The Relationship between Attachment and Loss When a Client Dies - Essay Example

Grief counseling is becoming the more popular field of psychotherapy, and is applied to various spheres of daily and business life. Attachment and loss are the notions which accompany people not only in their private life, but are also integral parts of employees’ activity at their enterprises and thus need special attention. The present research is designed with the aim of clarifying the theory of attachment and loss for the employees in case they lose their clients, the relationships between attachment and loss, and the measures that should be taken in regard to the employee and his moral state. The relationship between attachment and loss when a client dies As a manager, this learner has had to provide some level of grief supervision and counseling to employees when one of their clients expectedly or unexpectedly dies. It was not necessarily the most comfortable conversation to have and this learner was concerned about remaining neutral with the employee by not showing too much emotion but showing concern about the loss. This learner has never received training from a supervisory perspective on supporting employees when a client dies, nor has she received training on attachment and loss from a counselor’s perspective. Research indicates attachment theory provides an outline for conceptualizing clients concerns and intervening within the therapeutic scope of the relationship. Therefore, this learner proposes to present “Counselors have feelings too: The relationship between attachment and loss when a client dies” at the 39th Annual Directors of Programs and Services (DPS) Senior Leadership Conference. This conference is sponsored by Alliance for Children and Families whose mission is to strengthen the capacity of non-profit organizations that provide services to children and families. The proposal topic had to fit under three conference tracks; program development, organizational development or leadership development. This learner’s topic would be submitted under the leadership development track as a tool to assist organization leaders with client death and their employee’s response to grief. This presentation also will provide leaders insight to counselor-client attachment and provide suggestions for monitoring these occurrences. Grief counseling had become an integral part of any human relations, though the theories of attachment and loss are usually applied for the personal and not business relations, this is why the present work is very relevant in the light of the present day situation, when employees lose their clients and need counseling. As the conference we attend is connected with discussing death and dying, theories of loss and attachment appear to be rather acute, though their use should be tied to a specific topic, which is here represented by the grief counseling in business environment. The situations, when employees suddenly lose their clients, are rather frequent, though senior management rarely gives them the necessary attention, misunderstanding and underestimating the role of counseling in these cases. These events directly influence the capabilities, moral state and moods of employees, making their expectations lower and calling them for coping with these feelings alone. The topic will be very interesting to the readers and the visitors, as it directly illustrates the importance of grief counseling in business environment, the skills which should be peculiar of the counselors. It is often that simple managers should also fulfill the role of the counselor, having no skills and knowledge as for the behavior in such situations and without understanding that he must be neutral to the maximum level when speaking about this tragic event with the employee. This is why the present work is devoted to the theories of attachment and loss, their possible use in case employees lose their clients. The work which I would like to present at this conference was mainly caused by my personal interest to the topic of death and dying in relation to the business environment, however, it should be admitted, that there is hardly any company which seriously deals with the situations of client’s deaths or grieving therapy for their employees. it is also known, that hardly any manager possesses any skills to encourage the worker who has lost his client for further actions, giving him positive mood. This is why I am sure that the audience present will understand the relevance of this work in the modern situation and will be interested in the results acquired through the analysis conducted in the present research. Thus, the topic of the work is ‘Attachment and loss when the client dies’. As the conference is devoted to the discussion of various aspects of death and dying, grief counseling appears to be a very relevant topic for the present day society. Another reason for choosing this topic is that the theories of attachment, created until present time, have almost no direct connection to the grief counseling in case an employee loses his client, thus it is also necessary to connect these theories to the modern needs. There have been used 10 literary sources in the work, five of which are the modern researches on the subject of attachment and loss, and five other are represented by the recent outside sources, as journal articles. McMurray (1992) discusses the possible changes which are usually caused by grief and mourning and her conclusions and outcomes will be used and applied in this work to the situations with employees and their clients. According to McMurray, as grief causes changes, they should be coped with, which needs the use of all the individual resources to the fullest. In order to provide the correct counseling to the employee, it is also necessary to understand the stages of changes, through which the employee will go after he receives the news about his client. As McMurray notes, the first feeling is the feeling of loss, the second stage is the grief experience itself, through which every human goes in his attempt to get used to the new life situation, and the third stage is the stage when the loss process should be completed, and this is the very stage when the skills of the counselor are needed. The present research uses this literary