Why pain in grief and trauma is so repetitious and listening is so important

My best counsellors were available exactly when I needed them.  I’d just lost just about everything that ever mattered to me and would ever matter to me.  They were there, and they continued to listen, time and again, to the same confused utterings, and they were just there, and they did what was required to love me back into shape.

It took months and months and months.

There were times we’d all sit there bewildered for what to think or how to respond.

It was the very shape of loss and of grief and of trauma, because loss propels us into grief, and I’m sure with all I have in me that grief is trauma.

There are so many situations in our lives that leave us devoid of rational response, like there are no words, or the words just don’t make a difference.  There is a place for just holding space, for containing, somehow, the mess that flows out of a person in a traumatised state.

I know first-hand having experienced such a lengthy bout of grief—patterns that would recur—involve the process of repetition, for repetition shows us what is not so easily wished away.  It lingers for a reason.  It remains because it refuses to be digested.  What’s unpalatable just sits there, like oil on water.

So, for me, it doesn’t necessarily take patience, but empathy carries a counsellor much further, for it shouldn’t be about patience.  And the empathy I mention here is a FELT experience of having been there.

When you’ve been there it’s not hard at all sitting in the pain with another who endures.  It’s the most natural thing in the world, I find.  Why would you not sit there with another person who is a brother or sister by the designation of their pain?  Especially when you’re the one who’s been there but has processed all your pain appropriately given time.

The emotions and the words circle around the mind, and the concepts seem brutally abstract yet altogether so concrete.  The words are tried in different order, the narrative shifts ever so slightly in wondering ‘what if?’ and the same old ‘why’ questions emerge.

The shapes of grief move and shift, yet the methods and patterns of pain remain the same.  These shapes of grief are anger one moment, resignation the next, then perhaps depression, and then maybe a little dread of anxiety, before some bargaining.

It’s exhausting, yet inescapable.  It’s the same cycle of pain rehashed and regurgitated over and again, and the afflicted are sicker of it than anyone.

When you’ve been there, you know it’s all beyond choice.  A journey of a million miles is worth every courageous step, for you will get there!

So, being there, sitting in the mire of the pain with them, that’s not hard.

Mental Fracture and Emotional Fragility in Depression

The pages of my journal in the latter half of 2007 are bare for the most part; quite uncharacteristic for me during that period of life.  There is a story to be told, which those pages allude to tellingly.

I was in a murky depression.  Embarking on my forties, in a crisis of vocation, having recently married, surprised how unanticipated my life had become.  Life deconstructed.

This depression came as a Fujita-5 tornado, rapid and sudden; its signs only clear from hindsight.  Those symptoms appeared, unwittingly and unfairly, on our honeymoon.

Here is one story of how depression involves fracture of the mind creating enormous emotional fragility and spiritual crisis:

On an innocent enough Saturday morning I changed the engine oil in my Hyundai.  I’d done it dozens of times.  The job done, I started the engine.  Checking everything was working as it should I was shattered to find oil running all over the driveway.  I shut the engine down and ran inside absolutely broken, sobbing tears like a baby.  I met Sarah in the kitchen and fell into her arms, before flopping to the floor.  She didn’t know what had occurred and it took her a little while to find out.  I was inconsolable.  Normally I might react angrily that the job went badly; but in my depression there was no agency for such fight.

The fracture in my mind had contributed to the spilt oil in the first place; with depression it’s so hard to keep the mind on task.  I had failed to remove the old O-ring.  With a clear mind I would never make such a fundamental error.  Yet, as I recall doing the task, my lack of self-confidence was poignant.  Neither the mind nor the emotions could hold me up.

As I reflect over that initial period of our marriage, I quickly feel for the plight my new wife must have found herself in; her new husband completely insecure of identity, warred upon from within, defences down, a victim of a broken mind, that ran unchecked according to its own will, and a heart vulnerable to the cognitive chaos it sat under.

