Mediumship and the Recently Bereaved

Written By Anne Piper

As someone who trained and worked as a bereavement counsellor one of the main concerns I have about the use of mediumship is it’s potential affect on those who are grieving and coming to terms with the loss of a loved one. This article does not set out to dismiss mediumship, my views on that are irrelevant to an extent in this matter. This article merely sets out to question the harm mediumship could do to the natural and essential grieving process.

Speak to a medium and ask them “what is the point” in what they do and often the answers will be :“To give proof of life everlasting” , “To give comfort to those who have suffered loss by letting them know their loved ones are still around”. Whether you believe that mediums are doing what they suggest or not is a very personal thing, and the aim of this is not to question a mediums ability or whether or not they are truly doing as they suggest, it is to look at the harm, reliance in mediums can do to the recently bereaved or those who have not come to terms in the “normal” way with their bereavement. In this way, whether a medium is really doing as they suggest, or truly believes they are doing what they suggest, or is even knowingly defrauding people is irrelevant, the dangers are exactly the same. As may have been noticed I mentioned about people coming to terms with bereavement in the “normal” way. But, what is normal ? What is right for one isn’t necessarily right for another. What takes some people a month could take others a year, for some the process can take many years, and for some it never happens. As a bereavement counsellor my job was to help those people who for whatever reason were having difficulty with the bereavement process, and for this we had to look at the “norm” in terms not of time, but in terms of a natural progression of thoughts and feelings that we, as humans, have been proven to go through in order to resolve issues around loss in the form of bereavement. Of course this isn’t to say we encourage people to forget their loved one, this would be impossible and not how it should be. The aim of bereavement work is to help people remember their loved ones while being able to accept the fact they are no longer with them. The nature of the death and the relationship to the person who dies often has an impact on how long the grieving process takes, and to what extent a person ever really learns to deal with it, however, disturbance in the natural grieving process can also impact greatly in the time it takes and the final degree of acceptance.

I have worked with people who were suffering due to a bereavement that happened 10, even 20 years ago. When speaking to these people I always found that at the time they could not grieve for their loved one. This could be due to many factors including family pressures to “carry on”, family pressure not to “talk about it”, problems expressing emotion or a fear of their own feelings. Whatever the reasons the outcome was the same, part of the grieving process was missed out. Each subsequent bereavement brought forward the memory of the prior and people found themselves often grieving for many people at the same time, and, even more difficult for them to come to terms with was the fact that the emotions they were feeling, which in their view were due to a recent loss, were actually due to a loss that happened many years before.So, back to mediumship, how does this affect the grieving process ? In order to answer this we need to first understand the process itself, and this is known as the “grief circle”. The grief circle is basically the stages that a person needs to go through following a death. This process has been accepted and proven by professionals and psychologists for many years. What needs to be understood about this process is that the final part “reorganisation” can only be reached if the other stages have been dealt with, if any part of the process has been missed then the whole process must start again, even if it is 10 years later.

The stages of this grief process are :

Shock

Protest

Disorganization

Reorganization

In practical terms these stages have the following affects :

SHOCK This is the initial reaction to a bereavement. It is the mind’s way of protecting us from the intense emotion we may feel because it is too painful to us. We go into shock so as to avoid feeling and perceiving the loss and so it keeps its reality away from us. Shock is a very sensible, short term protection mechanism. It is often what helps people through funeral arrangements, dealing with family etc. Often people do not even start to accept a loss until the funeral is over and the visitors and those offering sympathy have stopped calling.

PROTESTIf we are no longer in shock we feel the pain that the loss brings us. We begin to realise the hole that is left in our lives by that person’s death and we start to suffer the pain of knowing that person will not return. We do not like this pain and our minds protest, trying to find ways to get rid of it, avoid it, or change reality to how it used to be. Some people resist thinking about the person, as though, by not thinking about him/her they can pretend it hasn’t happened. This time of protest can lead people to still set dinner places for their loved one or go to make a phone call to them, it is only when they have done it they realise the act is fruitless. Often the realisation of the fruitlessness of these actions can send people back into the shock process briefly, and these two stages can be repeated many times before the next stage is met.

DISORGANIZATION In disorganisation we really begin to feel what the loss means to us. The pain is now connected to the reality. We begin to realise the “holes” where the person used to be, we begin to notice and miss what they used to do for us or the place they had in our lives. We realise what we will have to take on board for ourselves to do, or those things we have to now do on our own. This can lead people to fail to carry out everyday tasks, to avoid those things that used to be done for them or that they used to do with their loved one. We realise that we now have to make decisions ourselves, cope with issues on our own, or find another support network and find someone or something to “fill the hole”. The sense of confusion and fear that this can bring can lead people to be disorganised, not do things they need to do and avoid certain situations until they begin to accept the loss and move on to the next stage.

