Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

Have you ever stood eyeball to eyeball with a person who lost somebody they loved and found that words stuck in your throat… leaving you numb and speechless?

Robert Neimeyer is professor of psychology .... at the University of Memphis, and he wrote about this problem in his book, Lessons of Loss …. It seems to me that when we understand what’s going on inside the mind of a fellow worker in grief… we can get past the places of awkward silences…. It’s not easy to see grief …. And yet we can catch glimpses that help us to understand and react to it whenever it comes to work….

That’s because … as Dr. Neimeyer says … the human brain works in different ways when approaching grief and loss …  depending on the nature of that loss…”  It also depends, in his view… on  “how the loss people experience... affects their views of themselves and their worlds.” This makes sense when I compare the fire that destroyed one fellow worker’s home ... and in another office ... a woman suffered the loss of a much loved grandfather ... who died peacefully in his sleep after a rich and fulfilled life…”  Grief evoked a completely  different reaction from another man I worked with ... who lost his wife of twenty-five years in a car accident…. One thing these had in common ... inevery case I felt stumped to respond in a way that would help….  Have you been there?

In times of grief… many people fall back on faith and close friends for comfort ... and yet Dr. Neimeyer points out that this reliance can also complicate a person's grief and our responses. Apparently... it’s always best to avoid pigeonholing people into grief patterns that don’t fit….. Sounds to me like what experts... such as Dr. Neimeyer, are really asking us to do… is to listen closer for the clarion call response that comes from within a grieving person's clues about a response they'd like…. Do you agree?