Podcasts & Research
Understanding Aspects of Grief
A Series of Podcasts designed to examine and explore some of the more complex grief areas and types of death. The aim is to raise awareness and inform those who are supporting the bereaved – in whatever capacity – on a regular basis.
The Podcasts are hosted on Transistor FM and the links to each podcast can be found below under each relevant subject summary.
Podcast 1 - Understanding Anticipatory Grief
As their loved ones may well have died after a short-term or long-term terminal illness, then bereaved clients may well have experienced Anticipatory Grief – grief in anticipation of an expected death. It is essential for grief practitioners to establish a sound grasp of this experience, especially around its similarities to and differences from Post-Death Conventional Grief.
Podcast 2 - The Grief of The Mid-Life Orphan
When a remaining parent dies, the bereaved person becomes an orphan. If this happens to someone in their thirties, forties, fifties or even sixties, they become known as the Mid-Life Orphan. Not only will they have to contend with the grief for the recently deceased second parent, but they will also face a number of other related losses – practical, psychological, emotional and existential.
Podcast 3 - Bibliotherapy for Bereaved Children & Young People
Bereaved children and young people DO grieve, and they do so as intensely and as fully as bereaved adults. However, they do so in ways that differ from adults. More often than not, they struggle to express their grief because of their emotional immaturity or because the adults around them are reluctant to assist them in addressing their feelings and emotions – for a variety of reasons. It is vital for those adults, who are supporting bereaved children and young people, to help them find their “metaphor” for their grief.
Bibliotherapy is the use of fictional books – with dying, death, loss and grief as main themes – in order to help bereaved children to both understand and express their grief feelings and emotions.
Podcast 4 - Secondary Hurts & Injuries
In today’s modern society, the bereaved are “allowed” three or four months, in which to grieve the death of a loved one. Then, it’s as if a guillotine appears, drawing a sharp line under the grief’s symptomatology and imposing a socially-constructed language that protects the needs of society – at the expense of the needs of the bereaved. It is, at this point, that we encounter Secondary Hurts & Injuries – the stupid things that people say, or don’t say, to the bereaved; and these cause as much pain and anguish as the death of the loved one.