Growing Around Grief and Continuing Bonds with Someone You’ve Lost

This blog, exploring the Continuing Bonds Model and the Growing Around Grief Model for understanding grief is the fourth in a series of five in-depth blogs looking at the experience of grief and loss. As a therapist, I’ve supported many people to work with the pain of their loss through bereavement counselling - people looking for space to process and feel more at ease with their grief. Grief and loss are such universal experiences, that touch us all at some point in our life. So, to have some framework or models that describe and explain grief experiences can be helpful - giving a sense that you’re not alone with your experience of loss. This blog explores two of these models

In the first blog in the series, we considered some of the forms grief can take, as well as the impact and effects of loss for many people. In the second blog of the series, we looked closely at the Kübler-Ross model often used to help explain grief and loss.  The third blog explored two more models of grief: the Tasks of Mourning Model and the Dual Process Model. This blog will consider the Continuing Bonds Model and the Growing Around Grief theoretical models of grief. And in the final blog in the series, we’ll turn our attention to considering support for the experience of loss and grief. As with all of our blogs, please do take care of yourself as you read. Consider what you may need, and what feelings and thoughts arise for you as you read. Take your time. Above all, be compassionate with yourself in response to the content of the blog.  

Continuing Bonds Model

Like the other theoretical frameworks we’ve previously considered, the Continuing Bonds Model provides a structure designed to support people to make meaning of their loss and grief. The Continuing Bonds Model was developed by Dennis Klass, Phyllis Silverman and Steven Nickman.  Their book, Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief, published in 1996, challenges the ideas that the grieving process is about cutting links with that which has been lost. Instead, they proposed a new way to think about and approach loss – one in which the emphasis is upon the ways in which a deceased person “stays with” the person grieving. They note that for many people, promoting a continued bond with a deceased loved one provides comfort and support in coping with loss and adjustment.  In this way, it is possible to carry the person with us throughout our lives. 

Is it possible to consider any continuing bond you may have with someone you are grieving for?

Is there any link that still connects you to them? And how does that feel for you?

Forms of Continuing Bonds

Behaviours and rituals which seem to be instinctive to so many people who experience loss are seen as ways in which a person can continue to feel a bond and connection with the person or even situation they are grieving. This can take the form of physically holding onto items, such as a piece of clothing or a photo of a loved one. Private rituals, such as touching or holding a loved one’s clothing, can also be a way that bonds are continued. Many people report speaking to their deceased loved one, and find this to be helpful and therapeutic. They may also visit places where they feel close to them. These are all ways people continue bonds with deceased loved ones. Whilst these types of behaviours are in fact, common to those who grieve, some people do not tell others about these rituals and forms of comfort as they may feel pressure from others to “move on”. They can experience shame and embarrassment. The Continuing Bonds Model reframes these rituals and behaviours as a helpful part of the grief process. 

People often find their own unique ways to continue to feel a bond with a loved one, even after death

Visiting their grave, and having a “chat” with them can be a helpful way to continue the bond for some people.

The “Growing around Grief” Model

The other model we’ll consider here was developed by Grief Counsellor, Lois Tonkin, in 1996. It’s known as the “Growing around Grief” Model.

This model challenges the idea that our grief or sense of loss will shrink and disappear.  Tonkin’s model recognises that significant losses initially consume most or all areas of our life. There is little life space left initially for anything other than the feelings of loss. You may feel the loses you’ve experienced consume you just now. Grief can feel as it is suffocating or robbing us of any form of life.  It can be hard to feel anything other than our raw pain of loss. That’s certainly true for many, many people when they first experience grief, and is visually represented to good effect in the haunting, spectre like image, with ghostly, staring eyes in Munch’s painting, Death in the Sickroom. 

Edvard Munch, Death in the Sickroom (1895) provides an evocative representation of how harrowing and all consuming grief can initially feel

An expansion of life:

However, according to the Growing Around Grief model, in time, it is possible to experience an expansion of life, so that the grieving person’s life gradually grows around their grief. The bereaved person adjusts to their grief by encompassing it into their lives. They can even grow from their grief. Their grief hasn’t shrunk, or disappeared - but there can be more than the grief in their life now. This process may take some time, or even a very long time, and everyone's journey through loss is different. However, according to Tonkin – it is possible to experience a sense in which life has grown around the grief. 

Like tree roots that have found a way to grow round the rocky terrain, some people find it is possible for their life to grow round their grief.

It’s not necessary for grief to “go away”

Some people believe this model is a helpful challenge to the idea that grief is something we should put behind us, that we should “get over” or no longer feel. In the Growing Around Grief model, grief does not have to “go away” for a life to develop and grow around the grief. This can feel comforting and offer hope to anyone who feels any sense of guilt about the idea that, one day, they will be able to “get on” with life.   

A chance to pause and reflect

So, if it works for you, my invitation is to take a moment to consider what meaning you make of your own grief, your own loss? Or, whether indeed, you feel there is any meaning to be made at all amidst the confusion and difficulty of loss? As we acknowledged in a previous blog, models of grief can feel helpful in making sense of grief and providing a structure. Equally, they can feel far too abstract, and removed from the raw pain of grief. There are no right or wrongs here, no best way to approach or navigate grief. Your grief is unique to you. Finding ways to give voice and expression to your own feelings of loss, even when these are messy and seemingly without sense or meaning, is one of the ways that counselling can be helpful for anyone experiencing loss, bereavement or grief.  In our final blog of this series, we take a closer look at practical and emotional support for anyone living with the experience of loss and grief.

Counselling can help you to untangle some of the confusing feelings that are part of grief and loss

‍Next steps?

If you have been impacted by any of the themes or topics in this blog, please reach out for support.  One of the ways you can do this is by speaking to a the bereavement charity, Cruse via their volunteer run helpline. You can also speak to your GP, or consider bereavement counselling or therapy for grief.

If you’re interested in scheduling a free intro call to ask any questions you might have about starting counselling to explore your grief and get therapeutic support as you grieve, I welcome you making contact with me, Claire Law.

I’m a BACP Senior Accredited Psychotherapist offering professional counselling and psychotherapy in Preston, Lancashire and online for adults based in the UK.

I offer a simple, no-pressure approach to people who are considering therapy - and can chat through how I work, and to share with you my availability for new clients for either:

• In person grief counselling at my therapy room in Preston.

• Online grief counselling via MS Teams.