Difficulties in Supporting the Bereaved

Interviews were carried out with fifty-seven adults concerning their interactions with others who were bereaved. When the respondent and the other person were bereaved by the same loss, support relationships were more likely to be difficult. The difficulty arose in part from problems in making shared decisions, in meeting one another's needs and standards, and in coming to shared realities. In some cases the difficulty could be attributed, in part, to the history of the relationship between the people sharing bereavement or to the emotional, cognitive, and physical demands of bereavement. In potential support situations where interviewees were not also mourners, those who held back generally had not experienced a death of somebody close.