Recently found myself in grief again. Sometimes life just throws curveballs at you.
I first learned about trauma, healing, and five stages of grief in Grey’s Anatomy season 6 episode 1.
Denial, anger, bargaining, sadness and acceptance.
Denial.
That first strike, when I first saw the bad news.
There’s a rush of blood, the split second of “I must’ve seen it wrongly”, the amygdala pulling the alarm,
Then the message was still there, and I still can’t believe. Alarm still ringing, all hell officially broke loose.
I so desperately wanted this to not be true.
I used to hate this first shock, because it hurts so bad, the punch came out of nowhere. Now that I have a different view on pain, I have a new perfective on this too.
I had a couple of flash backs of other traumatic moments, of what it felt like when I first learned the news.
I used to feed the figure/ narrative of denial by vowing to get stronger and never be humiliated like this again.
Humiliation, oh I didn’t notice you were there too.
Along with shame, they fuel the next stage - anger.
Anger.
Anger might be represented by testosterone, maybe adrenaline more so, or perhaps it’s dopamine plus extreme grief?
Is that why it’s addictive? Some aspect of it sure feels good, the rush, the flame overtakes prefrontal cortex like craving takes over an addict’s mind.
It’s contagious and a potent bonding force. It comes with such raw energy.
It roars through and burns down everything in its path.
The purpose is to intensify and amplify, to etch the need to be stronger into my head - get stronger and adapt, or you’ll die.
That’s what ‘s supposed to comes out of it, like a crystal shining in the sun, after the storm has passed.
But too often it takes a wicked unstable turn and morphs into something dark, abusive and counter productive.
The trick is to keep the truth upfront.
The anger roots in helplessness, it’s purpose is to highlight the truth that we are not strong yet (weak), but if mixed with shame and humiliation, the denial of the weakness, it turns into a monster.
The trick, the truth, don’t deny the weakness, you get it.
We are supposed to be over the denial phase.
Sadness.
Grief has so much energy, and most of it burns through anger.
Then the bipolar sine wave swings big, dips down to depression, or sadness.
Is it partly just the system naturally swings back to energy efficient mode?
It’s day zero of rebuilding, the first light of healing.
Honker down, stay humble, and start building, start growing stronger.
This is where most of us cry, to release all that angry molecules that keep pounding our nerves like a bully.
Crying is a super power, it heals.
Tears pour down like a rain. It cleans up the debris after anger’s fire burned everything to the ground.
Then the rebuilding can happen.
Acceptance.
What a beautiful journey.
Tragedy is a beauty.