Grief-Death or Illness of Family Member or Friend

Presented By,Jacob Arzaga, B.A, Ashley Arnold, B.S,

Matthew Edwards, B.A, Alysha Marquez, B.A, Adrian Tamas, B.

March 2014

Workshop Outline:• Adrian

o Illness of Family Members or Friends

• Jacob

o Grieving Across Cultures, universal coping strategies

• Matthew

o Defining Grief, Grieving styles, and myths about grieving

• Alysha & Ashley

o Spirituality, Interventions, Grief on College Campuses

o What can we do? and What to avoid?

• Q & A

• Evaluation

Student Learning Outcomes:• Students will be able to define various forms of coping with chronic illness

• Students will be able to identify how culture affects the grieving process

• Students will recognize the prevalence of grieving students on college campuses

• Students will be able to list different interventions of dealing with loss

• Students will be able to briefly understand the process of meaning making and spirituality

Illness of Family Member or Friends:• Chronic illness - A health problem that is prolonged, rarely cured, and often causes

impairment in activities of daily living

• Coping - Conscious and volitional efforts to regulate oneself and/or the environment in response to stress

• Primary control coping - Efforts to change a stressor (e.g., problem solving) or one’s emotional reactions to a stressor (e.g., emotional expression)

• Secondary control coping - Efforts to adapt oneself to a stressor, by strategies such as cognitive reappraisal, positive thinking, acceptance, and distraction

• Disengagement coping - Efforts to orient away from a stressor or one’s reactions to a stressor (e.g., avoidance, denial)

Definition: What is Grief:

• Grief is our response to loss, which may be a death, divorce, separation or other loss.

• Grief can affect our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, beliefs, and relationships with others.

Typical feelings experienced:

1. Many people experience feelings of sadness, anxiety, fear and numbness

2. It is important to realize that Grief is a process, not an event. It is a journey, not a destination.

College Students & Grief:

40%

16.5% per 100,000 Students

22-30% in 1st 12 Months

Balk, D. E., Walker, A. C., & Baker, A. (2010). Prevalence and Severity of College StudentBereavement Examined in a Randomly Selected Sample. Death Studies, 34(5), 459-468. Grasgeen, A. (2011). Colleges report few student deaths. Inside Higher Education

Different Grieving Styles: Generally, there are two broad styles of grieving, but most people experience a

combination of both. They are:

• The intuitive approach – people seek out social support and tend to focus on

the emotional aspects of their loss and managing their feelings

• The instrumental approach – people tend to focus on the cognitive (thinking)

aspects of their loss. They may grieve through activities and problem solving.

This style tends to be more solitary and private, focusing on managing the

thoughts that arise.

Myths about Grieving: • All losses are the same

• All people grieve the same

• It takes 2 weeks to 3 months to get over your grief

• When grief is resolved, it never comes back

• It is better to put painful thoughts out of your mind

• Anger should not be a part of grief

• You will have no relationship with your loved one after death

• The intensity and length of your grief are a testimony to your love for the deceased

• Funerals and rituals are unimportant in helping us heal

• It is best to get involved and stay busy

• Crying doesn't solve anything

Activity

Grieving Across Cultures

“What is most personal is most universal”

- Carl R. Rogers

Grieving can be contradictory

• Adapting and Compensating• Restoring feelings of control

Universal Coping Strategies:

Spirituality:Role of Spirituality in Loss:

• Death may serve as a crisis in faith and as a life turning point for which everything from then on may be different.

• Grieving people may feel abandoned by God and struggle with the resulting depression and despair.

(Muselman & Wiggins, 2012)

Steps for Meaning Making:1. People who are grieving need to make sense of the death by finding reasons.

2. People need to engage in benefit finding (new positive outcome in the wake of loss).

3. People need to undergo and identity change by reconstructing themselves in response to loss.

(Muselman & Wiggins, 2012)

Exercises/ Interventions:• Rituals: make meaning through

the theme of relating, changing, healing, believing, and celebrating in people’s lives (Imber-Black & Roberts, 2004).

• Bibliotherapy: useful intervention that renders different possibilities and explanations of death for people.

(Muselman & Wiggins, 2012)

Continue Exercises/ Interventions:• Art therapy: use of expressive arts

holds many therapeutic advantages that regular “talk therapy” may be unable to tap (Horovitz, 2002).

• Journaling & Letter writing: useful interventions that enables people to express their thoughts and emotions in an uninterrupted format.

