Grief & Trauma

So many of us “fail” to develop the skills or find enough support to be able to cope with our grief.  If we are prone to avoid our grief and the sadness connected to it, we are likely to defend ourselves by denying our grief or suppressing our sadness.  We may even convince ourselves we’re “over it” or “we’ve moved on” when it’s just not true.  You are not alone, as human beings, we do not come into the world well equipped to handle significant loss.

If you yearn for more happiness, and you're over the age of 9, then my guess is all the sadness you've refused, all the grief work you have not tended to sufficiently is creating the ceiling that keeps you unhappy. We're all going to “lose” everything someday and we all have those profound moments when we are moved to tears with the realization that we're connecting with something large, an ‘ethical’ large and something virtually spiritual in nature, and the profoundness of living rubs up against our sense that someday we're going to lose it all.  If I'm in my thirties and I look at that beautiful sunset and I could have a background realization - even if it doesn't get put into words.  That feeling that I will only get to have so many beautiful sunsets before I die.  And so, I'm in a feeling state of “cherish it and hold it close and feel sad in anticipation of having to say goodbye”.

Trauma has to be defined by the system itself and by the system, I mean you. How overwhelming was it for you it you? That’s the real question for the healing process. I disagree with many of the experts who define trauma in terms of a particular incident or the severity of an incident. I define trauma as any situation or incident that was unwanted that was also overwhelming. Anything unwanted, that was also overwhelming. A child can be traumatized by a lot of things that wouldn't traumatize an adult. And some adults can be traumatized by things that would not bother others. It’s a completely individual process in which the subjective meaning assigned to the event determines the person’s responding.