source in order to make it clear, that the loss idea is the result of the constant changes, and this idea is apparent in organizational life, no matter what kind of organization it can be. All types of organizations experience the on-going changes, and thus there is need for the employee to adjust to the new situations and environments. Simultaneously, as the person in the organization has to get used to the new knowledge and education he receives, he must also be taught how to grieve and should understand that grieving is nothing unusual in the situation connected with the loss of any client. Maglio (1991) has created the scientific work, devoted to the discussion of the cognitive-behavioral approach to grief counseling, which may be successfully used in the organizations and is very relevant for the present work. Thus, the present work uses this literary source for the explanation of the grief therapy importance in the organizational surrounding. Maglio states, that grief counseling in business surrounding is necessary to emphasize the reality of loss, and it is also essential that the counselor itself remains neutral while he is trying to assist the employee in dealing with readjustment, encouraging him to make healthy withdrawal from the client who is now deceased and to reinvest into another business relationship. These are the key stages which should be learned by the manager who has never earlier acquired any grief counseling skills. However, the author notes, that grief therapy is usually used in cases when the employee is not able to cope with the grief and emotions himself, however, knowing the situation, the manager should take certain steps to make the feeling of loss easier for the employee. The work includes this book into the references and bibliography, using the citations and the ideas of the author in the light of the already described notions. The works of Bowlby are supposed to be one of the basic sources for the discussion of attachment theories, and can be applied to the present topic. Though Bowlby’s theories and suggestions mainly relate to the personal and not business surroundings of people, some of his ideas are of considerable value here. Bowlby relates his ideas of attachment to the neurobiological development of the person. One of the scholarly works of interest in the present research is the research paper of Alan Sourfe (1995) of the Minnesota University, in which the author conceptualizes the notion of attachment as a form of emotion regulation. As the way infant regulates his (her) emotions depends on the way the caregiver behaves, similarly the way the employee regulates his (her) emotions as a result of the client’s death, depends on the way the manager is capable of grief counseling. In fact, there is direct connection between the status of manager’s status and the status of employee’s attachment. As employees often follow the sample behaviors of their managers, it is essential that the manager displays the correct way of counseling and behavior in the case of client’s loss. Tronick (1999) of the University of Massachusetts refers to the attachment process as the two-way street, which means that emotional regulation in any surrounding, and business surrounding as well, is mutual, and as the employee affects his manager, the manager in his turn influences his employee, and attachment is viewed by this author as the central element of any emotional regulation. In the loss description, there are five main stages of grief, which may be described as shock, denial, bargaining and self blaming, anger and anxiety and acceptance. However, in relation to the project topic and idea, it is noted, that in case with employees and business environment, the stage of denial and self-blaming is usually absent, and this is usually understood by the managers. The aim of the manager is to make the employee accept and get used to the thought that the client is gone, as well as to prepare him to the new contacts and the further work with the existing clients. Despite the fact, that at times an employee comes back to any of the grieving stages, acceptance of the loss allows for him to move forward in the grieving process. It happens at times, that the fact of client’s loss makes the employee develop negative image of himself in this world, and the role of manager counseling this time is to persuade the employee that death of the client is not a very influential factor in creating the image of employee in the business world. The grief stages are described in the work in details, with their direct relation to the topic of the research. The main theory applied is the attachment theory created by Bowlby (1973), with certain modifications in relation to the topic of the present research. The three main conclusions made in this work in connection with the Bowlby’s theory: first of all, the level of attachment towards the client is usually predicted by the attachment level of the client himself towards the employee he communicates with, and thus causes the deeper loss experience in case the client dies. The conclusion is that there is the strong continuity in the employee’s attachment patterns, which means that these patterns are usually formed by parents and are then applied by the person to various spheres of his life. The third and the last conclusion in connection with the Bowlby’s theory of attachment is that those employees, who are uncertain in their attachment and feel insecure, will go through the loss experience in the more difficult way and thus will need more serious attention of the grief counselor or therapist. The research has been conducted on the basis of the data, acquired from the 10 companies, in which at least one employee has experienced the loss of the client. The aim of this sample group was to analyze the behavior of managers in the situation of regulating of client’s emotional state and encouraging him at further effective cooperation with other clients and giving him positive perspectives. The number of ten companies represents enough quantity for acquiring objective results as for the mutual behavior of managers and employees in case the client dies. These results also allow creating the recommendations for the managers who are absolutely inexperienced in grief counseling, for the possible