2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
I let you go to all four winds …
From the stars brought the north-east melody of parting
Fly, my friend, may your path be bright West, east, north and south
L. Chebotareva "Romance of the Four Winds"
Is life possible without parting and loss? We may dream that it was so, but there is not a single human destiny that would bypass losses. Our whole life is saturated with partings - big and small
As a child, we learn to part with our parents for the time of kindergarten or school, later we learn to go far and build our own independent life. In addition to these natural separations, separations are sudden, traumatic and painful - such as breakup, divorce, death.
Parting due to death or a breakdown in relations brings pain and draws a person to the question of the meaning of this event in fate. A person is faced with the question of how to live with loss, how to continue with his life in the present, and how to continue to look to the future with hope. In most cases, the psyche is able to recover from the loss, just as the skin is able to recover from a cut. But sometimes, the loss becomes a trauma that needs healing.
"Trauma is any experience that causes unbearable mental suffering or anxiety" D. Kalshed
There are several reasons why the psyche may face barriers to recovery from loss.
- Internal strength of a person at the time of loss, or the so-called stress resistance.
- Entourage
- Experience of previous losses
- The structure of the psyche
There is a Buddhist wisdom that says: if an egg is broken by force from the outside, life ends; if an egg is broken by force from the inside, life begins.
The environment or tasks of the outer life can invade the psyche, which is trying to cope with the trauma. The environment may require "not to lose heart, hold on, stop crying, continue to live"
The reactions of others are often premature. With the best of intentions, a mother who has lost a child is told: "You will give birth to nothing else", a wife who has lost or is painfully experiencing a divorce is told "you will find another." These messages are perceived as an invasion that breaks the fragile life inside the egg, the cocoon that a person needs in order to start a new life.
Tasks in dealing with bereavement:
- to live the feelings caused by the loss: anger - towards oneself, towards another for leaving, anger towards God, fate or other people; feelings of guilt, frustration, and others.
- work on understanding the place that a person occupied and comprehending who or what can take this place in the life and soul of a person.
- Find the meaning of loss. What did this mean in fate, what meaning did the loss bring, what new life can begin after experiencing the loss.
Sometimes, human resources are not enough to cope with a traumatic event. Then the help of a psychologist may be required.
Visible signs that the loss has become an injury:
- long-term depression (lack of desires, appetite, desire for the future, sleep disturbance, disruptive behavior, deterioration of other significant relationships)
- somatic reactions - exacerbation of chronic diseases, loss of sensitivity.
Asking the question of what it means “not to let go” or “not to survive” parting, loss, the following criteria can be distinguished:
- Distortion of the feeling of time, as if the past is painted in brighter colors than the present.
A constant return of thoughts to the past, an attempt to find that day, hour, minute, in which it would be possible to return and correct what happened.
- playing in the head the questions "why me?" " for what"
- Feelings of guilt, anger that arise in everyday life and lead to destructive consequences (outbursts of uncontrollable rage, aggression directed at oneself)
- Lack of contact with reality. Which means the inability to love or appreciate the existing relationship again, as well as the perception of current events through the prism of the past.
For example, a mother who lost her daughter many years ago may say that she controls her son too much, does not allow him to play sports, be active and take risks. The fear of loss drives her so much that it prevents the mother from seeing her son - active and playful. Thus, overprotective can signal an unlived loss.
Freud in his article "Sadness and Melancholy" speaks of melancholy as burdened with grief, that is, a painful reaction to loss. He says: “In sorrow, the world has become impoverished and empty, in melancholy - the“I”itself. Thus, the task of the work of grief is to restore your Self, since no one can make up for the loss in the external world. It is normal to be sad and sad at the loss of a loved one. It's okay to get angry and disagree with a loss.
Difficulties arise when the personality itself, which has lost a part of itself, is felt as empty and flat. The feeling of loss of oneself leads to an attempt to return the “I” through a return to the past, when trauma divides the world into “before and after” the event. Trauma splits "I", bifurcates it into the psyche and the body. Some of the emotions remain in the past, and with a thread ties a person to long-standing events.
You can restore the integrity of your "I" with the help of a psychotherapist, working in a group. Why is the group important?
1. Working with a sense of loneliness. You won't understand this until you experience it yourself (s)
If the environment does not have the words or the patience to help cope with the loss, it becomes alien and cold. The non-supportive environment resists, attacks the feelings. The group also provides an opportunity to share your feelings with others, to be understood and heard. The group gives the feeling that the person has a right to their feelings, whatever they may be.
2. Different experiences of support and feedback.
Each person is unique, everyone has their own way of thinking, speaking, supporting, working in a group, we can expand our range of reactions and look for new ways to respond to life events. The more ways we can respond, the more protected we are from trauma.
3. The group is a protected space in which you can be yourself and tell your story in a confidential atmosphere.
How can you help yourself cope with traumatic events?
- Accept the feelings that arise after the loss. From people visiting my groups, I still hear attempts to apologize for their experiences and tears "I cry too much, I need to calm down and move on, but I can't." It's okay to grieve and mourn the past. Grieving is a natural process that people go through after a loss.
- Be aware of bodily needs and satisfy them. First of all, we must remember that our feelings live in the body, there is a physiological reaction to stress and real, physiological reasons for feeling depressed - such as a change in hormonal levels during stress, which is expressed in a decrease in appetite, sleep disturbance. Some people report that they “feel nothing”. It is important to continue looking for an answer to the question of what would be nice, good for the body. Any means of recovery will be helpful - a walk, a warm bathroom, your favorite food.
- Recognize the irreversibility of the past. We cannot go back in time and change it. We can only punish ourselves for what we did, or accept the fact that we did the best we could. At every moment of life, we are acting at the limit of our capabilities. If we didn’t do something, then we didn’t have enough knowledge or capabilities.
- Allow yourself to enjoy life again. Blocks pleasure, as a rule, guilt and unconscious anger. This can be expressed in the following words: “I was mistaken, which means I do not deserve to be happy” “I survived, but he did not, which means I must grieve for the rest of my life” “He offended me by leaving me alone, let him know how badly he did . Experiencing feelings of guilt or anger means sharing them with a significant person or expressing them in creativity.
- Realize the meaning of loss for the soul. It means to comprehend the changes that have occurred within and recognize them as part of growing up and growing. Get to know a new self, recognizing strengths and weaknesses.
- To keep love in the heart, while letting go of the person. Keeping love in your heart means restoring your integrity and allowing yourself to direct love to other people, to yourself and to new life tasks.
In addition, to make sense, it means to accept the past as it was in fact, and not as we would like to see it.
Letting go does not mean forgetting or becoming indifferent. Letting go means leaving it in the past, leaving it in your memory and making the event a part of your history, and not an intrusive present.
“The past is a story that we tell ourselves.” This is a quote from the movie “She.” After experiencing a loss, it is important to tell this story and leave it, starting to write a new story of our present.
Literature:
Z. Freud "Sadness and Melancholy"
D. Kalshed "The Inner World of Trauma"
P. Levin “The awakening of the tiger. Healing trauma"
E. Kubler-Ross "On Death and Dying"
F. E. Vasilyuk "To survive the grief"
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