Background
All families (like yours) need
healthy-grieving knowledge and
policies
(adult beliefs, values, and rules). Members of typical
and
are at special risk of incomplete grief because of their psychological
and major complex
(broken bonds).
A value is a personal or group opinion about something's nature or
worth. A vital part of any personal and family grieving policy is the key values
that adults hold about bonds, losses, and healthy mourning. Most of us adopt
and live from the grief
(and other) values we saw our childhood caregivers and hero/ines model, without much
thought.
Our American culture has generally discounted the importance of - and
for - healthy grief, so most people are only vaguely aware of their grieving
values. Their semiconscious
values powerfully affect whether family adults and kids have the inner and
outer
to grieve well that they urgently need.
This worksheet offers an effective way to identify and assess your
grieving values and where you got them, Use it to help you make conscious choices
about the values and to discuss them with key people. Have you ever tried
to define your "good grief" values before? Do you know if they're healthy
or not? What are the young people in your life learning about losses and "good grief"?
Learn
Your Values About Grieving, and Where You Got Them
Use this worksheet
to identify...
-
Your key beliefs about feeling and
expressing
the emotions that follow major losses (broken emotional/spiritual
bonds), and...
-
Whether
these beliefs are yours (authentic) or someone else's (adopted).
It's important that
your values and beliefs about mourning be yours, rather than - say - your
mate's, your parents' or ancestors’, or your religion's.
Change these questions and/or
add some to fit your situation. Invite important other people to answer them too, and
share the results non-competitively.
Pick a quiet place, and give yourself undistracted
time to reflect on each item. Print the worksheet out, and save it after
completion to review in the future.
Note your thoughts and feelings as you proceed, and whether
your
is
your
If
not, try to
or risk distorted responses to this worksheet.
There are
right or wrong answers here - just helpful self-awareness and insights...
+ + +
Key: Circle the symbol that fits your main current belief best:
T = "True - I agree," F = "False - I disagree,"
?
= "I'm not sure," and D = "it depends" (on what or who?).
As I start, I'm
that I...
1) I define "grieving"
as:
2) I believe healthy grieving is a
learned skill ( T F ? D )
3) I usually mourn my losses thoroughly and healthily now ( T F ? D )
4) The main time people need to grieve is when a loved one has
died ( T F ? D )
5) Three people who's actions most influenced my childhood beliefs about
feeling
and expressing strong emotions are...
__________________, ________________, and __________________.
6) I can
cry when appropriate, without major guilt, anxiety, or shame ( T F ? D )
7) I learned early that
females should handle grief by
8) If I get
angry, key people around me...
9) The important people in my life are each
supportive and encouraging if I need to cry in front of
them ( T F ? D )
10) When the woman who parented me felt deep
sadness,
she...
11) In the home/s I grew up in, it was always OK for
everybody to feel
and express irritation,
and rage ( T F ? D )
12) This has affected my ability to
feel
and show anger now by:
13) Some things or feelings I associate with
anger are...
14) When I got very
sad as a child, I...
When I get
sad now, I
...
15) Grieving
ends when...
16) I now have at least one person in my life with whom I can
always safely
share my deepest feelings: ( T F
? D ). If "true" - who?
17) When the man who parented me felt deep
sadness, he...
18) I'm usually comfortable enough
to honestly show my
sorrow and
intense anger to the key young people in my life these days ( T F ? D )
19) My normal reaction to a major personal
(broken bond) is...
20) My [mate / mother / father / child(ren) / ex] and I usually share all our
important thoughts and feelings promptly about our key
physical and
losses.
( T F ? D)
21) It's totally
safe for me to really let my
anger out now with my household and family members: I steadily feel sure no one will get
(too) hurt, or blame or reject me. (T F ? D )
22) When the woman who raised me felt intense
anger, she...
23) As far as my (partner's / ex's) ability to mourn well,
...
24)
When I got very
angry as a child...
Now,
I...
25) I get really
sad when...
26) If
someone always represses intense feelings...
27) The most impactful
physical or
invisible losses in my life have been...
28) My closest friends and family know
fully about
each of these
losses now, and what they have meant to me. ( T F ? D )
29) The loss that's most painful for me to recall is...
30) What I learned about
grieving from watching my key relatives is...
31) I usually guard against great
emotional
by...
32) When someone near me gets really
angry I...
The Web address of this article is
https://sfhelp.org/grief/values_wks.htm