Lecture
Self-consciousness plays a significant role in the experiencing of grief. When a person loses a loved one or faces other kinds of loss, their self-consciousness may be significantly disrupted. Here are some of the problems of self-consciousness that may arise in grief:
Loss of identity: Grief can cause a loss of one's sense of identity. A person may feel that they are no longer who they were before the loss, and that their life no longer has meaning. This can lead to a crisis of self-consciousness.
Feelings of guilt and shame: People may feel guilty or ashamed about various things in connection with the loss. This can affect their self-esteem and self-consciousness. For example, they may blame themselves for the death of a loved one or feel ashamed of their reactions to grief.
Mixed emotions: Grief is often accompanied by a range of emotions, including anger, fear, regret, and even relief (especially if the loss came after a long illness or suffering). These mixed emotions can confuse and bewilder a person about their own feelings.
Comparison with others: People may begin to compare their experience of grief with the experience of others, which can affect their self-consciousness. They may feel inadequate or unworthy if it seems that they are not experiencing grief the way others do.
Changes in values and priorities: Grief can lead to changes in a person's values and priorities. They may begin to ask themselves questions about the meaning of life and their role in the world, which can also affect their self-consciousness.
Why do we mourn? Is there a purpose in experiencing grief? This process gives a person the opportunity — albeit an agonizing one — to delve into their experience and integrate it into their "self-concept." The trial of grief provides an opportunity to understand oneself more deeply. Misfortune changes a child's perception of themselves, of their problems, and of how a tragic experience affects the personality. A person can characterize themselves by analyzing their skills, feelings, and thoughts, as well as depending on how they are living their life and what exactly they expect from themselves in the future. These three time frames — past, present, and future — determine the specifics of self-understanding and the self-concept. In the book by William Damon and Daniel Hart, "Self-Understanding in Childhood and Adolescence," this term is defined as "a certain cognitive representation of oneself, one's own interests, and personal identity." In order to understand themselves, children and adolescents need the integrity of the self-concept and the continuity of the outside world, as well as clarity, which means obtaining accurate information about what happened to them and having an open conversation about their experiences, if the child is able to express their feelings.
Self-analysis is a skill that unfolds as a child matures, the ability to express oneself emotionally. Meaningful behavior is built on self-analysis, as an opportunity to look at oneself from the outside, to see oneself in relation to other people. Further, self-understanding becomes a tool for the child's self-identification. Usually a child gains a great deal during this process; it happens automatically when the child communicates with one of the parents or with other people. When a child suddenly encounters the fact of death or another catastrophe (including the loss of a loved one), four personal factors — integrity, clarity, self-analysis, and self-consciousness — stop functioning, so the child loses control over themselves and the surrounding world. The thread of continuity linking past, present, and future is broken. There is neither past nor future, only bewilderment, shock. The child is defenseless for an indefinite period, and this frightens them. They need help to piece everything back together, but the father or mother — or both — are themselves in crisis and often unable to support the child in restoring their self-consciousness. Nowadays, we generally tend to view the process of overcoming grief as a set of tasks for the traumatized person we are dealing with. William Worden of the United States and Colin Murray Parkes of the United Kingdom identified four tasks concerning grief." Ben Wolfe (USA), a clinical social worker and director of a center supporting people in grief, interpreted these four tasks for bereaved children as follows:
The mandatory completion of the tasks for relieving grief constitutes an activity aimed at restoring the self-concept, at returning to a normal state. It is known that we are our memories, that life is nothing without memory of the past. What we are at present is largely based on what we were in the past, on what happened to us before; and who we will become in the future depends on what we are like today, on our present-day thinking, on our way of reacting and our manner of behaving. But having suffered a loss, being caught up in their problems, adults often say that they must help children forget what happened in the past. Therefore they hope that children will reject most of their difficult experience. It is important to look ahead to the future, to give hope for positive change. Such is the fourth task in the system for overcoming grief, and it cannot be completed until the life of the person who has recently died is recognized as worthy of being remembered and having its dates marked by those who survive. Many adults also believe that neither they themselves nor their children should openly display their feelings or talk about their experiences to anyone. Adults are afraid that in such a case children will develop painful experiences — as if children were unfeeling.
Expressing the widest variety of emotions is not at all harmful for a grieving child — by acting this way, the child better reveals their inner state. They can make sense of what has happened to them, generalize these experiences, and make them part of their life experience, part of themselves. Until you yourself encounter grief, try to understand that death really does happen, that the deceased will never return, that the catastrophe has, in fact, occurred, and that life will never be the same again. Once a child grasps the first three tasks, they can be taught, while looking ahead to a happier future, to "continue to live on with the people who are living and who love them." Completing all four tasks requires time, and one must not move on to the next task without finishing the first, and so on; later, while already working on another task, one can go back and move forward again, continuing to work on all the tasks at different levels.
To cope with these problems of self-consciousness in grief, it is important to receive support from loved ones, friends, and, if necessary, from professional counselors or psychotherapists. Grief is an individual experience, and each person may need a different amount of help and time to restore the balance of their self-consciousness.
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