Human Growth and Development
Concepts of Human Growth and Development
Mary is dealing with two separate, though related, events in her life at the moment; bereavement and ageing. Both of these are transitions, and these always present us with a problem of adjustment. You might like to think about this in terms of your own life experience, as suggested in Activity 7.1 (HGD: 151). Both of these changes in Mary’s life are beyond her control, and therefore likely to be harder to negotiate than those which she chose, like marrying Ken, or becoming a foster carer. But from what we know about Mary, she is likely to have qualities of resilience (HGD: 24, 170); she has coped in the past with the challenges of fostering, and it is probable that she had secure attachments in her family of origin. In our discussion of Tracey we noted the importance of emotion-focused strategies for building resilience to cope with life’s difficulties; they help us to manage our feelings about them, even when the difficulties themselves are beyond our control (HGD: 170). The other broad group of coping strategies is problem-focused, and these work better when we have some control over the situation (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984; Lazarus, 1993, cited in HGD: 170). Here Richard is picking up on this distinction when he realises that he needs to take a different role with Mary than he did in similar situations in his previous human resources experience; he needs to just be with her rather than take problem-solving action. Working with emotion-focused strategies, however, does make different and emotionally more complex demands on those in a helping role, and this is what Richard is finding hard.
In addition, as we have noted above, Ken’s death and Mary’s own ageing are just a part, albeit a major one, of a broader pattern of change and loss in her life. If Richard can give her the opportunity to acknowledge these other losses too, this will help her not to feel so overwhelmed by Ken’s death, which at the moment is carrying more than its own weight, and to make the transition into late adulthood. Erikson (HGD: 278) described the task of this last of his stages of psychosocial development as achieving integrity and avoiding despair. To achieve this ego integration (HGD: 278) one needs to be able to look back over one’s life and what one has achieved with a sense of acceptance and not too many regrets. We can see here that, although Mary has achieved much in her life, she has a tendency to undervalue this, giving all the credit to Ken, and she does have some regrets about educational and career opportunities not taken. If Richard can help her to re-evaluate her own achievements, this will help her towards ego integration.
Mary is feeling very disabled by her physical problems, and her confidence has been undermined by the fall that she had in the early days after Ken’s death. This has led her to avoid going out, and to withdraw socially. As a result, she has become depressed, which has then further reinforced her withdrawal. It is often assumed that poor health and physical disability are an inevitable part of old age (HGD: 274), and according to the disengagement theory of ageing (Cummings and Henry, 1961, cited in HGD: 283), Mary’s withdrawal from the world might be seen as age-appropriate. But the picture is more complex than this, as Mary’s GP has clearly realised. Anxiety and post-traumatic stress reactions are typical of early stages of bereavement (Murray Parkes and Prigerson 2020, cited in HGD: 301) and Mary’s reaction to her fall has probably been coloured by this. At a metaphorical level, she had lost her main emotional support, Ken, so she doubted her ability to stand without physical support in those early days, and this loss of confidence has stayed with her. And although the physical symptom which caused the fall, low blood pressure, has long since been stabilised, the inactivity and weight gain resulting from her withdrawal are now limiting her mobility.
The social context is important here too. In terms of the physical structure of her community, changes during Mary’s lifetime have made it harder for her to be independent and connected with her neighbours; most shops are now a bus ride away, and local social focuses, like pubs and cinemas, have disappeared. So Mary is disabled both by her physical impairment and the additional barriers that these social changes have put in her way. Disability involves an interaction between the individual and society (HGD: 201), and needs to be understood in terms of social construction (HGD: 247) as well as bodily functioning. Other aspects of social construction are likely to be affecting Mary too; when she is reluctant to use a stick because it makes her feel like an old woman she is probably talking about her awareness of how others will see her, and how this will then affect the way she feels about herself. The negative stereotypes (HGD: 286) associated with old age are often summed up in the term ageism (HGD: 286). If she accepts the inevitability of her withdrawal from active engagement with the world, rather than feeling that she has a choice, Mary will be influenced by the kind of ageist stereotypes that the theory of disengagement mentioned above can sometimes be used to reinforce. There is evidence in her meeting with Richard of a woman who still has an appetite for social interaction and the potential to re-engage with the world as she works through the process of grieving for her husband. Social construction affects the grieving process too. When Mary says she should be getting over Ken’s death by now, she is responding to contemporary social norms about death and grieving, which, as we point out (HGD: 296) tend towards denial, with mourning practices and rituals not giving the kind of permission to express grief which they have done in other times and in other cultures. Those around her may be finding her grief hard to bear because it reminds them of their own mortality and vulnerability to loss, and so may be needing to hurry the process along.
We have seen the extent to which Mary’s sense of her identity has been bound up with her relationship with Ken. She is now grieving not only for Ken but for that part of herself which was invested in their relationship, and which she now feels she has lost. Hopefully, her work with Richard will help her to construct a new narrative (HGD: 302) for herself which does not end with Ken’s death, but helps her to let go of what she has lost while finding a new identity which does not depend on being one half of a couple. In terms of Stroebe and Schut’s dual process model of bereavement (HGD: 304), she needs some support in achieving more of a balance between a loss-orientated and restoration-orientated focus in coming to terms with Ken’s death. Richard may be able to help her reframe her regrets for lost learning opportunities as a desire to learn from new experiences in the present and future; the way she spoke about her learning from her role as a foster carer showed a spark of enthusiasm which contrasted with the sad focus on loss of most of her conversation with Richard.
It is never too late to revisit the developmental tasks of life’s stages. In working through her grief for Ken, Mary now has an opportunity to return to the unfinished business of her adolescence and develop a stronger, more independent sense of her own identity as a result.