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Meaning may enhance healthy responses to loss and reduce unhealthy ones.

Experiencing growth through loss can decrease loneliness.

Support from others and steady meaning-making are vital in moving forward.

The burden of loss affects each of us at one time or another. Yet each experience involves a unique behavioral and emotional response. Research has explored the broad range of responses to grief and loss, which may help people in grief to move forward.

The Comfort of Coherence

Paul A. Boelen and Maja O’Connor (2022) examined the value of having a sense of coherence during a period of prolonged grief, depression, and life satisfaction after bereavement.[i] Examining psychological factors associated with maintaining healthy functioning after suffering an adverse event, they examined the role of a sense of coherence in recovering from loss. They defined this coherence as an orientation to life that includes manageability, comprehensibility, and meaningfulness.

Studying a Danish sample of 221 elderly people who had lost a spouse, Boelen and O’Connor compared sense of coherence factors with symptom levels of prolonged grief disorder and depression, as........

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