In a typical week I will assess two or three new clients new to our service. Over the course of a year that may add up to 100+ bereaved adults, each with a unique story to tell. They may be grieving a partner, parent, child, sibling, grandparent or another family member or friend. The death may have been sudden or expected, peaceful or traumatic. One thing that I have learnt over the 14 years of doing this work, is that beyond any doubt, the attachment style of the bereaved person is central to the way that they will grieve. Colin Murray Parkes, in his important book “Love and Loss: The Roots of Grief and its Complications” (2006) demonstrated this in his research.
As I have come to expect, many clients will tell you that their childhood was nothing out of the ordinary, that they had a happy childhood. I suspect that sometimes this is out of loyalty, especially where it is a parent that is being mourned. But of course, we have all had just the one childhood, with nothing to compare it with, so we are bound to believe that our childhood was the norm. I have lost count of the number of times a client has told me they thought the world of their parents, before recounting instances of alcohol-fuelled domestic violence, neglect, physical and mental abuse. Often these clients are referred to a bereavement support service from mental health agencies where they are being supported for chronic depression and other diagnosable mental health conditions.
To bereavement counsellors there is a familiar paradox. Grief for a loving parent who kept her children safe, is grief born of security. Just as John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth demonstrated, the secure child is distressed when mother leaves, but is quickly reassured when mother returns. Likewise, secure adults will usually experience intense distress in bereavement, but are usually able to come to terms with the loss comparatively quickly. Paradoxically, it is the insecure, ambivalently attached adult who experiences complications. She is grieving not just for a parent but also for the irrevocably lost opportunity to please and to put things right. In expressing anger with mother or father to her counsellor she feels disloyal. As counsellors we validate our clients’ emotions. We give them non-judgemental permission to voice their taboos. We offer empathic support. We help them understand the nature of their grief, to find new meaning, both in the past relationship with the deceased and in any continuing relationship the client chooses to foster.
Work with complex grief is not easy. It may take many sessions with little evidence of change, and the counsellor may regularly be focusing and refocusing the client on her goals. We (by which I mean client and counsellor) may have limited success, although I believe that a client genuinely committed to therapeutic change in the belief that they deserve it, can move mountains. With mutual patience and a trust in the therapeutic process, complex grief can be resolved. The sense of joy is palpable and the experience carries its own rewards.
