Growth Through Loss & Change, Volume I: How to Be with the Dying Without Fear

Dedication

To all the persons brave enough to be First Responders

To all those who have the courage to stay the course

Through long periods of stress, illness, pain, dying, death, and bereavement.

Contents: Volume I

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Appreciation

Forward

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Chapter 2

Appendix A

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Appendix A

Appendix B

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Appendix A

Chapter 9

Appendix A

Afterward

References

About The Author

Acknowledgments

To my students who taught me the majority of these interventions. They used them, adapted them, shaped them, and authenticated them. My part was to see what principles were being addressed and check them out with qualified personnel in the field for professional correctness.

With deep gratitude to the many professionals who so honestly shared their stories, feelings, and concerns.

Special thanks go to:

William Scheer

Bruce Conley

Donna Kruger

Rev. John Atherton

Rev. Steve Defor

Rev. Chuck Richardson

Rev. Gary McCann

And with deep gratitude to the many nurses who generously gave input to my interviews who declined my invitation to present this information saying:

"I am the clinician.

You are the mouthpiece.

If you do not present this information

It will stay on my unit with me.

You are the teacher

It is your responsibility to give it out

Unto those who can receive.

Appreciation

I appreciate the in-depth editorial and professional reviews of:

Bill Scheer, M. Div., MSW, Braidwood, IL

Bruce Conley, Funeral Director, Elburn, IL

Carter Crane, Editor, The Voice, Aurora, IL

William H. Schultz, BS, Plainfield, IL

John Atherton, M. Div., Hot Springs, AR

Jan Russell, RN, MSN, Pensacola, FL, Deceased 2009

Anita Scheer, MA, Educator, Coal City, IL

Ralph Kieffer, BA, My Brother, Oregon, WI

Marge Orchard, RN, MSN, Elgin, IL

Chuck Edwards, RN, PM, Batavia, IL Deceased 2001

I especially value the fact that the above professionals never ceased to pressure me to publish this manuscript.

Forward

William H. Scheer M. Div., MSW

Clarice has a profound effect on all who take her classes because she has touched us with kindness, knowledge and all the permissions necessary to embrace our loss, to accept it as our own, to grieve it while knowing that our ability to love is not diminished by our loss. She invites us to open our hearts to love once again as we slowly reorganize ourselves for our continued journey. Life is worth living and it continues to demand our participation. She prepares us to face the world again after bereavement and jump back into life.

I remember the comment of a group participant in one of our grief workshops. The woman lost her husband of many years and two grandsons. She had been stuck in grief for four years. She hadn’t baked Christmas cookies or given presents since her husband died. She just couldn’t bring herself to do it. Life offered her no joy and crying was her sorrowful lifestyle. After taking Clarice’s class she was able to celebrate the holidays, decorate, and hang remembrances on the Christmas tree that honored those whom she loved and lost. She was able to step back into life while respecting the memory of her departed loved ones. It was okay for her to feel joy again!

This is what Clarice has done all her adult life. She has set people who were lost in grief free; free to experience the joy of living and loving once again. Her two volume set is full of information about the many dimensions of grief with insights that have been tested and refined over the years. These two volumes are an invaluable source of information for anyone working in the caring professions including nursing, ministry, teaching, psychology and social work. May you have good reading, and welcome to Clarice’s world!

Twenty-seven years ago I was suffering the effects of a recent divorce. I spent many lonely weekends in my apartment hoping to find someone to fill my life with joy. I was standing in my living room one Saturday with nothing to look forward to. I said to myself, You’re not going to meet anyone sitting here in this apartment! I decided that I needed to get involved in a community activity. I had seen several advertisements for volunteers for Fox Valley Hospice. I volunteered as a public relations speaker traveling to churches and fraternities educating the public about the importance and value of this new service in our community. By early fall I decided to volunteer as a direct worker visiting and supporting the dying patient and their family. I was informed by the director that I would have to take a ten week course.

