain associated with the loss including the processes of reminiscing about the deceased and of making sense of the death; and (2) a restoration-oriented focus, which includes efforts to cope with secondary stressors such as adapting to new roles and shifting relationships as well as finding new meaning in life. The balance between these two processes is thought to shift to more restoration-oriented activities and fewer loss-oriented activities over time. When bereaved individuals struggle with balancing these different types of tasks, it is hypothesized that their grief may persist at higher levels over a longer period of time. An additional important component of this theory is an emphasis on taking breaks to participate in potentially enjoyable activities (e.g., socialization with others, leisure activities), while simultaneously ensuring that neither loss nor restoration-oriented tasks are avoided for too long (Stroebe & Schut, 1999).
Characteristics of Survivors of Suicide Seeking Counseling From an NGO in Denmark: Analyses of a National Database
Published in Archives of Suicide Research, 2022
Annette Erlangsen, Elene Fleischer, David Gunnell, Merete Nordentoft
According to the dual process model for coping with a bereavement (Stroebe & Schut, 2010), the impact of a loss may vary although it would generally tend to abate over time. The recovery process has been described as an oscillation where the bereaved at times will confronts the loss and its consequences and at times will avoid it (Stroebe & Schut, 2010). We found that almost half of users sought support within the first year after the loss. This parallels with findings of young adults bereaved by suicide indicating that the time immediately after the loss was particularly painful (Pitman, Rantell, Moran, et al., 2017) and users emphasized the need for access to support immediately after the loss (Hawton et al., 2012).