Grieving it Is Human Nature to Grieve

Grieving

It is human nature to grieve over a loss or something upsetting that has happened in a person's life. It should be noted that there are many ways of handling grief. Many experts have given their opinion and talked about how to deal with it. Furthermore, different religions have their own guides and ways of dealing with grief. Lastly, it should be noted that every person has a way of handling his or her own grief.

We see that grief basically consists of components that are spiritual, mental, social and emotional. The different symptoms of grief include depression, guilt, hopelessness and gloominess. These can cause a person to fall into depression and even psychological disorders like panic attacks or major anxiety episodes. It is seen that grief leads to things like loss of weight, insomnia, loss of motivation and poor living habits. All of these things can then lead to neurological or cardiovascular conditions that can be life threatening for the person

Grieving process as stated by Kubler Ross

The psychiatrist Kubler-Ross has put in a lot of effort into the study of the grieving process. According to Kubler-Ross, the process goes on forward with a natural cycle. In this process, the first step is denial, then anger which is followed by bargaining. Following that, there is depression and in the end there is acceptance. (Kubler-Ross, 1969) The main aim in this process was to guide a person through their grief process and help them resolve the issues that they are having. Bonanno (2009) went into more detail of the grieving stages and gave significance of each stage. The first stage usually is denial and isolation. The person would want to deny that a loss is actually present. Secondly, there is anger in which the person gets very angry for what happened. Bargaining begins when the person converses with God and tries to stop doing something evil in order for more good to happen in his life. (Torrey, 2011) Lastly, we see the depression stage in which the person is sad, angry and very tired of the situation. Kubler-Ross & Kessler (2005) highlight the acceptance stage because that is when the person actually does not feel sad or depressed about his or her condition. The person goes on to accept the reality and attempts to live their life normally after it.

The grieving stages as told by Kubler-Ross are discussed in relation to the story and the suffering of Job. Job is a man that is very famous for his obedience to good, his faithfulness and his goodness. Seeing what a good person job is, God allows Satan to put job to test. The test is basically impounding job with one tragedy after another. Satan starts off by taking Job's wealth, his children, his health, his friends and his family. In this story we see that Job is continuously told by his wife and children to go on and curse God but he doesn't do so. His reply to these things is if a person accepts the good from God, he should also be able to accept the adversity that God sends on the person. (Job 2:10) It is established that Job is undergoing a lot of suffering and needs to figure out a way to resolve it all.

It is observed that Job does not follow the classic patterns of the theory that was discussed above. Job does undergo some stages of the theory such as depression and acceptance. The righteous and god fearing attitude that he has, he goes on to exhibit the acceptance phase before all the other phases. Rather than ignoring or overlooking the bad things, he accepts them as test from God. His wife, children and even his friends attempt to talk him into the anger phase. They want him to inquire God about why he did what he did. They also want him to curse God and be angry at him. However, Job does not do any of that. It appears that Job does not really enter into the bargaining phase of the grieving process because he does not have to. This is crucial to view because Job is already a very righteous person. He has done what he had to do in order to please God. The main reason that he was put into this test was because he was a very righteous s person.

Job's grieving process will now be discussed in relation to the grieving process in religion of Islam. IT is noted that many things are quire similar in the attitude that Job puts forward and the way Islam tells Muslims to deal with grief. Acceptance is a major component of the grieving process in Islam. Muslims have to accept every bad thing that happens as the will of God. They need to see that it is for the better in some aspect. The life after death is highlighted a lot of in Islam. This is such that if a believer is steadfast, patient and is able to praise God even during the hard times, his life after death will be very good. Job does talk about accepting God's will and he also goes on to hint about a bodily resurrection in which he will face God.

Another important point in this grieving process is hope for the best. Even in the worst of times, Islam teaches the people to hope the best from Allah (God) and keep asking him to fix their problems. In other words, the phase of depression is not present in this process. It is rather replaced with an optimisticattitude full of hope and reward from the creator.

Joy

The idea of acceptance and hope in both these models point towards the emotion of Joy. Being able to rely on God and being able to hope for better things, the person feels happy again. In both of these grieving models, Joy comes at the end when the person has gone through all other phases. It should be noted that Joy is present in inside a person along with grief. Therefore, the major point that is to be noted is that the person can overlook grief and be happy any time he wants.