When a Balm Aggravates Pain: The Wrong Words to the Bereaved in Grief and Trauma Counselling

Introduction

There is likely no living person who has surpassed the age of six, in the view of this writer, who has not experienced loss of a dear one, although the frequency, incidents leading to the loss, experience of attendant grief and trauma, coping and rehabilitative assistance provided and received during the phase may vary. The death could be that of a child, classmate, father, friend, mother, neighbour, sibling, extended family member, or workmate, to list a few. Whoever the deceased is to the bereaved, the loss of a beloved person remains one of life’s highly stressful events (Rajic et al., 2023). Thus, one of the prominent ways people react to the loss of loved ones is to grieve. According to Asgari et al. (2023), and Skalski et al. (2022), grief is individual’s natural reaction to a loss or absence of a dear person or object considered valuable to the bereaved, or after encountering disasters and traumatic events.

During bereavement, Worden (2018) established that the bereaved passes through four stages of grief corresponding to tasks. These are bereaved person’s acceptance of the reality of the loss, their experiencing of the pains attached to the grief, adjusting to new environment, and building of new relationship. Across ages and cultures, network of supports ranging from family members, friends, neighbours, workmates, clergies, classmates, etc., come around to comfort, console, and demonstrate how much they cared for the bereaved in their moment of grief (Aoun et al., 2018; Bottomley, Burke, & Neimeyer, 2017). Either in one-on-one visits or in groups, one invaluable tool possessed and used by the people to convey their care and sympathy to the bereaved is words.

Words spoken at such bereavement visits are meant to strengthen, motivate, encourage, sustain, transform, and restore equilibrium (or peace of mind) of the bereaved. However, either because the utterers are overwhelmed by the occurrence, or imagine the pains the bereaved must have undergone, their words are often not well thought-out, censored, or evaluated for desirable therapeutic effect. The reason is that such words usually offer the direct opposite of their intentions. Thus, they end up weakening, demoralising, discouraging, deflating, transfixing and befuddling the receiver. Therefore, while the statements are intentionally meant to enhance the rehabilitation process of the bereaved, they inadvertently undermine their healing process. In that connection, Rajic et al. (2023) asserted that despite the good intentions of social supports during bereavement, they sometimes say some words or do certain things perceived by the bereaved as either unhelpful or even harmful.

Exploring the nature of the messages offered by social supports to bereaved individuals, Rajic et al. (2023) classified them into two, namely good and supportive messages, and unhelpful or harmful messages. On the one hand, good comments about the deceased, good comments about the bereaved, discussing memories of the deceased, expressing good aspects of the loss, expressing meeting the deceased after death, physical presence with the bereaved, provision of physical help, religious support, showing concerns for the bereaved well-being, and talking about feelings of the bereaved are supportive and therapeutic. On the other hand, the scholars identified interference in the bereaved life, minimising pains or inventing cheerful mood, offering advice, striving to heal up the healing process, undesirable practical assistance, unpleasant remarks, unwanted discussion about the deceased, and total identification with the bereaved emotion, exemplified by “I completely understand you” as unhelpful or in fact harmful. Indeed, one of the messages classified as unhelpful is focused on accelerating the bereaved healing process. Yet, grief is neither a problem nor illness meant to be cured or fixed; it is a natural process to be navigated as the bereaved goes through a normative and natural human experience that calls for facilitation instead of elimination (Ogunleye, 2021). Thus, rehabilitation from grief requires time, attention, and corrective gestures (Gross, 2015).