Non-Death Loss in My Life, Essay Example

The graph above depicts the non-death loss events of my life. Because I am only twenty years old, I have so far been lucky enough to avoid experiencing the death of a close friend or relative. However, I have experienced three substantial events in my life that have caused a cycle of grieving. My grief has ultimately been a source of inspiration to me in that it gave me the impetus to study the nature of loss and grief from a psychological perspective. It is possible that non-death events are incapable of inciting as profound a reaction of grief as that which is associated with the death of a loved one. 

That said, the three experiences of grief that are described in the chart above are important milestones of my experience and my emotional development. My three losses in life so far have been: the loss of my childhood friends, the loss of my dream career, and the loss of my family and home. These experiences have given me a frame of reference for understanding the processes of coping and grief from a deeply personal level. In reviewing these experiences over this course I have found depths of emotional response and personal repercussions that I had not previously considered.

Your interest in issues of grief and loss as well as what your personal goals for this course were; and were they achieved.

The most significant loss that I have experienced is the loss of my dream career. My greatest ambition from childhood was to study Chinese herbal medicine. Unfortunately I was unable to attain the necessary exam scores for qualification to gain entrance to a program of study. My interest in grief in lost is rooted tot his primary experience, but it is also an outgrowth of my persistent interest in the connection between body, mind, and spirit. John Archer writes in The Nature of Grief: The Evolution and Psychology of Reactions to Loss (2001) that the experience of grief can bring about unresolved stress that is instrumental in causing emotional and physical illness.

Archer asserts that it is therefore a positive move to implement coping mechanisms and strategies when dealing with grief. Archer observes: “certain coping styles and situational variables can dramatically reduce the period of grief…there remains the possibility that depressive and health-related problems surface later” (Archer 115). The apparently mysterious connection between psychological, emotional, and bodily states is brought into sharp focus during times of grieving.

By probing the nature of grief and the various coping strategies that have been developed by psychologists and sociologists, great insight is gained not only into one’s personal condition, but into the deeper nature of human relationships. For example, when experienced the loss of my career ambition, I remembered that my dream had begun in childhood. As a young child, I had a very weak constitution. My parents theorized that I had received too many antibiotics as a baby, so they decided to treat my illnesses with Chinese herbal medicine. I grew up with the ambition that I would someday practice herbal medicine as a profession. Looking back, I realize that one of the essential aspects of my ambition was the preceding association I had with Chinese herbal medicine and the care and love my mother and father showed for me as a child. 

Because I believe that the body, emotions, and mental state are all connected in complex ways, it is essential to attain a working knowledge of the way that grief and loss influence an individual. This means that one of my personal goals in taking the course was to verify whether or not grief and loss could be understood as processes that brought about positive change or growth for the person who experienced them. 

I wanted to find out whether the coping systems and techniques forwarded by professional theorists were viable. I also wanted to know whether or not systems and devices existed of which I had not previously been aware and that could be used in my own personal development. This means that I had both pragmatic, personal reasons for taking the course while also having reasons that were based in scholarship and curiosity.

Being unable to pursue my dream of becoming a practitioner of herbal medicine is a life-blow that seems as much an outgrowth of my past as it is an influence over my future. Understanding the way that grief connects to the past and future simultaneously is one of my personal outcomes from taking the course. For example, I understand, as is pointed out in Death, Society, and Human Experience (2012) that grief is a way of adapting in the face of loss. 

Also, as pointed out in the book, there are various kinds of grief such as resoled grief, unresolved grief, hidden grief, and disenfranchised grief. Because grief takes so many forms and guises and stems from so many different types of experiences, it can be difficult to find the path to successful adaptation. That there is a path to adaptation is something important I learned from the course. (Kastenbaum). 

My goals for the course were met at an intellectual level, but I am still integrating the concepts and ideas I learned into my emotional life. I think that it takes longer to process emotional responses than it does to process analytical ideas. In Chapter Eleven of Kirshenbaum, Rando’s task theory is discussed. According to this theory it is crucial to move on from losses while also remembering them closely as one faces the future. This means that grief functions as a kind of doorway or bridge from one stage of life to another.

This is a crucial idea in terms of my own emotional predicament because, as I mentioned previously, it was an n association with my parents and their love that helped to shape my ambition to become an herbalist. At the same time, it was my parents who advised me to give up this dream due to my entrance exam scores. Due to their influence, I have become an international student. This means that in addition to giving up on my lifelong dream of becoming an herbalist, I am also separated from those whom I love the most.

The course has helped me to cope with the separation from my parents. The course has also helped me to understand how rational assessment of personal loss can play a key role in helping one to move forward in life, overcoming challenges to find new opportunities. For me, change is often very difficult to accept, particularly change that impacts my personal relationships. 

