The room will be full of emotion, whether you hear wailing, whimpering, or stoic silence. The emotion in the room immediately following a death will make social work more challenging for some social workers.
Many human beings do not know how to behave around the death of someone who they were professionally connected to. We want to support family members in knowing they are entitled to express their experience. The heartache, anger and confusion is theirs to experience. We want to hold space for that when attending death in the hospice context. The biggest challenge to holding space for other people’s emotions is the unresolved emotion within us that we’re reminded of when around people who are hurting.
You are naturally impeccably supportive… but…
You are compassionate. You are there for them. Selfless. Interestingly, human beings who are good at being mindful of their own emotions are better at behaving more selflessly. When you’re aware of experience, your internal signals can help inform you about another person’s experience and what she might need. When you’re unaware of your own thoughts and feelings, you project them onto other people and confusing your needs for theirs.
Being supportive can involve frequently checking in gently with your own feelings while keeping your attention most of the time on the person you’re supporting. It’s like you brought an antsy dog with you. If you ignore the dog, it might take over. If you indulge the dog, it might take over. If it takes over, you’re not being very supportive. If you can attend to it just enough so that it spends some time sitting quietly, then you can also pay some attention to the person you are their to support.
So the first step to doing a good job at being appropriately present with the intensely grieving is to have such an understanding with yourself. Meditate, journal, reflect. Speak with a counselor.
When we next meet…
The next set of articles will focus on supporting family members when the patient has just died. We’ll look specifically at what to do and what to say, though what matters more is how you are. And who you are.
Until then, poke around. Check out previous articles, like this one on making routine visits useful.
Enjoy!