Being there for your kids - Grieving is a Normal Mental Health Process

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

We all experience loss. How we handle it defines it as a blessing or a curse. While we first go to friends and family to make sense of it all, if our grieving and depression linger, we can benefit from psychotherapy. Mentalligent Psychotherapy (MPT) is an excellent resource for you.

Hi, I'm Dr. John Robinson, and this is Teachable Moments. Did you know grieving is a normal mental health process? Have you ever grieved a loss? Of course you have. Mostly you've lost your keys, the directions to where you're going, and other such minor things, aggravating mostly. If we haven't yet, most of us will lose a loved one in death or be fired or downsized from a job, or lose that one special person whom you thought was for life, but who told you, I just can't do this anymore. These kinds of major losses are more than depressing. They're painful and hard to get over.

Grieving is a big part of getting past these losses, and it's a normal part of the mental health process. Most of us go first to our closest friends and confidants to start the grieving. We get soulless, comfort, and encouragement that will get through it. If we don't get through it, that is, then some of us will take the positive step of getting professional help. Getting into psychotherapy is an excellent way to navigate the grieving, accept the blessing, and find something positive that you can take away from your loss. There has been a lot of scientific research on grieving and recovering from a profound and personal loss. The ground dom of grieving literature is Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.

Her research led to her identifying five typical stages of loss. Although each person grieves in their own way, studies show that most people take about two years to successfully navigate the five stages of loss. Kubler-Ross identified these stages as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. There's no lockstep sequence nor timing. We often go back and forth between stages, and each takes more or less time depending on the many factors. Basically, after the abject shock of being presented with the loss, we first respond with total denial. No, no, no, this can't be happening.

We're going to meet up later this week. He's just away. He'll be back for our meeting. When confronted with the loss, our denial begins to crack as reality sets in. Still, unaccepting of the loss, we then get angry. How could he do this to me? Get away from me. I don't need your sympathy.

Does he think he's going to leave me with all of this? To mitigate our overwhelming anger and feeling powerless to go forward, we move into a bargaining stage of grieving. If he doesn't die, God, I pray. promise I'll go to church every week. Don't leave me, Mama, I'll be good. I'll do all my chores. Please, I'm begging you, don't go. Recognizing that we ultimately are helpless to change the circumstances and the loss has happened, we always fall into an expected depression. We are overwhelmed, beyond sad, gushing tearfulness, recognizing that our loss is real. Oh God,

this is really happening. How can I continue without her? My life will never be the same again. Finally, with a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, we ascend the mountain of acceptance. It's still hard to believe, but we will go on. We'll even make something good and positive out of our loss. I don't like it, but I must go on. I want to honor him in some way. Although he is really gone, I will always carry a piece of him with me for guidance and clarity. Mental intelligence psychotherapy, that is MPT, is an excellent way to help your client through her loss.

The components of MPT are mindfulness, positive psychology, and cognitive behavioral strategies. They seem tailor-made to lift grieving folks from their loss. After hearing your patient's story of loss, be empathetic and fully active listen. Give her whatever time she needs to tell her story and to collect herself. It may take several sessions just to accomplish this settling down. When she seems ready, introduce mental and psychotherapy as a healing journey, inviting her to let you guide her through the stages of loss and grieving. Mindfulness sets the tone for healing by helping your patient focus on her now.

Being present gives her space to be distant from her loss. Some folks benefit from imagining themselves in a movie theater as their own film director, watching their own story unfold on the movie screen. They can tease out every detail, change their script, although not the loss outcome, and navigate their healing. Positive psychology and its attending, strategies encourage both her perspective on what happened and her focus on her future. Loss tends to focus on the negative, the if-only's and the woulda-cuda-cuda should us. Helping her focus on her character strengths

will help her use them to get through the loss. Silicon's values and action inventory of strengths is a resource. Several cognitive behavioral strategies help her land in the last stage of acceptance. primarily use cognitive reframing to find out what good has come to her from her experiencing the loss. Writing a list of gratification gives her a resource to remember all she drew from her lost relationship. Using a daily journal helps her keep track of her healing and continually focus on her now while making plans for her future. Grieving is a normal mental health issue that we all experience to a greater or lesser extent. If my comments stir questions for you, contact me through my website at www.org, thereformykids.com, or email me at John Robinson 0.0.com. I'm Dr. Jonathan C. Robinson, licensed clinical psychologists, and author of Teachable Moments, Building Blocks of Christian Parenting, and my new book, The Healing, The Healing, Overcoming Adversity on the Path of the Good Life.

And this has been Teachable Moments. Teachable Moments, Building Blocks of Christian Parenting is available online at AmazonBooks.com and in local and national bookstores. More on Dr. Robinson at TMC-P-I-N-C.com.