Patterns Of Grief: A Personal Reflection On The Grieving Process

Running head: PATTERNS OF GRIEF 1

Patterns of Grief: A Personal Reflection on the Grieving Process

Allison K. Clayton

Toronto Art Therapy Institute

Art Therapy, Spirituality, Grief and Loss

Claudia M. McKnight

Monday, 30 April 2018

PATTERNS OF GRIEF 2

Patterns of Grief: A Personal Reflection on the Grieving Process

Grief is inherent to living ? a part of our human experience (Iype, 2010). It needs to be

lived as a normal emotional response to loss. This loss could present itself in one?s life in

numerous ways, whether it be a loss of a person or a loss of a situation. Change creates loss and

grief is how one reacts to this change. It will be unique to each individual and as of more current

bereavement

Personal Grief Process

Considering that grief can come into one?s life in many different forms and exist in one?s

life in numerous ways, when I consider the way that I grieve, I find myself following similar

patterns for different circumstances. Contrary to what the name suggests, ?normal grief? does not

have any set guideless in terms of timelines of grief. It simply suggests that one can move

towards acceptance of the loss in their lives. Overall, I find myself able to proceed through grief

and loss in a ?normal? manner. That being said, my grieving process results in this acceptance

but it does not tend to start this way. I find myself going through three different types of grief to

get me through the process and into a means of acceptance.

A few months ago, my family almost lost my father. He was taken by air ambulance into

the hospital for emergency, life-saving surgery. We were told upfront that the doctors did not

think that he would survive and to prepare ourselves. Fortunately, my dad survived and has

When all of this occurred, I felt I had to be strong for

everyone else, my mother and siblings. Whether or not they actually needed me to be strong, or

if I just felt like I had to be strong for myself in that moment, I tend to push things down and

substitute everyone else?s need ahead of mine until the problem is over or past. That is finally

when I become confronted with the actual feelings from the situation and decide to feel through

them. In this way, I find myself going though reactions of delayed grief, inhibited grief, and

abbreviated grief all before I find myself able to go through a ?normal? grieving process (Edgar-

Bailey & Kress, 2010). The same was true for when my grandmother had passed away last year.

I found myself inhibiting emotional responses to the event to be strong for my family ? keeping

my feelings quite private, delaying my responses to the grief until after everyone else around me

seemed stronger and able to deal with the situation, and trying to have a short-live response to

the loss by keeping myself busy through work and school ? a means of distracting myself.

Dual Process