Iona has been a clinician and manager of health services for fifteen years, and a trainer for UK-based medical charities, focusing on psychosocial issues, mental health disorders, and also the promotion of communication skills for people in helping roles. She tutors and facilitates groups via workshops and teleconferences, and now specialises in Sight Loss. As a freelance writer, she contributes regular feature articles for magazines, has written five published books, as well as published courses relating to personal development and counselling skills.
Iona has also written published books, courses and articles across a wide range of subjects, mostly in the areas of health, counselling, psychology, crafts and wildlife.
She has drawn experience from clinical and managerial experience within the NHS as well as medical and humanitarian subjects. She has been a regular feature writer and expert panel member of a national magazine for six years.
Project, Coordinator (Delaware & Tennessee) Human Writes
Excerpt from the Course
LOSS
To experience loss, we need attachment. There are many theories about why humans and some animals make emotional attachments to others. Survival could be one reason. Some theorists argue that it is purely biological, whilst others argue that attachments form due to the need for safety and security. John Bowlby (1980) supported the latter view.
We learn attachment behaviour from the time we are born and this affects our relationships throughout our lives. If we learn to trust and have steady, dependable care, we are able to grow up with high self-esteem and independence. We are also able to love and be loved. The greater the attachment, there is obviously the greater potential for loss. We may experience many losses throughout our lives, the loss of a loved one, a pet, a job, financial security, but we may also experience the loss of potential, that is, what might have been – the job we might have had, the parent we never knew and so on.
Society’s Views of Loss
Different cultures have different views of loss. For example, in Western society it is not always acceptable. There is the idea of the “stiff upper lip” and “coping well.” People are often expected to be “well” again a couple of weeks after suffering a bereavement and leave granted from work for bereavement is often only a week or two weeks at most. This is often compassionate leave for close relatives such as partners or children or parents. But what about grandparents, close friends, and so on. You may have had a very close relationship with them, but people may not expect you to have compassionate leave for this type of loss.
Most of us live in a multi-cultural society. Some cultures have built in methods of supporting the bereaved, others tend to be unsupportive and the person feels isolated. In some cultures, relatives openly grieve, in others the widow is seen as unclean and should not come into contact with the outside world for some time. Western Society does not, in general, help people grieve.
Some factors may contribute to this, such as the decline of the extended family, nuclear families, the decline of religious observance, the “stiff upper lip” mentality.
It is increasingly acknowledged that cultures that do not support and encourage expression of grief can cause their bereaved to experience psychological and physical depression and illness. In bereavement support, help, respect and understanding should be given to the bereaved person, whatever their race, gender or culture. Everyone will mourn one way or another.
Coping With Loss
The loss of a loved one is one of life’s most stressful events and can cause a major emotional crisis. After the death of someone you love, you experience bereavement, which literally means “to be deprived by death.” Grief is considered the involuntary emotional and behavioural response to bereavement. Mourning is the voluntary expression of behaviours and rituals which are the socially sanctioned responses to bereavement.
Knowing What to Expect
When a death takes place, people will experience a wide range of emotions, even when the death is expected. Many people report feeling an initial stage of numbness after first learning of a death, but there is no real order to the grieving process. Some of these emotions include: denial, guilt, anger, despair, shock, and sadness. These feelings are normal and common reactions to loss. They can be very intense and change swiftly. Some people even begin to doubt the stability of their mental health. These feelings are healthy and appropriate and help people come to terms with their loss.
It takes time to fully absorb the impact of a major loss but the pain eases after time and allows you to go on with your life.
Mourning
It is not easy to cope after a loved one dies. People will mourn and grieve. Mourning is the natural process people go through to accept a major loss. Mourning may include religious traditions honouring the dead or gathering with friends and family to share loss. Mourning is personal and may last months or years.
EBook to compliment this Course
The engaging world of the human psyche is thrown open in this deep and intriguing ebook. Multiple case studies help the reader explore this fascinating subject in depth.
by the Staff of ACS
Counselling Handbook eBook course online. Full of interesting case studies, this ebook is a wonderful introduction to the complex world of the human psyche. Expand your mind and learn about what makes people tick.
Are you a good listener? Hone your skills by learning popular counselling theories and techniques.
You will learn about:
- Listening skills
- Non-verbal communication
- Influencing skills
- Defense mechanisms
- Our perception of others
- Attributions
- Convariance theory
- Lay epistemology
(and many more such things that may not make sense now but will by the end of the book).
Contents:
1. Where can counselling be used?
2. How to see behind the mask.
3. Emotions and attitudes.
4. How to communicate better when all you have is words.
5. Theory versus practice.
6. Diffusing difficult situations.
7. Golden rules or tips.
8. Appendicies.
Extract from book:
We don’t know for sure how much of our communication is non-verbal. Estimates vary from 50% to the 80%. Non-verbal communication becomes more significant, the more mixed the messages are. So if a person is saying one thing, but their body is saying something else, we will tend to pay more attention to what their body is saying to us. Most of us are aware that this is a sign of attempted deception.
Meharabian (1971) carried out a study to see how people decide if they like each other. They looked at facial expressions and spoken words. Participants had to listen to a recording of a female saying one word “maybe” in three tones of voice – neutral, like and dislike. The subjects were then shown photographs of a female face with three expressions – neutral, like and dislike. They were asked to guess which emotion the person in the photograph, the person on the recording and both together were experiencing.
The participants were more accurate in guessing the emotion of the photographs than the voice at a ratio of 3:2. Meharabian also carried out another study where participants had to listen to nine words. Three showed liking (dear, thanks, honey), three showed disliking (brute, terrible, don’t) and three showed neutrality (oh, maybe, really). The words were spoken in different tones. The participants were asked to guess the emotions behind the words. They found that tone carried more meaning than the word.
They concluded that:
■Without seeing and hearing non-verbal messages, there can be more chance of misunderstanding.
■A lot of communication does come through non-verbal communication, but we are still unsure as to the exact amount.
■When we are not sure about a particular word, we pay more attention to non-verbal communication.
■When we do not trust a person, we pay more attention to non-verbal communication.
There are many myths about body language. For example, crossing your arm means defensiveness, covering your mouth means you are lying and so on. But we should rely more on other factors such as:
■Clusters of factors (showing more signs of non-verbal communication).
■Non-verbal behaviour at the time a question is asked, particularly if the question is embarrassing or difficult.
■Situations where the other person may not be trying to control their non-verbal behaviour.
As we said above, it is important to consider your own non-verbal communication. BUT not to such an extent that you try to control it all the time, wh
Iona Lister
Counselling Handbook