Healthy Living looks at coping with grief and loss

This week Healthy Living looks at issues of grief and loss; these are painful experiences that we will endure at some point or another. Coping with these problems is a challenge as we learn in the following segment.

Marleni Cuellar, Reporting
When you injure a part of your body, there are various processes you may go through to aid in healing the wound. Sometimes we self medicate, other times, for more serious injuries, we seek medical advice from a professional. A very important aspect of your well being is that of your emotional health. If you’re mental health is in jeopardy, you are not a healthy person.

Jenny Lovell, Counselor/ President Mental Health Assn.
“Mental health is not the absence of problems. I’ll repeat that; mental health is not the absence of problems. It’s the ability to manage your problems effectively; that’s all it is.”

Just like a cold, there are some emotional ailments that occur more frequently than others. Easily overlooked, is the process of grieving a loss.

Jenny Lovell
“Really and truly, there are several types of loss. If I fail a test, I lose some self esteem, if I get set back—you know children get set back in classes—they lose all their friends because their friends move forward and they’re left behind so that’s a big loss for the child. There’s the loss of a boyfriend, loss of a relationship. My sense of security is loss when somebody burglarizes my home. My sense of innocence is lost if somebody rapes me, if I’m molested. I lose my sense of innocence.”

Imagine the feelings associated with losing several family members in short span of time. Judith Bernard Rocke has had to cope with losing seven of her family members in the past nine years.

Judith Bernard Rocke
“It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts every part of your body, it hurts because then the memory that you have to live with is the one that it hurts.”

In 2000 Judith lost her father, six weeks later she lost her brother to cancer. Her mother passed away the following year after being ill for some time and one year later her uncle succumbed to cancer. Her other brother died that same year from cancer as well. In 2007 her nephew was murdered and most recently on January tenth, 2008 she lost her sister to a sudden heart attack. The death of her sister was the hardest blow for Judith.

Judith Bernard Rocke
“Its hard to cope with it because it was only me and she alone left, mom passed away, dad passed away, my two brothers passed and it was only she and I left. So everyday you get up you have to live with those memories.”

Coping with grief and loss is a process, interestingly enough, a process with several identifiable phases. The Kübler-Ross cycle is often used to differentiate the stages of grief.

Jenny Lovell
“She talks about the first stage being denial and in that stage is when the loss has occurred and the person feels numb; they’re in shock. We’re in shock, we feel numb, we feel awful. That’s the denial phase, this can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. How could this happen? That’s the first stage. The bargaining stage is when people actually bargain. Oh my God please don’t let this be so. And they’ll make bargains, they’ll bargain with God. God, if you let this not be so I’ll be a good Catholic a good Christian person. Mom I promise I’ll come home everyday, I’ll be here on time everyday, you don’t have to worry about me. And so the bargaining is when we bargain with somebody or even with God.”

Judith Bernard Rocke
“Well the first thing I did was to question my own self I said why? We were just becoming very, very, very close. She have any problem she call me. I have any problem I call her and tell her about my problem. It was like… most people would say you shouldn’t question God but I stood up and I said why me? Lost so much already now the only person that I could say that I should get close to or should be close to passed away. Now what else?”

The anger that Judith feels is also another stage of the grieving process.

Jenny Lovell
“Stage three, anger. How could the government let this happen, how could so and so let this happen, why isn’t somebody doing something about this and anger. A lot of times the anger is geared at anyone and everything. There’s also blame in there. It’s so and so’s fault that this occurred. It’s that person, it’s government fault that this happened. We look for somebody to blame for the loss.”

It is important to understand that no one grieves in the same way. Therefore, the stages aren’t necessarily sequential and some people can get caught in a cycle of depression and anger. This is typically when a counselor is needed to assist persons to move into the final stage of the grieving process.

Jenny Lovell
“The final stage is what we call acceptance and acceptance is not that I accept that the person was murdered or the person was in an accident and died unnecessarily. The acceptance is that the person is dead and now my life has to go on without that person and so I come to some acceptance that my life has to go on without this person being in it or without this thing being in my life or whatever.”

Persons need to go through the process of healing to reach the point of acceptance while understanding that there is no time line for recovering from a loss.

Jenny Lovell
“You can’t tell people when to stop grieving. Grieving is a very personal thing. Please try to be empathetic, not sympathetic; empathetic. By empathetic I mean try to walk in that persons shoes and put how you would want somebody to be for you if you were in that spot.”

Judith Bernard Rocke
“You have to stay strong take each day at a time and just hang on; perseverance. Just hang in there. Everything that have happened, happened for a purpose and God knows why and just hang on be strong and don’t feel like they’re out there alone because there is always someone along with them suffering form the disease like them. Just hang on and be strong.”

If you know anyone who may need assistance in coping with a loss, encourage them to seek out the assistance of a counselor. The Community Counseling Center is located on Freetown road where you can talk with one of their available counselors. The countrywide health clinics are also equipped with psychiatric nurse practitioners who are also available to assist. Remember each one of us grieves in a different way for different things the process of healing is based on each individual.