Here's a little fact for you... One hundred percent of
people die!
You may be thinking 'what a way to start a blog' or 'how
morbid'. But it is the truth and it is a reality that many people need to face
up to. Nobody is on this Earth forever.
Death is still a bit of a taboo subject. People don't like
to talk about it and it can be viewed as a failure to live. While birth is
celebrated as a new beginning, a success, death is treated with the finality
that it somehow does not seem to deserve if we relate it to the natural world.
Part of the problem is that birth and death are still unpredictable. They are
both certainties though, and human beings, the control freaks of the world,
must admit that we have no real control over those processes of life at all.
More often than not, we fight it rather than accepting it as fact. But who
would really want to live forever?
So what do we mean by the word 'death' and the process by
which we attain this state, 'dying'? Generally people are afraid of death. Many
people say that they are afraid of the process of dying; whether it will be
dignified, painful, long and drawn out, or short and peaceful. Some religious
people may not be as scared of death as their non-religious counterparts due to
feeling that they will go to heaven or some kind of soul plane once they are
gone, but will still admit to even a slight feeling of anxiety or apprehension.
The comfort that they take in their religious belief though, is that if they
believe they are going to heaven when they pass away, they do not have to
entertain the idea of being alone or not being at all. Death itself causes us
to face the loss of what we have in the present, and this, along with our lack
of control, is where the greatest fear lies. Studies have been done on the kind
of fear that people feel when thinking about death. The top 10 have been found
to be:
- Leaving behind what we have in this life.
- Total loss of control.
- Leaving unfinished business, either with others or not having done what we wanted to do ourselves.
- Pain, prolonged illness or violence.
- Losing dignity, mental or bodily functions, becoming a burden and worrying that is how we will be remembered.
- Fear of the unknown.
- Fear of how people will manage without you.
- Being judged.
- Disappearing into annihilation.
- Fear of failing.
It is these and other fears around death that lead to people
presenting themselves in my therapy room, because they feel a sense of loss and
grief stemming from the death of somebody that they feel cannot be overcome.
When a client of mine does attend for therapy because they
are grieving over the loss of someone, I spend a lot of time educating them on
the issues surrounding grief and loss. I go through everything that I have said
in this blog so far, I discuss the fears around death and how maybe if those
fears were alleviated, the grief that follows would not be as severe, and then
I do a bit of psycho-education (which I do with the majority of my clients).
The psycho-education involves me discussing the various theories around grief
and loss and applying them to how the client is feeling and their situation in
the present. The stages of grief are explained so that the client can ascertain
for themselves which stage they are at and then begin working on reaching a
resolution and coming out of the grief.
Of course this is a simple way of explaining what can be a
lengthy and drawn out process. Everyone is different and deals with grief in
varying ways. Some people get over a death in a short period of time, and for
other people it can take years. But everybody can overcome the grief they feel,
and it's my job to help with that process.
That's all on this subject for now. It's a dark one, but
it's also a topic that I believe human beings should be more open about. Let it
be taboo no more.
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