For a period of just over three months I had a daily battle.  I was in a paid ministry role and felt completely inadequate to discharge that duty most of the time.  Many times I had to put my depression to one side and pray that the Lord would uphold my mind and my emotions whenever I was ministering with the youth.  God was incredibly faithful.  My senior pastor, too, graciously allowed me to continue in the work.  To have to continue to show up helped.  But there were days, also, when I couldn’t function, and nobody could make me if I couldn’t make myself.

Coming Out of It

What ultimately drew me out of that depression was Proverbs.  I began reading a chapter of Proverbs per day, and remained on that plan, meditating on chapters of about twenty verses daily, for eighteen months.  That book of the Bible saved my mental, emotional, and spiritual life.  I read little else of the Bible during that time.  Those maxims of King Solomon (predominantly) were the spiritual staple in that season for me.

Focusing on Proverbs got my mind engaged and steadied my emotions as the Holy Spirit spoke encouragement’s life into me.  It showed me how important the steadiness of studying one book or section of God’s Word is.  Proverbs gave me the character of God as a structure for the wisdom I sought.

Through these precious aphorisms, God was able to steady me enough to heal the fracture in my mind, and that helped fortify the fragility of my emotions.  Through the patterns I could see in those 31 chapters, I began to restructure my thoughts, emotions, and prayer life.

Thankfully I came out of this depression about as quickly as I entered it.

And, for the record, I took SSRI antidepressant medication.  They were important; about as important as recognising the signs and symptoms and admitting I was out of control.  As soon as I have recognised I’m out of control, quickly I’ve been able to address the confusion and start on getting well again.  Antidepressants help re-establish the biochemical balance in our bodies so they can be a vital therapy.

May God sincerely bless you as you go gently with yourself.

Living your purpose yet not destroying yourself getting there

So many of us grow up with the vision of changing our world, yet all too many of us end up threatening to destroy ourselves in the process.

Let me explain.

Many people I know and many people that I’ve counselled, have had such an urgent purpose in themselves to achieve in their short lifetime.  There are so many good drivers in people to want to do this, yet many of these good drivers are also driven by our brokenness, and a purpose built on brokenness alone leaves a person susceptible to temptation.

So many have entered careers, in fact, that have sought to do that very thing, to make the difference in this life while there is breath in their lungs.  “My life must stand for some good,” they’ll say.

Anyone reading this is motivated by doing something good with their life—we identify.

What attracts many counsellors and pastors and nurses and doctors and social workers, among so many, to their professions?  It’s not generally altogether altruistic.  It’s usually because there’s a difference to be made because of some hole inside us that seeks to be filled.  At least that’s part of the reason.

But with the purpose to make something truly worthwhile of one’s life, coupled with the difficulties inherent in achieving such a noble goal, the goal often becomes a burden, and pressure builds due to the cognitive dissonance of not being able to make the difference you thought you would.  This usually strikes home in the mid-thirties to mid-forties and explains many a midlife crisis.

What occurs on the way to our living our purpose, to the achievement of our dreams, amid the pressures of life, is temptation—generally because we need to medicate ourselves.

Now, you probably don’t need me to tell you that medicating yourself is always a slippery slope.

But it is.  Whether it’s an ever-increasing need to drink or falling for the drug of your ‘choice’, or it’s internet pornography, or gambling, is a moot point.  So very many people fall into these modes of self-medication because of the tremendous unrealistic pressures they place on themselves to achieve what they see is their purpose, and to fill that hole that no amount of achievement can fill.

Indeed, it’s the striving to achieve something under such enduring pressure that leaves a soul destitute, often having achieved exactly what was set out to be done.

And addiction is a slippery slope because steadily you need more of your ‘drug’ while there are just as steadily significant diminishing returns in terms of ‘medicative’ benefit.  You need more to get the same effect, and with that ‘more’, the threats to your health increase and the sustainability of your secret life becomes even more untenable.  Fragility becomes the identity.

If it’s drinking, you’re drinking far more now and far more often than you ever thought you would.  If it’s drugs, you simply cannot believe your own form.  It’s the same with internet porn and gambling—with each day it seems, you sink to new lows.  You’re driven to medicate, but as soon as you do, you die a new death of anxiety and shame.  And you repeat this a thousand times, always promising that tomorrow will be different, yet not for one moment trusting your ability to reform from the habit.