behavioral lines in different situations related to the client’s death. The companies have been chosen through personal interviews with managers, which prefer staying anonymous, as such cases are not usually revealed to the public. This sample is a perfect representative of the general trends in the reactions and behaviors of both managers and employees at client’s loss, and their possible interactions. The behavioral lines are compared to each other for finding out similar and different features, mistakes and novelties, for creating the new theory of attachment and loss in relation to business environment. The research was held anonymously, and the age of the employees who have experienced the client’s loss was not taken into account, though emotional regulation and reactions at client’s loss change with age, and thus the grief counseling strategies to be chosen by the manager should be different, though it has been found that without having the necessary knowledge and skills in this field, the behavior of managers will be similar without accounting for age or life experience of their employees. It should be also noted, that any employee had the right to refuse from the participation in the research without any negative consequences for him, however active participation of such respondents will obviously bring certain benefits for the attachment theory in its business application with grief counseling becoming one of the most important areas in relation to mental health of employees, and thus it was advisory for the managers to attract their employees for participation in the research. The employees who have experienced client’s loss should have been correctly explained about the importance of their participation in the research for discovering the relationships between their attachment to the lost client and the feeling of loss they have experienced, with the determination of the ways and obstacles in which managers behave differently, thus possibly looking for relationships between the depth of employee’s loss feeling and the behaviors of managers, which also come as a consequence of the attachment and loss feelings between the client and the employee. Speaking about the peculiarities grieving stages for employees, it has been found that the stages of denial and self-blaming are absent in business environment, while the other three stages can be characterized in the following way: 1. Shock is usually a physical reaction of the organism at the news about the client’s death; however, with the lower level of attachment between the employee and the client, than it is usually in the personal environment, these physical reactions appear to be weaker or are almost absent. Only two of respondents were able to describe their physical reactions as the loss of appetite and some kind of muscular limpness. 2. Anger and anxiety have been familiar to all respondents, though the extent of this feeling was absolutely different among the participants. One of the main explanations lies in the different depth of attachment with the client, which also causes the level of grieving and loss experience. The less attachment the participant displayed with his client, the weaker was the feeling of anxiety experienced by him. 3. The last stage is acceptance, which usually needs certain period of time to happen. The realization of the situation, the impossibility to change it and the necessity to return to the normal life which however should never be as it has been before, were found not to be characteristic of the employees, while the main feelings they experience at this stage are in their doubts they would ever be able to start any new business relationship. There have been used the two types of instruments for assessing the level of attachment between the employees and their clients. The first instrument to be used was the interview method generally called the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), which has been created by Mary Main of the University of California in 1993. The AAI contains the 20 questions which ask the respondent about his (her) attachment experiences and significant losses, however, this questionnaire was somewhat modified to adjust it to the topic and aim of the present research – the questions as for the parents and children have been omitted. The interview was usually oral and took about 60 minutes, however in case respondents wished to stay anonymous, it was conducted in the written way. Another instrument to be used in the research was self-report scales, which usually measured the level of attachment from the viewpoint of the two dimensions – anxiety and avoidance. However, since recent time this scale has been developed up to the 36 questions. This work used the self-scale designed by Bartholomew and Moretti (2002), which is more in line with the works of Bowlby, and views attachment not from the point of view of anxiety and avoidance, but from the viewpoint of working models on self and others, which are more in line with the research of attachment and loss in business environment. The sample group should was of the optimal size, to provide the credibility of the results. This credibility is on the proofs for the relationships between the level of attachment and loss for the employee when the client dies. Implementing findings The study in the area of attachment and loss in business environment is called for attracting closer attention to the fact that grief counseling is also necessary in companies, as well as it is necessary in personal and intimate situations. The topic of death and dying become more and more relevant with time, however not much has been said as for the role of grief counseling when en employee loses his client. It is certainly important to create certain recommendations, based on the results which will be acquired through the present research – these recommendations may be implemented as a part of any managerial educational courses. It is obvious, and the present research is aimed at showing, that employees feel certain level of attachment towards their clients, and thus in case the client dies, they also experience the feeling of loss, which at times becomes too serious and needs special attention, directly influencing the working abilities of the employee. The role of the