Understanding Grief and Communication
As an inescapable part of the human experience, grief is an evergreen-in-importance topic of conversation. It is a mix of powerful emotional, psychological, communication and behavior response components.
Communication Intelligence discusses it today with two sources. The magazine talks with Kaylee Kron, LMSW GC-C MA from Pathlight Mood & Anxiety Center and Kiva Harper, LCSW-S, owner and clinical director of Harper Counseling and Consulting.
Kron has worked for a decade to change the way people understand, process and support grief, serves as a grief counselor at a non-profit hospice, is a public speaker and a community organizer of large-scale events that create space for attendees to look back at life’s most difficult moments, the pain felt and say, “that is grief.”
Harper has been a licensed clinical social worker of more than 20 years, specializing in the treatment of grief, trauma and traumatic events. She is additionally an associate professor of practice at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Kaylee Kron
Being of value to people grieving can be perplexing or intimidating. Not knowing what to do to be our best for others is not usually top of mind.
“We can be the most help to others who are experiencing grief by holding space for the thoughts and feelings they are having; accepting them as they are and not attempting to ‘fix it,’” Kron says.
“Grief tends to be an incredibly lonely time for a number of reasons but one that really rises to the top is our friends and family not really knowing what to do or say. Due to this feeling of not knowing, people tend to either stay away and wait for instructions or show up and make an effort to change the way the griever is feeling.”
There is something different that grieving people benefit from receiving
“The most powerful thing that supports us is someone we trust showing up and asking, ‘How are you?’ and us feeling like we can answer honestly,” Kron has learned.
Kiva Harper
Harper offers recommendations.
“We can help those who are grieving most by simply being there. Cliché statements are rarely helpful and do not provide much comfort,” she says. “We can help by doing the following: Bringing over a meal or giving a gift card, offer to run errands or provide transportation, provide childcare if needed, sit in silence — your presence is often enough — and ask how you can support.”
Unintentionally yet still negatively impactful, people can prove unhelpful and damaging to those experiencing the grieving condition and process.
“There are two primary ways someone attempting to support someone in grief can cause more harm,” Kron begins. “The first is not showing up in the first place. People tend to stay away either because they don’t know how to help or because the loss experienced reminds them that they too will experience loss one day and that is too uncomfortable to be around. Either reason leaves the griever to struggle alone. The second way someone can cause harm is by showing up and attempting to ‘fix’ the person’s grief through the use of platitudes.”
She explains to better illustrate with clarity what she means.
“Platitudes are common phrases we often hear after someone dies like, ‘They are in a better place’ or ‘At least they are not suffering anymore.’ Platitudes do more to appease the discomfort of the person attempting to help than they actually comfort the griever. They are the most surface way to support someone in grief because they require very little knowledge of the situation surrounding the death, the pain the griever is going through and personal reflection on their own discomfort.”
There is other behavior that doesn’t serve the person well.
“Although it may not be intentional, it is generally unhelpful to ask too many questions, especially about the cause of death,” Harper says. “The grieving party is likely still processing the events. Answering questions of any sort can be challenging. If the death also involved trauma, that will make it even more difficult to navigate unintentional but insensitive questions.”
Harper too brings up the counterproductive use of platitudes.
“Statements like, ‘They’re in a better place’ and ‘God doesn’t make mistakes’ should be avoided,” she advises. “For someone experiencing traumatic grief, (such as) death by suicide or similar, asking questions can actually be damaging, given that the grieving party’s mind is often fixated on the loved one’s final moments. Asking too many questions about the death can actually be a trigger.”
For those who are grieving, self talk is something important to observe, monitor and understand.
“Self-talk that blames one’s self or expresses regret can be painful,” Harper says. “Our relationships with our loved ones are more than the last few moments or days of their lives. They know we loved them, even if we didn’t have a chance to say it more often.”
Better she says to label our emotions and feelings and know that what is being felt is part of the new reality.
“Self-talk that acknowledges our pain is more helpful. Statements such as, ‘this hurts and its ok for me to be sad, angry, etc. right now,’ can move us toward healing,” Harper says, adding, “People express grief differently, so acknowledging our feelings without judging them is very important. It’s ok to not be ok.”
Kron meanwhile says that the communication with ourselves that hurts deeply could be one path to healing.
“Interestingly, the same self-talk that hurts the most can be what helps us through our grief,” she declares. “Guilt, for example, is a huge pain point in grief. Throughout grief, we often feel like there was something we could have or should have done to prevent the loss from occurring. This constant replaying of the loss scenario to find a way we were somehow responsible and could have stopped it forces us to process our loss — over and over and over.”
Despite this misery it can be an asset in processing.
“This replay, while painful, is an essential component to truly accepting the reality of the loss and processing the pain,” Kron says. “Grief, in every manifestation — whether guilt, denial, depression, anger, bargaining or acceptance is painful and essential.”
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Final, Important Comments
Kron and Harper converse about what is not well known about grieving, that if we understood, we could communicate more compassionately with words and actions.
“Every one of us is the capacity to support another human being in grief,” Kron asserts. “Grief is universal and ancient — we have been grieving since the beginning of time. Only recently has this been a skill that needs to be learned and a profession that requires special training. For a number of reasons, our culture has become immensely uncomfortable with death, dying and grief, leaving those experiencing it to guess their way through it, often on their own.”
What we might read or be told and then trust could be problematic.
“We are often told about the stages of grief,” Harper says. “Kubler-Ross described these stages after working with terminally ill patients. The stages described the phases she saw the patients experience. These stages have been shared widely, but are misunderstood. Not everyone will experience these stages and they are often not linear.”
There is something easy to remind ourselves.
“We could communicate more compassionately by simply realizing that grief is any loss and each person will handle it in his, her, their own way,” Harper says. “We simply need to support them without judgment.”
Publisher’s Note: Grief was also covered in Communication Intelligence, the Newsletter, with Elreacy Dock, a death educator, health consultant in the behavioral health field and an adjunct professor of thanatology at Capstone University.
