14. What is Anticipated Loss? How To Manage Grief Before The Event

Have you experienced grief whilst your loved one is still alive and managing a terminal illness? If so, then you can be assured that you are not alone. This episode provides advice on how to cope in these situations, as well as dealing with complex grief, which can debilitate you from living and engaging in day-to-day activities. One of G Seller's Bereavement Counsellors Tracy explains the difference between anticipated grief and complex grief whilst highlighting some coping mechanisms for both.  

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Transcript

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Hi, I'm Andy Eeley, a Senior Funeral Director with G Seller Independent Funeral Directors and we've been serving bereaved families since 1910. I'm sure you are well aware there's lots and lots of different misconceptions myths and taboos around what happens behind closed doors within the funeral profession. So we've decided to put this series of podcasts us together and try and dispel some of those myths, answer any questions, and just give you a bit of an insight. So please do like, share and subscribe. And if you do have any questions, send them to liftingthelid@gseller.co.uk and we will do our absolute best to answer them for you. It genuinely is Our Family Caring For Your Family. So today's episode we're going to be talking about anticipated loss and complicated grief. And I'm joined by my colleague Tracy. How are you, Tracy? Okay, yeah, I'm good, thank you. Good. So we've met before. We've had a previous episode where we've perhaps, I'd say we've touched the tip of the iceberg as to grief and what it is. I think we're going to look at things a little bit closer today, but again, I still think we're only going to be scratching the surface. Tracy, we spoke about grief previously. If you could just give us a short recap. What is grief? Give us a bit of an overview. Okay, well, grief is the complex, sometimes chaotic set of emotions we feel when someone passes away. Okay. It's a usual response to the loss of someone and over time, for most people, the feelings subside and we learn to live with the loss that we've experienced. Okay, anticipated loss and complex grief, I would suggest perhaps two very different subjects. So if we take anticipated loss, what is anticipated loss? What do I mean by that? Well, anticipated loss, the emotions that can come forward are just the same as the grief we might feel after somebody dies, but it happens before the person has died. If we've, if a family member is like, diagnosed with a terminal illness, okay. So this anticipated loss perhaps begin at that diagnosis. Okay. Like I say, it's kind of similar feelings, but at a time when the person is still alive, which can make us feel that actually we shouldn't be feeling that, like, it's almost disloyal to the person. Okay, so they tend to be feelings that are not, that are even less acknowledged than grief feelings a lot of the time because we almost dare not say anything to anybody else that we're feeling all of those things. But I think in family situations where there's been a member of the family who's been diagnosed as terminally ill and in the last part of their lives, it's going to be a number of people that are feeling that. Okay, but no one's speaking about it. So how can it affect someone? The grief feelings are very similar, so you can feel all the anger, sadness, panic, all those things, but there's no kind of end to it because the person hasn't died, They're still with you. Yes. I suppose you're feeling that you shouldn't be feeling that either as well. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. And I think we feel like we should be concentrating all our energies on the person who's terminally ill and looking after them and that it can almost be selfish to be greedy at this point and almost like we're wishing them to die because we're already grieving for them. Okay, but people can wax and wane between feeling like that and then feeling hopeful that the person is going to carry on living. So it's a very complex position to be in. Yeah, absolutely. How would you cope with that? What would you, advice? I guess. Okay, well, I mean, I think like I said, sharing how you're feeling with other family members is good because they may be feeling the same, but it's also thinking about how you want to spend that last part of your time with the person that's dying. So something that's meaningful to both of you, making it as good as it can be, maybe having those conversations that are difficult, that you've been avoiding and think about what you might want to say, have wanted to say to the person, but haven't yet said, and then thinking about saying it before it's too late. But also within all of that, it's really important to look after yourself because looking after somebody who's terminally is very kind of draining. And sometimes people that are doing that are also having to go to work and concentration levels can be low because of that. So there's a lot of external pressures on somebody. So it's really important that you look after yourself in terms of being there and able to support the person who's dying. So it's small things like just take a bit, if you could take a bit of time for yourself, do something that makes you feel happy, it's different for everybody. It's whatever you