Life is but a meandering through varying stages of loss, for we’re constantly losing, and if life is to teach us anything—about resilience I mean—it’s that we’re meant to learn how to face it, accept it, be at peace with the facts of our being that we cannot understand or change.
Whenever we face anxiety, there are components in our lives that we’d avoid. Whether it’s a conscious known anxiety or something we just feel unknowingly anxious about, anxiety disarms confidence because we’ve either experienced a loss or we fear loss is about to occur.
Not sure what’s worse, the reality or the unshakable reality of fear. Reality is tangible and like a living nightmare, but equally, foreboding, brooding anxiety is just as hellish.
The belief of learned helplessness in depression is the depth of grief, of loss at its unparalleled darkest. Yet, just as much, depression is instructive if we can eventually clamour our way out of those depths to new hope, and a grief-initiated depression heralds that kind of hope, ultimately. When the pain of staying in the depression exceeds the pain needed to risk for new life, a season of rising out into the light emerges.
Patience affords us eventual success, and we add it to the wealth of our life experience.
Anger has its role in human life, yet safe expression is key. Anger is a normal human emotion, predictive of the sadness and fear at fathoms deeper. Add the dimension of loss and anger is explained by the injustice of grief.
There are times in grief when we have no energy, but frustratingly there’s always energy to run in fight or flight, by anger or denial. Irritability is a worthy barometer of loss, and so is turning away from pain to the thrills of a million ways of lonely pleasure that lead to places worse than nowhere.
Panic is grief at its zenith of dread. Seven panic attacks I had in one short season nearly eighteen years ago, and the experience of the shocking power in panic’s descent never leaves you. Such dread is surely from the bowels of grief. To know it, empathy is added to you.
Much of mental ill health that we face existentially is grief. It’s the outworking of developmental trauma, resounding loss, calamitous disappointment, bewildering betrayal, shattered dreams, and every part of life that is unjust.
Yet, grief, when we see it for what it is, extends to us the invitation of facing to flourish. Facing is resilience, and what we stand to learn is we can face our sorrow, our fear, the realities of life we find ourselves suddenly thrust into.
When we face the facets of our grief, we’re compensated through the acquisition of life experience that invigorates purpose. None of the time wasted in grieving is a waste of time. Every second ends up being relevant eventually.
Photo by Patrick Jansen on Unsplash
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