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.
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