Question: Who is the Real “Grief Expert?”...

When I attended your training, I think you mentioned that the true “expert” is the mourner. Can you expand on this?

Your memory is correct – I have always maintained that the true expert in grief is the mourner. I do believe there is a real difference between studying a mysterious body of knowledge surrounding grief and committing yourself to helping people versus projecting oneself as a “grief expert.” The Companioning Model of Grief Care is anchored in “teach me” and “compassionate curiosity” about what the mourner is experiencing.

Compassionate curiosity for the companion is about being willing to enter into and learn about the mystery of grief while recognizing you do not and cannot fully understand someone else’s experience. Curiosity is bathed in an attitude of the “beginner’s mind and heart.”

This attitude is not ignorance but the capacity to see without assumptions, to take a fresh look each and every time you are privileged to walk with and learn from a mourner. It involves a clearing away of thoughts, beliefs, and ideas that might cloud your ability to see things as they are in pristine form.

As we all realize, children are naturally curious. As we grow up we are at risk for losing this state of heightened awareness and natural desire to learn from those around us. We may falsely assume we already know. In other words, our intellect takes over. Yet, being a companion to people in grief can reactivate our sense of miracle to bring a fresh, simple, unsophisticated view of things.

Paradoxically, you can only learn from the mourner by acknowledging you don’t know. It is out of your helplessness that you ultimately become helpful. You have to be willing to disconnect from believing you have superior expertise of another human being’s emotional-spiritual journey of grief.

Through no fault of your own, your training as a caregiver may make it difficult to admit you don’t know and don’t have answers. You may instinctively be frightened to be present to people that are in liminal space—betwixt and between!

Actually, you may have been taught that part of being a professional is to project confidence and to state opinions as if they were gospel. Sadly, you don’t get respected in this culture by admitting you are confused or by asking tentative questions in search of enhancing your empathy versus providing techniques for brief therapy that collaborates with attempts to “manage grief.” The unconscious contamination of your training is more likely to encourage you to assess, diagnose, and treat than it is to observe, witness, listen, learn, and watch out for the mourner.

For some caregivers it is difficult, if not impossible, to relinquish their “diagnostic categories,” “interventions,” and “treatments.” These terms often lie at the heart of the professional identity of the care-giver and the invitation to be part of the mental-health medical model of expertise. Yet, the companion humbly acknowledges that “compassionate curiosity” is what you really need to care for the mourner.

Compassionate curiosity is about actively encouraging the mourner to teach you about her grief while you remain patient, humble and caring. You have the honor as a companion to listen and to learn, to be curious rather than to be certain. The greatest privilege of the companioning model, in fact, is that it moves you closer to the very people you wish to support. When you listen without a need to judge or interpret, you create a safe place and become a safe person for the mourner.

At bottom, it is not differences that divide us. Instead, it is our judgments about each other that do. Curiosity and use of the “teach me” model bring us back together. To use this model invites us to rest in the sometimes uncomfortable place of uncertainty of not knowing, having the answer, or being the expert.

One astute observer, Bradford Keeney, wrote the following about the hazards of being an expert or master counselor: “You will find that it no longer matters what you say. Everything uttered will be contextualized as the voice of a master… Avoid the political posturings of ‘mastery’ and return to embracing and cultivating a beginner’s mind. Maintain and respect ignorance. Speak to hear the surprise from your own voice.”

As you contemplate the value of curiosity versus expertise, listen to your own inner voice. What has your own personal grief taught you about what helps people heal? Have you witnessed change as the journey unfolds, but not according to plan or as a consequence of intentional intervention? Do you appreciate the mystery of grief and challenge the wish to have it resolved (which it can never be)? Do you believe that caring for the mourner requires a different language than that of modern academic psychology? Do you believe there is no exact end point to grief and that it should not be tied to a specific linear timeframe? Depending on your answers, you may have to admit you are a responsible rebel who believes in compassionate curiosity and challenges ego-based expertise.

What is a “Responsible Rebel”? One who questions assumptive models surrounding grief and loss and challenges those very models. Rebels are not afraid to question established structures and forms. At the same time, rebels respect the rights of others to use different models of understanding, and provide leadership in ways that empower people rather than diminish them.

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