Don’t Get Stuck!

Another really unhelpful strategy is pretending pain doesn't hurt. If something matters to us, and it is not going well, it should bother us! Denying that we experience stress prevents us from dealing with the stress. I have a friend who has really suffered in recent years. When we chat, she tells me, "I have this! I can handle it! I am fine!"

She is not fine. In the heat of a moment, we may need to say, "I can get through this. I will be fine." This is a strategy for dealing with the stressful situation. But it does not heal the ill-effects of the stress. After the dust settles, we need to circle back around and acknowledge our stress, worry, frustration, rage and despair. Today, I have lost all interest in the stressful situations that drove me over the edge of my capacity to cope.

But there was a time when I needed to admit about how these events affected me. To be clear, this was not what ultimately repaired my heart, mind, and soul. But it was a necessary early step to admit how devastating several key events had been in my life rather than avoid the reality of the situation. I am not talking about endless rumination. That is the opposite of what we need to do, because the body experiences rumination as reliving the trauma. It's like deliberately sticking your finger in an electric outlet expecting not to get zapped.

Here's how to talk without ruminating. Instead of repeating ad infinitum the EVENTS or the faults of the people in the event, talk about how the event made you FEEL, what you thought about said event, and how you reacted. Self-observe. What can you learn about yourself? Using this method, we do not re-traumatize ourselves by repeating a story that - let's face it - everyone already knows. But what we are doing is giving ourselves an opportunity to deal with the stress by taking full responsibility for our life.

What about you? Are you avoiding admitting something that is stressful for you? Are you ruminating over a stressful event? Fine. It's fine wherever you are in the process. Just don't get stuck. Keep walking!

The Gift of Guilt

"I'll never get over my guilt," is a sentence I hear often from parents who have suffered the traumatic loss of a child (and all losses of children are traumatic - even if they are grown up when we lose them).

If we stay in this place of ruminating over our regrets and guilt, we are spared a bit from the acknowledgement of all our loss. Maybe it is easier to talk about our feelings of guilt than it is to live with the reality of all the things that will not happen now that they are gone.

It is all HARD. Guilt is crushing; mourning is like having heart surgery without anesthesia - every damn day.

But here's the thing - guilt is not really a gift unless it is true, legitimate wrongdoing - if that is true, then we know how to proceed: ask for forgiveness and make amends. However, it is usually not the whole story. Sometimes we give ourselves too much credit for what we perceive we can (or should) control. Secondly, it is expensive. Unremitting, unresolved feelings of guilt steals the present moment. It takes us away from the living.

Guilt, the lying little bugger, tells us that it serves as a living tribute to the loss. But guilt really just keeps stealing from the living. Guilt asks us to keep dying for our dead - and that sounds noble, even preferable to our grief over another's passing.

But what if there is another way? What if we acknowledge the specifics of what we cannot undo that was 'wrong' and refuse the offering of a generalized guilty feeling with no legitimate claim to reality? We acknowledge our legitimate wrongdoing and seek forgiveness, make amends. If we find that some of the beliefs that we have held about our guilt are simply not true, then we must move forward. We live. We live to honor the lost. We live well for those among us, our other children, our family that is still present for us to love well.

These are not easy things nor are they appropriate first responses for someone new to grief. But if we find that our grief is interfering with our love for others - maybe it is time to re-evaluate the ways we have thought about our loss. Maybe we need a grief counselor or a grief group to help us reframe our habitual way of thinking about our suffering.

Maybe we need some support for healing.

Listening to Your Thinking Center

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.

Nelson Mandela

Early on during the pandemic we devoured all the news we could find on the subject. We had decisions to make as a family and as a faith community. The pressure to do the safest thing was tempered by our belief that isolation is bad for people - especially people who are struggling. The more we studied, the more confusing the process.

One morning Pete had a panic attack; I had not slept in days. We stopped and THOUGHT about our situation. Too much information was causing more harm than good. So we stopped the obsessive watching and chose to limit our exposure. This has worked for us.

This is an example of the three centers of intelligence working at various times together and in competition. Our feelings were teaching us that we were overloaded, but our research and compulsion news consumption was “doing” out of control. We were not thinking, we were ruminating. FINALLY, our thinking center came online and called a moratorium on our doing so that our feelings could calm down a bit.

This is the value of our thinking center. It helps us establish guidelines that govern our lives. It contains new ideas (hey, stop watching all the news and watch just enough to stay informed), original thinking (what about zoom?), vision (this is not our future, it is our present), awareness (what good are we doing like this?), and understanding of the true meaning of reality (this is a historic moment, no one knows for sure what is right). The best gift our thinking offers is the capacity for consciousness.

Lots of time we believe we are thinking when we are really imagining, or ruminating, or obsessing. So, as the scriptures encouraged so many years ago - we have to take captive every thought and give it a good vetting to make sure we are really doing productive work at establishing guidelines that govern our lives.

Some of us are too heady, others could use a bit more thinking. Which are you?

We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

2 Corinthians 10:5