The traumatic stress in grief and the purpose beyond despair

Every now and then, in the collusion of the right circumstances, I’m like a deer in headlights.  For me, it’s always a cacophony of tasks leaving me ripe for the symptoms of burnout, but then there’s the deft ingredient of loss.  

Loss always slides in unannounced until it clobbers you like a megaphone.

I’m a people person who can manage a high task load for long durations for a relatively long time, until I can’t; until a loss comes in on the top of it all, as if God is saying, “You won’t be able to push through this one!”  It brings me to my knees.

(To be honest, it’s always safer for me to just be a people-person mainly, but there are so few roles in this world that allow you to just be with people.)

I sat at the computer in our busy office with my head in my hands, like a deer in headlights, just not able to think, and it was especially disconcerting that the stimuli just would not stop—a plethora of voices, emails piling up, phone messages, a miasma of noise; all the reminder of the relentless work that just keeps coming.

Even people asking, “How are you?” is a stumbling block.  Such a simple question that we normally reply with, “Great,” or “Fine, thanks, and you?”  On a day like today, I have no filter, I can’t lie, and people say, “Woah!”

And yet I can process one thing, like the writing of this article.

It’s why I love the practice of counselling and pastoring so much—you do one thing at a time; you’re present with one person at a time; you’re invested heavily in one plane at a time.  It’s eminently doable.

But all this is a clue for something else.  It’s not the work in and of itself that sends a person like me into the figurative foetal position.  It’s LOSS.  In the present case, the loss of a great mate who I’d not spent much time with in the past 15 years, which leaves me feeling sad for the regret of not spending more time with him and his wife and family.

It’s also the loss of a person who seemed larger than life, but the fact is life makes us all somewhat larger than death.  Death leaves us searching for where they went.  Death is somehow inconceivable.  It leaves us vanquished for answers.  Like, it just cannot be.

Something deeper happens in loss.

Grief stops you in your tracks.  It takes you way beyond your capacity to resolve.  It forces you into a place of sheer and constant uncertainty.  It brings us undone.

Because it is incomprehensible, loss affects us in our minds, our bodies, our soul.

Loss brings about the cause of traumatic stress, yes, like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and sometimes it can lead to PTSD, but not necessarily; it can, however, lead to instances of post-traumatic stress.

My first most paralysing loss occurred in the loss of my first marriage in 2003.  That loss event or series of events transformed me in many ways; the way I think changed, the way I interpret maps and directions, my responses to stress changed, my taste changed, and even my personality changed.  Perhaps in terms of the latter, I was becoming who I was meant to become.

Some would say these changes were adaptations, and that’s not untrue, for we’re constantly changing according to our environments.

The present grief I’m experiencing is the loss of this good mate.  It’s sadness for not having been there more, strangely enough, vicarious suffering for what his family is going through, on top of not having the expanses of emotional energy to deal with the grief.

All this in the previous paragraph is what amounts to the stimuli for symptoms and signs of traumatic stress.

Of course, I’ll be fine, just as you will be too when you face your losses.  Well, fine, ultimately.

It’s just not lost on me how traumatic grief is, and it leaves me knowing that you and I need to be especially gentle with ourselves during these times—as long as those times take, sensitive to the meandering trail and undulations of the valleys we’re negotiating.

Loss has this real benefit, however.  As we negotiate our grief, we’re joined by fellow grievers on the path of life.  We gain new friends.  Those who we receive the goodness of life from, and those we give the goodness of life to, and much of the time it’s actually about both—that’s what true and deeper friendship is all about.

But the trauma in grief is real.  It won’t crush us if only we can gently learn to face it and get the all-important therapy we need to process it well.

Photo by 烧不酥在上海 老的 on Unsplash

What death is teaching me

I don’t usually live a day without being thankful I’m alive—this, despite my occasional lament of life, is because I live with the concept of death taking me any one of these days.