At a subconscious level you live in the conundrum that your initial intent was good.  You started out to help people, but now you feel like the biggest phony in the world, and your hypocrisy only drives the shame that keeps you in such a compulsive, impulsive cycle.

Nobody is beyond this cycle, but I know what it’s like to mistakenly think you’ve got the self-control to master the good and ward against the evil.  YOU DON’T.  Back in my AA days, there were many little sayings to help you recover—one of them was Y.E.T. i.e., You’re Eligible Too.

The moment a person says they’ll never fall for the temptations of life, is the moment that person is immediately susceptible to them—because they don’t realise that every soul demands peace.

Why do we medicate?  Because we need to reconcile certain things—the pain within each of us insists it will be heard.  Face the pain and deal with the feelings, or be pursued all your life by the pain (your truth and need of healing) that simply demands a hearing.

Living out our God-given purpose ever runs in tension with the burdens of life that build and threaten to derail us amid the common temptations we may all underestimate.

Very few people set out to become a hopeless alcoholic, a crime-fuelled drug addict, a porn addict (and think of the destinations THIS addiction can take you too!), or a gambling addict that sees you squander a hundred thousand dollars.

We’re all eligible for the temptations of life, and the wise person reconciles all demands of truth.

When you feel like you’re dying of grief

I distinctly recall times in my earliest significant grief the bodily sensation that I was dying, so bad was the felt pain I was experiencing.  I was sure that the stress of it would kill me.

Yet it obviously didn’t.

I remember the dread of a hope that was no more, and how that made my heart feel overwhelmed with tension—yes, my physical heart, not just the metaphorical heart.

I recall my mind hurting so much that I felt tortured between the ears.  Those agonising thoughts at the death knell of a life coming to an end.  Those thoughts that loop and circle around and seem to have no end.

Then there was the tension that coursed through my body, stiff muscles around the neck and shoulders, the sore back, and weary knees.  Grief’s depression made me feel aged.   And then there’s the foreboding sense that there’s no will nor energy to do anything.

The grief that’s experienced because of loss—loss that cannot and never will be resolved—takes a person to these ends that seem to promise or threaten the end.

Why do I write like this?  Perhaps for the reader to know a little of what someone’s going through in their grief, because if you’ve never been there, it can be so hard to empathise, because you may not understand.  If you say, “Well, of course I understand!” please consider that if you haven’t grieved, you may think you’ve got an idea, but perhaps you can’t fully understand because you’ve not had the life experience yet.

I pray you never do, but chances are you will.

Pain from full-blown grief seems to take years off your life and it certainly leaves you greyer.

But I think what it more fully shows is that our bodies and minds are much more resilient than we give them credit for.  What I suffered didn’t so much debilitate me forever, and it certainly didn’t kill me like I thought the stress of it would.

More the issue is how it shows us how we can survive these extended seasons that can last years.  Only as we look back from years after do we see that what threatened to shorten our lives actually left us with a legacy of respect for our Maker who gets us through the pain one day at a time.

In the final analysis, we’re much stronger than we realise.

The effect of excessive outrage on mental health

There are the principles of transference and countertransference in therapy that explain stuff we’re not prepared to face, whether these are issues for the one counselled or the counsellor.

We live in an age of outrage, as the fabric of society slowly tears at the end of an age.  You only need to open up social media and it’s usually brindled with light entertainment, humour, popular pieces that focus you emotionally, comingled with conspiracies, scepticism, statements of incredulity, with the more than occasional venting.

Life is hard.  No matter who you are, there are challenges for time, for comfort, for purpose and meaning, to find sustainable cause for gratitude.  Yet, when we count our blessings, they’re usually innumerable.  And still, there is something within us that scratches away at our identity, and those who can party with this fact face their truth, pretending none of reality away.

Just as transference occurs to a person being counselled when something ruffles them, and their counsellor can react to their own fears in countertransference, a response is found in each of us in the outrage our eyes meet.  It’s designed to augment an emotional response.