This was my first meeting with the instructor, Clarice Schultz. Little did I know then that she would change my life in some very dramatic ways. There were twelve of us in the class. We were all profoundly affected by Clarice and her teaching style. Once you have taken one of her Grief and Loss classes she is indelibly etched on your heart, never to be forgotten.

Clarice introduced me to my wife in the form of a blind date. She gave me Anita’s phone number as she reminded me, Remember she comes in a package of four. I met my wife to be and her three children on March 19, 1983. We were married in April of 1984. Her children embraced me and we legalized the adoptions at the courthouse. We now have a fourth child. I invested in life and love again. That is healing grief.

Preface

How it Began

The door burst open to the Recovery room where I was nursing two critical patients. This was a quiet room with the lights dimmed and movement quick; but subdued, so as not to agitate the recovering patients coming out of anesthesia. The energy coming in from the nurse at the door was electric. She was saying, I will take your patients, Clarice, I can do it. You go to the emergency department where a man is writhing on the floor, completely overcome with grief at the death of his wife. You are good at that! You can do it! He needs you! I was scared. Death is always scary. I protested; but, she was already taking care of my patients.

At the emergency department I saw bewildered, kind folks, encouraging a young man on the floor. He was inconsolable and could not hear them. They had only been married a year. Swiftly I walked to him and went down onto the floor beside him. I locked in on his energy stream and reflected, reflected, coo-ed, reflected, comforted, and reflected.

That is how this all began. From then on I was often called to any part of the hospital.

I had just graduated from nursing school a couple of months before, so when the administration offered me an opportunity to attend Dr. Kubler-Ross’s seminars in Chicago, I was amazed and honored. The only requirement was that I turn in a summary of her presentations and develop nursing recommendations upon my return to the hospital. I did; and I was done.

A week later I met the Nursing Administrator in the hallway. She asked me to make an appointment with her to arrange teaching times for all the head nurses in the hospital. I said, Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t teach. She answered Yes, you can teach. I replied that it was a conscious decision of mine to choose nursing over teaching; therefore, someone else would have to teach the material because I would not be doing it. I was going to nurse patients. As I walked down the hall I heard her voice say, Yes, nurses do teach."

About two weeks later I met her in the hall again. Her mood was different. Sounding authoritative, she said, I asked you to make an appointment to come in to talk about teaching. I responded, And I told you, no. I would not teach. I cannot teach. I don’t know how, and I choose not to teach. Squinting her eyes, she asked in a steel voice, Ms. Schultz, do you like working here at this hospital? If you do, you will make that appointment with my secretary. And that is how my teaching career began.

I taught two series of eight sessions at the hospital, at the local college the next semester, the following semester I spoke nine hours in the superdome in New Orleans to an international convention of emergency physicians and nurses. Decades later, it is still going on. I am still teaching.

Donna Kruger RN

It was a few years later when I heard that a nurse from a nearby hospital was at a Catholic school in Aurora, Illinois, presenting a session on meeting the needs of the dying and their families. I attended and introduced myself. The custodian locked the school but Donna Kruger and I were still in the school parking lot at 3am. It was so exciting! She had been approached by Illinois Senator Grotberg to begin a new emerging model of care for the dying and their families, called Hospice. Donna Kruger, Bruce Conley, and I founded the Fox Valley Hospice.

We divided the duties, she took the development of the administration and I developed the hospice educational component. There was no end to the growth of that knowledge. I spent days at Rush Medical College Library doing research. I loved it! I taught the hospice training course for eleven years, at which time I left Illinois and moved to Houston, Texas. I continued to teach and develop this course continuously in Texas and now again in Illinois.

Certified

The entirety of this material has received full continuation education credit for all the helping professions in numerous states on the Regional and National lecture circuits. I have taught it for graduate as well as undergraduate credit. All of it has been clinically tested in the classroom and professional institutions of hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, schools, home health and palliative care facilities.

Most years I lectured or taught on the average about four times a week during the semester. The course was designed as a 2 ½ hour session by the original college for whom I taught. It consisted of 1 hour lecture and the other hour as facilitated sharing time. The college observers quickly saw that the one hour format did not do the students justice. Grief is so intense that when the student opened up they needed time to debrief. I still keep that format for classroom situations.