Because I am the type of person who takes each of their relationships seriously, the realization that I must temporarily place my academic career above my personal relationships was one that I accepted only reluctantly. Now studying the stage theories, such as those of Kubler-Ross and Stroebe and Schut, I understand that loss and grief are part of individuation and personal growth. 

Your personal style of dealing with loss i.e. how has your upbringing, culture, religion, ethnicity influenced your coping style? And how do you cope with issues of non-death loss in your life.

I have always been taught that loss and grief should be met with determination and resolve. On top of this, my upbringing has been one where I have been encouraged to use my mind to solve problems and not to expect challenges to be met without rational effort. It is hard to pinpoint exactly how my ethnicity has influenced my coping mechanisms, but I am certain that one way that being Chinese has influenced the way that I deal with non-death loss is that I tend to suppress the emotional side of the experience while trying to press forward in my life. 

I associate this cultural tendency with Archer’s idea of an Evolutionary Biology Model of Grief as mentioned in Kirshenbaum. In Archer’s estimation, grief is a maladaptive behavior because it does little to promote advantageous social bonds that increase the potential for survivability. A bit of this feeds into the suppression of emotions that takes place in Chinese culture; it is as though we view grief as “maladaptive” and are trying to move past quickly in order to prove that we are still sound and productive individuals.     

So, to some extent, I believe that I use work and study as a coping mechanism for loss and grief. I think that I personally value keeping an ordered mind in the face of obstacles because it is usually then easier to find solutions. This kind of thinking, however, can conceal very dangerous emotional and psychological traps. Chapter Seven of Kirshenbaum points out that one of the chief causes of suicide among teens and young people is that families impose rigid rules while maintaining poor communication strategies. It is crucial that emotional responses be allowed to find expression and enter into the stream of life in order for a person to move on from a loss.

Archer points out in The Nature of Grief: The Evolution and Psychology of Reactions to Loss (2001) that the emotional response to grief can often take debilitating forms. Archer writes: “Rumination is the obsessive dwelling upon the loss without any assessment or progression, which is associated with a depressive outcome… Negative attributions are likely to be associated with poor coping” (Archer 120). There is a natural tendency to associate the negative side of grief and loss with the emotional experience of these realities while simultaneously equating the idea of coping with cold, analytical reasoning. 

This describes my own approach to dealing with loss and grief. That is one reason, of course, why I have engaged in the formal study of loss and grief and why I am carrying out the present discussion of the topic. However, even on a purely analytical level, it is impossible to escape the reality that grief and loss are primarily emotional experiences. This is precisely the reason that they are so unbalancing and why they generate so much anxiety in an individual who is experiencing them. The anxiety is an indication to the rational mind that the process of moving through an experience of grief or loss must incorporate an emotional as well as intellectual progression.

In Coping with Loss (1999), Larson and Nolen- Hoeksema point out that there are logically based systems designed for incorporating the emotional component of loss and grief. The authors note that “In sum, problem-solving coping involves dealing with the concrete problems that result from one’s loss. There are a variety of emotion-focused coping strategies, including seeking social support, emotional expression, reappraisal, distraction, avoidance, and rumination” (Larson and Nolen-Hoeksema 67). This is a way of suggesting that emotional needs are evident in what we normally take to be simple, factual realities. For example, my most significant loss could be stated factually as: “I was unable to achieve my dream of becoming an herbalist because I score too low on my entrance exams in school.” This is a simple statement of fact, but it is also a “diagram” of emotional reactions.

The key element of the statement is the inference of personal insufficiency. It is not simply a problem of logistics: that the scores were too low; it is a question that I must now deal with the emotional resonance of believing that my poor test-performance has destroyed my childhood dream. My upbringing and cultural orientation encourage regarding this loss as something that simply calls for a change in career plans. 

The reality is that I must integrate the emotional feelings of sadness and disappointment that accompany the loss in order to actually move beyond the loss itself and find the opportunity that lies hidden in what currently feels like disappointment and misery. This is a form of self-reliance that grows out of an emotional response. It is only possible for the individual themselves to move out of a destructive emotional state and into one that energizes the future. According to researchers, the most effective methods of coping are done by those who engage “in active problem solving, by seeking social support, and by engaging in expression of their emotions.” (Larson and Nolen-Hoeksema 159). Therfoer, in my case, learning to express emotions more readily would help me move on from my loss and grief.   

I’m still in the process of trying to make the transition to a better self and to integrate the loss of my dream into a new and perhaps more meaningful ambition. As it stands, I must cope with the secondary loss of having to be separated from my family. The way that I cope with his loss is to remember that I am able to visit them twice a year and that they still support and love me and hope the best for me in everything I do. 

