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Default Oct 14, 2019 at 12:45 AM
  #1
At various points in my life, I'm grieving over the following losses:
  • Giving my daughter up for adoption
  • Job/career loss
  • Reputation loss
  • Loss of conservation of resources
  • Loss of social capital
  • Relational loss
  • Bereavement over those who have passed away (father from heart attack, best friend during teen years from being a victim of statutory rape and murder)
  • Health loss (due to physical disabilities)
  • Youth loss (during aging)
  • Aesthetic loss (loss of beauty, attractiveness)
  • Loss of superb working memory
  • Loss of memory (due largely to dissociation, amnesia, many blows to the skull throughout my traumatic years)
  • Loss of identity (due to the many cascading effects of losses throughout my lifetime, which impacted my identity)
  • Loss of self (whenever I'm forced to walk on eggshells or whenever I'm experiencing moral injury trauma or whenever I'm coerced or whenever I'm being victimized)
  • Loss of mental health
  • Loss of respect
  • Loss of spirituality
  • Loss of normative body functions
  • Loss of dreams (not deferred)
  • Loss of sexuality (I'm asexual due to physiological and psychological traumas)
  • Financial loss
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Default Oct 14, 2019 at 01:07 AM
  #2
I took a thanatology course in high school, many moons ago (I'm 45 y/o now.) We touched on topics of bereavement, suicide, and the 5 stages of grief. What we didn't discuss, however, were the unconventional grief and loss issues, many of which I've outlined in my original post, but which were beyond the scope of the course I had taken in high school.

Grief work in therapeutic settings, for some, is challenging. Whenever interpersonal victimization is on our list of lifetime traumatic experiences, emotional expression of any kind becomes scary - something to avoid, something to stuff down, something to neglect within ourselves, something that our abusers didn't want to see, something that our abusers punished us for, something that came with consequences of more loss and pain. Not surprisingly, many people who have unconventional grief issues, such as the ones listed above, avoid certain emotions that naturally come with grief, such as crying or expressing verbal anger. We may avoid talking about it, too.

After years of avoiding grief work, I decided to ask for it. Unbeknownst to me, I've not found one therapist who has agreed to work with me on these issues. I've been through decades of coping skills for my various other symptoms, but I've not yet found a therapist who trusts me enough when I say that I've been through the first stages of trauma work, but not that middle stages, or when I say that I was rushed past the grief work and told to jump into societal integration with newfound social skills. The lack of processing grief backfired, and only made my conditions regress.

In essence, I've been grieving alone for about 10 years now. My losses are not uncommon, but they are sometimes minimized by therapists, who would rather see the positives. I've tried being positive, and do think positive every day - hence, my lack of giving in to suicidal ideation, and my constant desire to improve my life and my future. If the therapists had only seen my past progresses, treatments, and innate strengths, they would know that I'm ready to process grief, however painful that is for me to experience (or my parts, as I have DID on top of PTSD), and however painful that is for a therapist to witness. Because it is often taboo and traumatizing (vicarious trauma/secondary trauma) for layperson to hear their loved ones grieve, the therapeutic relationship coupled with online groups help me to address my grief issues without avoidance.

After having read the following article 11 Kinds of Therapy to Help You Grieve a Loss
...I realized that I was doing most of the things on that list of 11 informal therapies that exist outside of clinical settings. However, my only beef with those reintigrations to normative living or moving on is that the emotional expressions remain bottled up inside, the invalidation from past victimization ensue, and the loneliness in suffering remains. Although such suggestions might work for conventional grief issues, such as losing a job (but not a career) or grieving a loved one who had died for whatever reason, it may not always work for grieving over unconventional losses.

I plan on going through the list on PC to find an article that discusses these losses and different grieving treatments available, but if you know of any other tips or suggestions, I'm all ears.

Here's a general list of what PC offers (which I have yet to read, so maybe what I'm looking for might already exist somewhere on PC): Coping with Grief | Psych Central
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Default Oct 15, 2019 at 10:33 PM
  #3
Hi lillib. I am sorry for all the losses. You have listed all the losses in your personal experience, but you are not alone. At the very least we all lost our childhood and teen years and early adult and our innocence. Oh what a loss that is.

