Mourning

General information

Generally mourning makes it possible to overcome a critical event of the life. It often is associated with died: the death of a perfect image of the parents when those divorce , the death of confidence in a person , the death of an love affair during a separation , the death of somebody .

Mourning often requires the support of others showing Sympathie (“sympathy” means “to suffer with”).

Mourning can be carried out by the means of all creative means of expression (the monuments, arts…). Thus, the event is not forgotten but commemorated and the pain that it caused even attenuates disappears.

Stages of mourning

Work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross makes retain five stages of a mourning.

Shock, Refusal: This short phase of mourning occurs when the loss is learned. It is one more or less intense period where the emotions seem practically absent. It is by leaving this short stage of mourning that the reality of the loss settles.
Anger: Phase characterized by a feeling of anger vis-a-vis the loss. The culpability can settle in certain cases. Period of questionings.
Bargaining: Made phase of negotiations , blackmails…
Depression: more or less long phase of the process of mourning which is characterized by a great sadness, handing-over in question, distress. Endeuillés in this phase have sometimes the impression which they will never finish their mourning because they lived a great range of emotions and sadness is large.
Acceptance: Last stage of mourning where endeuillé begins again best. The reality of the loss is included/understood much and accepted. Endeuillé can still live sadness, but it found full sound operation. It also reorganized its life according to the loss.

The 5 phases above can be linear but it often happens that one endeuillé can make returns in-back before starting again to advance. A good way of crossing a mourning is to include/understand what one saw and to share his feelings and emotions with close relations or people who also live a mourning.

These stages do not follow one another inevitably. It is not a question of a inevitable mechanism . Certain people can leave a mourning and to pass at the ultimate stage of liberty of action, without the feelings which they could carry being able to be regarded as negligible .

Vis-a-vis the not-desired Change S

Mourning is a personal and collective reaction which can vary according to the feelings and from the contexts. This reaction starts with the refusal and ends in a more or less released acceptance of the feeling of attachment which tested endeuillé.

With the advertisement of its clean dead, it is with the mourning of its own existence that it is necessary to face.
Confronted with died of a close relation or a loved or appreciated person, it is a relational mourning in which we are involved.
Vis-a-vis the advertisement or with the report of a rupture, relational mourning can cause states comparable with those of died of a close relation.

In all the cases, so that the process of mourning becomes active, the condition is that the change is not-desired. If it is about a suicide, if the death is hoped for, if the rupture is awaited, mourning either already passed, or it is not necessary to speak about mourning, or it comes to delayed-action…

Vis-a-vis its clean dead

Work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross illustrates this situation.

Vis-a-vis died of a close relation

The mourning can be defined as the period which follows the Mort of a close being (relative, friend, familiar animal). It is about one at the same time psychological and social concept:

psychological: when a person is attached to be it lost, it enters during one time of sadness and questioning, even of Nervous breakdown; there are 3 phases in the process of mourning:
# the phase of refusal or sideration during which death to be it expensive is not integrated yet; it lasts relatively little of time;
# the 2nd phase is that of the depressive states with demonstrations of physical pain (loss of the sleep and appetite, swell in the throat, aches etc, and of mental pain (lack of concentration, loss of confidence in oneself; the duration of this phase is variable according to each one)
# the phase of reorganization during which one tries to take again taste with the life.
social:
# the individual feelings and the mental state of the endeuillée person affects her capacity to maintain or enter in relation with others (including in the field of the sexual relationships), in addition the subject in mourning can develop new waitings with respect to its entourage: need for attention, solicitude, calm, insulation, distraction.
# according to the habits , which are often abandoned in the strongly urbanized areas, it “is necessary” to follow a certain number of traditions (wearing of specific clothes, prohibition of remarier during a certain time in the event of widowhood…) which depend in general on the degree of relationship and the social importance of the late one.

Death can be a delivery in the case of a tyrannical person or when death concludes a painful long illness. However, with this delivery can be added the remorse and the culpability.

The mourning of a relation

Mourning is a stage which is known in Médiation. Indeed, the mourning of a relation is one moment which often requires an accompaniment in the relational change essential to the construction of a new relational form, that there is rupture or not.

With the whole departure, lived information as shocking causes an amazement. The news is for example the advertisement of a separation or listening of a matter interpreted like conveying the implication of a not-desired change.

The shock or sideration

The term of sideration can completely be appropriate to qualify the reaction of the person vis-a-vis information. According to the personalities, this reaction can result in a great agitation or a paralysis. It is what we name a shock .

The Refusal

Then, in this first state will be added the refusal to believe information . Arguments and behaviors of dispute, rejection of the information brought and lived like shocking. An interior discussion ou/et external can relate to the probability of the announced event: - It is not true, not possible….

The description of this moment is brief, but it should not be believed that this brevity means that the state is not important. It happens that people remain blocked in this state… or that they return there, as in a refuge. It is what we name the refusal .

The Anger

The person is confronted with the checking entêtante authenticity of information. Its state will become more and more complex with attitudes of revolt, turned towards oneself and the others. The intensities are variable, according to the amplitude of the emotional system of the person. Consequently, the thought of the person nourishes strong contradictions. She can pass from the charge to the greatest consideration. Carried by paradoxical reactions related to its system of operation and its interactions, it can be trained in greatest dumbness or go in an unverifiable volubility. She saw same manner of the feelings of guilt. She interiorizes or/and expresses all kinds of criticisms, of judgments.

The person is in states out of oneself . Impulses of revenge can thus push it to have behaviors which it does not include/understand itself. Confronted with the impossibility of one return to the situation of which it must make mourning, the person saw with incomprehension a repetitivity of the cause of mourning. She undergoes her own reproaches, her remorses, her resentments, of the dislikes, the repulsion. She fights and struggles. She can act in a way diverting for others. All in it seeks with not " plonger". According to its resources, it will act in seduction or aggression. But all seems to bring back it on the subject which obsesses it. It is the anger animated by a kind of striped disc and sometimes a compensatory frenzy to thwart the possible feeling of rejection or devalorization.

