By Elayne Savage, PhD
© Can Stock Photo / cuteimage
When I blogged about Coping with Uncertainty, Isolation and Empty Space last month, some of you asked to know more about loss.
Over the last month I’ve had dozens of new conversations with therapy and coaching clients about how early losses and fears are affecting how they are coping with the present day anxiety of the coronavirus pandemic.
I’m especially aware how each new loss in the present can bring up losses from the past. Even though they seem long forgotten, they can pack a wallop, bringing back strong emotions and body sensations, in a PTSD-kind-of-way.
Loss of security
Loss of health and vitality
Loss of professional identity
Loss of a job or position
Loss of respect
Loss of recognition or promotions
Loss of loved ones, pets, friends, co-workers
Loss of support
Loss of contact and connection
Loss of self-esteem and losing face
Loss of expectations and illusions and dreams
And each of my disappointments is a loss as well.
It helps me in times of loss to remind myself that losses sometimes force me to see things through a different perspective. And this terrible crisis has produced some opportunities to learn something new about life –– when I choose to.
“….we are shedding bits and pieces of ourselves as we shape and reshape our lives, our futures, and ourselves. Like a snake which must shed its skin in order to grow, or a bird that must first molt to make room for its new stronger feathers in order to fly, we must let go of parts of ourselves, our identity, our sense of security, and those we love, in order to grow and flourish.”
–– From loveandlightfromhealingcreek.blogspot.com/2006/06/necessary-losses.html describing Judith Viorst's Necessary Losses
All too often experiencing losses seems surreal –– especially sudden losses when we don't have time to adjust. And the onset of suffering and death from the coronavirus and covid-19 has surely seemed sudden.
Grief is a response to any kind of loss and I’ve learned from many years of struggling with losses, how important it is to grieve each one of them.
In Order to Grieve, We Must Make the Loss Real
I’ve learned about the importance of making the loss real in order to be able to fully grieve and move forward.
In order to make the plane crash real, I knew I had to spend some time on a DC-3.
There are many ways to make losses real:
- Writing out the story of the loss and disappointment and reading this out loud to yourself or to someone else makes the loss real.
- Creating a ritual.
Burning memorial candles. Lighting long-burning votive candles. I really like the Jewish Memorial candles that come in small glasses and burn for 24 hours.
- A virtual play-doh sculpting party. (Homemade recipe below!)
Form the play-doh into how you feel when the loss or disappointment comes. Then sculpt it into a somewhat different form—more positive appearing—reframing the meaning. For example, choosing to see something using a creative ‘opening up’ outlook rather than a ‘closing up or roadblock’ and making a shape to display that new perspectuve,
https://www.iheartnaptime.net/play-dough-recipe/
- Making collages from magazine ads and photos that symbolize the loss or disappointment, then making a second collage and choosing to capture a different point of view.
Let’s Put Our Losses in Perspective
- Give a voice to your feelings.
- Give yourself permission to be sad or disappointed or angry.
- Remind yourself that this present loss is being influenced and affected by all of your past losses no matter how small they may seem.
- Try to acknowledge and speak to and calm the fears of that part of you that is the most upset—that scared child part of you that asks, “What’s going to happen to me?”
- Can you visualize a container in which to keep your fears of loss and abandonment? What does it look like?
- Find some creative ways to make your losses real and to grieve them.
- Let the part of you that knows how to deal with these setbacks lead the way for the part of you that is confused and floundering.
- I encourage clients to ‘walk alongside themselves, noticing and naming’ their thoughts and their feelings. This practice allows them to recognize that they do have choices in their responses.
When we are able to make a choice about how we perceive these disappointments and s we may not feel so trapped. Having options means allowing the flexibility to change the way we think about something. So why not make a choice to make a change in how we think about loss and disappointment? Why not sculpt it into a somewhat different form — reframing the meaning.
By "naming" and "noticing" you can create some objectivity and open up your awareness to reshaping and rethinking the situation. and make choices about how you want to react to and deal with the situation. It’s easier to change something that we clearly see and understand.
Renewed Trauma and PTSD
There’s another aspect of loss that I want to give some attention to.
For many of us experiencing loss can create fears of abandonment. It brings up emotional and body memories of past traumatic experiences.
“Trauma is the response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event that overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope, causes feelings of helplessness, diminishes their sense of self and their ability to feel the full range of emotions and experiences.”
https://integratedlistening.com/what-is-trauma/
Trauma can be whatever event is traumatic to an individual in the moment. For some of us it may involve being teased or shamed or belittled by a mean-spirited parent or teacher or older sibling or cousin. Or being yelled at by an enraged out-of-control parent. For others it may involve being pushed or hit. And for some of us it might be being accosted by sexual innuendos or sexual assault. Each of us has different ways of processing inappropriate behaviors and each of us has our own brand of resilience which affects how we react to future trauma.
In previous blogs I’ve focused on how during a traumatic event the stress hormones come into play. Adrenaline, norepinephrine and cortisol are activated by the amygdala and result in fight, flight or freeze reactions.
These central (survival) details are imprinted, encoded and put into life-long storage in the neural pathway. Each new fear-inducing traumatic situation can bring on a kind of PTSD –– with renewed spurts of the stress hormones during a new experience, often repeating over the course of our lives Many times we don’t even exactly know what sets it off, but there it is.
According to neuroscience the human brain processes, files and stores memories that are linked to strong emotions.
The amygdala is the processing center for emotional responses. During a traumatic event it screens the information your five senses take in.
Think of it this way: The amygdala time-and-date stamps certain sounds, sights, smells, tastes, and touch and stores it for safe-keeping and the hippocampus is the brain’s memory filing system.
When certain powerful memories are triggered by a specific cue there may be an emotional or body reaction. Often we don’t realize what prompts us to get so upset and upon reflection it turns out to be some kind of stored memory.
We tend to remember the essential, central, survival details, and the brain’s filing system – the hippocampus, filters out the peripheral details.
In my work as a Child Protective Services Social Worker, trainer of therapists, and practicing psychotherapist I focus on childhood and adult trauma. I have often encountered the complex workings of the brain in processing traumatic events. And I know this from personal experiences as well.
It can be immensely upsetting when seemingly out of nowhere there is an unexpected return of the kind of anxiety, which had been experienced during the original event.
When emotional and body reactions seem to pop up from seemingly unrelated occurrences, it can be It can be disconcerting, confusing, frightening and overwhelming. We find ourselves back in the fight, flight or freeze mode and those stress hormones kick in again, causing similar anxiety to the original traumatic experience. The fear and dread and uncertainty of this pandemic are triggering some very old traumatic experiences in many of us. And anxiety runs high.
A woman I know describes how "The tornado hits and I'm Dorothy."
Fortunately there are ways to deal with these memory intrusions:
I’m a big believer in identifying and putting words to the messages we take in from the original trauma – having to do how we view our world, the safety of our world and trust of the people in it.
And I’m a fan of using ways to reprogram the neural pathways: Neuroplasticity, EMDR, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), and Brain Spotting are not therapy, but they provide additional tools.
More about Grief and Loss:
https://www.tipsfromthequeenofrejection.com/grief/
https://www.tipsfromthequeenofrejection.com/loss/
http://www.QueenofRejection.com/article_photos.htm
Hoping this provides some understanding of all the levels of distress this pandemic has been causing for so many of us .
If you have questions or more to add, contact me at [email protected] or on my blog site under ‘comments’
www.TipsFromTheQueenofRejection.com
© Elayne Savage, PhD
Until next month,
Stay safe and as comfortable as you possibly can . . .
Elayne
Elayne Savage is the author of ground-breaking relationship books published in 9 languages.
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