HELPING CHILDREN WITH LIFE AFTER LOSSLAURA BEST, MSW, LCSW

LEXINGTON COUNSELING AND PSYCHIATRY

LEARNING COMMUNITY BEHAVIORS

• Be fully present

• Be self-responsible for engaging in this session

• Be productive

• Be solution-oriented

• Honor confidentiality

• Your participating in activities and discussions is not mandatory but appreciated

OBJECTIVES:

Describe the influence of culture and society on experience loss and grief.

1

Describe the relationship between personal attitudes and experiences and one's effectiveness in intervening with individuals and families experiencing death, dying, loss, and grief.

2

Recognize and support expressions of grief as a response to loss.

3

Recognize, support, and foster healthy loss and grief oriented rituals.

4

THE INFLUENCE OF CULTURE AND SOCIETY ON EXPERIENCE LOSS AND GRIEF.

• Culture influences much of our experience including loss

• Rituals connected with loss closely connected to culture

• Polarized

• What do you see?

• What do you think and feel?

• What do you wonder?

• What do you see?

• What do you think and feel?

• What do you wonder?

• What do you see?

• What do you think and feel?

• What do you wonder?

WHAT DOES THAT TELL US???

PERSONAL ATTITUDE AND EXPERIENCE AND AFFECT WHAT WE DO

Our professional experience with clients moving

through grief and loss

Our own personal experience

Our struggle to understand grief and

loss inherently influences how help

A STRUGGLE TO UNDERSTAND

What did you see?

• What’s in your suitcase?

• Professional?

• Personal?

GOOD BYE’S

What did you see?

GIVEN A CHOICE BETWEEN GRIEF AND NOTHING, I’D CHOOSE GRIEF

-WILLIAM FAULKNER

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-

NC-ND

UNIVERSALITY OF EXPERIENCE

• Love and grief are “package deal”

• Only protection from grief/loss is total detachment

WHAT WE CAN DO TO SUPPORT

Educate

Structure and predictability of safety

Understand through the lens of context

Tangible rituals

STAGES OF GRIEF

• Denial/Shock

• Anger/Protest

• Bargaining

• Depression

• Resolution

STAGES OF GRIEF

What did you see?

UNDERSTANDING

• Societal and cultural context

• Gentle and steady, slow….not quickly

• Want to be SEEN so not alone in the grief

• Australian cultural response to grief – move something to acknowledge change

• Our souls know how to do this, we have been doing this as people forever

• “Watering the flowers”

HEALING

• Cant heal what we don’t feel

• Feel as opposed to resist grief

• Acute grief transitions to grief bursts – “grief is asking for time with you”

• Surviving the pain of that loss

GRIEF IS A NO JUDGMENT ZONE

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

CONSIDERATION OF DEVELOPMENTAL RELEVANCE

Developmental

stage

Developmental task Behaviors Helping actions

Infancy Trust Crying loudly, withdrawal,

apathy, mournful crying

Keep routine, familiar smells and

sounds

Preschool

Ages 2–5

Do not have: logic,

cause/affect, permanence

Clingy, anxious, stubborn Loving, stable interactions,

patiently attempt to connect

School

Ages 6-11

Forming concrete logical

thoughts

School and learning

problems, preoccupation

with loss of caregiver

Sympathetic listeners, assist

teachers or other adults

Adolescence

12-19

Grieve through stages of

grief, forming identity

Destructive behaviors:

substance abuse, eating

disorders, depression

Help deal with conflicting

emotions, sense of identity, allow

to make choices, safe expressions

of freedom and independence.

FROM A CHILD’S PERSPECTIVE

What did you see?

GRIEF PRESENTATIONS

• Inward

• Guilt

• Isolation

• Outward

• Anger

• Avoidance

TRAUMA AND GRIEF

What did you see?

IDENTIFYING LOSS- AND GRIEF-ORIENTED RITUALS

• Rituals are important because they:

• Symbolically express feelings

• Help create a continuing and enduring connection

• Can provide a sense of legacy

• Help to make meaning

CONTINUED CONNECTIONS

• Connections: spiritual, physical, emotional

• Don’t/didn’t stop loving them

• How to have a relationship after death – love in absence not just presence

• We heal as a tribe

• Make an appt with your grief

• Finding a meaningful way to adjust to a world and life without

• Hamburg – St Nikolai Church (symbolism)

LOVE AND GRIEF ARE A PACKAGE DEAL

What did you see?

TANGIBLE RITUALS

• Memory table

• Donation in one’s name

• Plant a tree

• Lighting a candle

• Poem/prayer

• Decorating grave

• Wearing clothing or jewelry

• Favorite flowers

• Songs

• Meals

• Picture mementos

• Lifebooks

• Going away party

• Others?

RESOURCES

• Hospice

• Therapy Aid

• Pinterest

• Professionals

• Each other

• More?

MOVIES:

• Inside out

• We Bought a Zoo

• The Lion King

• The Good Dinosaur

• Instant Family

• Others?

BOOKS:

• I Miss My Foster Parents, by Stefon Herbert

• The Elephant in the Room: A Children’s Book for Grief and Loss, by Amanda Edwards

• Building the Bonds of Attachment, Awakening Love in Deeply Troubled Children, by

Daniel A. Huges

PRESENTATION CITATIONS:

• The Other Side of Sadness by George A. Bonanno

• Mindfulness for Prolonged Grief by Dr. Sameet M. Kumar

• Grief Land by Armen Bacon and Nancy Miller

• Life After Loss by Bob Deits

• It’s OK that you’re not OK by Megan Devine

• On Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

• Help Me Say Goodbye by Janis Silverman

THANK YOU!LBESTLCSW@GMAIL.COM

Laura Best, MSW, LCSWDirector of Children’s and Clinical ServicesLexington Counseling and Psychiatry859-312-0661

WWW.COUNSELINGLEXINGTONKY.COM