What Abi Taught Us (17 page)
Read What Abi Taught Us Online
Authors: Lucy Hone
âLearning about
spiritual practices
across cultures, exploring different ways of honouring, revering, and remembering, along with the recitation of prayers from childhood provided me with comfort during dark hours.'
Indeed, there's good evidence to show that attending religious services is strongly related with resilience.
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Although religion isn't for everyone, it's easy to see how being part of a religious group gives support and a strong sense of purpose in life. Having a set of beliefs that very few experiences can shatter is a frequent theme in resilience research. As Charney points out, these don't have to be religious beliefs: âFor many of the people we've met it was faith in the traditional sense, being religious, but in others it was a non-religious but important spiritual belief, or having a moral compass or a purpose in life that helps you get through tough times.'
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IDENTIFY YOUR SIGNATURE STRENGTHS
While studies show that character strengths help to buffer against stress and improve coping ability, there has not been much research specifically investigating how character strengths assist
grieving. So, in the interests of conducting my own research experiment, I decided to re-do the VIA Character Strengths survey, according to how useful the 24 strengths had proved towards my grieving.
The best way to do this assessment is to go online to
www.viacharacter.org
. By entering this book's unique identifier code (NGNL11), you will be contributing to my research into the association between character strengths and grief. This will in no way compromise your anonymity. The good people at the Values in Action Institute maintain strict codes of scientific ethics, so they will just be supplying me with raw scores in an Excel spreadsheet which prevents individuals from being identified.
For a less scientific (but more immediate) alternative, follow these instructions.
STEP 1
Looking at the list of strengths below, rate each one on a 1â10 basis, where 1 is âI haven't used this strength while grieving' to 10: âthis strength has been essential to my grieving'. Try to be honest and score them according to how you are, not how you'd like to be! Write a score next to each strength.
Creativity (originality, ingenuity):
thinking of novel and productive ways to conceptualise and do things; this includes, but is not limited to, artistic achievement.
Curiosity (interest, novelty-seeking, openness to experience):
taking an interest in ongoing experience for its own sake; finding subjects and topics fascinating; continually exploring and discovering.
Judgement (critical thinking):
thinking things through and examining them from all sides; not jumping to conclusions; being able to change your mind in light of evidence; weighing up all the evidence fairly.
Love of learning:
mastering new skills, topics and bodies of knowledge, whether on your own or through formal instruction; obviously related to the strength of curiosity but goes beyond it to describe the tendency to add systematically to what you know.
Perspective (wisdom):
being able to provide wise counsel to others; having ways of looking at the world that make sense to you and to other people.
Bravery (valour):
not shrinking from threat, challenge, difficulty, or pain; speaking up for what is right even in the presence of opposition; acting on convictions even if unpopular; includes physical bravery but is not limited to it.
Perseverance (persistence, industriousness):
finishing what you start; persisting in a course of action in spite of obstacles; âgetting it out the door'; taking pleasure in completing tasks.
Honesty (authenticity, integrity):
speaking the truth but more broadly presenting yourself in a genuine way and acting sincerely; being without pretence; taking responsibility for your feelings and actions.
Zest (vitality, enthusiasm, vigour, energy):
approaching life with excitement and energy; not doing things half-heartedly; living life as an adventure; feeling alive and activated.
Love:
valuing close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing and caring are reciprocated; being close to people.
Kindness (generosity, nurturance, care, compassion, altruistic love):
doing favours and good deeds for others; helping them and taking care of them.
Social intelligence (emotional intelligence, personal intelligence):
being aware of the motives and feelings of yourself and others; knowing what to do to fit into different social situations; knowing what makes other people tick.
Teamwork (citizenship, social responsibility, loyalty):
working well as a member of a group or team; being loyal to the group; doing your share.
Fairness:
treating all people the same according to notions of fairness and justice; not letting personal feelings bias decisions about others; giving everyone a fair chance.
Leadership:
encouraging a group, of which you are a member, to get things done, and at the same time maintaining good relations within the group; organising group activities and ensuring they happen.
Forgiveness:
forgiving those who have done wrong; accepting the shortcomings of others; giving people a second chance; not being vengeful.
Humility:
letting your accomplishments speak for themselves; not regarding yourself as special.
Prudence:
being careful about your choices; not taking undue risks; not saying or doing things that might later be regretted.
Self-regulation (self-control):
regulating your feelings and actions; being disciplined; controlling your appetite and emotions, overcoming short-term desires for long-term benefit.
Appreciation of beauty and excellence (awe, wonder, elevation):
noticing and appreciating beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in various domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics to science, to everyday experience.
Gratitude:
being aware of and thankful for the good things that happen; taking time to express thanks.
