The Role of Ritual and Behavior in Bereavement - Assignment Example

? RESILIENCE of The Role of Ritual and Behavior in Bereavement Resilience refers to the ability of an individual to withstand and well cope with stress as well all other adversities in life (Bonanno, 2009). After devastating tragedies on life, individuals and communities are able to rebuild their life and cope with the situation as a way of rebuilding continuity. Rituals in the case of this resilience at hand would refer to all the actions that are performed in the wake of the demise so that the traumatic behaviors are averted for the betterment of the person affected. According to Bonanno, the roles that are associated with any given bereavement are associated with the given culture. In the wake of the same, different cultures carry out different ritual acts in alleviating the effects of a loss and creation of resilience. Rituals play a great deal of functions in the life of a person subjected to the given tragedy. Medically, the rituals act as therapeutic step. There are several rituals depending on the society that is concerned with the issue. One of them is the funeral of a deceased person. Funeral as a ritual is carried out differently in the different societies. For instance, in the western world, there is usually a high sense of cultural differences and these would to a large extend be dictated by the specific culture. Funeral home visits with a casket among the western nations; a catholic wake as well as a Shiva among the Jews is some of the rituals. What function do these serve? There are rituals that are also part of other rituals. A funeral service is a greater ritual that is carried by most groups in the world. One of the roles of a funeral and its sub-rituals is that it creates admissibility and appreciation in the hands of the bereaved. Many people according to Bonnano have had to appreciate the fact that so many mourners can turn up to witness the burial of someone in the society. Finality of the death is therefore appreciated and realized at that instance. Burial or cremation is also a ritual that must be carried out to a dead person. Burials witness a lot of activities. These activities just like the whole funeral process are supposed to create an acceptable situation of the reality of the matter (Cecilia & Thomson, 2005). In the western societies for instance, most of the actions are leveled towards creation of acceptance in the victims who suffer from denials instead of carrying out unwarranted practices. Therefore, all the rituals and behaviors are supposed to create a transition and actually the witness of a behavior is usually an indication that the transition is being successfully implemented. Different societies define the expected behavior in a funeral differently. The basis of the behavior is based on the traditional and historical facts that have been followed over the generations (Bonanno, 2009). A great deal of knowledge about emotions is a strong issue when it comes to dealing with resilience at any stage. Much of the western world would therefore have a very personalized approach to issues of resilience than the other parts of the world. Therefore, there is no conditioned definition of the expected behavior in a society but it is based on the type of culture that has been cultivated over the generations. Bonanno’s View of Resiliency and Grief Grieving as a way related to resilience is a process in the recovery process. Grieving is suffering due to any reason that would take resilience to recover back to normalcy. Grief is an emotion that is strong and overwhelming mostly caused by an unfortunate happening. During grieving, there is a high sense of symptomatic experiences that go with the situation and is highly dependent on the strength of the loss incurred. The victims experience a lot of numbness and there’s a total removal from the daily life. This daily life includes social life and therefore, there is support that is required to make sure that the victim recovers completely. The response of the experts to the situation of grieving has always been that of accepting that lack of mediation would cause a total breakdown by the subject (Bonanno, 2009). Therefore, there has been a proposal of some recovery processes that have been recommended by medical specialists. These symptoms therefore usually cause the victim to look like he/she is suffering from an acute condition. It is this situation, according to Bonnano that makes people to think that the victim is suffering from another complication. With the knowledge that mourning can take several months or even years after the demise of the subject, all this time span is a grieving span. Resilience will therefore be subjective if the affected is not strong enough to move on. Grief is said to take processes to heal. This as stated is dependent on the strength of the relationship that existed between the given victims. First, the victims are advised to k now how to remain steadfast and accept to live without the availability of the departed. This is mainly punctuated by the fact that there will be shared activities that are missed between these two partners. It is therefore necessary to fill the created void by accepting the idea of the loss so that life goes on. The other idea that grieving has to involve is creation of space in the heart for the lost person (Cecilia & Thomson, 