Introduction

My intention is to publish these unedited versions of my lectures so that others may use parts of them to augment their own presentations. It is my desire that readers find the material helpful in their personal as well as professional lives. It is a body of work that has proved useful throughout many years.

If something were to happen to me these lecture manuscripts will die in my file cabinets. It is to avoid this fate that I put them on the internet for the use of anyone. That is what they were developed for, that is what I devoted my life to, and may the ministry to the suffering continue.

The manuscripts were developed by request of the sponsoring agency for presentations at professional regional and national conventions. Therefore they are meant to stand alone. To achieve this, I often cut and pasted from existing manuscripts to provide the proper introduction and background for the material. Therefore you will find some repeats of material.

They went together nicely for the college courses that I taught. You may use them as you wish to best serve your audience.

Course Name:

Many versions depending on the institution sponsoring the program or course.

Sensitivity to Loss

Death & Dying

Grief & Grieving

It is an assumption of this course that all who are bereaved,

Are also placed in the role of helper

This role occurs both in a present loss situation as well as in future losses, so that any healthy coping patterns learned in this loss event will be available with adaptation for future losses.

Course Description:

This course focuses on the principles, theories and intervention methods that underlie the care and support of the dying and bereaved. Emphasis is on identifying the dynamics of loss and discovering practical means of support in the personal and institutional setting.

Content Includes:

Dynamics of grief for the adult and child, tasks of the dying person, the grief impact on family and institutions, and the role of the community in support of mourners.

Intervention methods are taught which are related to the cultural and emotional aspects of, dying, grieving, sudden death, grieving children, and caregiving.

Target Population:

All persons in the helping professional and paraprofessional fields, e.g. nurses, physicians, teachers, counselors, ministers, funeral directors, EMT’s, respiratory therapist, police, fire, hospice volunteers, grief support facilitators, church visitors, and all lay persons who are sensitized to death and grief. Continuation education credit for this material has been granted to each of the above groups.

History of Course:

Content of this course has been DEVELOPED and taught by CLARICE SCHULTZ for 30 years in a variety of settings, colleges, hospitals, hospices, churches, workshops, seminars, and inservice programs around the USA. Ms. Schultz published some of the content in professional journals.

Goal:

To enable the students to: develop a therapeutic presence that they can offer to themselves and others coping with a loss, in family, community, and institution.

Chapter 1

Emotional Preparation

Of the

Helping Person

Experiential Journey

Welcome to this book that will take you on a journey. As you go through each chapter you will find that your life will change. It will be more of an experience for you than an academic learning of facts. There will be academic material but the information affects you experientially. As you travel through the pages of this book life will be different for you. Through these pages you will find a safe place to search your own life’s history of loss and come to terms with your own personal death awareness.

This will give you an opportunity to define your personal value system. Through this you will be able to define your individual skills of self knowledge, self healing, and self growth. In this way you will be able to reach out to heal others through the experience of your wounds, not in spite of your own wounds.

Your decision to read this book indicates that you want to help others as they struggle through their life’s passages. I also believe you are interested in learning how to process your personal losses in a healthy way so you can continue to grow and love into a rich old age.

This book is designed to help you look at your own life. The information contained here will assist you in gathering the gifts of grief from your life and from there to reach out to support others in their losses. The principles and dynamics of loss are presented here in a way that can be applied to oneself as well as to other people.

This material is presented from a holistic health model. We are holistic by nature. We are a composition of several facets; social, physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. When working with a dying or a grieving person we need to be aware of each of these dimensions in their life, and at the same time, it is important to be aware of these dimensions within ourselves.

Writer’s Contract

I have been privileged to be on this journey with many classes of students. I, too, have grown as the students shared what they read, discussed, and put into action. The students have been my teachers. It is from them that I have learned much of what I share with you. Just as I have grown immensely from the sharing of others in my classes, you also will benefit. I am glad to share this material with you.

