Coping with bereavement
With more than 50 years of experience between them, the pair regularly conduct workshops and present conferences in their native US.
Both women were in Bermuda this week to hold seminars for both health professionals and the general public on how we can better cope with something we all experience at some point in our lives — bereavement. Reporter GARETH FINIGHAN and photographer GLENN TUCKER met with Dr. Katz and Mrs. Hauder to discuss their work.
Q: What is grief counselling?
SK: We’re mental health professionals and we specialise in grief. I wouldn’t say we do grief counselling but we specialise in helping people who have had someone in their family die. There’s a special body of knowledge in order to help people who have experienced a death that’s quite different from other areas of mental health. RH: Much of it involves helping people understand common responses and reactions to loss so that they know that what they’re experiencing is normal and natural. That allows individuals and family members to accept whatever they’re experiencing and be able to cope better with the loss when they know they’re not going crazy.
A lot of what we do in counselling is “normalising” what people are experiencing and educating them about grief and loss, about what that process is like and how it takes a lot longer for most people than they think.Q: Time is the greatest healer. Is that true?
SK:<$> It’s true on the one hand but on the other we have totally inappropriate time expectations for people in terms of healing. The very word ‘closure’ is inappropriate because there’s no such thing as closure. After 9/11 there was a lot of talk about closure once they had found body parts but it really is a non-concept. it doesn’t happen. People need to figure out how to have a relationship with someone who’s no longer here.
Medical text books will say that if someone is still grieving after a year that’s pathological, it’s totally wrong. But people can take several years after the loss of a spouse or a parent.
If you lose a child I tell people, if they’re pressing for a timeline, that it may be five years, just to give them some understanding that we’re not talking about weeks or months.
Our society usually will give people about six weeks, then after that we don’t want to see any more crying in public or a candle on the desk any more. The one thing we do is help people with time expectations.RH: Even after five years . . . I think it’s difficult to talk about years. Asking someone how long grief takes to get through is like asking somebody how high is up. The reality is that, even when the most intense grief has passed, there will often be times of resurgence, during special holidays or whatever, certain triggers.SK: <$>Just this morning I was talking to Rebecca about my grandmother who’s been dead for 30 years and I got tears in my eyes. The idea of giving time expectations is so individual but our biggest message is that it takes way longer than anyone is comfortable with — family members, co-workers, a therapist — it takes longer than most people think. The take-home message is that people need to be patient with themselves and their friends.Q: Are you able to help people who are dealing with other people who have suffered a loss?
RH: Absolutely. That’s what we’re doing today and that’s what we’re doing with the public seminar this week. It’s about how people can help their friends who are suffering a bereavement.
Q: And how can people help?
SK: Talk about the person who died. Mention their name. Recall a favourite memory you have about that person.
Q: But people might feel awkward about that.
SK: No, you shouldn’t. Just talk ordinarily about them. When someone is talking about their child and what their child is doing, just say ‘And what sports was Johnny involved with?’When someone dies it doesn’t mean they never existed. Their accomplishments are still there, the relationship is still there, and people need to continue that relationship. You can help them do that by being open and talking about it. By keeping memories alive.
People might not want to talk about how bad they’re feeling but they will always want to talk about the person they lost. They might cry while doing it but so what?
You haven’t made them feel bad, they feel bad all the time anyway. You make it less of a burden because, by talking about the loss, you make the bereaved person feel less isolated, less alone.RH: The other thing that people have a need to talk about is the way the person died. If it’s someone who had a lingering illness they sometimes need somebody to process with. It’s a way of helping them make sense of it all. But you also need to tell the story of the person’s life.
SK:<$> It’s all about human connection that many people shy away from because they think it’s not polite or because it might make someone feel bad or because we’re uncomfortable talking about it. People say they don’t want to go to grief counselling because they say it won’t make them feel better. Exactly. We can’t take away the pain but we make them feel less alone and we make them feel less like they’re going crazy.Q: Is there a typical grieving process?