Abatement, sadness until the depression

The tension forces which the state of anger can cause, maintained in spite of oneself, can generate an organic exhaustion. Mixing all at the same time the initial shock, the refusal and anger, the person can arrive at living an abatement, more or less deep.

The person undergoes a state of resistance to the tender. A war in oneself, with the tearing feeling of a war lost in advance. This state can go until the depression, which can be characterized by physical pains, headaches, of belly, back pains, aches, as well as suicidal attitudes and behaviors. Nevertheless, the interacting whole of the internal states can make him revive the former emotions and behaviors. It becomes particularly " here; difficult with vivre". Generally, it is in the interior and sometimes external escape, with dispersed attempts, unforeseeable, of research of the return - that we could indicate like regressions in the various states lived since the beginning of the process. This state which develops to arrive sometimes at culminating points of the depression and of destruction can be expressed in a paradoxical way: dramatic in oneself and not expressed with respect to the others. Its duration is not related to the intensity of the feelings that the person tested for the third. It is at least in any case a state of despair which can grow blurred, but to seldom disappear suddenly.

Resignation

The resistance of the organization can then lead the person towards the abandonment of this fight during which it can have the feeling to have very tried to return to the lost situation. It can sometimes take refuge in the stage of the refusal. It is the case of these people who put the cover of the people deceased (or parts). Generally, according to this " buckle infernale" , it comes to a true abandonment. Sometimes depressive, sometimes becoming again sociable, the person lets herself carry by the course of the life. She does not have any visibility of what she can do. She acts with the liking of the circumstances, according to it to what the event returns it with which she is confronted. It is the resignation . But this resignation can be composed of tender or rejection.

Fatalistic acceptance

The preceding state caused a relative opening. The obsessing character of the cause of mourning grows blurred. It is the life. The hour is with fatalism. It still happens that the person expresses former states. The intensity is lower. The periods of abatement are less long. It conceives some projects. It is the acceptance. This internal context is strongly maintained in number of culture, with fate, waiting of the reverse of fortune , the will of God , etc…

The reception or impact strength

reception - integration of the experiment, construction, anticipation, projection. The cause of mourning becomes a memory.

Why isn't it simpler to take the things well immediately? The question is vain. The past became a heritage of existence, the present was seen in a relativized way and according to projects and of a pleasant glance of the existence. What was cause of suffering became a resource oneself, appeasing, smile, even a " merci" of experiment… It took place a transformation which has nothing to do with the relativisation of the preceding stage. A beneficial transformation, not a smoothing of experiment of life. It is the named stage impact strength, term popularized in France by the ethologist Boris Cyrulnik.

But when this positioning is not known, it is unimaginable.

The role of the external guide

The mediator can usefully identify the positioning of the person: he will be all the more effective to accompany - and control competences of accompagement - the people in the changes related to the resolution of the disagreement.

In fact are, how much people in the reception ? Don't our cultures contribute to stop us in the fatalistic acceptance of what we live?

The remarks made by the person undergoing the relational rupture are likely to provide information on the stage of mourning where it is. The Médiateur can thus more easily intervene to accompany the Changement.

Official mourning

In France, an “official” mourning (following the death of an important personality or an event having marked the spirits, like an attack), is marked by the setting in Bern of the flags (on the official buildings, the French flags are hoisted halfway or tightened by a black stringcourse) and a minute of silence is observed in the public places, the schools…

Duration of mourning

In France

Formerly, in France, the duration of mourning was generally fixed, for the couple, at one year for the widower and two years for the widow. When it was about the death of a person not having any family ties, a mourning could be respected, only by courtesy, for one length of time much shorter.

During the period known as of “deep mourning” and which generally lasted a year, the widow was to wear only clothing of black color. At the end of this period, conventions enabled him to take on Violet, mauve or gray and this, until the term of mourning. It is what one called the period of “half mourning”.

The widower, as for him, was to wear dark clothing, and possibly to fix a black ribbon around his hat or to carry a black stringcourse around the arm.

For another family member (father, mother, brother, sister…), the same rules were applied but within less times.

Today, the black color is carried by each and everyone. There is not in general more mark external of mourning, and fact more social mourning strictly speaking. Some regret this irrefutable fact: if the entourage is with the current of the situation of the person, it is not on the other hand the case of the other people, which can lead to a lack of tact and thus to an additional suffering in certain situations.

Colors of mourning

The color of mourning varies according to the cultures and manners.

In France, and Europe in general, this color is the Noir
with the Vietnam, with the Japan or in India, it is the Blanc.
in China, it is the red combined with the white.

One can see many symbols in these colors:

the black is the darkness, associated with the closing of the eyes, with the night sleep (death is frequently perceived like a sleep eternal), with the absence of light under the ground (place of burial, field of Hadès where go deaths in the Greek tradition ancient, place where the Enfer is supposed to be);
the white evokes the paleness of death, the celestial light, the truth (in certain cultures, the heart of death has accesses to knowledge out of reach the human ones).

However, one can to note that, if the black is the color most associated with mourning owing to the fact that it is that of the deep mourning and, formerly, of the liturgy of deaths, other colors of mourning are allowed: the purple one (of the lavender to the mauve) -- who is today the liturgical color of the mass for the dead --, gray and the white. It will be also noticed that formerly, to the Court of France, the Queen carried the mourning of her husband in white (“White Mourning”, very rigorous), and the King carried mourning purple.

See too

Internal bond

Mourning among catholics
Mourning in the Judaism

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