Congratulations

I want to acknowledge the difficulty that people have when they decide to study bereavement. It is hard to make the decision to help others in grief. So, along with my welcome to you, I want to congratulate you.

I really do mean congratulations on reading this book. If you evaluate how you felt about studying the subject of bereavement and you were straightforward, you would likely admit that it was a difficult decision. It may have been an effort to put one foot in front of the other or you might have felt like walking backwards. You probably thought of a million things you had to do before you got involved, or needed to get involved with this thought process. You may have felt that you wanted to postpone the study of death and dying, grief and grieving, until next season. Reticence is the name of this game. Be candid: you would have found it easier to sign up for a course on precious gems, CPR, or aerobics.

Why is it so hard to take a course on death and dying? Because deep down you know you run the risk of bringing up some of your past unresolved grief. It is daunting to think of it coming to the surface. You wonder, Can I handle that?

Not Denying Grief

By your opening this book you are different. There is a screening process that takes place when people choose to acknowledge loss. Some people choose to avoid all reminders of loss. Your presence tells us that you are not denying the reality of grief in your life. You are saying by your behavior, Since grief is real and does exist; since sorrow is a part of all of our lives, I would like to know more about what is normal in the bereavement process and how I can assist someone who is grieving.

You recognize the actuality that in time you will have a grieving friend, a fellow worker, or someone in your church family who is going through a tragedy. Many of you are presently relating to a bereaved person, a grieving Mother-in-law, sister, brother, or friend. You want to support their healthy behaviors.

A Screening Process

There is a self screening process that takes place when the opportunity to study attachment and loss arises. Many choose to avoid the subject and therefore the opportunity to learn more about this taboo subject. You are special. You are different. What kind of people study death, dying, and the principles and dynamics of loss? I don’t think that there is a common denominator other than that there is a genuine depth of caring in these people. They are all beautiful souls; they all want to use their lives and skills in a therapeutic manner to make life a little easier and healthier for themselves and others who suffer.

Knowledge Does Not Take Away Pain

For yourself, the knowledge of principles and dynamics of dying and bereavement will not take away your pain; because, if you have loved, you will grieve. Grief is a love story and you would not grieve so, if you had not loved so. Grief follows attachment as surely as night follows day. The pain of separation will be there for you.

One of my students, a young innocent looking 19 year old burst out in class saying. But that is why I came to this class. I don’t want to grieve. I want to learn how not to be sorrowful. She went on to say, I was a late in life baby. My parents are old and because of health conditions, I know they will die in the next ten years. I do not want to grieve. I do not want to feel bad!

Her intensity shocked the other classmates. It sounded as though she had an attachment difficulty. It sounded as though she was without feelings. Stunned, a young minister in the class asked, Do you love them? she broke down sobbing, Yes, I love them so much. The minister responded, That was your first mistake. Now you are destined to grieve. She wept. Then she spoke of her parents saying, They are the nicest people I have ever known. They mean the world to me. I cannot imagine living without them. I don’t think I can survive their deaths. I am so afraid. I hoped the class would tell me how not to grieve. The other students were sensitive and supportive to her and during the semester she gained confidence that she could indeed survive the grief. She grew determined to gather all the gifts of having loved and in time lose those two wonderful parents.

There is something different about suffering pain when you know that what you are going through is normal. It doesn’t seem so frightening to go through the process.

Birthing a New Self Image

An analogy that helps is childbirth. When a woman enters labor without any knowledge of the process, she becomes frightened. Once the pains get beyond the intensity of menstrual cramps, and once her body takes over and spontaneously responds to each new stage, the new mother tends to panic because she has lost control.

Wood’s People

At 16 years of age I worked in a busy obstetric department in northern Wisconsin. In those days there were people referred to as, Wood’s people, since they lived in the forests. As a little girl I went with my mother as she drove down the forest fire lanes to find them. She seemed to know when they were sick or without food. I recall her saying they were people who couldn’t live in a community; some for personal reasons, some for psych reasons, others were alcoholics, but all of them wanted to isolate themselves. My uncle George was one of them. He was very spiritual, a hermit, and he loved the forest. He was a good man; I loved him dearly.

