17 Loss, Grief, Mourning and Resilience – How do They Go Together?

Episode 17:  Loss, Grief, Mourning and Resilience – How do They Go Together?

Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis:  Carpe Diem, where you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview.   We are going beyond mere resiliency, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before.  I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski your host and guide, with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com.  Thank you for being here with me.  This is episode 17, released on May 25, 2020 entitled Loss, Grief, Mourning and Resilience – How do They Go Together?

Some of you have been in touch with me and asked for work on Grief, which we touched on in Episode 3 with the loss of the sacraments in the lockdown.  There’s been conversation about grief on the discussion boards in the Resilient Catholic: Carpe Diem Community space in Souls and Hearts, and now we are going to dive deep into this whole area of grief.  We are going to do two podcast episodes on grief and the coronavirus, and I will be doing one Zoom meeting for our members.  Seating is very limited for that, I’m only taking on 12 for that meeting at 7:30 PM eastern time on Friday, May 29, I saw one or maybe two open seats left, so check that out at Souls and Hearts.  Joining the community is free for the first 30 days, so come check it out at Souls and Hearts.com.  

Our thinking can be heavily impacted when we are experience intense emotions, so let’s really get some clarity, let’s shine some light on things now.  The first thing, really quickly, is to define a few terms around grief, loss, and mourning. Let’s get our vocabulary straight, because that really helps our thinking.   

We’re going to start with the concept of loss, loss – and that’s because loss comes before grief.  Loss always comes before grief.  Loss precedes grief.  So we’re going in order here, and starting with loss.  

There are two kinds of loss:  Actual Loss and what I call the Loss of Potential.  Actual loss and the loss of potential.    

Actual loss is the loss of a real, tangible good.  Something good is taken from us.  It could be death of a loved one, when we lose the relationship, with its intimacy, connection, the love.  It can also mean the actual loss of some part of us – our sense of hearing for example, or the 

Loss of Potential –  this is the loss of possibilities that we hoped for – something anticipated in the future.   a wedding that will never happen, children that will never be born, a promotion that will not come now, etc.  It also includes words that were never said, words that were never heard, stories that will never be finished.   Grieving at a funeral of family members – not of the actual loss of the abusive, alcoholic, philandering husband – not for the loss of the actual person.  But for the symbolic loss – no longer married, no longer the possibility of living happily ever after.  

Grief is our individual experience of loss – so remember, the loss is the good we no longer have. Grief is our reaction to the loss.  It’s our experience of the loss.  And that experience is emotional – sadness, anxiety, irritability we may feel mood swings -- or we may feel nothing apathy

Psychological – disbelief, impaired concentration and attention, flashbacks, ruminations, going over and over some memory of the person.   

Grief is also physical – for example when the tears flow, have intense fatigue, headaches, loss of appetite, trouble sleeping.   Grief is also expressed through behavior – the heavy sigh, when put our hands to our heads and groan or when we withdraw and sit alone in a dark room.   

The experience of grief varies a lot from person to person, situation to situation.  It can be painful, sometime exquisitely painful, horrendously painful, it may seem intolerable.  Sometimes it’s much more quiet.  It may also be bittersweet, or even have a sense of peace in it, such as when a loved one suffering from a terminal illness dies well.  There are different kinds of grief, and we’re going to get into that later in this podcast, but for now, let’s understand that grief is our individual experience of loss.  

And with grief comes mourning.  

Mourning is a public expression of our grief, it’s what we show to others.  Mourning is how we show our grief.  How we share our grief with others.  How we connect in grief.  Some of this is conditioned by our culture – 3 rifle volleys salutes for deceased veterans, funerals, eulogies, the chicken dinner in the parish hall after the Mass, tossing a handful of dirt on the grave.  

Review the above: 

            Actual Loss

            Loss of potential 

            Grief

            Mourning

So how can we really solidify our understanding of these definitions?  How can we make these concepts come alive?  Hmmm.  Let me think.  [Ding]  I’ve got it!  How about a story, to make all this come together for us?  I think that’s a great idea.  So it’s story time with Dr. Peter.  

Story Time:

Richard and Susan (not an actual case).  We’re going back in time 20 years, back to the early 2000s.  At that point, Richard and Susan had been married for eight years.  He was an engineer with an excellent job, highly successful and creative at work.  He really loved their three young sons, aged seven, five and three.  Susan was a professional translator in Spanish and Italian.   She had travelled and lived abroad before her marriage at age 32.  They had met through mutual friends, and both were nominally Catholic, attended Mass on Sundays and their sons were baptized, but it was not a central part of their lives.  Richard was somewhat emotionally reserved and kind of introverted didn’t talk a lot about feelings, and had always been into racing go-karts.  Now he was getting the oldest son into the hobby in a mini go kart and really enjoying that together. Susan was more extroverted, and maintained a lot of connections with her professional women friends, many of whom were younger than her and unmarried and still living in Italy and Spain. 

Susan really wanted a daughter, and had been going through some recent fertility issues, there were medical complication.  Richard felt he had enough kids, at least in his opinion.  But at age 40, after a deepening of her prayer life – she began to take her faith more seriously -- she conceived again, and the ultrasound indicated the baby was a girl.  She was so excited, and at 22 weeks everything was going well.  And then complications with the placenta started, and by 24 weeks the baby had died.  Susan miscarried her baby daughter and because of medical complications, also wound up with a hysterectomy.  

All right. So we have the story or at least the beginning of the story.  Let’s work with the story.

So what was the actual loss – remember the actual loss...