Is this grief work?

[C.]

Childhood:  Intellectually I've known for a long time that my parents didn't provide me with what I needed as a child, but it's like I'd turned off that "need" for so long (since infancy we think) that it's been hard for me to understand and/or experience emotions in smaller doses rather than the extremes that come with CPTSD and emotional irregulation.  Since reading Walker's book I've come to understand on a deeper level that I did not receive "good enough" parenting for me to develop a healthy sense of self, emotional regulation, or healthy ways of relating to others.  Classic situation of ongoing emotional neglect and intermittent emotional abuse.  The pieces of my childhood that I've put together by stories from my always smiling "happy" (fake happy, like a clown it seems to me now) mom, include that the only way I'd sleep as a newborn/young infant was to "cry myself to sleep", then as a 1 year-old when I "tantrumed" she would put me in my crib alone until I was done with that unpleasant behavior, the sewing project she was working on when I was a 1 year-old so that I'd learn to "wait" for her when I needed something, then the near daily verbal abuse of my father towards my mother, and my mom turning to her 10 year-old daughter for emotional support.  Throughout my life I've been told that I was a shy and fearful pre-school child, like it was something in my biology.

Awareness & sadness:  I now see these stories for what they were, emotional neglect and my anxious response.  I've known this intellectually for a few months (I was in denial for 45+ years), but I just couldn't seem to feel anything about it.  Then, about a month ago, I was thinking and trying to "feel" when the tears came and I sobbed for that helpless baby that felt sad, lonely, afraid or tired and just needed to be held and hugged.  Now, often when I'm reading through threads on this web site, when I read Walker's book, or watch House M.D., I find myself crying for short periods of time followed by feeling relief and serenity.  Simply writing this post has brought on tears now and again along with a lump in my throat, maybe (because) b/c I need to allow myself to cry harder? 

Anger:  Pete Walker talks about some of the other emotions of grief for a childhood lost, and although I almost tapped in to anger, the moment passed and now it just seems so hopeless and long ago that anger feels pointless.  But, maybe that's my inner child at work who learned that anger got me nothing.  In fact, I seldom feel anger now, although during the last 10 years of my marriage irritation became a frequent emotion.  The only time I feel anger now is with behaviors of my teen-age son-negative behaviors that I fear his father or I have unconsciously "taught" him.  And I probably should feel angry with someone at work, but I tend to "freeze," afraid that I might "get in trouble"(a.k.a. fired) and so I end up just concentrating on doing my job instead.  I think that once my "training" with this person ends (she is not a supervisor and the supervisor seems kind/appropriate), I'll be able to be more appropriately assertive and strike that balance of human interaction that Walker describes.  This co-worker/trainer is undoubtedly not very healthy herself, so right now I need to concentrate on staying "safe" around her and normal assertiveness might be seen as defiance or a threat.  Fortunately, I will not be around her as much in the very near future since my "training" is coming to an end.

Questions:  Are the tears that I describe "grief work" that I'm experiencing?  Is the anger/irritation rising up from my childhood?  What next?  How do I know that I'm not simply re-traumatizing myself, especially with this web site?  When, if ever, will the tears start to subside?  How long is it healthy to focus on the sadness before I need to move on to anger and "angering" as another step in the grief work of a childhood lost?  Am I simply learning to experience sadness in a healthier way?

I have a therapist who I work with, but he's out of town for two weeks right now, plus that's an hour per week and I have other times when I can process this pain in healthier ways.  My therapist has told me that experiencing triggers and processing them is a major way to do the grief work.  At the moment this forum, therapy, and writing are my healthy options for processing.  I don't have any healthy friendships at the moment with whom I can do this work (recently noticed I'd been "fawning" or accepting emotional abuse/neglect in my "friendships").

Question: Does what I'm describing sound like grief work?

Thank you in advance for any thoughts or ideas you'd like to share with me on this thread

[alovelycreature]

I hope this metaphor is helpful in terms of the grief work.

The title of this website is very appropriate for what I consider grief work. I think when we have these realizations we need to grieve them. It's like a giant wave hitting our little boat on the water when we start to really feel the sadness associated with childhood memories. We don't feel safe, we're scared, and we're trying to also ride the wave to safety. The next wave might come too. The tears, the anger, all those unprocessed feelings are like waves hitting our boat. Over time, after we start to grieve, we know how to tackle the waves. They might be just as big, but we're not as scared of them because we know what they are and how to handle them.

Over time, we might have calm, then have another storm; but each time a storm comes, we know what it is and how to handle it. Maybe the storm is triggered by a child we know, the way a loved one treats us... but we learn over time that these feelings of fear are from the past and not the present.

Grief work is a lot of crying. You're mourning what you never had--a mother to care for you. You're also mourning that you will never have a mother to care for you, and that you have to figure out on your own how to mother yourself.

We're going to spend the rest of our lives grieving. Time changes everything. I know many people focus on Kubler-Ross' stages of grief... but I prefer Wordon's. Exchange "death" with "loss." It's about finding meaning in your experience. It is who you are.  Here's a link: http://www.whatsyourgrief.com/wordens-four-tasks-of-mourning/

Rain, another member, suggested I read the book Will I Ever Be Good Enough? By Karyn McBride. It has helped me much more with the grief work than Walker's book actually. Walkers book has become more of a supplement and reference. I highly suggest it since it sounds like you dealt with a NPDm. McBride walks you through the steps really well for dealing with grief in regards to a NPDm.

I don't know about you, but sometimes when I'm doing the grief work I feel like I'm going "crazy." I also had a gaslighting mother, so that may be why. My mantra lately has been, "There's nothing wrong with you. There is something wrong with what happened to you."