I don’t see this as a morbid way to live.  On the contrary, I feel I’ve already died to myself so Christ can live in me.  It’s not some kooky Christianity; it’s my very purpose for living for an eternal purpose that crucifies every pathetic complaint that emerges in an instant against my purpose.

Yes, I complain, and I do so often.  I live in some terms a kind of bipolar life vacillating between extremes, and in this way, I can empathise with a broader set of people.  God has given me an appreciation of what it’s like to struggle—and I’m bizarrely thankful.

Back to what death’s teaching me.

1.             My complaints are put into perspective on the canvas of the reality of death.  I may complain, but then I face that soon I’ll be gone.  Many people are quietly or not-so-quietly scared of death’s reality, but I am not.  I have trust in a good God.  God has granted us LIFE in its abundance—we take it as we choose it, for we must choose.

2.             I’m one of these weird creatures that both craves and laments a high workload.  I want to make a deep contribution in every area I can while I’m alive, but I also crave the peaceful contemplative life.  I realise that I can’t have it both ways.  Death teaches me that there are benefits in achievement as far as legacy is concerned, but there are also spiritual benefits in slowing down occasionally to truly be thankful, while I’m alive.

3.             I want to ‘possess’ stuff in life—stuff that means a lot to me but not to most others, because it’s stuff attached to my memories and experiences, and worth next to nothing in monetary terms.  Like the stuff in my small study.  It’s about 64 square feet (pictured) but it’s full of the nick-nacks I’ve picked up in life.  Yet, I can’t even take these valuable-to-me-but-worthless-to-others things with me when I depart this life.  Death teaches me that everything material fades to nothing eventually, and that this can only be, and is best, accepted.

4.             I often wonder, and lament, that I’m so busy contributing to all areas of my life that I don’t have or make the time to reflect on what’s happening.  I do this and live this way in faith that I’m saying my yes to my God.  My relationships—as far as they depend on me—are going well, and that’s what matters as I prepare to face my Lord.  And here’s the rub: whenever I’m offered a relational opportunity, I don’t want to say no.  I want to make the most of it.

5.             Probably the most salient message death is teaching me is how important the rest of life is—I mean, NOT.  There are so many important issues in life, but death puts them all into perspective.  Death makes everything just a little less important, and I think that’s important.  My faith has me believing in a justice beyond this life so I can let go of my demands for justice in this life, not that that means we shouldn’t advocate against injustice—we need to.  BUT we don’t need the presence of injustice in this life to destroy our hope.  We need to sustain ourselves.

Death is one of the best teachers for life, if only we’ll face others’ deaths and the prospect of our own.

Where did those 45 years go?

In the living of our lives, we’re invariably so busy making ends meet, financially, priorities, friendships, and otherwise, that before we know it, 45 years have travelled by, almost as if it were 45 days.

Think about this if you’re in your 20s, 30s, or 40s.  I’m finding that it’s not until you reach your 50s that you recognise that the best years appear behind you, yet you have the best years of appreciating those years of past in front of you.

This is what I mean.  I look at the two images herein, one of my family of origin, with the only member missing, my sister who was stillborn, and then I look at the family I’ve been blessed to produce.  I look and I see what a wide expanse that 16,425 days is, and it’s as if there’s SO MUCH life that’s lived that it covers about 16,425 mini-series’.

Here’s the thing.  While we’re busy getting on with life, we barely recognise what is day by day wasting away.  The days of our lives that in some ways we decry as being too hard, too hopeless, too hair-raising.  We may focus on how life is getting harder to live, the world less sustainable, a horrible concept to bring new life into.

When we focus on the future to the expense of the present, we worry away our lives, and because 45 years goes just like that, we habitually live outside of the present many of those 16,425 days.

The gorgeous thing about getting older, especially when our hearts have been somewhat softened by the wisdom of understanding the mercies poured out into our lives, is we begin to relive those years in our present.