RE-ORGANIZATION Having felt the pain of the loss and felt the way it affects us and our lives, we can recognise the nature, size and quality of the loss. We can reorganize our lives and begin to rebuild a new life for ourselves with the knowledge, understanding and acceptance that that person is no longer there. Of course this isn’t to say we can or should ever forget the person. However, we now begin to remember them positively, starting to allow ourselves to let in good memories. The fear of coping without that person and any guilt about allowing ourselves to be happy starts to lessen.

So, how can mediumship disrupt this process and ultimately lead to non-resolution and non-acceptance of death ? There is no need to take each individual stage when studying the negative effects of mediumship if carried out too early in the grieving process. Too early being before all stages have been reached and completed. The problem with mediumship is very basically that it prevents proper and complete acceptance that the person is truly gone. If we bare in mind that during the early stages of bereavement one of the main issues is coming to terms with the loss, through shock, protest and disorganisation what are we doing by encouraging the bereaved to acknowledge the person is still with them? We are infact denying them the opportunity to feel the emotions and express them, we are denying them the chance to feel the ways in which they miss that person and to fill that gap in a positive and meaningful way, infact we are going as far as to help them forget the reality of the present and live for the dead not for the living.

An example of this is someone who relied on her mother for support and advice and that shoulder to cry on. When her mother died she went through the initial shock, however, as she progressed into protest she could not deal with the emotions she felt. The belief that her mother was no longer there became something she could not even consider dealing with. In short, she did not believe she could live without her mother and so, searched for proof that her mother was still there with her. And so, she did what many do and got in touch with a medium. What happened next could have been true mediumship, cold reading or guesswork, that in itself is not the issue. What is the issue is that the medium told her of her loss and what it meant to her. The medium told her that her mother was telling her that she was still there, could still listen to her and would always, somehow find a way to help her through her difficult times. Suddenly the feeling of loss was decreased, now the woman hadn’t lost her mother, she just couldn’t see her. If she tried hard enough she could even feel her mother giving her a hug. In many ways her mother was still there. She no longer needed to reorganize her life because in many ways her mother hadn’t died. Disorganised stage completely missed out she missed out the reorganised stage as it wasn’t necessary. Life to a very large extent went back to normal. Her family and friends tried to make her see things differently and slowly she pushed them away, she didn’t need them, she had her mother. To her this felt real and right.She talked to her mother, made decisions based on what she believed her mother was telling her and relied on readings and messages from mediums to keep proving to here that her mother was still there. And, time and time again the mediums came up with the right evidence (or evidence that she made “fit” in to what she wanted). Then one day she went to a new medium, a medium who did not mention her mother. All the way there she had been asking her mother to come through, she needed help with something. Only this time it didn’t happen. To her it felt like her mother had deserted her. Imagine ringing up one of your friends or family in a time of need and having a phone put down on you, this is what it felt like. She was unable to see that maybe her mother didn’t feel it was right to come through, she couldn’t accept that maybe the medium just didn’t pick up on her mother, and she certainly couldn’t accept that up until this point, just maybe the mediums had played on her vulnerability telling her what she needed to hear, and that maybe her mother had never been there at all. What she had to accept however, was that her mother wasn’t there at this time and wouldn’t always be there, maybe even would never be there.The result of this was that months on from her mothers death she had to go through the grieving process. She had to go back to the protest stage but, to an extent even had to go back to the shock stage. Time heals, but it also makes things harder in some ways. She now had to accept the loss not once but twice, once in real terms and once with her mother as spirit. She now also had to build up her circle of family and friends again, some came back, some understood, some didn’t. And so, she had to accept and deal with the loss of those people. A different type of loss maybe, but loss all the same.This is not a story, a made up situation for the benefit of this report. It is a real incident and one similar to many that we dealt with. You may look at this and say “yes but it wasn’t like that for me. You may say “my bereavement was different”, or “we are all different and this only applies to this lady”. This might make you think that mediumship of this nature is only negative in some situations. This is a wrong assumption. The details may be different, time spans and words may differ, but the result is the same.People need to accept death and learn to live with the present. People need to remember the dead but live their lives with the living. People need to be able to cope without their loved ones, relying on, and enjoying time with those who are still with them. They need to go through ShockProtest Disorganization Reorganization Then, and only then should they consider approaching a medium, if that is their wish. Then, and only then will they be able to accept the person is not there in real terms but is in someway still a part of them. And then, and only then will they be able to cope if that person does not come through and give them the proof they need. Bereavement and acceptance of truth is not preferable, it is essential. Having “contact” with a person when you haven’t accepted they have died leads to a halfway house. Grief cannot be properly managed yet the person is no longer there. You cannot say goodbye to someone who you believe is there giving you messages, yet you cannot say hello whenever you wish.

By Anne Piper

Copyrighted to Anne Piper 2007. This article may not be reproduced or used for any purpose without the prior agreement of the articles author.