All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
– Leo Tolstoy in Anna Karenina
Introduction
Communication is the key to maintaining and sustaining relationships. The aim of communication is to work towards achieving certain goals. Whether it is a teacher teaching at school or a parent asking a child to clean up their room, communication aims to get things done. Effective communication helps in getting things done quickly and without hassle. In families too, communication is essential to work towards the shared goal of creating a happy, well-adjusted family. Effective communication is essential towards building strong and healthy families . Family communication involves the verbal and non-verbal ways in which family members communicate with each other. It is important because it enables family members to express their needs, concerns and wants to each other. Communication helps to solve the problems that arise in family life.
But communication like many other aspects of life is not always easy. Differences in personalities of family members, expectations, different styles all lead to communication issues from time to time . However, it does not mean the communication breakdown will be allowed to continue. Families will get back to each other and reinforce bonds in order to ensure that daily living is not negatively affected. Some of the tenets of effective communication include listening, building rapport, allowing people to feel at ease, using appropriate style of communication . Like every other aspect of life, communication too is impacted by major life changes.
Loss of a family member is a major life change. It could take the form of death of a family member including a child or when adults or children get separated or leave. What happens when a family experiences loss? Does bereavement bring communication barriers? Does communication help cope with the loss or is it really not a time for communication? These questions form the basis for this paper. The subject is of great importance because grief of any nature can be overwhelming and it is during extreme stress that family dynamics can change for the worse. It is important to identify the methods to overcome communication barriers associated with bereavement.
Literature review
There are generally four styles to communication, the direct style, the indirect style, the masked direct style and the masked indirect style of communication . For communication to be effective it must be clear, directed to the appropriate person and must involve active listening. Indirect styles of communication lead to confusion because the listener is never sure what is expected of them. However, when families experience loss of family members, the communication system is impacted severely.
Bereavement is a difficult time for the family . Grief can manifest in several ways and each family member deals with grief differently. If the family had been caring for the departed for a considerable time, financial stress is added to the grief. Families can become hostile or sullen and dysfunctional. Children are impacted by death differently. In the case of death of a sibling, surviving children are at high risk for psychological issues . However, other research also shows that loss of one child can strengthen family ties. Several factors affect the way the family will react to bereavement including the timing of the death, nature of death and the nature of relationship of the deceased with the rest of the family . When a child dies, it upsets the natural progression and surviving parents find it hard to cope; research has shown that couples who had lost children became increasingly dissatisfied with their marriage. The loss of a family member through death or separation, changes the family dynamic and for a time the remaining members are unsure of the future distribution of roles and responsibilities. This leads to communication issues between members.
Communication barriers arising from bereavement can be due to many factors. Age and gender can present barriers to talk about the loss , as is witnessed in women handling grief differently from men in that women are more intuitive in their display of grief; men tend to take up various tasks to cope. Adolescents cope with grief differently when compared to young children . They tend to be able to utilize self-help strategies like engaging in activities while coping with grief. Younger children may not be as equipped to handle the grief. Parents who lose a child may have periods of intense grief due to the nature of the bond that generally exists between parent and child . For many people the relationship with their child will be the most significant of all their relationships. Therefore, intense grief will lead to a breakdown in communication. The nature of the grief itself becomes a barrier to communication. Another significant barrier that was found was the apprehension of the bereaved person as to how the listener will respond to his or her grief ; most cultures worldwide require people to manage their own feelings, in other words ‘put up a brave front’ and not burden others emotionally.
However, all the literature that was reviewed speaks about the need for families to communicate in order to share their grief . Sharing the stories of their specific grief will help people make sense of their life after loss. Bereavement brings disorder to our lives, sharing the grief helps in ordering it back. The more family members share their grief, the closer they will come due to their relational intimacy.
When the bereaved are children, family support is critical for their mental well-being . Parents need to communicate openly about death and dying and provide a supportive family environment. If the parents are the deceased, children must be guided by professional counselors through their grieving period . Children must not be left alone to cope, because they will rarely find support in their peer groups and outside their family.
The review provides evidence that bereavement has tremendous impact on the communication dynamic of a family and it is critical that the family regroup and communicate and share their grief in order that relationships do not deteriorate.
Application
I shall use the example of the movie We Bought a Zoo to illustrate how the family communication gets impaired due to bereavement and how communication is also the key to repair. The movie was inspired by the memoirs of Benjamin Mee, a British writer and his struggles to rescue a zoo while coping with the sudden loss of his partner and bringing up his children . While the movie took several cinematic licenses to reframe the memoirs in terms of timeline and events, it provides a showcase of how families struggle with bereavement. After his wife dies, the movie version of Benjamin Mee buys a rundown zoo and relocates his family. While the younger child copes with the dramatic changes in her life – loss of mother, loss of home – the adolescent doesn’t. Their father’s new responsibility means that he has little time to talk to the children except give instructions. The daughter copes by becoming dependent on her father while the older child, a son, becomes withdrawn and confrontational because his father never speaks about his mother. When in fact, the father was struggling with the loss as much as the children but didn’t have the time or the support to talk about his grief. The silences slowly destroy the family dynamic and make it dysfunctional. Only after several events when the lines of communication are reopened and they share their grief with each other are they able to move forward together.
Conclusion
Communication serves the purpose of achieving certain goals. Within a family communication strengthens familial bonds , enables people to express their thoughts and ideas freely and build a successful family unit together. Like all aspects of life, communication in families is affected by many factors. Bereavement is one such factor and its impact is tremendous. In the difficult time of grief, families are at risk of becoming dysfunctional due to lack of adequate communication . Bereavement brings about several stressors and the nature of grief is also affected by several factors like nature of the death, the deceased’s relationship with the family . It also brings about barriers to communication. Barriers could be due to the disparate ways in which people of different genders and age groups handle grief. The very young and very old need a lot of support but adults and young adults have self-help mechanisms . A child’s death can cause extreme grief to parents sometimes to the detriment of their partnership . Culturally also it is expected that people manage their own grief which presents a significant barrier to communication. However communication is the key to overcoming the grief of loss. When family members share the experiences of grief with each other it strengthens the bond between each other . By communicating openly parents create a receptive environment at home which helps children cope better with loss. When children lose parents, it becomes imperative to provide with adequate support either from within the family or with the help of social workers.
Bereavement brings about major shifts in the way families communicate among themselves. Happy families can become dysfunctional when they stop communicating. Grief can be a major barrier to communication, but it is only when family members talk and share their grief that the healing process can begin and family relationships can be restored.
Works Cited
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