Delayed Grief
Changing mental health There's no doubt that coach-counsellor integrationists are working at the cutting-edge of mental health. We are the trailblazers for a new wave of practitioners who are prepared to challenge the old ways and the status quo. We refuse to be tied to a one-model-for-every-client approach
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It's a privilege to be working in mental health right now. Although there are social and financial challenges, never in recent history have people been prepared to be so open about their own emotional well-being. Prince Harry’s honesty will do even more to help.
My article this week looks at delayed grief and how the reaction to unprocessed loss can take us by surprise many years later. I hope it helps… The simplest way to help someone who is grieving As James sat in front of me, memory after memory of his father’s death surfaced, released, and ran softly down his face.
‘He died when I was 10’, said James. ‘It was an unexpected heart-attack. He went to work one morning and didn't come home. Mum thought I was too young to go to the funeral so I went to school on that day just like any other day.’
James's mum wasn’t being cruel. She had hoped to protect her young son from the pain of seeing her so desperately upset. She wanted him to escape somehow the turbulent and intense range of emotions that are a part of the journey through the grieving process. So she made life as normal as possible for him. She compensated by taking him on holidays, buying him the latest designer clothes and gadgets and putting on her ‘I'm okay’ face in the daytime.
Crying alone It was only after she put James to bed at night that she allowed herself to cry.
She put away the pictures of James's father and he was rarely referred to. The mother-who-meant-well stayed strong and kept going. She was doing a good job she told herself. After a year, James seemed fine, was doing well at school and never mentioned his father.
What she didn't realise was that, in bed at night, James could hear his mother crying and would often cry himself to sleep too. Both mother and son were going through intense emotions they did not want to communicate to each other, for fear of causing upset.
Both were isolated in a shared grief for the most well-intentioned of reasons. They were making a mistake that many of us make.
Must keep going There are plenty of laudable reasons for not dealing with grief. People have to go to work to keep their job. They have to get the kids off to school. They have to mow the lawn, do the shopping, cook and pay the bills. They think if they give way to grief, it will be like a dam bursting, that they won’t be able to cope with the deluge and will drown in a flood of their own tears.
'We are taught, in the face of adversity to stand strong. We must stay in control. We have to keep a stiff upper lip’
But deferring grief is like living with an undetonated bomb. We kid ourselves that if we tiptoe around it, it won’t go off.
An open wound The grief, however, remains as a concealed, but open, wound. Although we may have stuck a plaster over it, it will not begin to heal until the bandaging is removed and we let some light and air onto the injury.
Death has become a sanitised business. We try to ignore it. We clean it up with phrases like ‘passed over’, or ‘slipped away’ rather than saying someone has died. Or we wrap up the event and leave it on a shelf somewhere in a darkened room we try not to visit.
We are taught, in the face of adversity to stand strong. We must stay in control. We have to keep a ‘stiff upper lip’.
But grief is not an illness. It’s a fact of life. We will all lose someone we love and we will all feel pain. Being able to ride the waves of the big emotions that come with bereavement is an example of mind management. Asking for help or talking to someone about how we really feel is a sign of emotional intelligence, not weakness.
As a therapeutic coach, I have a range of skills in my professional toolbox.
But for James, as with most of my clients who are grieving, I used the simplest, yet most powerful of them all.
I listened.
Authors Bio
Frances Masters is an experienced psychotherapist, trainer and author.
Her professional journey has seen her evolve from counsellor to coach, developing along the way, a unique new mental health model, test bedded for 5 years in a therapeutic coaching charity she founded in 2009.
Frances is currently delivering the 2017 Fusion Therapeutic Coaching Diploma. Spaces are limited but you can Enrol now
The Fusion therapeutic life coach training has since been accredited by the National College of Further Education (NCFE) as a fast track diploma and distance learner skills certificate.
Frances is passionate about getting effective mind management into our schools.
Frances' belief is that learning these skills early will help young people develop the emotional resilience to feel their best, be their best and create their very best lives.