like. Go for a walk, binge a box set, order a take out, something like that. Anything that just gives you a bit of time to recharge your batteries to make you feel like you're more able to then be with the person who's dying. It's quite interesting. You said earlier that a lot of family members may feel the same way, but you wouldn't necessarily know. Do you think they should talk to one another? What about input from someone like yourself with sort of counselling at that stage? Would that be appropriate? Something that we should perhaps think about? Yeah, I think like I said at the beginning, people don't talk about anticipated grief because it's almost like you're not allowed to grieve at that point. And so services for that are quite few and far between. But that's why we've developed the service we've got, to provide for that niche part of grief support, that basically anyone can access our services for anticipated grief support. And it might not be that people need lots of it, but it's just like a space to actually just be able to acknowledge how they're feeling. And that can be really helpful to sort of sustain them through, to still be there for the person who's terminally ill. But equally, a lot of support can come from within families if they talk to one another but that can be a sticking point because people don't want upset each other. Yeah, I guess just the dynamics of the family as well might cause issue there. You don't know. Yeah, not everybody's got a family structure that they can access so yeah, sometimes a bit of professional counselling support will be the thing that will help them through. Okay, so it's quite complicated. It is very complicated. I think all grief is, isn't it? But there's another type of grief, it's actually called complex grief. Could you just talk us through what is complex grief? What's the difference there? Okay, well, grief, the feelings are the same yeah, but it happens if for a few reasons if say, someone's experienced a lot of personal losses within a short amount of time okay, so which happens yeah. And if grief like I said, I said at the beginning, you know, normally we kind of, grief feeling is reduced over time and then we kind of come to some peace with it. But if it carries on those acute feelings carry on for like two, three years and someone's still feeling as as upset and debilitated by grief as they were in the beginning, then that's what we would sort of class as complex. Okay. Okay, so what would be the signs of complicated grief? Well, if you're still continually upset and not able to go to work and not engaging in life again and hiding yourself away and just feeling like you can't face the world, that is a sign that you are experiencing complex grief. Okay, is this something you would notice yourself as or would it be other people? It's more likely that other people will notice that. You might feel like you just want to hide yourself away, but actually other people will notice that you might withdraw from friends and things, but it's worth anybody that's got somebody in their life that's kind of experienced a number of losses to kind of just be a bit mindful of that sometimes. It's quite subtle things that can be noticed, but yeah, other people will probably notice it more than you do. Okay, how can we help with that? I mean, like with the anticipated loss, you gave us some potential advice of talking. With complex grief, any sort of coping mechanisms there? Well, I think it's always lean on any support you've got within family or friends, but really, if it's complex and it's long held and it's been going on for years, it does need bereavement counselling support, because it's almost like you need the space to be able to unpick the number of deaths. Because when you get a cumulative amount of deaths, it's almost like you can't process one death to start back at the beginning. Unpick it all. Some deaths will be more kind of significant than others, but actually it's a cumulative effect that makes us feel like there's no certainty in life and deaths all around us, and that's one of the reasons that makes us give up on life, almost. We just think everybody dies, don't they? Which we all do eventually, but it's kind of not living while you are living, in that sense. So, yeah, unpicking it within counselling support and it's a slow process. I was going to say, is that a different sort of counselling support? Is it more involved, is it longer? I mean, there's no sort of one size fits all with counselling for bereavement anyway, but, yeah, it tends to be a bit longer because it has to be more gently done, because there's more deaths to unpick and process. But sometimes when people enter into counselling, they'll find space, just being able to talk about it and talk about each individual person they've lost and how they're feeling. Just the process of that without really doing any work on it, can be enough to help someone feel like they can start to step back out into life again. Good, Tracy. Again, I think we're still just scratching the surface here, but thank you for your time and certainly we see you in subsequent episodes. And please do revisit our initial episode, the episode on grief, to give you a bit of an overview there as well, but yeah, thank you, Tracy, and thank you. Any questions at all, please do, like, share subscribe, send the questions to liftingthelid@gseller.co.uk and we'll see you next time.