ALYSIA ANNE: VISUAL ARTIST
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ALYSIA ANNE: VISUAL ARTIST

Bedtime reading.

23/3/2015

 
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Cheerful reading before bedtime.

I've been critical of Kübler-Ross's grief stages mostly because it's been detrimental to my recovery from the loss of my parents.  I didn't really pay much attention to the stages personally, but those around me expected me to follow this strict guide of when and how to feel.  I know this is a gross misapplication of the grief model, but the misapplication is societal.  In both deaths, when I wasn't following the prescripted stages I was questioned and bullied over it.  What this ended up causing was for me to retreat further within, thinking I was experiencing death the wrong way.  Eventually I just shut it out entirely and it festered like an infected wound for years while I consciously tried to bury it deeper.  My whole issue comes from the way grief models are presented.  They're usually listed, and even with warnings ("please don't use this as a list!"), we still do.  Perhaps if the model was some sort of visual graphic it could better represent the seemingly universal moods that we can all connect with.  I don't doubt there isn't a fair set of emotions we all may feel, but we all experience bereavement so radically differently I fear even suggesting, say "anger" (one I haven't personally encountered) as an emotion present in grief will present a problem for people who haven't felt it.

Lauren J. Breen and Moira O’Connor[1] note the fundamental structure of grief through psychology analysis also fails to consider grief doesn’t always align to specific functions.  They posit that this creates a paradox for complicated grief: a cyclic interference in what may actually be healthy grieving following a delineated path.  By medicalising grief, and assigning a diagnostic category, we create a self-fulfilling prophesy of damaged individuals.  This does not, in fact, prove that complicated grief isn’t a thing, rather, it proves its existence by default.  Until a society can understand death, we will not have the correct capacity to deal with it.  

[1] Breen, L. J. & O’Connor, M. (2007) “The fundamental paradox in the grief literature: a critical reflection.” Omega: journal of death and dying. 55 (3) 199-218.

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