Healing from grief – Beyond Grief and Loss Therapy

Author’s note: I don’t condone the use of psychedelics for recreational purposes. I do recognize that there are psychedelics that can be used with positive outcomes for some psychiatric disorders. I am not a psychiatrist. You need to consult the proper medical person about using psychedelics. They should understand the proper use, and the protocols for their use.

In September I attended the Oxford trauma conference. It got me thinking about a question I’ve had for a while.

I want to talk about depression, trauma, and suicide. There are components of trauma in depression, and sometimes a person with depression considers suicide, and this is where it gets tricky. I’ll attempt to explain this dynamic.

When a person is depressed, their brain isn’t functioning correctly, and this is why finding the right drug is useful. The right drug will allow the brain to bypass the depression and cause things to work correctly. All of a sudden, when the pills kick in, neurons do what neurons should do. A person dealing with depression needs a pill to make it happen correctly. You can function again! I’m giving you the quick and simple explanation here. So, swallow the pill, and get out of bed to greet the day. This is when the cocktail you need to swallow works. You might need to adjust the cocktail periodically to keep things headed in the right direction. For most people, drugs and talk therapy are a good combination.

What do you do when the drugs don’t work? Some depression is treatment resistant. Some depression is caused by the environment the person lives in. If the depression is caused by environment, getting free of that place is a good beginning. It is possible that the body has learned to be depressed; a good psychiatrist can help you use drugs in a limited way to help break the cycle. You must leave the toxic environment and find a good therapist who you can work with on overcoming the conditioning of the environment.

With treatment-resistant depression, no matter what the psychiatrist tries, no matter how fancy the cocktail of drugs is, the person struggles with the daily activities of life. They function on a limited basis. Some days are good, and others aren’t. This is where trauma and hopelessness come into a person’s life. The world has begun to turn the shade of a muddy yellow-brown, and slowly that is how the world is seen: no rose-colored glasses for these folks. It is an ugly color mix. This is where danger lies. You are too depressed to really think, and you don’t have the energy to think everything through. The person is trapped in the sludge of life—think of it as really slow-acting quicksand.

At some point in time the mind begins to ask the question that leads down a path that many see as forbidden: suicide. This is where the real trauma seeps into a person’s life. How can I think this? The shock and horror that I could consider ending my life can breed trauma within the soul. How could this thought be present in me? The muddy place thickens, and if you voice these concerns, friends panic, therapists jump to make a suicide contract, which doesn’t really work for those serious about ending it, and the person having the thought might shut down due to fear and social stigma. This only deepens the traumatic process going on inside.

As a therapist I am legally bound to keep a person safe, and that means prevent harm to self or others. As a therapist I want to have you talk about and explore your thoughts and fears. My job is to offer you a safe place to be heard.

In many ways, the person is facing an existential crisis of epic proportions: to stay and live, or to shut it all down. When a person thinks in this way, they’ve entered the war zone of thought. I don’t want a land mine to be triggered. You defuse the land mine by gently digging in around it, getting the fuse, and defusing it. I don’t want to blow it up. In this case, that is the wrong method of destruction.

I believe in hearing a person’s story and allowing them to come to terms with who they are and what they must face in life.

I listen, and you tell me your story. We find a way in to defuse the stuff inside. Together, we clear land mines. We hope for healthy defusing.

And now, there is something wonderful happening for people who are depressed and traumatized.

With all the buzz about MDMA, and the hope around its legalization for use in treatment of psychiatric disorders, it will be interesting to watch what can happen with its ethical use. I’m aware of its use for several DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) disorders.

Used correctly, and with medical supervision, there might be a pathway into the mind that could relieve the trauma of depression for many who suffer.

Don’t jump yet. MDMA has a medical protocol, and it might not be right for everyone. Don’t run out seeking this on the street. It is dosage specific and needs to be administered in a safe environment, and with a therapist and psychiatrist supervising the process. Used incorrectly and recreationally, ecstasy can damage a healthy brain. Used with clinical degression, it can serve as a healing agent.

This brings me to the question I’ve been mulling over: Could Jon have found some relief with MDMA? My answer at this point in time is that it might have enabled him to have some relief from the deep trauma that the depression had caused, but he would not have been a good candidate for this type of therapy due to a preexisting bipolar diagnosis. The protocol would have screened him out because bipolar and drugs aren’t a good idea.

Here I sit with hope for some, and hope that someday there will be hope for so many trapped in the muddy place.

Dear Joyce,

I remember all too well the day you dropped dead in front of us, and as I ran to call 911, Mom ran to you. That was in 1977, and the decades have passed, and now the conversation my brother and I have is about what Joyce would be doing now. It is strange how you left breadcrumbs for us to follow.

You were only fourteen when you had the heart attack, and we’d hoped that the pacemaker you now lived with would give you a long life. We couldn’t have predicted what happened that hot July day. The beginning grief was about the loss of our sister. With time the sorrow diminished, as months, and then years, expanded into decades. Now I think about the forty-eight years that have passed, and I imagine.

I think that, with your love of small children and your medical curiosity, you may have gone into pediatric nursing. You got little children far better than I ever did. You loved their quirkiness, and they loved you.

Your braces were off, and you had contacts. You were feeling happy about your appearance, and I was glad. You were one of those people who had a healthy love for yourself. That is rare for any time. Most people struggle to love and care for themselves.

You were having to do the hard work of life. As Richard Rohr would put it, you were doing first-stage and second-stage work at fourteen. The book Falling Upwards explains what I was seeing with you way back when. Rohr explains that things like disability cause us to sort out stuff sooner in life. This sorting process is also true for the LGBTQ community. You were tuned into needful things at a young age.

It saddens me that so many people feel that bringing up the dead is a no-no. Please do! It was delightful to talk with my younger brother about you. I loved hearing what he thought about where you’d be. We know you’d have children.

I think about you and Daddy working with you on pitch on the flute. You couldn’t hold a tune, and you really wanted to be a good, solid musician. Daddy worked with you and taught you to find and hold the right pitch. I gotta tell you, your lack of pitch drove me nuts! We were at opposite ends on pitch. I couldn’t understand how anyone could not carry a tune. I’d been singing before I could talk, and I wind up with a sister who had to learn to do what many people can do. That’s OK—you had gifts I didn’t have.

You were saying “have a nice day” before happy smiley faces were a thing. Remember the year you made dinner plates with art on them for the family? You made one for yourself, and it said “have a nice day” on it.

People who haven’t lost anyone might think that this is a strange post. A letter to a sister who is long gone. It is good to think about the good things, and that bad stuff. It is part of the process, and it will play out at different times in our lives.

Yes, you could be a real brat at times. I love you—even if at your birth I couldn’t figure out what this thing that cried, ate, and generally did nothing to enhance my world was good for. Then you grew, and we sisters got matching dancing dresses. You became fun, and then you got all the bold, cute clothes. Not bad, considering that Beth and I never could have pulled off what Mom knew you could do with cute clothes. Just so you know: we told Mom all about it when we were adults, and she said that we lacked the personality for cute and bold. Mom was right.

I’m so glad I wrote this to you. It has been a lovely walk in the past. I need to do it more often. I wonder what you’d say about this?

Love you,

Gail

Tag: Healing from grief

The Muddy Place

Dear Joyce