How to cope with Ambiguous Loss from Severe Mental Illness

Living with and supporting loved ones through their severe mental illness often comes with serious feelings of loss. This loss may not fit with traditional models of grief due to its ambiguity.
In this presentation, Jerri Clark describes ambiguous loss and shares strategies families can use to cope with this adversity.
Video Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:45 Outline
01:11 TAC's Mission and Me
02:57 DJ Jaffe
03:59 Dr. E Fuller Torrey
04:35 What is Severe Mental Illness (SMI)
05:10 SMI Data
06:05 What is an Ambiguous Loss?
07:28 Typical Loss
08:05 Jerri's Ambiguous Loss
09:32 What Makes These Losses So Hard?
10:09 The Ambiguity!
11:29 A Loss From Age, Accident, Illness
12:40 Jewish Tradition of Sitting Shiva
13:37 Dr. Pauline Boss (who coined the term ambiguous loss)
14:26 Grief is Normal
16:08 Ambiguous Loss and SMI
17:34 Pause for Reflection
18:26 Top 6 Coping Strategies Overview
19:03 #1 Find Meaning
21:06 #2 Adjust Mastery
23:08 #3 Reconstruct Identity
24:01 #4 Normalize Ambivalence
26:35 #5 Revise Attachment
28:14 #6 Discover New Hope
29:06 Play With Ambiguity
30:26 Stay in Touch With TAC
30:56 Thank You!

[@tmeade6465]

Thank you for this. We have lived for 25 years of vowing to never giving up hope. For a cure, for our son to return. As we age it is clear that we need to learn to cope. I actually found your site and beginning to do some work to advocate for changes.

[@dahliafully]

Thank you for this. "You cannot fix the ambiguity." That is part of complexities of the ambiguity itself because there is such a strong need to heal, a strong sense of what is helplessness and where there is help and purpose. The strategies you're offering here are both sensible and sensitivity. Your embrace of ambivalence and the complexities of such intense experiences and living through "worst case scenarios" in real time. I really appreciate that each sentence is stated with slow, careful clarity. It's like you have taken the oars to guide a rocky boat of folks with calm, steady rowing. So thank you. More of this for all.

[@brentladd]

Thank you. This is so well done. And you have lived it. It has been 5 yrs of a roller coaster from hell with my daughters SMI and severe substance abuse disorder, and recent incarceration. It is validating to learn about ambiguous loss, and a pathway through understanding and learning both/and thinking and being in the world, and the futility of fixing the relationship. It is deeply agonizing as a parent to navigate my love for my adult child, yet having arrived at a threshold of not being able to help her.

[@user-ne7zt6ft8u]

Thank you for this! My therapist told me I was codependent because I was grieving my sons onset of schziophrenia. I quickly fired her as she clearly didn’t understand I was grieving! This video gives me so much validation.

[@taccommunicate]

So sorry to hear about your struggle to find understanding and support during such a hard period. Hope that you have found a compassionate support network since then and that your son is doing well. So glad to hear you feel validated from the video!

[@dahliafully]

Thank you for firing her! I had a similar experience. Many therapists are way too quick to label their clients and over-diagnose with cookie cutter analysis. I wish you solid, informed support that isn't so quick to give a report as opposed to understand the nuances and the complexities involved in loss and coping with our experiences of tragedy.

[@user-bh7tt5hg6k]

Thank you Jerri.

[@taccommunicate]

Thank you! We're lucky to have Jerri at TAC