2005). There is always a feeling of guilt when there is an activity and the person that is supposed to be part of the activities is dead. This creates a feeling of suffering where there is a tendency to create a non-existent place for the partner. Therefore, grieving that has been embraced positively has been expertly known to be part of the resilience process. This is because when the victim accepts to move on with the situation, there is a tendency to create positive living. This positive living is resilience in itself. Resilience procedures take different procedures depending on the culture, age and sex. The resilience processes as discussed in the case material are differed between the western world and the rest of the world. Moreover, the children tend to undergo a process that is different on loss of one of the parents as compared to the older people in the society. Therefore, grieving is a direct process of resilience. Attachment Theory, Trauma in Biology and Psychology The attachment theory describes the dynamism that is presently affective of people relationships. This theory therefore clearly describes the biological attachment that occurs in humans as a result of the attachment that is rife in their life as a result of being close. The effects of the attachment have a biological basis given that some of the relationships may be as a result of there being an offspring such as a mother and a child. An infant develops a primary relationship with one care giver and in most cases, the mother is involved. Psychology, evolution and ethology are key tenets to the development of this kind of relationship. Therefore, there is always a biological connection between the parties involved in the relationship. For instance, attachment is an affectionate bond which is paramount in infancy and is greatly realizable between a small kid and the mother. It is also based on dependency. By instinct, the children attach themselves to those that take care of them. In this case, the aim by the way of biological means is survival and the psychological aim is absolute security (Goss & Klass, 2005). The attachment therefore in this case is used to define the bond between the kid and the mother while care-giver’s bond is used to define the relationship between the kid and someone else like the maid. Therefore the relationship between the existence of trauma and the two branches of biology and psychology are based on a long standing relationship. First, there are developed behaviors between the care-giver and the kid. This leads to the development of a specific characteristic between the two. When the care-giver is lost either especially through death, there is a detachment that occurs in terms of the behaviors that were originally developed tending to be compromised. This will lead to a stress that is leveled towards adaptation of a different characteristic. From a psychological basis, behaviors are adaptive. The loss of the attached person leads to the loss of the behavior. There is therefore a deep set psychological and biological effect of the victim. The work done by those who have experienced trauma automatically changes and there is a high level of stress and struggle to adapt a new behavior. The new characteristics that will be developed are such that there will be loss of security which creates a high level of avoidance. Team work is therefore lost to someone who is traumatized as such. Resistance comes in as a result of the low level of trust that will be created in the subject. There is also a high level of disorganization that comes up because of this. This disorientation causes a very high level of low concentration to the victim even at the place of work or at a socialization center. To such people, many things do not make meaning and therefore they have to be helped through the process of resilience. There is therefore a biological and psychological relationship between all the parties that a person is attached (Goss & Klass, 2005). Role of Stories in a Meaning-Making Understanding of Grief The goals and purposes of grief is that there is a high level of integration between scholarly beliefs and the understanding of clinicians. This is in fact directly related to the idea of biological and psychological principles. Oscar Niemeyer’s ideas as expressed by Klaus in his writings expressing his emotional attachment to the career and talent he had. His is a true biography that clearly defines the real passion he had in his life about his earlier passions. Klaas further explains that at the death of someone in our lives, there is bound to be a big void left. The surviving person therefore is left to make a construction of the dead through any possible method available especially in remembrance of the roles that were played by the dead in the life of the living. Bereavement therefore creates three connections to the living in view of suffering of wholeness; shattering of the patterns of the present lives, makes a disruption of the flow of the autobiographies between the two connected individuals as well as creating a large disconnection (Goss & Klass, 2005). When this biography is made, the clinicians believe that there will be a biological continuity that will be created. The case indicates that there is no ‘me’ but all the relationships that happen create ‘us’. This ‘us’ creates an emotional attachment that makes sure that