This is the first part of a paper I am writing about how to deal with loss of a beloved and mourning from an Integral perspective. I will publish it in parts in this blog and will make the full text available at a later stage.

Introduction

This paper is an attempt to describe how you can deal with the loss of a loved one. You may think of losing someone to death, but loss exists in other ways as well, such as loss of a relationship or loss of communication due to e.g. the partner getting Alzheimer’s disease. The latter has also been referred to as “mourning without death”. Whichever the case may be for you, you are dealing with loss of someone you love and need to find a way to cope with it. This has proven to be one of the most difficult things for people to do. Not only because it has such a profound impact on our lives, but also because there is no easy prescription or manual on how to deal with it. Every person has his own process to go through and no two people go through the same process, not even when mourning for the same person.

This paper is therefore general in its setup and leaves a lot of questions to be answered by yourself. It does aim to be complete, though, by taking into account all levels and perspectives that come into play when dealing with loss.  

Coping with loss is possible in many ways and depends on several factors. These factors are to do with the following two elements:

a. The stage of (psychological) development that you function at. People function in different ways and go in their lives through a development of their value-systems, morality, emotions and many other things. The level that you are at in your development indicates the needs that you have in how you deal with your loss. The idea is, that you deal with your loss at all levels that are available to you. Only then can you deal with all elements that loss consists of.

b. The perspectives that you take on your loss. Apart from your personal emotions, thoughts and actions, there are other factors that play a role, such as the culture you come from, support that you can get from other people and society, physical issues, etc. Dealing with the situation from these other perspectives may turn out to be helpful in living through it.  

The general message in this paper is that mourning exists at many levels and in many perspectives and that we can only deal fully with it if we deal with all applicable levels and perspectives. Ultimately, we have to complete a process leading to being able to live our own lives again, where the loss of a beloved person has gotten its place, but without being unnecessarily dominating anymore.