How do I help a colleagueclient who has suffered a bereavement

1
How do I help a colleague/client who has suffered
a bereavement?
BIG Business in Glasgow Tuesday 4th May 2004
Rev. David Mitchell Lecturer in Palliative
Care Marie Curie Hospice Glasgow
2
Understanding Bereavement

• It is unique and individual to each person
• Members of the a family will cope in different
  ways
• It is a process that takes time
• Popular perception is weeks/months
• Reality is months/years
• It often brings past experiences to light
• It is NORMAL to grieve
• As a colleague or professional you cant make it
  better, you cant fix it, however, you can
  support people through it

3
Tasks of Mourning (Worden 1991)

• To acknowledge the reality of the loss
• To work through the pain of grief
• To adjust to an environment in which the deceased
  is missing
• To emotionally relocate the deceased, memorialise
  and move on with life
• Worden, J. W. (1991) Grief counselling and grief
  therapy. 2nd edition, London
• Routledge

4
Circle of Grief (Grief Education Institute Denver
1986 cited in Goodall, Drage and Bell 1994)
Life Cycle
Reorganisation
Shock
Protest
Disorganisation
Go round too fast and you get stuck in the circle
Goodall, A., Drage, T. and Bell, G. (1994) The
Bereavement and Loss Training Manual. Oxon
Winslow Press
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What is normal?

• Visiting the grave daily/weekly?
• Setting a place at meal times?
• Seeing the person in the street?
• Vivid dreams?
• Remembering only the recent memories?
• Sick images, forgetting the good times
• A sense of relief?
• After a long illness / a bedside waiting
• Death of an alcoholic

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What can you do to help?

• Avoid speaking to fill the quiet
• No platitudes!
• Listen
• God gave us two ears and one mouth!!!
• Allow people to express how they feel
• Its okay to sit quietly
• Its okay to let people cry
• Acknowledge feelings
• is that how you are feeling?
• Use the right words
• Its okay to say dead and died

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Where can you get help?

• Cruse Bereavement Care
• Oswald House
• 5 Oswald Street
• Glasgow, G1 4QR
• Tel. [phone]
• www.crusebereavementcare.org.uk
• Tom Allan Centre
• 23 Elmbank Street
• Glasgow, G2 4PR
• Tel. [phone]
• Contact your local hospice and ask for advice on
  local bereavement services