Those things that elicit some emotional response in us take us to a primal place, and those emotional responses speak to a truth deposited deep within each of us.

These emotional responses speak to our core values that have been refined through the harder experiences of life.

The harder that experience was, for either us or someone we cared about, the deeper the furrows of pain we may carry for the traumas we endured.

And so it’s hardly surprising that we’re disgusted, angry, sad or afraid.  Indeed, the gap that exists in us all personally means we tend to SEEK out the stuff that elicits these hot and high emotions.  It basically fills the empty core within, but it’s erosive.

The trouble is, and you may have already noticed this, a constant or excessive outrage tends to create mental health issues, or it reveals something about what’s going on for us—that deeper lack.

The anger we transfer over to some person or group ‘over there’ is one way to deal with the sorrow we carry deep within.  It actually feels easier to point our fury outward toward some target outside of ourselves.

But this is of course the projection of an external locus of control.  Projections such as these fix nothing, and they usually make our mental health more complicated.

We can only enter healing by facing what’s deep 
within us as much as anything to stop hiding from it.

This is a hard truth for every single one of us to wrestle with.  It’s certainly not a popular truth, but it is THE truth.

Our outrage tells us a lot about ourselves.  It’s a mirror to our personal discontent.  We want our world to be different, but the tragic irony is the only one we can change is ourselves.

This is not to say we shouldn’t agree with social justice issues and advocate for them.

We just advocate differently when we’re not driven by outrage, and not only are we more balanced, but we’re also more effective, and we can sustain the effort for longer.  Important issues need not consume us.

Understanding the grief of dread in situational depression

It’s just one word, but it says so much.  DREAD.  Anyone who’s been there knows the instant terror that overtakes the moment.  Worse, because NOBODY can feel it like you feel it, in that it floors and disables you, it can leave others mystified at best and condemning of you at worst.

A whole hour of dread is enough to make a person wonder what happened to make the day fall into such a hole.  A whole day of it leaves a person shattered and debilitated.  And unfortunately, that dread can linger for days and longer leaving a person in absolute despair, really to the point that a full-blown depression manifests in the inability to do anything—even the smallest things are like massive mountains to climb.

When I talk in terms of situational depression, I really am talking loss, but it’s not always the traditional losses that we grieve so much that cause us to be depressed for a time.

Sometimes it’s losses like a dream you’ve lived that’s gone, or one that’s passed you by, and therefore reality is constantly tinged with an unavoidable sorrow that expresses itself in complaint, bargaining or anger (or combination thereof).  In this place, you can’t reconcile that there’s nothing you can do.  Everywhere you look it’s hard.  Dread!

Until you’ve been there, that deep in dread that you can’t climb out, people don’t see how callous they are in telling people in it to get a grip.  I know, it can be so frustrating when it looks like a person’s making every excuse under the sun to make life difficult for you.

Just imagine how it is for the person who isn’t lying or pretending or chickening out.  Imagine for a moment that what they’re saying is real.

Sometimes losses loom larger than Everest and panic overwhelms you.  How on earth did the bottom fall out of hope, where fear rides high and steals away every capacity for peace?  I recall the season long ago where I suffered a series of seven scary panic attacks over a month or so—you only need to experience one of these to fear the next one for a very long time, even if it never comes.

It’s from depression that you’ll learn you’ll do anything to climb out of it—when, and if only, you’ve got the energy and confidence to do so.  You’ll try faith if it’ll give you a leave pass to joy, hope, and peace, and especially so if there’s someone who will sit and sojourn with you.  Many of the great spiritual awakenings come as a direct result of the hardest seasons of life, as some of the worst times in living memory become the catalyst for some of the best times.  Afterwards.  After the dread ebbs away.

The dread has a lot to answer for, and yet this dread teaches us empathy when nothing else could.  There’s something to be said for trauma in what such experiences of life teach us, as our powers of empathy grow fathoms deeper in understanding.

Yes, I know of men and women who’ve been there—the privilege of riding counselling couches with them once or, with some, for weeks and months on end—who came to be champions for help because of the help they themselves received.  It’s how we all start I think.