It is so sad that we do not all face our losses, but societal norms do not point in that direction. Still as individuals we can do the best we can.

In my case I have had to learn to refocus and accept what I cannot change. No amount of expressing seems to empty the deep well of grief. But I can spend less time around the well. For me that is focusing on exercise, eating healthy, volunteering and helping others so I am not obsessed with my own suffering but trying to alleviate other's suffering. Whatever you do, making it for the bettering of others makes it stronger.
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Default Oct 16, 2019 at 04:18 AM
  #4
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Originally Posted by CANDC View Post
Hi lillib. I am sorry for all the losses. You have listed all the losses in your personal experience, but you are not alone. At the very least we all lost our childhood and teen years and early adult and our innocence. Oh what a loss that is.

It is so sad that we do not all face our losses, but societal norms do not point in that direction. Still as individuals we can do the best we can.

In my case I have had to learn to refocus and accept what I cannot change. No amount of expressing seems to empty the deep well of grief. But I can spend less time around the well. For me that is focusing on exercise, eating healthy, volunteering and helping others so I am not obsessed with my own suffering but trying to alleviate other's suffering. Whatever you do, making it for the bettering of others makes it stronger.
@CANDC
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Thank you!

I think I've focused on so many other people in my life, or have avoided the grieving process (and the emotions that go alongside), that I'm now at the point where I want to help myself integrate all of those feelings so that I'm not inadvertently displacing feelings, or avoiding, or insensitive, or subduing. I do what I can to enjoy life now, as well as to volunteer (those things make me happy), but there are times when I'm helping others or, in the past, when I was in a counseling course in college, that I ask myself, "What about me? I never got to process these things, but I'm trying to help others process them, and it hurts because I'm not receiving any of that for myself."

I've taken time off to focus on me because, deep inside, I'm hurting. I'm sad, I'm angry at all the injustice, I'm bargaining (if I learn this or do that, then maybe I'll fill the grief with something else), I'm accepting (that this is how life just is, which seems dismal and depressing), and I'm denying (whenever I avoid or dissociate or make excuses for my abusers). Although I've accepted the grief, it doesn't mean that the emotions that are welled up inside but too afraid to come out are completely healed. They're not.

It isn't the same speaking about them online because I'm still stuffing my actual tears. It hurts to feel alone. It hurts when others threaten self-harm or suicide, and then I'm afraid of losing them. It hurts when I'm in fear of my life or when my physiological conditions mean one less thing taken away from me. It hurts that I've not had the self-actualization I've always wanted, or that I wasn't able to maximize my potentials, no matter how hard I tried, because of structural violence and other abusive powers.

I know myself well enough to understand my individual responsibility (my internal locus of responsibility) as well as a (hopefully healthy) balance of loci of control (what's external and what's internal) and the external locus of responsibility. So it's not those issues which concern me because I do what I can on my part, I also believe in advocacy, and I also believe in freedom of speech to name that which are known systemic issues.

Despite my best efforts, I'm still in hiding with my grief. I want a sense of closure, relief. I'm not "depressed," or at least I wasn't diagnosed with depression this time around, but I am feeling this impending sense of loss, especially as I age and am coming down with all sorts of mobility problems, in addition to the ongoing PTSD and DID issues that I have.

Maybe this is complicated grief (I hate the words complex and complicated, by the way, LOL), or maybe this is unconventional grief (a term I heard somewhere, which sounds kinder). There is a lack of therapists who treat these areas, and I've already had CBT for many things, which negates the issues of grief work. Most of my grief issues are due to trauma, but my trauma therapists in the past have always ran quickly past this stage of healing. Some of my therapists even admitted that it would be too painful to hear themselves (their own counter-transference issues or their own unresolved issues or their fear of secondary/vicarious trauma), so it wouldn't be beneficial for either of us. Really, what they were saying was that they couldn't handle the therapy I needed. Still, I wished that there was an in-person group for this kind of thing, if it's too hard for therapists to treat.