We reconnect with important figures in our past.  We appreciate the glories of yesteryear almost as if there were something ethereal about them.  But of course there is; what we would give to go back to those days—provided they weren’t traumatic—and just spend 10 minutes as a fly on the wall, just to experience with our senses what it was like—because we’ve forgotten the minute detail.

These 50s years I’m finding are such a gift.  I’m more in touch with what’s really important, even if I cannot yet fully live into it—because of the obvious financial constraints.  I’m more thankful for time with family, including reminiscing over times of past with family, yes even the harder times.

These are just some observations and I’m hoping not too much a waste of time to read.

 

The most important indicator of good mental health

I’m going to say it right up front.  The most important indicator of good mental health is IN-SIGHT—that ability to see TRULY, as all of life actually is, i.e., ourselves, others, situations, etc, and to live out of this truth.

First and foremost, it’s seeing that you’re beloved and second, and just as important, it’s seeing that you’re fallible.

If we can’t see the first state—that we’re beloved—we end up with horrendous self-image and are prone forever more to spiritual attack.

If we can’t see the second state—that we’re fallible—we end up hurting others.

If we can’t see either, we’re a danger to ourselves AND others.  The saddest thing about this, apart from the threat we pose to others, is we stand far apart from the true blossoming potential every human being possesses.

But with insight—that ability to truly see what truth there is to see—we can accept ourselves for who we are, and we can accept it when we fail.  With the capacity to endure the moment’s shame and guilt for what they are, we’re not crushed by the circumstance of acute embarrassment for falling short.  Paradoxically, when shame and guilt are faced in those moments of getting it wrong, they’re processed quickly; they don’t stick, meaning they only stick when we’re acutely ashamed of our shame and resentful we feel guilty.

With insight, we’re not crushed, because our fate does not lie in our performance.

Our fate is not in what we do or don’t do, it’s in WHO we are.  Not that this is any excuse to do what is inconceivably wrong—nobody with insight would wilfully harm others or themselves.

Yet, because we’ve all had times lacking in insight—when our mental health was askew for instance—we’ve engaged in harmful activities.

The greatest gift on earth is what those in the Old Testament called “the fear of the LORD,” which is a much-unexplained concept.  The fear of the LORD is true sight.

But you and I might have the wrong perceptions for what this truly is.

True sight is picking ourselves up in our BIAS.  Who does this routinely?  No, we typically live in bias—a cacophony of unconscious bias a lot of the time.  And it doesn’t matter who we are.  Insight is the humility to see when we fall for the lie of a false perception.  My typical personal default is picking myself up in my bias AFTER the event or overcompensating for it BEFORE the event.  Of course, it’s better to see your wrong ‘better late than ever’ but it’s still a fallibility.

Insight helps us to know that “the heart is deceptive.”  (Jeremiah 17:9)  Yes, the fact of unconscious biases proves this concept.  But insight helps.  Insight helps us have a healthy distrust of our first perceptions, enough in fact to fact-check them.

The prayers of Psalm 139:23-24 and John 4:24 say, “God, help me SEE,” for seeing is worshipping in Spirit and in TRUTH.  A person with insight cannot live in perpetuating a lie.

The best contributions we make in life is to see ourselves, others, circumstances, and things AS THEY ACTUALLY ARE.  Nobody is due the disdain of violence, not even those who are violent.  When we kill others with our thoughts, we kill the very idea in ourselves that we’re beloved.

Everyone is both beloved and fallible.  The blessed can see this both about themselves and others at the same time.

This is the mental health we need to nurture in ourselves and others—the capacity for true sight of IN-SIGHT.

Photo by Nathan Maduta on Unsplash

The descent of spiritual attack when panic overcomes reason

It’s happened countless times to me, and it still strikes bewilderment in me how quickly the descent can occur.  Whether you believe in spiritual forces or not, there is without doubt something that happens within our psyches when plummeting or triggering occurs.