One opportunity we all have is to see that our experiences aren’t another’s and vice versa.  When life is well with us, there are always those in our midst who are doing it especially tough.  Having been there, you know it’s true.  It shifts your perspective to be open in what people could be dealing with.  And the world needs more of that space held, one for another.

See the purpose in a situational depression.  It’s to learn empathy and to care for others in kindness when we can.  But the dread is a horror to survive.

Empathy for the Overwhelmed

I’m glad (but I’m really not) that I frequently feel overwhelmed—glad only because I feel I can empathise.  So I can see why it’s important to experience or have experienced various kinds of suffering.

We all have times when we’re overwhelmed.

There are myriad ways we can feel overwhelmed, and often it’s the case that it’s a combination of factors that form a confluence of attack on our wellbeing.

For me personally, it’s usually more than just reaching my threshold of workload—but too much of that leads to the onset of burnout.  But add some personal conflict, stress related to a relationship, together with a lot on my plate, and I’m easily overwhelmed.

But I’m not everyone.

We all suffer when we operate in overwhelm for too long, when we deny again and again what we’re really feeling.  Feelings are an important thing to face.  Rather than continue to deny them, which we only introject into ourselves as stress that we eventually dissociate from, we’ve got the opportunity to apply courage.

That’s what it takes to relieve the overwhelm.

But it’s understandable when feelings are big to avoid them.  We’ve all evaded our feelings.  There’s no shame in running from what’s hard.  We’ve all had our Jonah moments when we couldn’t face what perhaps we needed to.

Much of the time when we are facing momentous and challenging times, we don’t sense the strength and comfort we’d gain from the counsel and support of empathetic others.

There are people we all know who love to help others through a silent, reassuring comfort of just being present, listening, and in terms of ‘advice’, offering only their own stories as good mentors do.

Battling in the overwhelm is no fun at best and desperate work for survival at worst.

You can feel as though there’s no hope, as if all the air’s been sucked out of your lungs, as if your head is going to explode, and your heart’s about to stop.  Insight is hard to manage at these times, so go gently, breathe, find room for space—whatever space you can get, whether it’s time or silence or solitude or sleep (if you can).

There’s no fun in the overwhelm, but if you picture action to reduce the pressure, the overwhelm can be the catalyst for change you need.

Allow me to leave you Psalm 30, and look especially at verses 5 and 11:

A psalm.  A song.  For the dedication of the temple.  Of David.

¹ I will exalt you, Lord,
    for you lifted me out of the depths
    and did not let my enemies gloat over me.
² Lord my God, I called to you for help,
    and you healed me.
³ You, Lord, brought me up from the realm of the dead;
    you spared me from going down to the pit.

⁴ Sing the praises of the Lord, you his faithful people;
    praise his holy name.
⁵ For his anger lasts only a moment,
    but his favour lasts a lifetime;
weeping may stay for the night,
    but rejoicing comes in the morning.

⁶ When I felt secure, I said,
    ‘I shall never be shaken.’
⁷ Lord, when you favoured me,
    you made my royal mountain^[c] stand firm;
but when you hid your face,
    I was dismayed.

⁸ To you, Lord, I called;
    to the Lord I cried for mercy:
⁹ ‘What is gained if I am silenced,
    if I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
    Will it proclaim your faithfulness?
¹⁰ Hear, Lord, and be merciful to me;
    Lord, be my help.’

¹¹ You turned my wailing into dancing;
    you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
¹² that my heart may sing your praises and not be silent.
    Lord my God, I will praise you for ever.

10 strategies to guard your heart and mind when you’re spiritually imperiled

Many conditions of our humanity are cloaked behind spiritual attack.

Much anger, fear, sorrow, especially as we try and ‘think’ our way through complex problems... problems that are all too often unfixable.

I’m learning in this area, but am counselled by the words of Oswald Chambers:

“In intellectual matters you can think things out, but in spiritual matters you will think yourself into cotton wool.”

In other words, the more you try and think yourself out of a spiritual dilemma, the more intertwined you become in the dilemma.

