Interesting look at the lack of collective grief in some areas of the nation over the immense loss from COVID. While some areas collectively understand the grief the nation is facing, other areas do not. Collective grief is important as a nation when disaster strikes, to identify loss and come together.
The pandemic and its damage to society does not equal the collective outcry of grief that it should so far. Please also review AIHCP’s Grief Counseling Certification
The article, “More Than 250,000 Are Dead. Why Is There So Little Collective Grief?” by Corrine and Erik Ofgang look at the number of dead due to COVID and ask why society is not grieving enough over this in the USA. They state,
“A large portion of the population believes the falsehoods that the virus is a hoax or the numbers of dead are inflated, and grief itself has become politicized with some worrying that too much focus on rising death counts will discourage economic recovery. But these factors alone can’t explain the lack of collective response.”
With lack of many visuals of the death, society may not also be recognizing the dangers. To read the entire article, please click here
Please also review The American Academy of Grief Counseling’s Grief Counseling Certification and see if it meets your academic and professional goals.
Grief that transfers to work from home can be counter productive to the office or work place, but it is a natural occurrence and managers must be aware. Managers can help limit the issue by actually addressing it and helping employees deal with grief. Support and understanding are key elements in helping an employee function at work while dealing with grief.
Grief follows employees to work. Helping employees with grief is important. Please also review AICHP’s Grief Counseling Certification
The article, “How To Help Others Manage Grief: 16 Lessons For Business Leaders” from Forbes, looks to address the issue of helping employees deal with grief. The article states,
“Working through feelings of grief and mourning with your team can not only improve everyone’s mental health and overall satisfaction, but can also provide valuable insights to help you become a better leader. Below, the members of Forbes Coaches Council share 16 important lessons that business leaders can learn from the principles of grief management.”
Please also review AIHCP’s Grief Counseling Certification and see how it can help you learn more about grief or progress within your professional career. Understanding grief in the work place is a critical leadership quality that needs to be utilized especially during the pandemic.
Learning how to understand and explore grief itself helps one understand the nature of life and loss. Those who run from it will never be able to adapt to it and will find their lives always lacking. It is important in grief counseling in many ways to eventually embrace grief when the person is ready to accept the reality of loss and how loss is part of his or her life.
Grief Counselors help others embrace and accept their grief in order to build a bridge from the past to the future. Please also review AIHCP’s Grief Counseling Certification
The article, “Introducing Grief: How My Clients and I Have Embraced the Exploration of Loss” by Stephen Gribelevich looks at the nature of loss and how he works with others through their loss. He states,
Often, when a client of mine identifies with the experience of complicated grief, they endorse persistent feelings of loss without a corresponding process of connection to life beyond the loss. Moreover, they often express a chronic doubt in the possibility of meaningful discovery during examination of their grief. Complicated grief often drives a person to fixate on certain associations of loss and to avoid other associations, which can make it difficult for one to do the kind of thoughtful narrative work inherent in the grief process.
Depression can encompass the entire self. Eventually, a person sees themselves described as a depressed person. They are seen as an “eyeore” type personality. One cannot be defined by depression and allow their personality to be defined as it but they need to receive the help they need to better cope and regain their identity. How one feels should not define who one is.
Depression can overtake one’s identity. Please also review AIHCP’s Grief Counseling Certification and see if it meets your academic and professional goals
The article, “Depression Is the Ultimate Identity Thief” by Dr Michael Friedman looks at identity and depression. He states,
“We start to lose faith in ourselves and our identity becomes connected with depression. We think of ourselves as a “depressed person” rather than someone who suffers from depression. Add to that the fact that our social relationships and work performance suffers and we assume that we are “not good at relationships” or “not a strong performer.”
Please also review AIHCP’s Grief Counseling Certification Program and see if it meets your academic and professional goals. The program is online, independent study and open to qualified professionals.
During mass social grief, it is important for leaders to show leadership in grief. This involves in addressing the loss, looking for ways to help others cope with the loss and offering ways to adjust to the loss. Leadership in corporations, government even to the smallest unite of the family, needs good leadership from individuals in time of grief and loss to reassure, help and inspire.
Crisis and grief define leaders. Leadership in grief helps others find purpose and reassurance to rise above it without ignoring the problem. Please also review AIHCP’s Grief Counseling Certification
The article, “Grief leadership in time of crisis” by Jitender Girdhar looks at how leaders during crisis and grief can take a leadership role in helping others through it. The article states,
“Grief leadership is about leading people, whether or not they’re your friends, employees, or a nation, through experiences of sadness, trouble, and grief. Grief leadership is, essentially, resilient people leadership.”
In times of crisis and pandemics, leadership is needed. Not only to lead but to also assure and help cope with the loss. A leader needs to not ignore the issue but embrace it. Acknowledging the issue but reassuring the multitude of victory is essential
Please also review AIHCP’s Grief Counseling Certification program and see if it matches your academic and professional goals.
While the Five Stages of Grief are an excellent look at how individuals deal with death and loss, they may not apply to every individual. In fact, individuals grieve through different stages and face grief different ways. This is not to discredit the stages proposed by Kubler Ross but more so to address to grief counselors, that it is not always the way.
Grief is not always tucked away into neat steps and processes. Please also review AIHCP’s Grief Counseling Certification and see if it meets your goals
The article, “Five Things You Should Know About the ‘Five Stages of Grief’” by Eleanor Haley from the site “Whats Your Grief” reviews how one should understand the stages. She states,
“The five stages of grief are not absolute truth. Like all theory, it’s based on a hypothesis (an educated guess). There is a bit of research to support the theory, but there is also a bit of research to contradict the theory. In reality, other grief models may fit your experience exponentially better than the ‘Kubler-Ross Model’.”
While Kubler Ross theory and stages are valuable, one must understand they are not always linear as well as many steps are repeated. One should not dismiss it in grief and loss but one should also be free to wander from it when needed. Please also review AIHCP’s Grief Counseling Certification and see if it meets your needs and goals.
Making sense of suicide is difficult. Loved ones who lose family to suicide suffer immensely in the days and months and years after. Questions swirl around their minds. What could one have done better, or why did one say this or that, or why was one not paying attention to the signs.
Processing the loss of a loved one to suicide is a very difficult process. Please also review AIHCP’s Grief Counseling Certification
Regret, guilt and intense grief can follow. The very fact that suicide is a taboo subject can also intensify the grieving process. Suicide grief hence has all the prerequisites and ingredients for a possible complication emotionally for the family.
The article, “Making sense of suicide grief” by Susan Quenelle looks deeper at suicide grief for family members trying to make sense out of the senselessness. She states,
“September is National Suicide Prevention Month. This designation helps to serve as a reminder to all of us of the many people who struggle with emotional issues on an ongoing basis. But another related area of concern is those who are left behind after someone has committed suicide.”
Those left behind suffer the most and it is important to help them understand their grief. To read the entire article, please click here
To learn more skills to help others through the process of losing a loved one to suicide, then please review AIHCP’s Grief Counseling Certification
Death of a loved one is difficult by itself. It takes time to recover from the loss and re-adjust to the life without them. While we re-adjust, some say we never truly recover completely and that is fine. However, when we lose someone and the death is complicated because of the nature of the death or how we ended it with a particular person, then complications can emerge in our recovery process.
Looking back the death of a loved one can be painful. Sometimes it can bring back certain things about the death or how we reacted to it. Please also review AIHCP’s Grief Counseling Certification
Sometimes one may regret how they handled the death of a loved one. Maybe the last words were not pleasant, or the one felt conflicted during the person’s illness. Other times, one may regret not discussing or doing this or that with the person. In other cases, the nature of the death itself can cause extreme distress. Many deaths via suicide or through a particular disease can become disenfranchised. Individuals suffer far greater in these types of sudden and unnatural deaths. They raise questions and cause embarrassment in some cases.
These types of complications can lead to an array of issues for the recovery process and turn simple grieving into a complicated form of grief that may not reside on its own.
The article, “Struggling with How a Loved One Died” from “Whats Your Grief” looks at how one can overcome these conditions of a death of a loved one. The article states,
“It’s very important to note, revisiting events like these can bring up many distressing thoughts and emotions. When thinking about the death, some people may actually re-experience intense emotions like panic, terror, and fear. In an effort to not feel this way, the person may actively avoid anything that could bring up these memories which, in the long run, may cause them to cut themselves off from important people and places and to possibly live in a state of hyperarousal.”
To look back at a loved one’s death is natural. There is nothing wrong with it, but when the death is more complicated or we regret how the process played out, then we may feel stronger emotions that can haunt us. It is important to face those emotions and deal with them.
If you would like to become a certified Grief Counselor then please review the American Academy of Grief’s Grief Counseling Certification and see if it meets your academic and professional goals.
With covid, life is upside down in all facets. Providing grief support like any health or mental issue has turned to telecommunication. Remote care and counseling or over the phone guidance has become a new norm. Schools also are facing issues as debates begin on re-openings. Many have grief issues with covid and other anxieties.
Grief Counseling at schools will face new challenges as they open for the school year during covid. Please also review our Grief Counseling Certification
The article, “Providing Remote Grief Support to Students and School Communities” from “Whats Your Grief” takes an indepth look at the challenges of providing grief counseling to schools and students via remote. The article states,
“It stands to reason, a higher number of children will be carrying the burden of loss when they return to school this year, whether they are grieving the death of a loved one, or a non-death loss. While at the same time, there are new and significant barriers to receiving the types of support teachers, parents, counselors, and community members are accustomed to providing.”
Atypical depression can cause a over sleeping. Atypical depression is an ongoing depression, where a person may not even realize they are depressed because an event or surprise can temporarily lull them out of it, but it still nonetheless persists. Many who experience this type of depression will over sleep.
Oversleeping can be a sign of depression. Please also review AIHCP’s Grief Counseling Certification and see if it matches your academic and professional goals
Oversleeping is a symptom of depression because it is a way one tries to cope with the sadness. One will feel they have nothing to look forward to so they turn to sleep as a way to escape reality.
The article, “What You Should Know About the Relationship Between Oversleeping and Depression” from Cleveland Clinic’s Health Essentials looks at the correlation between oversleeping and depression. The article states,
“While oversleeping can be a symptom of atypical depression, there are different factors that also contribute to it. “When someone is depressed, it can be because they sleep as a form of escape,” says Dr. Drerup. “They may be thinking, ‘I don’t have anything to look forward to so why do I even start the day?’’
To learn more, please review the entire article and click here
Please also review the American Academy of Grief’s, Grief Counseling Certification. The program is offered to qualified professionals seeking a four year certification in Grief Counseling. The program is online and independent study. Please review the program and see if it matches your academic and professional goals.