Hope (optimism, future-mindedness, future orientation):
expecting the best in the future and working to achieve it; believing that a good future is something that can be brought about.
Humour (playfulness):
liking to laugh and tease; bringing smiles to other people; seeing the light side; making (not necessarily telling) jokes.
Spirituality (faith, purpose):
having coherent beliefs about the higher purpose and meaning of the universe; knowing where you fit in the larger scheme of life; having beliefs about the meaning of life that shape conduct and provide comfort.
STEP 2
Looking at the strengths with the Top 5 scores, ask yourself the following questions to identify your âSignature Strengths'.
Is this the real me?
Do I enjoy using this strength?
Does using this strength energise me?
Write your Top 5 Signature Strengths here:
1. ____________________
2. ____________________
3. ____________________
4. ____________________
5. ____________________
Pick one of your Signature Strengths and try to use it more over the next week.
Ask yourself the following questions:
How did you find this exercise?
What did you learn by filling out this survey?
Are some of these strengths more useful while grieving than others?
Which ones?
Did you score much higher or lower on one strength than you anticipated?
How does ______________________ strength feel for you when you use it?
Who sees this strength in you?
What about your partner, what strengths do you see in them?
Are there some strengths you consider as family strengths?
When have you used this strength in the past?
How might you apply these strengths to help in your grief?
Where else in your life could you use these strengths now?
Managing exhaustion and depression through rest and exercise
GRIEF IS UTTERLY EXHAUSTING
. Nine months in I went back to sleeping in the afternoons whenever I could. Partly due to the pointlessness of it all, but usually just due to plain old tiredness. Grief is so unlike any other of life's challenges. I have found myself bewildered and frustrated by the never-ending nature of it all. Usually, when I have a job to do, I work out a plan of how to get through it and, eventually, with enough hard graft, problem-solving and continual effort, reach the end. Job done, take a break, start again. But with grieving it feels as though there is no end, no break. Just one perpetual uphill struggle to convince yourself this is do-able: up, up, up we go,
and instead of being rewarded with a downhill cruise after all the effort, along comes another hill. Some days it's a hill, others a mountain, at times you find yourself in a lull of acceptanceâa gully between the uphill slogs. But up you have to go, again and again. No wonder it's exhausting.
Successful grieving requires successful energy management. For me, this started with acknowledging my tiredness to myself, and then to others. Now Trevor and I have conversations about tiredness over and over again, particularly on Monday mornings, which are always the worst.
âThink I must have some kind of virus,' he'll say.
âMaybe. More likely it's just the exhausting process of grieving and living without her,' I'll reply.
SUCCESSFUL GRIEVING REQUIRES SUCCESSFUL ENERGY MANAGEMENT.
Having acknowledged it ourselves, the importance of letting other people know also became clear. If I hadn't told others how frequently I felt tired, they might have thought us rude for leaving parties, work or work functions early. Rude, or lightweight, or uncommitted. Telling them that, even nine months later, I often felt overwhelmingly tired and just needed to bail out or have a 20-minute power nap in the car, or on the couch in the office, helped me from feeling bad or becoming overwhelmed. As I've said before, part of my ground rules for trying to return as quickly as possible to regular functioning is that I do not ignore the signs of my grief when they require my attention. The graphic below outlines the steps to take.
Grief is also exhausting because there's no way to get away from it. How many of us have booked a holiday or just a weekend elsewhere to have a break, only to discover that grief knows no geographical boundaries? It just comes with you. We have found school holidays are the worst. At least during term time we had the boys at home with us, and the busy regular routines of school and work life kept us all busy, and connected. Take that away and we found ourselves frequently alone, sometimes for days on end in the summer months when the boys were away staying with friends or on sports camps, giving us too much time to think. Those first New Year and summer holidays were long and torturous.
Exercise: Make a plan for dealing with tiredness
Which of the following are manageable for you? Which will help you get the rest you need? Identify the times and places that fit in with your own routines and commitments.
⢠Sleep when you can (a 20minute sleep is really effective).
⢠Find yourself a quiet space (car, a quiet corner of the office, bed, sofa), drink a decent coffee and then settle down for 20 minutes' sleep; the coffee will wake you up without needing an alarm, by which time you've had the benefit of sleep and
the coffee to keep you going. Obviously I'm not advocating drinking too much coffee, but if you simply cannot get away, this is an effective fix.
⢠Watch your weekday bed timesâtry not to add to the tiredness by forgetting to go to bed at a sensible hour.
⢠Watch out for the weekends. Once we'd realised that two late nights over the weekend stuffed up the whole of the next week, making everything harder and us much more miserable, we tried to be really disciplined about this.