You know you’re under spiritual attack when you try three or six or nine things and nothing makes any difference, which leaves you frustrated and panicked and even more bereft of precious inner resource.

If we aren’t careful, we’ll become spiritually imperiled, which is a crisis of faith, be it temporary for an hour or day or two, or something worse.

These are things to consider when in the grips of turmoil:

1.             Pray.  Yes, that’s right, to sit there, to close your eyes, to look to the heavens, to seek help, to wait patiently... is good... prayer, in a word.

2.             Take a step back, smile, or even laugh if you can—it might take a few moments.  No matter how bad things seem, retreat far enough to regain perspective

3.             When in a funk, do less, think less, try less.  The funk is an indication of imbalance.  Balances are never restored by doing, thinking, or trying more

4.             Keep your mind open to the fact that there is an enemy, without being consumed by paranoia for that fact.  There are invisible powers, but we subvert them simply in doing what’s right—even if that means sitting there in shaking sobs to pay homage to sorrow instead of bowing to the temptation of fury that only hurts others or yourself

5.             What gets us into a pickle is also the key to getting us out.  If too much rumination got us into the mess, true mindfulness will always help—mindfulness being the focus of the mind on one therapeutic (“feels good”) thing at a time

6.             Give way to the feelings of grief you’re hiding from.  Spiritual attack hides itself very well in denial.  But there is peace in the facing, and though it may seem to hurt at the time, what you enter when you enter your pain is something that’s sacrosanct, precious, alluring

7.             Connecting with loved ones or with a key passion is one way to augment mindfulness

8.             Insight will help to arrest the slide.  Spiritual attack is always an attack on insight, and insight is the capacity to see truth.  We think that seeing truth is easy.  It’s not.  Sometimes it’s just impossible to see, hence the lack or void of insight

9.             Get held.  That’s right, sometimes we just need to go to someone we trust and be held, whether that’s a physical or merely spiritual reality is up to you and the person holding you

10.          Let me finish by another quote from Chambers: “Simplicity is the secret of seeing things clearly.”  The simpler you can make things, the simpler you can accept life as it is, the better.

Again and again in this life, we’re brought back to the classical idea to keep it simple.  Much is achieved when things are seen as they are, for what they are, especially when that leads to reflection, gratitude, and peace.

Photo by Melina Kiefer on Unsplash

Your kindness will never harm anyone, but your rudeness might

None of us really ever know what will happen next in life, and this is something we can definitely know about people.  People can be very unpredictable, and if we can see that in ourselves, to predict what another person might do is fraught with every other possibility.

Kindness threatens nobody, but aggression inflicts unknowable wounds.

To be fair, sometimes kindness comes at a cost to the one absorbing hostility as they meet attacks with grace.  Anyone who’s ever done this knows exactly what I mean.  And, of course, the key concern is the pattern of toxic harm that keeps coming, for which we often find we have no answer.

It’s these situations that have caused many to give up hope entirely.

What we all need to see is our world grow kinder, especially in the backdrop of some of the most challenging times everyone’s faced.

The only way we can be kind over the longer haul is by nurturing kindness within, by attaining our own peace, attending to our own healing and self-care.  Of course, some people have more of a capacity for kindness because their hearts have been converted to the rightness of such a motivation for living.

Some, quite frankly, just do not care for it.  They loath the qualities of humility and empathy, and they exist to exploit people and situations because they honestly feel entitled to treat people any way they want.

The person profiled immediately above will often have a contribution—whether directly or indirectly—in the forfeiting of life.  Again, against a backdrop of a myriad of other factors that challenge a person’s mental health, it will be bullying, harassment, and abuse that will tip people over the edge.

It’s not always about the direst consequence, for there are a plethora of ways people check out of life.

Kindness has no such part in the ending of hope, but it actually buoys hope, is a buffer for peace to coalesce, and is a springboard for joy.

Kindness never does even a modicum of harm.  Kindness builds capacity in others, and when we’ve succeeded in giving our away our kindnesses, we always directly or indirectly benefit.

Photo by 30daysreplay Germany on Unsplash