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Posts tagged ‘Healing the pain’

Apr 23

Exiting the Stuff-It Club

The battlement is empty, the communication office has shut down, and unemployment has been granted to all. I think they are sipping drinks on the warm beaches of their dreams. Hmm, did those imaginary souls have imaginary bucket lists? Oh, before I get too silly, I’ll move forward.

I want to note here that it is somewhat risky to admit that I sought treatment for trauma. I have done the writing I have to inform people, and to normalize what I have done. I’m exiting the “stuffing-it club.”

If you had asked this former professional “stuff-it” expert at any age if I’d be writing these words, I’d have laughed you out of the space we were both in. I flash back in my mind to the young Gail in her twenties, and the therapist that should have been able to see a wee bit more than she did. I give her grace and grant her a pass. She walked me out of one mess, and it was good.

The fact of psychotherapy is that in the 1970s we didn’t know enough about PTSD or any form of trauma to treat it effectively. Some of what is now listed in the Diagnostic and Statical Manual (DSM) wasn’t there, and is only present now because of what we know now, and have learned, and will continue to learn. Cut us some slack.

In the late 1980s it was a short encounter with a therapist who enabled me to ask myself one or two vital questions. The guy served his purpose well.  

In the 1990s two therapists taught me about approaches to healing that I needed to experience. I was able to count those hours as part of the state requirement for therapy. However, I’d stuffed childhood into the deep reaches of my mind. It lived there until in 2023. I knew I’d need to pull it out and finally take it all apart. You’ve read the posts about the journey. A few hundred words into this post, I want to talk about what is happening to me now.

About two weeks ago the end of the process happened. OK, not the full end, but the end of the process of working through all the trauma.

As the dust settles and I sit with myself, the things I notice are good, and at the same time I understand that I’m going to need to grieve some things that could have been different: things that could have been and never will be. Saying goodbye to the past in a healthy way also means greeting the present in the spirit of grace and mercy for myself. Saying hello to the present means facing what has been missed out on and making peace with it. I did the stuffing, and I’ll claim it.

Well now, this is a new type of grief. I can do this!

I started to notice the changes in my responses to everyday things shortly after the end of the process came. This first one is huge: I don’t say shit and fuck the way I once did. Swearing is shorthand for getting what we’re feeling out fast. Fine, go ahead and let it rip, and then after the shorthand try to do the long response. I believe that because the calm has come into my life. I’m in a place to react to the nutty things in a calm manner. Here’s an example: I got a mail informing me that the government wants a crazy amount of money from me. I did what many would do: I let a few choice words rip. Then, I pulled back for an entire weekend and thought about how to do this ugly thing. Both responses were needed, and I was able to work through possible solutions. Am I happy about what I’ll have to do? NO. However, getting there in a calm fashion is a great outcome. I’m also liking myself better for what doesn’t happen to me now. The anger was not who I am.

Another positive outcome from doing this kind of work is that I see things in a new way. I’m a good therapist: this I know due to client feedback, and being in touch with myself. Because of what I’ve done for myself, I’m an even better therapist. The reason why I can hold out with grace for my past therapists and myself is that I get that they can’t be judged for what they couldn’t and didn’t know. I wasn’t ready to talk about what had happened to me.

In 2026 we now understand how trauma affects the body and the mind. We understand about feedback loops and responses to things, and we get how the brain and body learn to respond to trauma. I can also send someone to a psychiatrist to see if medication is indicated. At the appropriate time I might also refer someone to needed allied specialists that are out of my scope of practise. Now, within mental health, we’ve got options that your parents didn’t have!

I want to mention that all therapists should keep a supervisor on the payroll. We also need to have the ability to take things to our own therapists. A second pair of eyeballs on our own issues is a must. I’m thankful that I have the needed eyeballs.

Mar 5

Dotted Trauma

Before I move forward, here are numbers for the year of Jon’s death by suicide. According to the WHO, there were approximately 817,000 deaths by suicide in 2016. I am a survivor of a loved one’s suicide, and I’m an expatriate who resides in the EU. This post is about how grief shuts us down, and then slowly turns the lights on in our lives—again. This is a post about dots.