While my family is not necessarily emotionally demonstrative, the bond between us is very strong and it is the central point by which we define ourselves. My loss in regard to becoming an herbalist is something that is connected to my early childhood memories, but it is not something that should be an obstacle to my continued close reliance on my family. At the same time, by grappling with my experiences of loss and grief I am becoming a person who is more capable and ready to meet challenges on their own terms.

Your comfort levels in dealing with different issues of grief, and different kinds of loss with others. i.e. are there specific kinds of losses that you feel will be particularly challenging to work with?; do you have experience with specific groups of people or specific illness or events that have proven to be difficult in the past?; do you have any value-oriented or ethical conflicts with certain issues, people, events?

At the present time my comfort level for dealing with loss and grief is not particularly high. Or, more precisely, my emotional comfort zone is not very high. By contrast, my intellectual or analytical understanding of grief and loss is at a very high level. Because of this increased understanding, my ability to cope with the logistical or mental aspects of loss and grief is strong. My intellectual comfort zone is very wide. So, for example if somebody wanted to discuss their experiences with grief and loss, I would probably be a good listener and I might even be able to offer them some coping systems or ideas that I have learned.

On the other hand, I would probably not feel comfortable discussing my emotional state of being in regard to my own experiences with loss and grief. I would probably feel out of my comfort zone if I had to share my experiences of loss and grief verbally with a  group of strangers. I feel that my emotionally restraint is somehow connected in my mind with politeness even though in reality it is healthy to express emotions.

The group of people or kind of people that I have the most difficulty relating to are those who wallow in negative feelings. While it is true that I may often have a tendency to repress my emotional response, I have a very difficult time dealing with people who embrace only negative emotions. I believe that positive emotions are necessary in order to overcome grief and loss. Therefore I am always offended when someone suggests that it is impossible to move past a loss or setback. As Archer points out, it is entirely possible that positive life changes take place when one is experiencing negative emotions; therefore it is also possible toe experience positive emotions when one is undergoing negative life experiences. 

Archer writes “positive changes were also unrelated to either positive or negative emotions, suggesting that the positive emotions…are different from the experience of positive life changes” (Archer 119). I think that this is an important distinction to make because I am not suggesting that if you ‘think positive” good things will happen to you. Rather, I believe that having a negative emotion or experience does not prevent a person from moving forward into a positive life change. So if someone suggests that it is impossible to move on from a negative experience they are ignorant of the fact that negative emotions are not, in themselves, prohibitions to positive changes.

Because so much of the issue of loss and grief is associated with emotions, I personally face a number of value-based conflicts with any group or situation where open declaration of emotion is required. I am not suggesting that my position is in any way a good way to be; I am simply stating a fact. I am in conflict with groups or situations where strangers are expected to divulge intimate details about their emotions. Part of this is, as I previously mentioned, a cultural bias of mine, but party of it simply reflects my personality.

Studying the psychological underpinnings of loss and grief has enabled me to see that emotional release and catharsis is an important part of individual growth. I realize that I must take immediate steps to overcome my inability to articulate my emotions in groups. I also realize that some of my wariness is probably a good thing because there is always going to be something that is purely personal about an individual’s emotional development in life. I think that one way that emotion can be shared between people in a way that is not uncomfortable is through displays of compassion and caring.

By showing that you care about others, it is much easier to understand that your own sorrows and wounds are nothing more than aspects of universal experience. As Larson and Nolen-Hoeksema point out coping strategies are adaptive by nature and there is much to be learned from the example of others. The authors assert that “The coping strategies used by people who were able to find something positive in their loss tended to be adaptive ones.. they were purposely trying to reappraise their loss in positive terms as a way of coping.” (Larson and Nolen-Hoeksema 159). This to me seems to be the best combination of using logic and emotional response together in a way to find a path forward from loss and grief.

One of the most interesting and hopeful aspects of the process of experiencing loss and grief is that contemplation of these experiences often leads to a greater understanding of the experiences of others. This shared experience of loss and grief is the foundation of much of what we call art and culture. Those who fail to understand that loss and grief are part of the overall emotional experience of being human are likely to become caught in a trap of over analytical response that will slowly make them “cold” and unresponsive to the needs of others. Those who are unable to give expression to their emotional responses in the face of loss and grief are likely to become lost in a “rumination” of events that leads to depression or even physical illness. For this reason it is essential tor regard the experiences of loss, grieving, and coping as being of the highest significance in an individual’s life and as experiences that define self-image.

Works Cited

Archer, John. The Nature of Grief: The Evolution and Psychology of Reactions to Loss. Hove, England: Brunner-Routledge, 2001..

Kastenbaum, Robert J. Death, Society, and Human Experience. Allyn and Bacon, Eleventh Edition, 2012.

Larson, Judith, and Susan Nolen-Hoeksema. Coping with Loss. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum  Associates, 1999.