Loss and grief

1
Loss and grief

• Safety, control and trust

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Key messages

• loss is a constant part of life
• more than bereavement
• grief responses are individual
• grief can be communal
• culturally determined
• schools can provide safety and control

3
Activity

• People feel less confidence following a
  significant loss
• It is best to leave grieving people alone
• You never laugh if you're really grieving
• Most people get over the loss of a close relative
  or friend in a few weeks
• Mourners feel better after the funeral
• Men and women grieve differently
• Children and teenagers don't show their grief
  like adults
• The unexpectedness of a loss is not the main
  factor which affects the severity of a person's
  grief
• If you have had a significant loss you will
  understand exactly how another grieving person
  feels
• To get help from a bereavement support group, you
  can just talk to them over the phone
• NALAG GriefLink quiz

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Definitions

• Loss
• being parted from someone who or something that a
  person values
• Grief
• complex emotional response to loss including
  sadness, anger, helplessness, guilt, despair
• Raphael, B. (1984) The Anatomy of Bereavement A
  Handbook for the Caring Professions. London
  Hutchinson

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Adolescent loss Activity

• Brainstorm some possibilities of loss for the
  adolescents with whom you work
• real
• symbolic

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Adolescent losses

• Chance (more or less)
• death
• separation, divorce
• moving house
• illness/accident -self/others
• natural disaster
• victim of crime
• financial change
• loss of pet
• birth of sibling
• Developmental
• weaning
• separation
• school changes
• friends move
• growing older

• Private
• trust
• missing out on team
• victim of bullying
• school failure
• realising youre different
• failure to live up to expectations
• ugly' teenager
• betrayed by friend
• Deprivation/neglect
• child abuse, poverty
• unresponsive parenting
• lack of stability
• Homelessness

Hockley, R (1985) The precipitants of grief. The
Family and Grief. Proceedings of the 4th National
Conference of the National Association of Loss
and Grief, Sydney
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Diversity, loss and grief

• result of trauma
• historical and social factors can result in
  multiple losses and a constant cycle
• extensive family connections means more frequent
  grieving
• cultural and community connections are sources of
  strength and obligation
• difficulties imagining a future
• individual, family and community grief
• feelings of difference and non-acceptance by
  family, friends, community and society
• being caught between cultures
• loss of former or potential competencies,
  relationships, opportunities

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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues

• constant cycle
• multiple losses
• more frequent grieving for relatives
• historical and social reasons
• feelings of difference
• Not only have indigenous peoples suffered major
  losses, but they have also suffered the loss of
  the practices and rituals which enable them to
  deal with these losses.
• GriefLink website www.grieflink.asn.au/indigenous
  .html

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Change and loss Activity
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Curriculum ideas for inclusivity

• Similarities and Differences in Fears (p 40)
• In pairs or small groups
• Brainstorm own examples to create worksheet
• Holmes-Rahe Survey of Loss Experiences (p 49)
• In pairs, brainstorm examples of loss
• Allot up to 100 points for each event
• Create class survey
• Individual students add up own scores
• Discuss help seeking strategies for high scores

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Staff scenarios what helps? Activity

• problems at home
• verbal harassment by students
• staff tyres slashed in carpark
• menacing phone calls at home
• being stalked by student
• run out of teacher release time
• new push in curriculum
• subject is being marginalised
• fall off in enrolments
• major issue between two staff members
• teacher family illness
• personal burn out

• teaching outside expertise
• financial worries at home
• staff member has depression
• racism in staff room
• being bullied by staff member
• homophobia
• role has been redescribed
• sections of staff not socialising
• staff member has a chronic mental disorder

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Four tasks of mourning

• Acceptance of reality of the loss
• Work through the pain
• Adjust to the environment when someone or
  something is no longer there
• Emotionally relocate what is lost
• Worden J.W. Grief Counselling and Grief Therapy.
  2nd Ed. Routledge London

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Principles around grieving

• grieving is normal
• dealing with loss is an individual, mostly
  private, possibly lonely process
• losses rarely exist alone
• young people are limited by experience and
  options
• it is a privilege to be invited into the
  experience of loss of an adolescent
• loss threatens our sense of safety and trust

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Safety, control and trust what can we do?
Activity

• If loss threatens our sense of safety and
  control.what do you do in your workplace/
  classroom to help people
• feel safe?
• feel they have some control over their life?

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Commemoration Activity

• What things have people done in the past to
  commemorate a loss?

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Policy check

• How does our school commemorate a loss in the
  school community in a sensitive way
• immediately?
• in 12 months time?

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Loss and learning

• At each stage of learning we must give up
  something, even if it is a way of life that we
  have always known
• Source unknown

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Life without lossActivity

• What would life be like in a world without loss?
• What would life be like in a world without grief?

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Personal reflections Activity

• Me
• use curriculum activities
• listen

• My workplace
• review policy