manager here is to encourage the employee and to persuade him in his positive image among others. Thus, the results of the research should be implemented to change the whole picture of grief counseling in various companies for the better. Although death is the fact which noone in this life avoids, the discussions of this topic have not been frequent in the recent time. This is why, the present conference and the research presented by me is very relevant in relation to the problems, which arise in the modern surroundings. Grief is usually not limited by the feelings connected with death, this state includes all functions of the organism, which are physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual reactions at the information and understanding that the person is gone. The process of grieving counseling is widely spread in the personal surroundings, while in case an employee loses his (her) client, no psychological assistance or encouragement is given to him and he has to cope with the feelings and inner thoughts and doubts himself. This is why I suppose that there has been acute need in conducting this research and presenting it at this conference for the attention of the audience present. In designing the grief therapy for the employee, there are certain tasks, which may be taken into account for the future similar researches or as possible guidelines for the managers who may want to learn more on this subject. These tasks are as follows: 1. The ability to adjust to the situations where grieving is inevitable. This skill is especially needed by managers, why have to deal with encouraging and calming down their employees in case the client dies. 2. Looking for effective ways of coping with the changes, caused by client’s death. It is often in the business environment, that unexpected loss of the client causes certain changes in the working schedule of the employee, who dealt with the business affairs of the client and now has to solve the problems which left unresolved by the client himself. The fact that the employee will have to deal with these problems for a certain period of time will make his experience the feelings of loss over and over again, thus this is the manager’s task to make this process as mild as possible, and possibly give these responsibilities and obligations to another employee. 3. When a person is characterized by the excessive emotiveness, he is expected to go through the process of deep attachment to the client, as well as unresolved or chronic grieving in case this client dies. This is why managers should pay special attention to these employees, giving them time to cope with the loss and coming back to work in normal mental and moral state. I hope that the audience present will be interested in providing further recommendations for the business environment in case clients die and further researches will be encouraged in the similar field by my work which was not only my personal interest, but also the need which have been present in companies for many years, but never accepted or made public. For the further development of grief counseling in the business environment and the understanding that the loss of the client by the employee causes certain changes in his mental health and thus needs special attention, this is why it is necessary for the professional counselors to attend the conference, which will provide them with new knowledge in the field of attachment and loss, their relationships in the business environment and the ways for assisting the employees in their attempt to cope with the feelings of loss, anger, anxiety and misunderstanding. The following resources will be of interest for the audience in their wish to conduct further research or get acquainted with the problems of attachment and loss more closely: Fonagy, P., & Target, M. (1997). Attachment and reflective function:  Their role in self-organization. Development and Psychopathology, 9: 677-699. George, C. & West, M. (2001). The development and preliminary validation of a new measure of adult attachment: The adult attachment projective. Attachment and Human Development. 3, 30-61. Hazan, C., & Shaver, P.R. (1994). Attachment as an organizational framework for research on close relationships. Psychological Inquiry, 5, 1-22. Sable, P. (2004). Attachment, ethology and adult psychotherapy. Attachment & Human Development, 6, 3-19.  Slade, A. (1999). Attachment theory and research: Implications for the theory and practice of individual psychotherapy for adults. In J. Cassidy & P. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (pp. 575: 594). New York: Guilford Press. References Bartholomew, K. & Horowitz, L.M. (1991) Attachment styles among young adults: A test of a four category model. Journal of personality and Social Psychology, 61 (2), 226 Р 244. Bowlby, J.. Attachment and loss, Vol. 1: Attachment. New York: Basic Books; & Hogarth Press. 1969. Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Clinical applications of attachment theory. London: Routledge. Fonagy, P., & Target, M. (1997). Attachment and reflective function:  Their role in self- organization. Development and Psychopathology, 9: 677-699. George, C. & West, M. (2001). The development and preliminary validation of a new measure of adult attachment: The adult attachment projective. Attachment and Human Development. 3, 30-61. Hazan, C., & Shaver, P.R. (1994). Attachment as an organizational framework for research on close relationships. Psychological Inquiry, 5, 1-22. McMurray, Ladonna. (1992). Change, loss, grief and communication. New York: Geddes Maglio, Christopher J. (1991). Grief counseling and grief therapy: a cognitive-behavioral perspective. London. Sable, P. (2004). Attachment, ethology and adult psychotherapy. Attachment & Human Development, 6, 3-19.  Slade, A. (1999). Attachment theory and research: Implications for the theory and practice of individual psychotherapy for adults. In J. Cassidy & P. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (pp. 575: 594). New York: Guilford Press. Sourfe L.A. (1995). Emotional development: The organization of emotional life in the early years. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Tronick, E. (1989). Emotions and emotional communication in attachment. American Psychologist, 44, 112Р119. Read More