SK: <$>There are some typical things, some typical reactions if not a process. For example, in the beginning people are in shock and it takes months before reality sets in. Then there’s typically a period of what I call hard grief where you’re in a row boat on a stormy sea and being tossed from wave to wave and it’s all kinds of emotions — anger and guilt, physical problems, sadness, despair, hostility.
Then, after time, maybe a year, maybe two, who knows, that gets less and less and people begin to see a light at the end of the tunnel. They have some days when they don’t cry or days when they actually might smile.
They’re then able to talk about the person without focusing on the death event but on who the person was. Then people can begin to re-engage with life, although really your life is never the same after you’ve had a major loss.
Everything relates to before the death and after the death. You’re changed and people have to figure out who they are in terms of the new reality of their life.Q: Have you both gone through the grieving process yourselves with the loss of a loved one?
RH:<$> Yes. I’ve had two very significant deaths in my life. I lost a sister when I was two-and-a-half and then my father died ten years ago. Both of those were very different loss experiences. With my father there was a tremendous amount of adjustment because he filled a role with my mother and when he died I and my sisters had to do so much more to see to her wellbeing. With my sister I don’t have recollections of her but what I do know is the impact it had on my family.
There were many other secondary losses as a result of her death that took place — the emotional climate in the family was altered so much and it altered my relationship with my siblings, it altered my mother’s ability to give me the nurturing that I needed at that time.Q: Do you think the death of your father helped you in your own profession as a counsellor?
RH:<$> Yes, I think it did and I think it also helped me understand what I was going through. I understood my clients more after that. But I also took some time off too because it was too intense helping other people when I was going through so many emotions.
Q: Has our attitude to death changed over the years?
SK: A little bit because people talk about it a bit more. For example, when I first started in this people didn’t really know what a hospice was. I think we’ve perhaps become a bit more comfortable with it. Twenty-five years ago people wouldn’t be told what they had if they were dying. People are a lot more open now.Q: Do you think counselling has become like an industry now? It seems everybody needs counselling for every problem in their lives. Why do you think that is and is it a good thing?
SK:<$> I feel that I’ve helped thousands of people but the truth is you have to help yourself. You have to make your own changes. I think it’s a good thing generally but I do also think that there are people who become mental health professionals who are trying to work through their own mental health problems.
RH: I think some people are counsellor junkies, just going from one to another without really being motivated to make any changes in their life. We want to lead them to a place where they don’t need to see a counsellor.
Q: What made you get into grief counselling?
SK: I saw a big need because I realised that no one wants to talk to people who have suffered a loss.
RH: I applied for a job in a hospice programme after being in nursing for ten years. There was me and one other woman and within two months she quit and so I ended up taking the programme through the next leg of the journey. I found that I enjoyed the work, as hard as it was and challenging.
SK: It really is a privileged experience to be involved with families at such an intense time in their lives. It’s crisis time for most people and to help them ease that time is very gratifying and fulfilling.
Q: Finally, if there’s one thing that you could say to someone who’s just suffered a bereavement, what would it be?
RH: Often a person who has suffered a major loss isn’t necessarily suicidal but they don’t want to go on living. Their pain is so great they don’t care if they live or die. What we do is educate and help them to normalise.
SK: People need permission to grieve and we talk to them about what to expect. Self care is a big thing. Just give them very concrete ways to take care of themselves during that time. Drop out, drop everything you’re doing and take some time to just sit and cry and grieve and find somebody to talk to about it. Find some way to reconnect with the person that has died. Be in their room or wearing an article of clothing of theirs.
That’s a really good step. I think it’s great and some people sit down and write a journal in the form of a letter to the person that’s died.
There’s nothing wrong with any of that, it’s just a way of connecting. If you always wanted to buy that pink dress for your baby who’s died then buy it. RH: For friends and family more than anything it’s important for them to listen and not pass judgement on the way someone is grieving because there’s not a right way and there’s not a wrong way. The worst thing a person can say is, ‘You have to snap out of it, you have to get on with your life’.
That kind of thing is just so unhelpful. You know what? You can do what you want.