These people had babies and the girls grew to puberty at which age many were impregnated. In the 1930’s and 1940’s most or these children did not go to school. Later the school buses stopped at the mouth of the lane and the children walked back into the forest. These children had no amenities. Their babies were born in shacks and the birth not wisely attended to, if at all. But by the 1950’s there were an increasing number of pregnant girls found on the roadways waving down cars for help. They were in the middle of complicated labor. Their lives were in danger. Sometimes they were alone and sometimes a person would be with them. But that person seldom got in the car. When they came into the hospital the nurses loved these young mothers. There was empathy and gladness at the opportunity to save their life and perhaps their baby’s life.

At sixteen years of age I was so impressed with their fear. They had never seen electric lights, masked people, or stainless steel. Injections and IV’s were torture instruments in their eyes. They were terrified! They were totally unprepared, much less prepared than the third world people of today. Of course there was no TV and they had never heard of a telephone or seen running water in pipes or toilets, or a building over one story high. I don’t remember one girl whose support person came into the hospital with her. They were alone. We kept someone at her side to ease her fear.

Not the Time to Patient Teach

The most a support person can do at that time is to stand beside and encourage. In the time of deep fright, deep pain, or deep grief, it is not the time to patient teach. During crisis the recipient cannot deal with more than one thought at a time since the ability to make rational judgment is impaired. The nurses could only assure her that we would not leave her alone and when we had to go home another person would sit with her. We could gently stroke her and make calm parental sounds. That is all.

Can the woman in the height of labor learn all about child birthing while she is in labor? No. And so it is in grief. When we are talking to someone in the state of crisis, we cannot share with them all the wonderful helpful knowledge we learned about the grieving process. We can stand by, be supportive and offer our warmth. We can say, Lean on me, you are not alone. We recognize what you are going through, we’ve seen it before. I assure you that it looks normal to me.

However, those mothers who have been through the child birthing education process understand the birthing phases. Even so, they too, have to experience labor. But when the contractions take over, the body submits to labor and the pregnant mom loses control, she asks, What’s happening? The nurse answers, You are in phase II or Phase III. The mother responds with, Oh yes, as she identifies what she is experiencing to be a normal process, and panic ceases. It is the unnecessary pain of grief that we want to prevent, not the necessary pain of birthing a new self image.

Necessary Contraction Pain

I ask you, was that mother who attended the child birthing classes spared pain? Is she spared one contraction that is necessary to bring that child into the world? No! So it is in grief. After losing precious people in your life, the knowledge of the normal dynamics of grief will not save you one necessary contractual pain as you birth a new self image. But it surely makes a significant difference to know the pain you feel is normal, instead of fearing that you are going insane. You can then make plans on how to work with the grief to facilitate its processing.

Emotional Preparation

Permissions

It is important to prepare yourself for the emotional component of this work by giving yourself permission to experience the full range of emotions. The time you spend reading this book may be a sad time for you. Many students of mine have said, I am very sad the day after class. They wonder, Perhaps the course is not good for me if it makes me so sad. Some wonder if they are not good candidates for grief support work because they feel so sad after working with this material.

Let the Sad Flow Free

I think it is good to permit the sad to flow freely. I don’t think the sad is in the course, the sad is in you. If you have lived this long; you have lost. Losses are part of life. You could not have gotten to the age you are now without experiencing loss. Many of the losses you are dealing with are unidentified. Identified or not, you still expend energy to repress your feelings as you keep them below the surface.

This book will give you permission to let the sad flow freely. I’d like to suggest to you that you use this period of time to practice getting comfortable with all of your emotions. When you feel them, simply identify the feeling and allow it to emerge. You will be a much freer person when you no longer have to expend energy controlling those feelings.

Night Dreams

Also be prepared for the night dreams. Perhaps your story or someone else’s will keep circulating in your head and in your dreams. That is okay. Allow the dreams to occur. Dreams are part of processing exceptional material; however not everyone remembers their dreams.

