Grieving in a Crisis

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Just imagine if you had a loved one on Malaysian Airlines flight M370 which vanished into thin air on the March 8, 2014. Imagine for a moment the pain you would have experienced not knowing what had happened to your loved one. The emotional toll on the families has been heart rending as seen from footage on the television.  The process of grieving has been around ever since the creation of mankind. Humans tend to make strong bonds of affection or attachment with others. When these bonds are broken, as in death or separation, a strong emotional reaction occurs, which is defined as grief. Grieving can occur at anytime throughout an individual’s lifespan. Grief counselling refers to a specific form of therapy or a focus in general counselling with the goal of helping the individual grieve, and address personal loss in a healthy manner. The purpose of grief counselling is to assist the individual work through the feelings, thoughts and memories associated with the loss of a loved one. Grief counselling is very important in that the process helps the individual work through acceptance of the loss, as well as, determines how life can go on without that person, and consolidate the memories in order to move forward in a healthy way.
Children especially have a difficult time dealing with the loss of a loved one, such as, a parent and it is very important that all the support be provided to them in order to help them overcome that period of bereavement.
As human beings were are not immune to crisis. In fact from the moment we are born we enter a crisis filled world. It is imperative that we develop coping skills to deal with inevitability of crisis. A crisis is the experiencing of an event or situation as an intolerable difficulty that exceeds the person’s current resources and coping mechanisms. As a result grief counselling is a useful tool as it provides us with a variety of direct and action-oriented approaches to help us find resources within ourselves to deal with crisis
It must be very painful for the families of those passengers of flight M370 especially since there is no concrete evidence as to what happened to the flight. Many family members are in a state of denial and will be in such a state until some physical proof is given alongside the theory that the plane crashed into the ocean. The family of passengers on Flight M370 will require long term crisis counselling in order to cope with the untimely death of their loved ones.
Let us continue to pray for the families so that they too might find peace in this their moment of stress and immense loss.

Wayne Campbell
waykam@yahoo.com

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