Have you started a journal? I write in mine all the time. When I feel very overwhelmed or need to tell someone I'll post it in my journal on here. Here is a safe place to share.

Final tidbit. Do something nice for yourself after you have a grieving session. I feel like that extra self care makes it easier the next time you do grief work. It's like a little reward for all the hard work.

[C.]

Thank you Lovelycreature.  It's so amazing to me that there are so many of us out there needing to grieve lost childhood's or mothering and figuring out how to do it for ourselves as adults.  I feel like I've landed on an island I didn't know about with people who've all had to figure out how to survive there and they're welcoming me and supportive, but I need to learn the skills through practice.

Yes, the boat metaphor helps and makes sense.  I've experienced strong grief with the loss of my infant son.  Surprisingly much easier than this grief work....anyway I remember I would just follow my heart when I started to experience a negative/processing type emotion and take action like journal writing, writing poetry, or a web site like this one and when I truly processed the emotion I'd feel better.  So I'm hearing that yes, this is normal.  I am grieving the loss of mothering and fathering, something that I couldn't understand as a child so it was postponed.  And as an adult I was unaware/in denial for another 20+ years.  Now, as a mature adult, it's time to learn to navigate that boat.

My therapist likens it to "emotional potty training" which as an early childhood professional I completely understand.  I also almost "feel" like I can feel the missing pathways of nurturing & protection when I kick in to anxiety or anger.  Like I'll tell myself this is a familiar neural pathway (the anxiety or anger), but a lot of people have another, healthier option and I can help myself develop that one right now by processing.  Then I think about why I feel that way, how it relates to my earlier story, what would have been a healthier "mothering."  I kind of re-parent that experience and then approach the here and now with compassion and more skill.

[schrödinger's cat]

I'd like to say something constructive, but I can't think of anything. I'm so sorry for your loss. It must have been an overwhelmingly horrifying time. Grieving a child is said to be the hardest grief there is.

I've grieved a father and two friends, and each time it was different. Grief can be surprisingly subtle, especially (I think) when you're grieving something you never had. Grieving a loss is straightforward. First, something was there; now it's not: the absence is glaringly obvious, and so painful you want to scream. But grieving something you never knew? I'm often grieving the kind of father my father couldn't be because of his illness. I've grieved that for the past twenty-odd years. And it's unlike that overwhelming, stark, obvious pain that his death caused, his absence. It's more subtle, more complicated. Quite often it's nothing that comes by itself. It stays in the background. It's hidden. So I have to go and look for it sometimes.

[C.]

Exactly Cat.  I think that's why I was in a way surprised by this pain...i thought the death of my son was supposed to be the "worst"...it wasn't the worst pain for me this has been much harder and more painful...

[flookadelic]

Hello C.

I was in my mid forties and only a year from my breakdown when I realised that, when my parents suddenly converted to the most excessive kind of evangelic, born again "Christianity" when I was ten, that I had in effect, lost them. The change was so complete, so savage, so undoable. My mother went from being my best friend and confidant into someone who only saw me in terms of a soul to be saved for Jesus, overnight. Our communication died in a welter of preaching and admonishing. Where once there was friendship there was forcible laying on of hands, the babble of "speaking in tongues" and worse, much worse. She had turned from best friend into total stranger without warning.

It is the most subtle and twisted form of bereavement. The body was there but the person had gone. I had stopped being a child and instead became a soul in need of Jesus. And I carried the loss without ever realising the weight of it as hey, she was still alive and kicking. But now I know, this is a form of bereavement pure and simple. A well meaning maternal abandonment that was never acknowledged, respected or understood, not even by myself. But did I feel it, underneath everything else.

Only when she died did I suddenly remember how we were once the best friends in the world. What a waste. What a total and stupid and pathetic waste. My grief was tempered by...the fact that I had already lost her, a long, long time ago.

So yes, we do grieve and are right to. It is a natural response to an unnatural condition. Just because our loss doesn't happen in the conventional sense doesn't make it any less of a loss, any less devastating.

Anger....whoooo...when I had my initial diagnosis of PTSD (although not CPTSD) a fraction of all the anger and disgust and shame and frustration and fury I had held against myself for over 30 years was suddenly directed at the perpetrators. I barely ate or slept for a week as the full implication hit me. That my cptsd mind wasn't just "silly old me" but a condition with distinct and obvious causes...I was so angry and still get flashes of it. What really helped me was art therapy. Just psychically vomiting my story and my feelings onto paper in a raw, unadulterated form. It provided a healthy release. Now it seems to be primarily sorrow that is the backdrop to my brain. It just comes in waves...but I am fortunate in having a few years of good inner work behind me before I had my diagnosis, so at least I started out with good tools and experience of using them.

As always, I look at posts here and feel a great deal of compassion for us all. Not sympathy for those less fortunate (which can be condescending), but empathy between equals. But I also see the strength involved in standing up to often overwhelming thoughts and feelings. Admiration, dear froot, admiration.

[alovelycreature]

Cat, that was helpful and insightful.

What we grieve is something we have never known, but it is still a loss. I feel that the grief that we experience with CPTSD (and other mental illness) is disenfranchised by society as a whole (at least here in the U.S.). We're told to "pull ourselves up by our bootstraps" or to "suck it up and get over it." So, with these messages we might not even know that we need to grieve, or that these uncomfortable feelings that still effect us from our childhood need to be grieved. I still run into to many people with the thought process of *trigger*, "I was hit as a child and I turned out okay. SO it is okay for me to spank my kid."

Grief is something we do as humans constantly. We grieve things we don't have, opportunities that have passed, loved ones that are now gone, and the way we change and grow. There are so many things that we're not allowed to grieve, but it is important to healing and finding a happiness and joy in life.