Feeling of Love and Joy

As you experience deeper feelings of sad you will go deeper and deeper into your feelings of love and joy. It is a process. That is just the way it is; there is a balance to life. The more your sadness is liberated, the freer you are to feel feelings of delight and love, because the same energy that restrains sad holds out love and joy. When you are no longer using that energy to put a cap on sad, love and joy quietly emerge. You won’t have to will it to happen. It just does.

You become sensitized to all of life during the time of grief study. Take time to notice the colors in the sunrise and sunsets. They will excite you more, music will touch you deeper; poems and thoughtful meditations will be more meaningful. You will enjoy seeing other people loving one another and supporting each other in a special way.

Use of the Therapeutic Self

You will be aware that you have become more observant of how people reach out and touch one another. You will be conscious of how people stand supportively beside one another, and how they demonstrate caring for each other.

Take this opportunity of renewed sensitivity to soak in the love and joy you are experiencing. This is a good time for you to become acutely observant of others using their therapeutic-self. You will see it in the grocery store, on the ball court, street, and in the work place. You will recognize it by the tone of voice, open body language, eye contact, soft eyes, parental tones, and gentle touch. The period of grief study is a time when we are acutely aware of the therapeutic use of self.

One day you may be in line at the bank and notice the teller reaching out to cover the hand of an elderly person and understand he is changing the name on the bank account from two persons to one. That is hard. I was at a tennis tournament when a young woman lost the championship game. Her coach husband ran unto the court. I could see that he was talking continuously to her. I assumed he was coaching her. He had his forehead against her forehead and his arms around her neck. Then I saw her crying and he tenderly wiped her tears. He was not coaching. He was encouraging her. They were alone in a public arena.

Personal Death Awareness

Mirror Effect

Looking at those who have lost is like looking in a mirror. We see ourselves and those we love in their eyes, their stories, their yearnings, and their love. It is scary, intense, exciting, enriching, touching, and sad, all at the same time. Here we touch the essence of being alive. This is where the rubber hits the road. This is where attachment lies and where love is born. This is where the heart is torn asunder. This is the wonder of life and living.

That Could be Me

A phenomenon called the mirror effect happens when we look at a grieving person and for a moment we see ourselves. Suddenly we realize That could be me! That could be mine! Instead of seeing that other person we see ourselves, our mates, our child in that car crash, our Dad on that death bed. With that happening, innocence is lost. We will never be quite as naïve again.

The reaction to the mirror effect is one of terror. A part of us thinks as the Psalmist, Thousands will fall to my right and thousands to my left, but I will be standing. Usually we live with thoughts like, It happens to the other guy. I am gifted and from my bounty I want to help others who suffer. My role is the helper, not the helpee.

Role Confusion, Victim or Rescuer

My husband and I lived in our wonderful home for twenty nine years. I planted every known flower and many trees on our lot. We brought our babies home to that fine house and they left it to live their independent lives. It housed my dreams. From there I attended colleges, taught, and nursed in trauma and disaster programs. Then one day in thirteen seconds a tornado wiped out a lifetime. It took the mementoes of our history and spread them over twenty miles and filled our yard five feet high with other people’s torn memorabilia.

I was in shock. For days I walked the devastated neighborhood that I used to know so well, but now could not even tell whose lot was whose or where the occupants had gone. Twenty nine people were dead and countless injured. All went to live somewhere else. Disaster teams of every ilk were everywhere. I walked and walked with one refrain, Lord, I am supposed to be out there with one of those disaster teams, not in here as a victim. I couldn’t get over the role confusion of being victim or rescuer.

We think, I take care of my children, teach them, provide a good example, disaster won’t happen to them. We think, I drive carefully, I made good choices, I save my money, I have good insurance. I plan. That ensures it won’t happen to me. But, suddenly the time comes when we are face to face with a suffering person and realize, It could happen to me! It could be someone I love!