the psychological attachment is taken care of between the two. For instance, Klaas sees ‘self’ as an illusionary impermanence that does not bring out a unionized self. Therefore, bibliography creates continuity and therefore makes sure that the ‘us’ continues to exist even though the real ‘we’ does not exist. Stories are told in a variety of ways. These ways are dependent on the importance of the person who is the subject of the stories. They are also a haven of development of the ‘us’ issue. This is seen when the stories create a combination of a number of issues including abstract things in the world, themselves and the other people. Therefore if there was a person who was lost through either death or any other strategy, there will be a big positive flow of events leading to the development of grief management. Stories create sense. Since they inculcate a sense of three issues, there will be a high level of the ability to move on with life and whether attached psychologically or biologically (Cecilia & Thomson, 2005). One needs to be able to form a direct connection with the real world. It creates a framework for the occasions in remembering another. Therefore, there is need to create a sense making session so that there is a high supply of the product. The other functions of stories are the catharsis. It heals; it cleans and creates a lot of the ability to identify a very formidable characteristic of the victim. That is why stories and an account of the deceased come up to ensure that there is a high sense of security in the resilient parson. This security is used to help the victims to talk and talk on end so that there is a better understanding of the company policies and regulations (Goss & Klass, 2005). Inability to Make Sense of Loss, the Inability to Find Benefits and Complicated Grief Complicated grief is a condition that is caused by a prolonged suffering by those who are affected by a loss. The prolonged grief causes a significant and functional impairment for a time period of at least one month after the bereavement period is over (Goss & Klass, 2005). This grief can be caused by the inability to make sense of a loss after it has occurred. Making sense of a loss creates the ability for the victim to move on clearly and remain objective with life. Since complicated grief is a prolonged condition, there is a coinciding complicated cause from the experiences by the subject. “The Sphere of Public Discourse’ as expressed by Klaas (2005) and experienced by the members of the Naropa community indicates several community and individual activities that make a subject move on after a loss. There are so many social and private activities that must be done so that there is a direct move from the tragedy. However, some individuals and groups are simply not able to move on based on several factors. Niemeyer’s views are all based on the assumptive world as well as narrative framing. Situations that include refusal therefore to cope with the loss can be summed up in a bibliography. Some people are still however unable to cope with the bibliographies and in what was considered the ‘assumed world’. This therefore takes a very long time to create a sustainable independence in the person. Lack of this acceptance will also hinder the development of resistance to beneficial steps such as life insurance covers, planning of the health service as well as other social benefits as described by the communal inclusion of decision making such as that expressed in the Naropa community. This high sense of denial is very critical in the generation of a comeback to normal and positive life. Sense finding and benefit finding has greatly contributed to the benefit of the society as a whole. The society is an integral part of an individual and therefore highly dictates what goes on to the individual. In the case of the bombings, the latest of which was the Boston marathon bombings, it was ideal that the society pulled up the value it holds in the event and acted accordingly. Many individuals were affected directly and indirectly. Some lost their lives in an event in which it was a family fanfare time to participate in the race. Since no one can anticipate the happening of the disaster, but the response of the society regardless of the unknown impending danger were helpful. It was the sense finding and benefits factor that caused the entire community to take part in the rescue. The more than 250 people who were wounded were not typically Americans but sense and benefit finding goes a long way in the creation of a unified fit in the development of help aid. Meaning is given to the experience at hand and therefore all acts are acted upon according to the respective area of specialization (Goss & Klass, 2005). Positive outcomes of the nasty event were realized as a result of positive actions that came up as a result of the positive perceptions the public in Boston took to help alleviate the process and create resilience in the victims. References Bonanno, G. A. (2009). The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us about Life After Loss. New York: Basic Books. Cecilia, B., & Thomson, T. (2005). Narratives And Story Telling In Coping With Grief and Bereavement. Journal of Death and Dying, 51(1), 1-16. Goss, R. E., & Klass, D. E. (2005). Dead but not Lost: Grief Narratives in Religious Traditions. St. Louis: Rowman Altamira. Read More