Emotional Anesthesia:
Why We Get Worse Before We Get Better
Following a Death
‘This is so confusing’ you say, thinking about the loss of your beloved. ‘Instead of getting better as time passes, I’m getting worse. This is crazy!’
We’re confused by this unexpected change because logic dictates that emotional healing from a death should be linear, just like physical healing from a surgery is: initially painful but improving with each passing day until, finally, recovery. Instead the reverse is happening. We ask ourselves why? “Why am I losing ground, not gaining, in my recovery from this loss?”
Unlike surgery where an anesthesia is felt at its start and then wears off soon afterwards, emotional anesthesia begins after we experience a loss and continues to numb us for months afterwards, not hours. As time passes, it finally begins to wear off. But all we realize is we’re now functioning more poorly than we were months earlier, struggling far worse than before in managing our pain [For further understanding, see ‘Adult Counseling’ Loss from Death on website].
Many clients have wished that this emotional anesthesia last indefinitely. But alas it doesn’t and so we begin to feel the full range of emotions that we were protected from for months. For some, prescription drugs become a solution. One client told me the meds created a ‘good feeling’ – euphoric was how it was described to me – and was most disappointed when informed that ‘feeling good’ was not a natural or helpful response to losing the ‘glue in one’s life.’ And yet choosing sadness and longing over euphoria seems crazy to some, and I get that.
Nevertheless, choosing to feel all of the emotions our loss creates is the healthiest chose. Why? Because there is “a time to weep & a time to laugh, a time to mourn & a time to dance” [Ecc.3:1-4]. Grieving is a universal season that touches all of our lives. When we try to detour and avoid this fact, we lose out on the opportunity for a healthy recovery. The key word here is healthy. We can recover. Bur simply letting time pass does nothing to direct our recovery towards healthiness. We heal but we heal most imperfectly [See Oct., 2017 Blog: Prince Harry, son of deceased mom, Princess Diana].
Most of us find it really hard to voice our hurt, to let out our pain. It feels like a loss of control that few chose, much less welcome. But our emotions are not bio-degradable: they don’t just disappear with enough passage of time. Rather, they stay with us for as long as we choose to avoid and bury them. Just listen to some of our beloved veterans of WWII who never spoke of the horrors of war, and now when re-visit these memories, speak of them with an emotion that is as if they had happened yesterday. I’ve had clients do the very same thing.
Just as we can only physically heal when our body is rid of any infection, so too can we only heal emotionally by cleansing ourselves of the pain – the infection in this analogy – through re-visiting each of the pain-filled imprints of our loss and talking A LOT about IT. Then, letting the tears roll down our faces, unrestricted and unrestrained.
And you don’t have to cry in front of other people! So take a deep breath and surrender instead of silently suffering inwardly.