Disenfranchised Grief Rituals
Role of Ritual in the Treatment of Disenfranchised Grief
Rituals, for example crying during a funeral, acts as a sign of respect to the deceased. The rituals depend on gender, where some are acceptable for one gender, and others are unacceptable. Most rituals are formal. However, some go through spontaneous creation by people who have the need and interest in dealing with grief. In this case, rituals help in the achievement of the restoration of a feeling of control. Rituals exist in wide varieties. Despite the variety, the sense of control restoration has a similarity in almost all of them. Some rituals occur in public, while others occur in religious institutions. Some of the rituals include washing the car of a dead person as often as they used to (Sas & Coman, 2016, p. 560). Another possible ritual is playing a son that a departed person liked or played often. Other people perform actions, cutting their hair repeatedly to remind themselves of how they used to do it before losing their loved ones. To deal with breakup-disenfranchised grief, some people write letters to their lost lovers but never mail them, a special type of ritual. Rituals help people get into the right terms with their grief after losing a relationship, a competition, or a job.
Examples of Rituals you may use with a Client System
With a client system, one can use rituals to tell the client to draw their feelings on a plain piece of paper for a specified period. The next step is sprinkling salt on the paper that contains the drawing. The client then tears up the paper (Sas, Whittaker & Zimmermaan, 2016, p. 20). Another client system ritual is taking a walk with the client and engaging them in activities that he/she liked when the dead person was still alive. Sleeping is another ritual that a client system can use. In this case, the client sleeps for a specified period while the supporter observes his/her reactions.
References
. Sas, C., & Coman, A. (2016). Designing personal grief rituals: An analysis of symbolic objects and actions. Death Studies, 40(9), 558-569.
Sas, C., Whittaker, S., & Zimmerman, J. (2016). Design for rituals of letting go: An embodiment perspective on disposal practices informed by grief therapy. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 23(4), 1-37