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ASSESSING THE
BEREAVED PERSON’S SUPPORT SYSTEM
Counselors
and other caregivers who work regularly with bereaved people understand the
importance of community in helping their clients work through the grief
process. While personality factors and past history play important roles in
accommodating the loss, the support system present for the bereaved person is
vital.
A
mistake frequently made by counseling professionals and volunteers, however, is
assuming that a client’s family and friendship circle provides support that is
meaningful to the bereaved person. As any caregiving professional can attest,
however, having a family or a large group of friends does not necessarily mean
one has supportive family and
friends. Even for people who have networks of people who want to be supportive,
they don’t always provide the kind of support that the bereaved person finds
helpful.
Peer-led
support groups, for example, will often inquire of newly widowed people in the
group, “Do you have children close by?” When the newly bereaved person responds
in the affirmative, a group member will sometimes say, “Oh, you’re lucky. I
don’t have anyone—I’m all alone.” In fact, relational conflict might make the
one with children wish to be alone. In other cases, the presence of adult
children is no evidence that they are providing any measure of perceived social
support.
In
your work with bereaved people, get beneath the labels that denote
relationships we would expect to be supportive. Dr. Ken Doka has suggested we
concern ourselves not only with the family but what he terms, the “circle of
care.” Faithful friends may be more important in the support system of your
client than blood relatives are. The following questions will help understand
what the words mean when your client says he or she has a supportive family or
circle of friends.
Who are
the people who seem most supportive to you? This question helps
work past labels. Adult children, for example, might or might not be supportive
to widowed parents. Rather, some adult children rush parents to “get over it”
or make major decisions like selling their home. These activities may not be
perceived by a bereaved person as being supportive at all. Rather, they may
list as their most important support people members of the faith community or
the bereavement support group the client attends.
What do
they say or do that helps you feel most supported? Asking this question
helps bereaved people list specific words or behaviors that they find helpful.
Again, the question elicits a story and provides an opportunity for the
counselor to point out efforts people are making on the bereaved person’s
behalf. This may also be the point at which the client lists some of the things
people are doing that are not
perceived as supportive. However, if the bereaved person does not list
non-supportive words and behaviors, you might ask at some point. . .
What
are some things you wish people would do or would not do? Learning what people
are doing that is not supportive is
as important as learning what is perceived as supportive. Well-meaning friends
often use statements that are intended to communicate care but actually end up
“minimizing” the loss. Statements like, “At least he isn’t suffering anymore,”
“Aren’t you relieved she’s in Heaven now,” or “At least you have other
children,” are intended to help—but rarely do. Frequently, widowed, able-bodied
seniors are frustrated by their adult children trying to make decisions on the
parent’s behalf. One group member said, “My daughter seems to forget I was
paying bills before she was born; just because my husband died doesn’t mean
I’ve become helpless!”
How do
you think their concern for you has changed since N. died? Make sure you do not
just assess the level of perceived support in the weeks immediately after the
death. People who are supportive in the first few weeks often find other
matters that require their attention by the end of the second month. Learn as
much as you can about how your client’s support system has changed. Was it very
good initially but is somewhat lacking now? If so, a bereavement support group
can be an appropriate remedy.
What
has surprised you the most about the way people have supported (or responded
to) you? Grief
is filled with surprises. Most non-bereaved people have no idea what level of
pain can be experienced in the death of one’s spouse or child. But an even
bigger surprise for some people is the unexpected ways family and friends do or
do not come alongside the grieving. For example, your client might indicate
that she was overwhelmed at the show of love evidenced by food and flowers sent
for the funeral. “I never realized how many caring people we know,” a recently
bereaved person might say. However, the bereaved might also be surprised by the
ways people ignore them change the subject, or constantly try to “cheer one
up.” Inviting the discussion provides you with important opportunities to provide
education, resources, and support of your own.
The Author: William G. (Bill)
Hoy is an educator and counselor specializing in death, bereavement, and
end-of-life issues. In addition to walking through significant losses of his
own, Dr. Hoy has counseled grieving individuals and families for more than 25
years. He is the author of Guiding People through Grief and Road to Emmaus: Pastoral Care with the Dying
and Bereaved. His newest book, Called to Care: Navigating a Life of Care
for Others will be published later this year. He teaches in the graduate
program in bereavement and leadership at Marian University
and oversees the counseling program at Pathways Volunteer Hospice.
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RESEARCH THAT MATTERS
Stroebe,
W., Stroebe, M.L., & Abakoumkin, G. (1999). Does differential social
support cause sex differences in bereavement outcomes? Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 9, 1-12.
Though
most counselors readily accept the notion that social support has a positive
benefit on the experiences of bereaved people, scientific research on
bereavement has produced somewhat conflicting results. Clearly, as the
attachment theorist John Bowlby maintained, social support does not alleviate the depression and loneliness
when an attachment figure dies.
Stroebe,
Stroebe and Abakoumkin sought in this study to discover how social support
might affect bereaved men and women differently. In essence, their study showed
no correlation between the genders when it came to health outcomes,
self-reported depressive symptoms and loneliness. However they confirmed that
bereaved people of both genders do clearly benefit from social support, and
that those who reported high levels of perceived social support also reported
lower levels of depressive symptoms and loneliness.
There
are many variables in studies like this one, including among others, the
relatively small sample size (30 men, 30 women). However, these results do
provide research authentication to what many counselors already know
intuitively and through clinical experience: grief is best managed when it is
faced with the support of caring others.
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LIBRARY NOTES
Dyregrov,
K. & Dyregrov, A. (2008). Effective grief and bereavement support: The role
of family, friends, colleagues, school and support professionals. London: Jessica Kingsley
Publishers.
Effective Grief and
Bereavement Support
is a well-researched, yet practical book that will serve counselors well. The
book begins with a survey of both the historical and current thinking on social
support in general and the grief process in particular. Then, the authors
proceed to knock down current myths about how grief works, including pointing
out that there is no compelling, verifiable evidence that so-called “stages”
exist among grieving people.
This
book is not an essay espousing personal opinions on grief. Instead, these
authors are researchers on the staff of a large Norwegian bereavement center,
the Center for Crisis Psychology in Bergen.
With one’s perspective as a sociologist and the other as a psychologist, the
authors do a nice job of drawing together both the psychological and the
socio-cultural factors present after an unexpected death. The book is
well-documented, and concludes with an appendix outlining the five major
studies on which they relied in reaching their theoretical and practical
conclusions.
Perhaps
the book would have benefited from somewhat tighter editing; the language is a
little choppy and difficult to read at times, likely because the authors are
not native speakers of English. However, this minor irritant is more than
offset by the very useful perspective this will be to remind us how best to
encourage social networks to do their best work in the care of bereaved people.