Grieve Your Vulnerability

The mirror effect happens to most people. Most likely it will happen to you. What to do? Live through it. Process it. Grieve your vulnerability. It takes months for a helping person whether neighbor, church member, volunteer or staff, to go through the adjustment of working closely with the dying and bereaved. During the time of adjustment it is sad, frightening, and humbling. Let it be. Accept your place in the human condition and it will pass.

You will never go back to that period of naïveté, that period of innocence again. But the terror and the pain will pass. Out of your compassion will come true empathy and a maturity of spirit. You are no longer above it all, no longer superior. You have a sense of oneness with all people, awareness that we are all connected, and a sincere, Today is not my time. Today is your journey. I am here with you.

Unless we are willing to face our vulnerability through those who suffer, we cannot work effectively with them; therefore it is necessary to be open and vulnerable to do this work.

Be Gentle With Your Self

This means that during this period of grief study you will become extra sensitive and this affects other parts of your life. Certain movies and stories won’t be for you right now, just as particular jokes and bawdiness may not be for you now. Do not bombard yourself with them. As you open yourself to deeper levels some experiences will remain with you for a time. You may need to turn off the TV. You will think, This program is not for me now. You will know that you are too emotionally fragile to deal with harshness. Students think they will be sensitive forever, but after this material has been processed, some of that sensitivity moderates.

So be gentle with yourself during this time of grief study. Do nice things for yourself. Since you will be more emotionally vulnerable and open spiritually, give yourself more time to walk, to muse, and time to just sit and be.

Use a Debriefer

When working in the field of grief and dying one of the most important aspects of self care is the effective use of a debriefer. You will need a person to whom you can spill out all of your reactions; the angry ones, jealous ones, feelings of being scared, lonely, sad, joyful, and happy. You need to process the guilt of could I have done it differently, and could I have done more? And yes, you need someone to share the ecstatic feelings that are so much a part of this work. There is a euphoria that occurs when working in the field of loss. Dr. Garfield from Berkley said the elation is the major reason people stay in this work.

You will find that very dear friends and relatives cannot be a debriefer for you. You will need an objective outsider who knows how to listen to what is happening to you and be supportive in all the facets of your feelings as you process grief experiences. Students tend to choose their dearest friend who they have always been able to say anything to. But we found that very few people can listen to what a bereavement support person has to say. This is different than what you have shared in the past. Friends are not prepared for what grief support persons have to talk about. Very few people are prepared to hear what it felt like to look at what you looked at, and to hear what you heard.

It is important that you make a contract with an outsider, preferably someone trained as a people helper such as a therapist, counselor, teacher, nurse, social worker, or minister. This special person needs to agree to be available to you at all reasonable times when you need to emote and debrief. This person needs to care about you. It is not necessary that your debriefer be particularly interested in grief dynamics. You need someone who is interested in your physical, spiritual, emotional, social, and intellectual needs; someone who is interested in all facets of your holistic self and how each aspect is affected by your grief work. In the debriefing session it is wise to go over each aspect; social, emotional, intellectual, physical, and spiritual separately and express how that part of you has been affected by your grief work. Put tabs in your journal and make a separate section for each one. Believe me, each of your facets are affected when you are immersed in grief. To keep from burning out each of them must be kept filled.

Awareness of Your Losses

A Life’s Review

You have already grieved. I know that. Whether identified or not, most helping persons have already tasted the bitter sting of loss. It is through the gifts, the insights of their grief-experience that they became sensitized to the needs of others.

Visiting with the dying and grieving causes the support person to review his or her personal losses. It also provides a revelation of losses that are to come in the future. This review is ongoing. It is the ability to live and work with life’s review that is a crucial attribute in a helping person. Those who achieve this ability cannot keep themselves from grieving. This leads to healing and growing. It is to this purpose of personal death awareness, along with the knowledge of the principles and dynamics of loss, that an education course for those working with the dying and grieving must be focused.

These permissions must be considered when facilitating grief support groups because, even though the members of the group are considered lay people, lay people are the major caregivers for family,