A 2500 word essay on the third year psychology module 'Loss, Grief and Bereavement'. The essay covers an account of personal loss, detailed description of various theories on coping with loss, applying those theories to the case of personal loss to evaluate said theories and then discussing the the...
Loss, Grief, and Bereavement: Cultural, Social, and
Therapeutic Perspective
My own experience of loss comes from the death of a family pet, this being the death of my dog. I
had owned the dog for the entirety of my life, picking her up being the first memory I have of my
own childhood. At the time of her death, I was 17 and have had her for 15 years. I assumed I was
going to be prepared for her death when it happened as I have experienced deaths of previous pets
before as well as deaths within the family from distant relatives. These experiences didn’t bother me
much when they happened as I didn’t have a close relation to such however when it came to my dog
it was very different.
I was present when she was put down so I hand the first-hand experience of seeing her go
which potentially helped my experience of loss as I knew that she was gone, and I could easily accept
that from the start. For the rest of that day and the following days that week I was left feeling empty
and depressed with how that my dog was gone. Due to the close relation I had, it was more than just
losing a pet but more like losing a friend. The sadness was driven by the fact that nothing could be
done to change the fact that she was gone. This over time turned into the acknowledgement that
nothing could be done to change the matter. This helped me come to terms with it though as no
matter how sad I may have been it wouldn’t bring her back and I would have to accept that.
Over time I was less depressed about it but still felt an emptiness as all the little things in
daily life I had gotten used to weren’t there anymore such as her barking at the door when people
came home, the tapping of her paws as she walked through the house and that her bed was left
empty where it was for a few months after she passed. One thing that helped a lot was that at the
time my mother ran a dog day care business, so we always had a number of dogs in the house in the
, PSY3014 Loss, Grief, and Bereavement Assessment
week which helped take your mind of the fact our dog was gone. This was more like a double edged
sword at the start as it made things worse due a regular day care dog that was friends with mine was
running around the house barking at people as if it was trying to find my dog. This showed me the
greater effect it had on others not just yourself as it wasn’t just me or my immediate family effected
by it. A couple years on now and the loss has been processed and dealt with, things have been
accepted and I have come to terms with the fact my old dog is gone but I have many good memories
to reminisce on.
When it comes to grief and bereavement over the years several researchers have looked at
different ways to explain and breakdown the grieving process, one of the most well-known
theories/models on the topic is the 5 stages of grief model proposed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her
book ‘On Death and Dying’ (1969). This model suggests that when someone goes through the
process of grief, they go through progressive stages that are of different states of mind. These stages
are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance.
Despite being the more well-known idea to how people cope towards loss it has a
substantial number of issues with it, mainly that sets an ideal process to grief when in reality it is a
far more complex process than what it suggested with the 5 stages. When it came to my own
experience with loss, I didn’t go through all these set stages, nor did I go through a linear progress in
a clear order which highlights to how grief can be a messy process without a set structure but also to
how it can be different from person to person. In my experience I never was in denial over what
happened, not being able to come to terms with the death, I was quite the opposite in that I
accepted the fact with what happened and that my dog was now gone. During the progress I was
more depressed than anything else which shows to how the theorised 5 stages isn’t the case for all
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