How family members experience and process grief from loss

¶ … trauma? How is trauma acquired?

According to the American Psychological Association (APA), trauma denotes an individual's emotional response to a tremendously negative event. Trauma may be considered a very natural reaction to any awful occurrence, but its impacts may be so serious that the person's ability of leading a normal, happy life is hampered. Trauma may be brought about by a devastatingly negative experience, which leaves a long-term or lifelong impact on a person's emotional and mental stability. Although a large number of causes for trauma involve physical violence, others may have psychological elements involved. Trauma is most commonly caused by:

• Domestic violence

• Rape

• Acute injury or sickness

• Natural disasters

• Witnessing violence

• A family member's or close friend's demise

Usually, trauma is linked to a victim's presence at the place where the traumatic incident occurred. This, however, is not always the case. A victim can also suffer trauma after observing a shocking event unfolding from afar (Psychguides, n.d).

2. Taking your family as a case study, what are the individual family members' experiences of trauma?

Normally, grief and sorrow represents a household affair. Our whole family was deeply affected by the death of my grandfather. We felt as though a key familial link, the root of our family tree, was, all of a sudden, broken. Everybody appeared to be struggling to regain this lost link, fix the family back together. All members mourned their personal loss differently.

Father

Following his father's demise, my father seemed to be channeling his hurt feelings into physical action. His grief was expressed via goal-oriented tasks, and not emotionally. Instead of constantly crying over or talking about his father's death, my dad devoted his time to time-limited activities like writing eulogy and planting a garden in memory of my grandfather. He expressed his grief in words only to his nearest pals. While he did cry occasionally, this was normally done in solitude (Tousley, n.d).

Myself

Following my grandfather's demise, I faced a struggle with how I internally experienced grief and how I expressed it to the world. This gave rise to constant disharmony and discomfort within me. Conflict or "dissonance" can stem from familial, social or cultural traditions. While my sorrow was strong and deep, I struggled with concealing how I truly felt, to maintain my public image (Tousley, n.d).

3. Analyze the effects of trauma in your family using the Bio-ecological System Theory.

The theory propounded by Bronfenbrenner outlines complex environmental "layers," each of which impacts the development of a child. Not long ago, the theory was renamed the "bio-ecological systems theory," for stressing the fact that the primary environment that drives a person's childhood development is his/her own biology. The interaction of elements within the individual's maturing biology, with social landscape and his/her immediate filial or community environment powers and guides his/her development. Disagreement or alterations in any single layer are capable of rippling throughout the remaining layers. In Bronfenbrenner's opinion, all components of their surroundings impacted an individual's development. The environment of an individual was categorized by the theorist into five distinct levels: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem (Roundy, 2003).

Bronfenbrenner's microsystem -- the very first layer in his model -- refers to the system that is closest to an individual, with which they directly interact (for instance, home, workplace, school, or day care (in case of kids)). People in one's microsystem include family members, caregivers, or peers. Microsystem relationships are two-directional in nature. That is, how we behave with other individuals in our microsystem will influence how they, in turn, treat us. This constitutes the theory's most important level. Let us consider my own microsystem after my granddad's demise: My home represents its basic component and involves my everyday interactions with members of my family (i.e. my parents). My school is another component, and my routine interactions in this environment occurred with my educators and classmates (Roundy, 2003).

The bio-ecological systems theory's mesosystem entails interactions among different elements in an individual's microsystem. In the mesosystem, one's many microsystems don't operate separately, but are interlinked and influence each other. Such interactions indirectly affect the person. Parent-teacher relationships constitute a facet of a student's mesosystem. My parents actively participated in my education, which positively affected my personal development, as diverse components of my microsystem worked in harmony. My development would be negatively impacted if there was any conflict between the components of my microsystem (Roundy, 2003).

One doesn't actively participate in one's exosystem; all the same, this layer impacts an individual. For instance, a child's life is impacted if his/her father or mother gets fired from their job or gets promoted. My exosystem includes how my father reacted to his father's demise. The situation affected me -- I would grow anxious and worried whenever my dad left. This impacted my personal development in many areas (Roundy, 2003).

One's cultural environment and related systems constitute one's macrosystem. Examples would be the nation's political system, economy, and cultural values. At that time, a key facet of my macrosystem was my being a grieving person's child. A major influence in my life was my community's values (Roundy, 2003).

My chronosystem would include time in relation to my childhood environments. Components of this layer may be internal (e.g., physiological changes which transpire as a child matures) or external (e.g., the time of death of a loved one) (Paquette & Ryan, 2001).