What types of communications are most effective with ambiguous loss?
Rural Wellness
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08/29/2024
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What types of communications are most effective with ambiguous loss?
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- [00:00:00.000]One of the things that I kind of talked about a little bit before was having clear communication,
- [00:00:16.180]right? So certainly talking about it and naming it can help a family moving forward and coping
- [00:00:25.680]with ambiguous loss. Some other parts are these changes in routines or rituals or finding
- [00:00:30.540]a ritual. So just to refresh real quick, ambiguous loss I shared was it's a stress-based loss.
- [00:00:38.460]So it's the situation that's causing the grief, right? I once heard Dr. Pauline Boss say,
- [00:00:46.180]she would say this in response to individuals who were coming to talk to her about this.
- [00:00:50.640]She would say, the person would say, "Oh, you're telling me I'm not the one who's like
- [00:00:55.380]crazy and messed up. It's the situation that is crazy." And that's really true because
- [00:01:00.920]it's something that's happening to you. So I shared addiction, dementia for these
- [00:01:07.360]losses that are, you know, leaving without really being able to say goodbye and the other
- [00:01:14.500]parts of these being able to say goodbye, but without really leaving.
- [00:01:17.720]So again, this myth of closure, maybe the person is no longer psychologically present
- [00:01:25.080]but they're physically absent or physically absent and but consistently psychologically
- [00:01:31.380]present in your mind. And so maybe, I don't know John, maybe it would be helpful
- [00:01:36.500]to share like a ritual around this. So I can speak to one for myself. So my spouse was in
- [00:01:43.700]the United States Air Force, you know, deployed in early 2010 to Iraq. And so he was physically
- [00:01:52.320]absent, right? But he was always on my mind, always on my mind. And so one of the things that
- [00:01:59.420]I noticed very quickly as one of these ripple effects of the loss was when I used to come home,
- [00:02:05.260]he would get home before me from work. And his hat would always be, his, you know, cap would
- [00:02:11.360]always be down on the entryway table and his keys would be in it and I would throw my keys in it.
- [00:02:15.900]Well, he left, he deployed. I came home and that first week there was no hat on the entryway table.
- [00:02:23.160]And it was just this constant sort of reminder that he's not there. He could be in harm's way,
- [00:02:29.500]right? And so what I did to sort of help myself cope, this idea of finding meaning,
- [00:02:35.380]a new ritual, giving myself an opportunity to be hopeful and still honor that relationship was I
- [00:02:41.980]went upstairs to the closet, pulled one of his hats down and put it on the entryway table. And
- [00:02:47.560]so for those entire months that he was gone, I would come home and throw my keys in the hat.
- [00:02:52.280]That was my way of being able to still kind of communicate with him, find a ritual, but to
- [00:02:58.740]recognize I can't change this situation. The only thing I can change is how I'm responding to it.
- [00:03:04.100]♪ ♪
- [00:03:07.100]♪ ♪
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