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"Conflicts in Grief" |
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It is not uncommon for bereaved persons to find themselves involved in conflict with other individuals who are related to the deceased. Conflicts that arise during grief can be some of the most difficult problems bereaved persons experience. Resolving conflicts is difficult.
One of the keys to understanding such conflicts is that each bereaved person is experiencing grief in a unique way because each person shared a distinct and separate relationship with the deceased. For example, the wife experienced the deceased as a husband, and the children experienced him as a father. When these distinctive differences are brought together, it often creates conflict. Each individual is experiencing grief in a different way and at a different level.
Each bereaved person brings the accumulated personal experiences of their life to a particular grief situation. Their personal history with the deceased is tied to, interwoven with, and inseparable from the person they are and their interaction with the deceased.
Conflicts in grief are as numerous as people. For example: conflicts that arise within families due to the choice of the kind of casket, vault, place of burial; the way the funeral service is to be conducted; resentment and disapproval of the children when the surviving parent decides to date and remarry; and jealousy and anger surviving children experience when parents continue to idealize a deceased sibling. Conflicts also arise over wills and inheritance.
Other causes of conflict include: role changes which occur following death; differences in values, philosophical and theological views of death, and funeral rituals and customs; and the particular ways individuals choose to cope with and work through their grief.
Grief-support groups provide a therapeutic atmosphere where bereaved persons can understand their particular grief and learn necessary coping skills that enable them to adjust to loss and rebuild life. It is also a place where one can identify conflicts and their causes and decide on realistic and practical ways to resolve these conflicts.
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| This article was submitted by Don Harold Lawrence,
grief counselor for the SUNRISE Program. |
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