It can be circumstantial, in that something happens to bring you undone in an instant, it can be a slow build up that carries you over the cusp, and just as much it can happen for any inexplicable reason, leaving you more confused and dazed than you’ve ever been.

We fear these moments where we’re at the complete mercy of whatever darkness prevails.  The only good thing about these descents is that they force a response out of us a lot of the time, and unless they completely disable us, we normally can claw our way out or endure it.

Another positive that comes from such an event is the fact that denial is no longer an option.  When your hand is forced behind your back, you have no choice but to wince, and the same thing occurs when mental wellbeing descends at a rate of knots.

First, it’s to refuge, but ultimately there’s some response to fight your way back.

This is not just a panic attack, although panic attacks fit the realm.  It’s every variety of mental and emotional descent, whether it can be explained or not, and so often it’s not.

The descent of spiritual attack when panic overcomes reason seems illogical to those who’ve never suffered it.  But I’ve also known plenty of people—myself included—who once held to the belief that reason could always control such moments.

The fact is reason might add up, but in these moments, you cannot access the solidity in reason, and you descend into panic anyway.

Strategies that have helped me at these times:

1.             Get yourself safe first and foremost, even if that means departing from public places in a relative hurry.  Especially if you’re prone right now, have yourself an out planned and prepared for the moment of acute social anxiety.  You have no apologies to make to anyone when you’re all at sea.

2.             Connecting with safe people who can be present with you or pray with you or for you.  Prayer really does help on a lot of occasions.

3.             Deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation can help, because they’re physical interventions.  Meditation can help for some.

4.             Remind yourself that “this, too, shall pass,” especially if you consider how previous episodes have run.

5.             Be mindful that every experience puts you closer to effective strategies that will work for future.  Despite the pain, nothing’s wasted.

6.             Where you can, nurture relationships where those you rely on understand your mental health status and situation.  You don’t need an impossible relationship or two to manage when you’re already battling huge spiritual attacks within mental health disequilibrium.

7.             Where you can, speak your way through attacks of guilt and shame in ways of affirming your intent is for good and not for harm, that you’re doing your best and that always needs to be good enough, because it’s all you’ve got.

Photo by Alec Douglas on Unsplash

Embrace your depression, your hardship, your truth – don’t fear it

There is a lot to fear in living out the traumas in real life.  It can seem that there’s so much to lose and so little to gain.  You pick up the pieces of your life at any given point—you reflect—and you hope as you pray.  Then you read this:

“... we have two fundamental needs.  One need that’s with us in infancy and it’s absolute and it’s non-negotiable is attachment.  And so the other need then is authenticity.  Authenticity therefore is the connection to ourselves.  Without authenticity and without a gut connection with ourselves, how long do you survive out there in nature?”
—Dr. Gabor Maté

We exile our own pain when we refuse to face it.  When we refuse to face it, we cannot overcome it, and it simply stays there as the dormant (or not-so-dormant) trigger that springs up to create a relapse.

The gift we can give ourselves at any time is authenticity.  If we can be authentic with ourselves, we can be authentic with others, even as we have confidence within ourselves to confidently face the world we walk out into.

As we embrace our maladies of being—our depression, our sense of being at odds with our world, our hardships, the truth we face and attest to being our reality—we liberate what we cannot escape from.  In other words, there are states of being we all experience that are inescapable—if we can’t escape then why don’t we learn to courageously embrace them?

We don’t embrace these hideous realities because we’re scared, we’ll plummet further, but if we can embrace them, we reverse our default attitude.

Instead of fearing things will get worse, we focus our energy on just being mindful and the fear dissipates.  Then we can connect with ourselves, and authenticity comes into view, and we feel better attached to ourselves.

Insisting on controlling what we cannot control is not a sensible strategy.  When mental health is down, rather than fight our reality, we’re better to move through it by moving WITH it.  It’s about being gentler with ourselves.

As we accept what we cannot in that moment change, we take the pressure down, and peace comes closer to our grasp.

Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash