Receiving Care - Dealing With Grief [Video]
Transcript
Hi. I'm Sivea Key, and welcome to Retirement Safety Zone. Today we're talking about caregiving from a different perspective - the perspective of the person receiving care.
So let's talk about grief. The first tool to be able to help your loved one is to learn about grief in order to better understand the depth of their emotional turmoil. According to the Cleveland Clinic, grief is a natural response to any kind of loss, regardless of whether the loss is a spouse, a job or full mobility. Says the clinic psychologist Regina Josell, "Grief is a natural experience, but people experience it in different ways. Typically, it includes a variety of emotions like sadness, anger, irritability, and even guilt. Keep in mind that these stages are meant as a guide for sufferers and their loved ones, and don't necessarily apply to everyone or happen in any specific order or at any specific pace." Look for a link to this article right below the video in the description if you would like to read more details.
Grief can be described as having five stages, which most of us have learned about denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Dr. Josell explains that denial refers to the difficulty of comprehending the reality of the loss. It can take a while to wrap your head around the fact that you've experienced a significant loss, that things are different and they're not going back to the way they were.
As we discussed in the introduction, anger is a component and a companion to illness, aging, or injury. It can be hard to accept that anger is a normal and natural response. "It can be directed at a variety of sources," says Dr. Josell. It can also manifest as blame, the feeling that someone else is at fault. So when your loved one yells at you or the nurses, try to remember, you're not the one they're angry at. It's their frustration and pain at the limitations that they're experiencing and their loss of independence.
Another stage is bargaining, which sometimes happens before the loss is final. Like when you think, "If I recover from cancer, I promise I'll start going to church every week," or, "If my husband would only pull through this heart attack, I'll never argue with him again." This stage can be related to denial, but it can also be useful because it can inspire hope and effort towards healing. Doing things like promising to do all your physical therapy exercises or getting into a stop smoking program.
Like anger, sadness is natural when you experience a loss, but depression can develop from the feelings like sadness or even from side effects of some medications or treatments. Symptoms of depression can include loss of hope about the future, feeling directionless, lost or confused about your life, or even difficulty concentrating, or having difficulty making decisions. For the elderly, depression may sometimes be confused with the onset of dementia, so having a professional diagnosis is critical in finding an effective path out of depression in this case. Reaching the stage of acceptance, whether it's early or late in your loved one's process, it can be the critical stage to regaining emotional balance after loss.
Acceptance is a sense of understanding that there is a finality to what has happened. Dr. Josell explains, "You can hold onto your sadness while still experiencing good memories of the past and maintaining hope for the future." Grieving takes time. How long it lasts is different for everyone. For one person, it may be a few days. For a friend of mine who lost her beloved husband, it took years. Grief may never completely disappear, but just gradually lose its power and its dominance over our emotions. The bottom line about grief, Dr. Josell says is simple, "If you feel you're suffering, go talk to somebody," and caregivers, don't take this on all by yourselves. You may need to get a professional involved. When a dear friend of ours was admitted to rehab in a long-term care facility for the fourth time last year, we all knew he was dying. And at 92, he just could not recover enough from his various illnesses and injuries to regain his health.
He was melting away to bones. He had little appetite, and he just couldn't process the food enough to get the nutrients he needed. He was overwhelmed by infection just time and time and time again, and yes, he felt angry. He was depressed and he was scared, desperate to find some way to help him. His wife and I reached out to a hospice service. They were a godsend, both for the excellent care they gave him and the way they managed his intense struggle with passing away, but also for the way they helped his wife and I understand what was going on, find ways to support him, and in the end, have a peaceful passing for our dear one. So don't be afraid to reach out for help.
Thank you for spending time with me today. I hope you found this helpful, and if you did, please give us a thumbs up or share this information with your friends. Subscribe to our channel if you want to continue to learn about ways you can help others and ways that you can protect your family and your retirement. Thanks and have a great day.
Next Steps
Looking for more information about giving or receiving care? You can find all of our posts about caregiving here.
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