1 / 22

Spirituality in Grief

Spirituality in Grief. Glen R. Horst. Objectives. Describe the activity of soul and spirit in re-learning the world ( Attig ) Identify sorrow-friendly practices ( Attig ) Note mindfulness meditation’s potential for deepening a grief response ( Kabat-Zinn )

dewei
Télécharger la présentation

Spirituality in Grief

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Spirituality in Grief Glen R. Horst

  2. Objectives • Describe the activity of soul and spirit in re-learning the world (Attig) • Identify sorrow-friendly practices (Attig) • Note mindfulness meditation’s potential for deepening a grief response (Kabat-Zinn) • Explore how grief can open into compassion (Halifax)

  3. Spirituality Spirituality is the dynamic dimension of human life that relates to the way persons (individual and community) experience, express and/or seek meaning, purpose and transcendence, and the way they connect to the moment, to self, to others, to nature, to the significant and/or the sacred. EAPC taskforce on Spiritual Care in Palliative Care http://www.eapcnet.eu/Themes/Clinicalcare/Spiritualcareinpalliativecare.aspx

  4. Voices of the bereaved • “It’s so hard to go on. I have great faith in God, but just can’t seem to move forward.” • “Are my family members happy and content after death?” • “Why???? Why did this happen?” • “It’s adjusting to life on my own that I find the hardest.” • “I feel like I am going crazy, talking to him when no one is around.”

  5. More voices of the bereaved • “The tears won't stop, I'm not sure what to do, and can't sleep. Then again sometimes that's all I want to do, is stay in bed and not move.” • “I have a huge hole in my heart.” • “My soul hurts beyond words.” • “We have to create a new normal on a daily basis.” • “Oh, the anger. It is like a poison.” • “People say ‘he knows, he sees.’ Really? I wish I could see or feel him here.”

  6. And more voices..... • “I felt so guilty about leaving her [after midnight; she died the next morning]. She said, ‘Don’t go; I’m afraid.’” • “I’m fighting my own demons. She wouldn’t have had all those panic attacks towards the end if I had taken that neck brace off in the hospital [after her fall]. That was where it all started.”

  7. Helpful Concepts (Attig): • Soul: “home-seeking” aspect (force, drive) of our self • Seeks nurture, connection, and grounding in the familiar. • Offers care, love, compassion in return • Spirit: “meaning-seeking” aspect of our self • Reaches beyond the known for meaning in the new • Strives to overcome adversity and to understand • Characterized by faith, hope, and courage • Ego: sense of being a separate self that is in control (This is “me”) • Defends against threats to self-image, self-confidence, and self-esteem

  8. Grief Reaction: Pain of Separation • all-encompassing suffering that involves emotions, thoughts, body, and relationships • triggered by reminders of separation: things, places, events, other people, aspects of our self • Brokenness: sense of self; daily life pattern; life story; web of meaning • Ego in crisis: cannot prevent bad things • Soul in crisis: uprooted, homesick, longing • Spirit in crisis: fearful, discouraged, lethargic, loss of faith

  9. Spiritual Confidence Shaken • Has God abandoned us? Is God punishing us? • Do illness and death happen randomly? Is the world out of control? • Where do we fit in the greater scheme of things? Where do we belong? • Is there any point to going on day to day, caring, pursuing purposes, hoping?

  10. Grief Response: Relearning the World, Our Selves, and Relationships with the Deceased • Ego work: begin again to solve everyday problems • Soul work: reconnect with the familiar to make ourselves at home in the world again and in its surrounding Mystery • Spirit work: reweave web of daily life, joining new threads to familiar; entering unknown with courage, hope, and faith; stretching into new chapters of our life story to find and make fresh meanings • Relationship with deceased: shift attention from pain of separation to loving in separation “When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” (Gibran)

  11. Loving in Separation Pain of Appreciation separation and gratitude Cherishing those we love by remembering their legacies: • Practical legacies: e.g. material goods, biological inheritances, advice and counsel, interests • Soulful legacies: roots in individual, family and community traditions; ways of caring and loving. • Spiritual legacies: ways of changing and growing, overcoming adversity (including sorrow), and searching for understanding and meaning.