(Muselman & Wiggins, 2012)

Grief on College Campuses:• Students who are experiencing grief and loss

benefit from an empathic environment in which their being validated and understood by others.

• Having a sense of community is important on college campuses when dealing with loss. It provides students grieving with the opportunity to fellowship with others who may have went through the same things.

• College students face difficulties grieving while in college:o Negotiating their grief while keeping up

with academics and their social environment is very difficult.

(Fry & O’Neil, 2013)

(American Psychological Association, 2014)

What Can We Do?1. Be a listener; let the person talk

2. Express your concern for the student; Let them know they are not alone

3. Let them know that there are services on campus to assist them with dealing with the pain of grief and loss

4. If you notice the student is missing classes or keeping to themselves more than usual tell someone (RD, Staff person, Faculty Member)

5. Contact the Student Counseling Center or Office of Spiritual Life staff so that we might reach out to the student who has suffered a loss

6. Check in with that person

Things to Avoid:1. Avoid placate (“He’s in a better

place now,” “It’s part of God’s plan,” or “Look at what you have to be thankful for”).

2. Avoid giving advice about what they should or shouldn’t be doing their grieving process

3. Avoid passing judgment on the persons’ timeline of grief there is no set time and remember grief is not a linear process.

Resources Available at CBU:Counseling Center at CBU:

3510 Adams St. (located in the southwest corner of Lancer Plaza facing Diana Ave.)

951.689.1120Monday-Friday, 8am-9 pm,

Saturdays 8am-4 pmhttp://www.calbaptist.edu/explore-cbu/offices/counseling-center

/

Office of Spiritual Life-Chapel located in Yeager

References:Balk, D. E., Walker, A. C., & Baker, A. (2010). Prevalence and Severity of College Student

Bereavement Examined in a Randomly Selected Sample. Death Studies, 34(5), 459-468. doi10.1080/0748118090325181

 

Baumann, S. L. (2013). Feeling Bored A Parse Research Method Study with Older Adults. Nursing science quarterly, 26(1), 42-52.

 

Bhushan, B., Kumar, S., & Harizuka, S. (2011). Bereavement, Cognitive-Emotional Processing, and Coping With the Loss: A Study of Indian and Japanese Students. Journal Of Social Work In End-Of-Life & Palliative Care, 7(2/3), 263-

280. doi:10.1080/15524256.2011.593160

 

Compas, B. E., Jaser, S. S., Dunn, M. J., & Rodriguez, E. M. (2012). Coping with chronic illness in childhood and adolescence. Annual review of clinical psychology, 8, 455.

 

Fry, M., & O’Neill, D. (2013). The grief group: a university and hospice collaboration. Journal of College Student Development, 54(4), 430-432.

 

Grasgeen, A. (2011). Colleges report few student deaths. Inside Higher Education

 

References Continue:Graydon, K., Jimerson S., Fisher, E. (2010). Death and grief in the family: Providing support at school. National Association of

School Psychologists.

 

Muselman, D., & Wiggins, M. (2012). Spirituality and loss: approaches for counseling grieving adolescents. American Counseling Association, 57, 229-240.

 

Norton, M. I., & Gino, F. (2014). Rituals Alleviate Grieving for Loved Ones, Lovers, and Lotteries. Journal Of Experimental Psychology. General, 143(1), 266-272. doi:10.1037/a0031772

 

Stone, A. M. (2011). " We don't like to call it lying, it's just therapeutic communication": Understanding the influence of social support on coping with illness uncertainty (Doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois at

Urbana-Champaign).

 

Zafar, N., & Mubashir, T. (2012). Emotional distress and coping strategies in university students after the death of parental figure. Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 22(3), 90-103.

Please complete the

Evaluation Forms

Evaluation:1. I now understand that various forms of coping with chronic illness.         Strongly Disagree    Disagree  Neutral     Agree    Strongly Agree

2. I am aware of the prevalence of college student grief on college campuses.         Strongly Disagree    Disagree  Neutral     Agree    Strongly Agree

3. I now have a better understanding how culture affects the grieving process.         Strongly Disagree    Disagree  Neutral     Agree    Strongly Agree

4. I have learned about different interventions of dealing with loss.         Strongly Disagree    Disagree  Neutral     Agree    Strongly Agree

5. Prior to this workshop, I had no knowledge of the resources available in the Counseling Center here at CBU.

Yes or No