In this comprehensive guide, we will explore profound concepts that acknowledges the gravity of your experiences, and offer a roadmap to rebuild and rediscover joy amidst the wreckage.
There is no making sense in the senseless
What happened to you replays in your mind like a broken record. You get no reprieve from it, regardless of what you are doing. It is in the forefront of your mind twenty-four-seven. It is simply unbelievable. Too surreal to accept. It is difficult to focus on anything else when your mind is preoccupied with thinking about your loss. You try to make sense of what had happened, asking questions like:
- “Why me?”
- “How did I not see this coming?”
- “What could I have done to avoid the situation?”
- “Did I deserve this?”
- “What I would give up to have things return to normal?”
The world has millions of moving parts, interacting with one another in a complex web that it is impossible to untangle the why from the what? Earthquakes, brain aneurysms, terminal diagnoses, miscarriages, terrorist attacks and being attacked in your own home.
You will drive yourself insane finding logical answers to a senseless situation. It is a lot of needless energy spent on something that cannot be changed. When it creeps into your mind, cast it out and carry on. Keep doing this. Save your energy for dealing with the actual situation.
Be with your emotions
Expecting to feel happy all the time is not only unrealistic but it's also sure recipe for depression. Sometimes we are going to feel sad, and less often we are going to feel gut-wrenchingly horrible. This is reality. Everyone does their time in the sad pit.
Emotions are like the weather; you cannot change it. You can only be with it, sit with it, and get to know it. When it rains, we don’t try to stop, deny it or label it. We simply work with it and work around it. The same treatment needs to occur with our emotions. Do not hurry your emotions along, ignore them or suppress them. Simply acknowledge them and carry on.
Our emotions are also like the weather in that it comes and goes. This too shall pass. To make life changing decisions and take life changing actions at the height of strong emotions is unwise. Allow time to do its best work. Even Hiroshima half- lives over time, and so will your explosive emotions.
The rain passes when it passes. There is no correct length of time to grieve. Your experiences are unique and so is your trauma response. Never feel guilty or inadequate that you are grieving for too long. You are doing your best in your situation and there is no better than that.
No one can mourn forever. It is simply too sad to exist that way. Things will naturally come to a head where change will occur. In the meantime, while it rains, you can sit indoors and watch a movie, or you can dance in the rain. What you cannot do is get worked up over rain.
Keep it simple
In these chaotic and confusing times, remember to keep things simple. Misfortune throws our lives, definitions, and routines into disarray. The easiest way to get organised again is to have less to organise.
You are currently in survival mode. When chased by a lion, there is no room to be planning out next week or next year. You only need to focus on the next step. Getting out of bed, brushing your teeth, doing the dishes, or paying the bills. By doing the next important thing, you will gain distance between yourself and the lion. It is only then you can afford to ponder on more complex subjects.
You don’t need to have your purpose and identity figured out right now. It will take time to redefine who you are and what now gives your life meaning. Your identity and purpose can only be redefined by spending some time living out your new circumstances. Your new ways of life will inform your thoughts, which will eventually give rise to the answers you seek. In the meantime, your identity is an adult, and your purpose is to keep an open mind.
The Roman philosopher Seneca once said, "If you don't know what port you're sailing to, no wind is favourable". I disagree. If you don’t know what port you are sailing to, all wind is favourable.
Growing around grief
The grief never lessens but it can be made to feel smaller by growing a bigger life around it. There is no single action you can take or a sentence you can say to move on from grief. Rather, moving on means finding the courage to continue living your life. To put yourself back out there and build new memories, make new friends and engage in new experiences.
Seek your passion, activities that give you some pleasure in this saddened wasteland. Grab it and run with it. Even if it is just going through the motions at the beginning. Joy will creep back in and when it does, you will surprise yourself. Little by little, day by day, eventually adds up to big gains. Take that bath. Take that walk around the block. Light that scented candle. Make that cup of hot beverage. Get a start on that book.
As your life keeps growing bigger, your trauma event starts to appear smaller, even sometimes getting lost in the expansive life you have created. Now and then, like an old book on the shelves, you might pull out your trauma and revisit its pages. The feelings will flood back and remind you, it never went away. All that happened was your book collection got bigger.
Seize the opportunity to grow
No one ever changed from a place of comfort. It takes a sizable misfortune to generate the kind of discomfort that is a catalyst for change. Every crisis is an opportunity for you to grow your soul. Viktor E. Frankl said, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves,” and this is what you must do.
Frankl asked a grieving husband, “If you had died first, what would it have been like for your wife?” He responded that it would have been incredibly difficult for her. Frankle pointed out that he had spared his wife this immense suffering by carrying the grief on her behalf. The man, though still sad, no longer felt powerless. He had found meaning in his suffering. He could carry the grief instead of his wife.
Seek out teachers. They exist everywhere around you. You are not the first person in a world of billions to go through what you are experiencing. Learn from others who are further along in their journey. Ask questions, “Why are they okay now?” Teachers come in many forms, from observing nature, leveraging the wisdom of the elderly, listening to untainted views of children and following inspirational thought leaders. Be humble and keen to learn.
Challenge the status quo. How you have presently lived is just one way. Your reality is simply your perspectives and reactions to a situation. Challenge your ideas and change your reality. Redefine new measures and find a better way to be.
You never lost anything
You cannot lose what you had in the past because it already happened. The past, etched in memories, is an undeniable truth. The only mourning is required for future losses, which, arguably, you never had it yet and therefore not yours to keep or lose.
Moving on doesn’t mean letting go of the past. That’s yours to keep forever. Moving on is simply coming to terms with what has happened and forging a way to keep living. It will not invalidate what you once had. No one and nothing you do can change history. History is yours to keep. The future is yours to build.