In the 1990’s it was a pretty dress with blue and white dots that I loved to wear. The white top with blue dots sparkled, and the skirt, with its reversal of blue and white dots, delighted me.

In the late 2000’s it was a brown and white dress with a small sash that made me smile. I wore that one until it needed to see other uses.

This past weekend I ordered a new dress with dots. It came about because a friend of mine has such a dotted dress, and she said that I needed to order one myself. I think my joy over seeing her in the dress caused her to tell me to order such a dress myself. I had not thought of acquiring a new dress of joy. The fact is, suicide can shut a person down. It is a different flavor of death and grief. My brain lay dormant for ten years of grief. Gail wasn’t functioning as Gail once did, and the joy of the dots got wiped out. Think of it as a functional shutdown that allows the person to look as if it is all going well. The machine works but not as well as it could. It is why I shut down fully for several years and didn’t work as a therapist. You don’t work with people when your head isn’t all present. Sometimes it’s a day, and at other times it is longer.

My shutdown experience may be similar to others, or it may differ greatly.

First off, there are no rules in grief; there is only what you need to feel, and the rest can be set aside until you need to revisit the feelings. This kind of death and loss sends you to places that no one should have to go to, and yet, in order to get through it, you must go there. You must be willing to face a rawness in your life and come out on the other side of the tunnel that carries you underground. You will cross Styx and come out on a new shore, and just when you think you are safe from it all, you will wake up to a new realization: trauma. You didn’t see this coming because, unlike your typical death and grief, there aren’t liminal spaces in this type of death. Unlike the death bubble that hosts the liminal space, you can’t hop back on the conveyor belt of life and treat life as if there haven’t been radical changes. This time, someone in your life decided that they were going to exit, and they succeeded. In 2016 I became one of the people that entered into this place due to the loss of a loved one. And so, like with other forms of traumatic and unexpected death, those of us who encounter this hard place must settle in for a long and not-so-cozy journey. This is about navigating the river of life and being willing to explore new environs. The good thing about this is that each time you explore the new places in your soul, you get new skills and a sleeker boat that you can navigate with. It is true that no matter where the water is, there will be rapids, and learning to run them is rewarding. Yes, it is painful, and grief is not for wimps. But it is worth it!

It has been said that death rearranges the address book. In suicide, death alienates the address book. It is not just about people not knowing what to say: it is that the unthinkable happened, and now a hard reality besets the survivor(s). For me, I was well aware that my husband could end it all. What I was not aware of was how different this type of death experience is. The shocker was that I didn’t see it coming until after it had happened, and before I found the note on the dining table. By the time I found the note, I had a feeling he was going to do it—he ended it all before I could find him to stop him. He made sure of that.  

The next hours and days were a blur, and it has taken some two years of therapy to reconstruct this trauma. It hasn’t been easy or pretty. It took me admitting that I was dealing with PTSD, and being able to let go and trust the competent therapist I found to do what he does so well. It has been worth the painful periods I’ve had to face.

And so, I shut down to pretty dresses and dots. The dots faded away in my mind, and I forgot about the happiness that wearing dots brings to my heart. A wall of the mind took its place as if the real Gail wasn’t ever there, and this person who was there wasn’t the fully complete Gail. For ten years she has slept. Now, I am awake, and I’ve arisen from a slumber that I didn’t know how to deal with. I have dealt with a death by suicide and will continue to be aware of how his death has affected me.  

All things said, this type of grief journey is a cycle. Sometimes the thing needs to be said in ten million different ways, until the one time we really hear it, surprise! It is like we experience it as a fresh and new discovery. Whatever past grief collective there is, they are laughing at us for the millionth time as we “discover” again what hasn’t stuck. Maybe, they all say, she’ll get it this time. Grief is like spiral dynamics. We discover and loop through it on a new level.

Grief can shut the mind down. It can shut the soul down. What some experience doesn’t have words, and it is as if there is an unspoken code that says that yes, I’ve travelled the path, and yes, we’re in a strange group of people. Only we know this because you can’t always put words to the experience. Sometimes the words do make it out, and when they do, you say them.

Coming out of where I’ve been will be my story alone. I claim the trauma, and I claim the healing. Yes, I was one of 817,000. We haven’t all been down the same grief path.