‘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 is from a surgery: initially painful but improving with each passing day until, finally, recovery. Instead the reverse is happening. We ask ourselves why we are losing ground, not gaining, in our 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, not hours. As time passes, we realize we’re now functioning more poorly than we were months earlier, struggling far worse than before in managing our mourning.
Many clients have wished that this emotional anesthesia would last indefinitely. But alas it doesn’t and so we do begin to feel the full range of emotions that we’ve been protected from these past months. Ugh! At this critical juncture, some turn to food, drugs, alcohol or busy excesses, or others use prescription drugs as their solution to maintain their numbness.
One client told me that 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 or distraction seems crazy to some, and I get that! Nonetheless, choosing to mourn is the right and necessary choice. Why?
Because life is a series of seasons that marks the passage of life’s many events. The Bible’s Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 4 begins with announcing that: “There is an appointed time for…every event under heaven.” Specifically. in Verse 4 states that: (there is) “A time to weep & a time to laugh, a time to mourn & a time to dance.” In other words, grieving is a universal season that is among the many seasons during a lifetime
‘Seasons’ are also known as ‘Rites of Passage’ – like transitioning from childhood to adolescence and then adulthood, marrying, having a family, becoming grandparents and, yes, becoming bereaved. But when we try to detour and avoid this Season of Grief, we lose out on the opportunity for a healthy recovery. The client noted above refused to choose feeling all of the emotions of loss. Instead she wanted only the “…laugh & dance” portion of Life’s Seasons. Not the healthiest chose. Why?
Because the key word here is healthy. Simply ‘letting time pass’ does nothing to direct our recovery towards healthiness. Sure we heal but we heal most imperfectly, meaning that many 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. All the Rites of Passage cannot heal us properly! Rather, they stay with us for as long as we choose to avoid and bury them. [See May, 2019 Blog, Delayed Grief Reactions of Prince Harry, Son of Princess Diana].
“Proof for this ‘time heals’ myth” you ask? Just listen to some of our beloved Veterans of WWII who never spoke of the horrors of war back then but now, when these memories are re-visited, speak of them with a raw emotion that is as if they happened only 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 all the pain-filled imprints of our loss and talking A LOT about IT. Then, letting the tears roll down our faces, unrestricted and unrestrained.
No, you don’t have to cry in front of other people, but you do have to talk and be guided through this necessary Season of Grief. So take a deep breath and surrender instead of silently suffering inwardly while wearing your “happy-face” mask for others!