Is it possible for me to ask a therapist to please jump right into that stage with me for traumatic grief, instead of doing the whole intake process all over again and doing coping skills that I've already known and mastered in my own life? I fear emotional expression, but it's just under the surface. It is something I want to be able to feel again, so that my happy feelings are also more authentic. I hate this bottled up feeling I have. I hate carrying around all this grief.

Any suggestions?
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Default Oct 16, 2019 at 11:53 AM
  #5
Hi lillib. I hear you that giving to others all the time can leave us drained. Finding a balance is difficult but doable.

I thought of this article when you talked about being manipulated. It can also apply to phone conversations or even in person conversations.

My personal experience with grief has been that no matter how I try to deny or imagine how things might have been different, is that nothing changes with grief. They are gone and nothing I say will bring them back. So what is the next step? For me it was important to pick my moments for grieving. If grieving is not appropriate now then I try to focus on the matter at hand, knowing that grief will return.

Maybe you need a specialist in trauma (PTSD) that can help you with professional methods of dealing with trauma.

For me grief was extended by my expectation that something I could do could turn the grief into joy. At the most I found that only acceptance was a draw where neither the grief or the joy won out but I finally said "Okay what now?"

This video speaks to acceptance to me YouTube

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Default Oct 22, 2019 at 05:14 PM
  #6
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Originally Posted by CANDC View Post
Hi lillib. I hear you that giving to others all the time can leave us drained. Finding a balance is difficult but doable.

I thought of this article when you talked about being manipulated. It can also apply to phone conversations or even in person conversations.

My personal experience with grief has been that no matter how I try to deny or imagine how things might have been different, is that nothing changes with grief. They are gone and nothing I say will bring them back. So what is the next step? For me it was important to pick my moments for grieving. If grieving is not appropriate now then I try to focus on the matter at hand, knowing that grief will return.

Maybe you need a specialist in trauma (PTSD) that can help you with professional methods of dealing with trauma.

For me grief was extended by my expectation that something I could do could turn the grief into joy. At the most I found that only acceptance was a draw where neither the grief or the joy won out but I finally said "Okay what now?"

This video speaks to acceptance to me YouTube

(((hugs)))
@CANDC
@CANDC

Thank you! I read the article regarding the text messages. I'm going to watch the video you suggested soon.

I do need a good trauma therapist, but it's really hard to find one who can work on traumatic grief issues and fit well with me and acknowledge my strengths without going too overboard with the positive psychology (I need balance, not something that will hide my emotions further). Also, most T's that I've had at the VA are short-term or rotate; they're not in their positions long-term; so I have to get used to switching T's at a drop of a hat, it seems (maybe with two-weeks' notice, maybe with less). It's hard to work on trauma issues when having to start all over again with every new therapists and spend the first month attempting to get back to where you last left off with the last therapist. It's frustrating, but it is free, so I cannot complain too much.
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Default Oct 22, 2019 at 09:36 PM
  #7
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Originally Posted by lillib View Post
@CANDC

Thank you! I read the article regarding the text messages. I'm going to watch the video you suggested soon.

I do need a good trauma therapist, but it's really hard to find one who can work on traumatic grief issues and fit well with me and acknowledge my strengths without going too overboard with the positive psychology (I need balance, not something that will hide my emotions further). Also, most T's that I've had at the VA are short-term or rotate; they're not in their positions long-term; so I have to get used to switching T's at a drop of a hat, it seems (maybe with two-weeks' notice, maybe with less). It's hard to work on trauma issues when having to start all over again with every new therapists and spend the first month attempting to get back to where you last left off with the last therapist. It's frustrating, but it is free, so I cannot complain too much.
Hi lillib. Glad you are looking for a good therapist. But any therapist is better than no therapist. The VA might have a PTSD program that does not require combat causes. That may be a possible way to deal more directly with trauma. Not sure how they categorize trauma.

For me finding things to be grateful for made me look for something right in my life. That helped me wear down the pattern of always focusing on what was wrong with life.

Hope you get the support you need.

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