  12. Relearning Spiritual Place in the World: Adjustment of Beliefs May Be Required • Beliefs about: • the nature of the world (e.g. secure vs. threatening; orderly vs. chaotic; just vs. unfair) • the (possibly divine) forces that operate within it • the meaning of life, death, and suffering • To find plausible answers or better tolerate living without answers: • May deepen religious faith or secular convictions • May change faith or convictions

  13. Sorrow-friendly practices • Dwelling with sorrows is a choice • Meditation • Sharing and exploring sorrow with another • Ritual/ceremony • Experiencing or creating works of art • Catching and engaging dream images • Attending to sorrow in your body and to breath • Leaning into a faith • Opening heart in prayer • Keeping a grief journal • Seeking meaning in after-death encounters

  14. Mindfulness and Grief (Jon Kabat-Zinn) • Learning: • Moment-to-moment awareness (thoughts, feelings, sensations) • Focusing on your breath, taking each moment as it comes • Working with all your reactions • Accepting yourself as you are – no judgment or rejection of experience as undesirable

  15. Your Emotional Pain (Suffering) is not you • Open up consciously to your suffering • Observe it; be curious • Thoughts and feelings coming and going • Reliving what happened or a particular moment • What could you have done differently? • Blaming yourself or someone else • What will happen next? • What will become of you? • Intentional knowing of emotional suffering contains seeds of healing • Part of you that can know your feelings has an independent perspective – participant rather than victim

  16. Shift your perspective • Acceptance of present as it is • Natural tendencies: • Non-acceptance, rejection of what has happened (things as they are) • Deny or avoid painful feelings • Become lost in painful feelings • Mindfulness = seeing what is transpiring from moment to moment • A compassionate intelligence that takes it all in • A source of peace within the turmoil (cf. Mother who is source of compassion, peace, and perspective for upset child)

  17. Times of great emotional upheaval and turmoil. . .are times when we most need to know that the core of our being is stable and resilient and that we can weather these moments and become more human in the process. (Full Catastrophe Living)

  18. From Grief to Compassion (Joan Halifax) • Grieving can lead beyond our separate stories to an awareness that we are related to a greater whole and that our true home is in the infinite • Our awakening can begin to happen when we’re finally drawn through the tight knot of suffering into the world of suffering around us.

  19. Community of Sorrow • Sorrow of our losses feeds into an underground river running beneath our lives • Grief individual, intimate, private • Initially sorrow feels like it is “my river” – no one else has ever felt this pain - alone • Grief collective, communal • Eventually discover river runs beneath all human life • We are bonded to each other in our sorrows • Compassion: feeling and interacting with each other’s suffering • Story of Ubbiri

  20. Grieving – a Crucible of Maturation • Slow work of swimming through pain and longing • Initially, whole being seizes up with fear and suffering – then something settles deep in our bones that gives us strength • Nobody can tell you how to do it or do it for you • You have to learn to swim in the “black, rushing waters of sorrow” and pull yourself to the other shore • Others can accompany, guide, encourage

  21. Summary • Grieving begins in losses over which we have no control (Grief reaction) • Need to be attentive to our reactions and patient with ourselves– no judgment, no right way • Mindfulness and sorrow-friendly practices • Grief work is active and involves choices (Grief response) • Soul work • Spirit work • Loving in separation • Compassion

  22. Resources • Attig T. Catching Your Breath in Grief: and grace will lead you home. Victoria, BC: Breath of Life Publishing, 2012 • _______. How We Grieve: Relearning the World. Rev. ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011. • Halifax J. Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death. Boston, MA: Shambhala, 2009. • Kabat-Zinn J. Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness. New York, NY: Dell Publishing, 1990.

More Related