When regression strikes hard, it’s a sign of traumatic grief

Many individuals and families are under tremendous stress right now, as we all wrestle with not only the grief of this time, but also with the momentousness of change that continues to sweep through all our lives every single day.

We are all doing our best to adapt to this ever-and-rapidly-changing environment.

Every single day, and often many times per day, there is the constancy of News stories, government announcements, and new developments, and all of this within a context of the unknown.  Worse than ever, our culture that elevates and virilises outrage is creating daily sensations which simply magnify the noise.

Let’s look to the actual impact of the grief we are experiencing.

This is a predictable pattern: experiencing grief is traumatic, and trauma causes us to regress.  It’s not just with children that this occurs, but we very well need to understand children are integrally affected.

But if we take the case of an adult who is plunged into grief because of the losses they bear, we can see how an adult will feel traumatised, and we can understand that this trauma will cause the adult to redress mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.  At least for the short term; until they adjust.

How much more important is it then to empathise with children, who in their raw child state, will bear the features of this pattern of trauma and regression so much more poignantly?

The backward steps we are taking right now that we may be ashamed of, or feel guilty about, are normal, and these backward steps are actually the precursor to the process of adjustment we’re all making.

Indeed, backward steps of regression and adjustment are evidence of beautifully sensitive souls impacted at present by a world infected with unprecedented uncertainty and constant change.

But the tricky thing for most of us is we see ourselves taking backward steps of regression and we’re harsh with ourselves.  This is very much a human default.

We criticise and condemn ourselves, which in some ways is a self-protection strategy, for we may fear others stepping in to criticise and condemn us, and because that’s more painful than our own self-judgement, we pile onto ourselves with blame-talk.

Backward steps quickly take the shape of self-loathing.  What we actually need to do is talk to ourselves and reassure ourselves that what we are facing is grief, and that we WILL feel traumatised, and that we WILL respond by regressing.

The thing we need to do most of all is be gentle with ourselves at these times, and particularly help children understand when they face this, that what they are experiencing is normal.

We and they may want to escape it or fix it, but because we can only accept it, these situations beyond our control WILL traumatise us, and we will then face the prospect of adjusting.

The last thing we need is to judge ourselves for regressing.

In the world that worships performance and success, now is the time more than ever that we need to back off the pressure.  Now is the time to be still.

Now is the time to look at what is most unsavoury and just simply say, this is unpleasant, but this too shall pass.  That is not easy, but it is doable.

Photo by Rosie Kerr on Unsplash