Contact me on Social Media
FINDING COMFORT: As You Heal from Abuse, Trauma or Loss.
In this book I address grief in its widest sense. Loss of expectations is central to the experience of grief – abuse, trauma and loss through separation, divorce or death only represent the tip of the grief iceberg. Any loss of physical and mental health, our attributes and anything we are attached to, be it human, animal, thing, spiritual or idea can lead to grief that may destabilize our functioning and undermine our well being. Grief is a normal human experience (normal in the sense that if someone hits you on the head, you would expect to feel pain and be upset with him/her). The pain of your loss comes in waves and lulls and does get better, in your own time – hung in there.
I share with you some of my personal and professional experiences of grief and grief work and the insights I have gained as a clinical psychiatrist, in the hope that you will find additional comfort in your hour of need. I describe some tools like: “The Five Step Release Exercise” to help you ‘let out’ painful emotions. I discuss the distracting and stunting effects of being preoccupied with, say: “The nasty and disagreeable characteristics and behaviours (the ‘nasties)” from sources around you, and how you can deny these nasties ‘voice’ during your healing journey.
Taking ownership of your loss or trauma, and the responsibility of generating solutions for your pain is one way you can help move the grieving towards healing, especially if there are distracting forces around you. The following illustration will clarify the ‘ownership of my problem and taking responsibility for the solution to my problem’ further, as there are times that snakes simply cannot be avoided.
Scenario
Question: What would you do next? I hope you did not say that you would go to the snake and ask it: “Why did you bite me you cold blooded brute? Why do you have fangs? You put this venom into me - come and remove it from my leg before it kills me.” This approach would temporarily displace the problem to the snake but is futile as an attempt to solve the problem that the venom is causing inside your body. While you argue with the snake the venom is depleting your life force.
This venom is now yours and your problem to deal resolve. This venom no longer belongs to the snake. It is yours alone. The sooner you acknowledge this and own it, the sooner you will come up with ways of retarding its journey to your vital organs. You need to remove it, release it, or in some way fortify your body to prevent serious damage. Whether you scream for help, use relaxation, bind your limb with a tourniquet, cut the wound and squeeze or suck out the venom, or seek medical help will depend on what comes to mind first and what is available.
Taking ownership of my problem and solution to my problem:
Taking ownership of my problem and solution to my problem can be used in all your grief situations: focuses your energy to the grief pain that you can do something about; allows you to take full responsibility for coming up with solutions, at all levels, that can promote your healing, including who you recruit to come to help you; can be particularly useful in intractable grief pain when you feel stuck – e.g. in abusive relationships, when you get stuck on blaming or when you beat yourself with guilt and self doubt; can help you acknowledge your limitations and seek help sooner; can protect you from being railroaded by other people’s objectives. It needs to become a way of life in your grief work.
