One thing that dealing with grief has
been teaching me is that we have two processes that go on with us all
the time. I get to see it show up fairly often, and it's not all
that comfortable. I'm doing OK and then the next moment I'm
overwhelmed in a swamp of sadness. Or instead I'm sometimes suddenly
shaking and jittery and wanting to run or hide. Or sometimes it's
finding myself having to fight off being blinded by a consuming rage.
It catches me by surprise, and often I'm not sure at first what it
was that set it off. Even if I can point to something that might
make sense of it, it seems way out of proportion to what it should
be.
Yup, there's two things going on. On
one level, I'm thinking. On the other level, I'm dealing with
feelings. And, to be honest, they both have about equal power to hit
me as strongly as each other.
Lots of people I know seem to be of the
opinion that thinking is the primary internal function for us. It
fits. That's what we're taught. We hear things like “Keep your
head” or “Think it over.” We get told that getting an
education is the key to success, and education means going to school
and learning new ideas and information. Sometimes that learning is
assessed by how well we can regurgitate those new bits of
information. Give the right definition, connect the date with the
event, put the concepts in order. Sometimes it's about applying
them, like with math problems. When there's a problem we're supposed
to think it over and figure out the right answer. Oh, and be ready
to explain it to someone else, which often relies on being able to
demonstrate clear, logical thought processes.
Feelings don't get that kind of value
or respect. At the same time, they're still used just as strongly in
some ways. Just about all advertising is about evoking the feeling
that the product or service they're displaying will bring happiness.
There's the implication with it that, if we don't have it, we will
end up unhappy. Heck, if you think about how much sex is used in
advertising, that fits, too. Sex certainly isn't about a rational
process. Some feelings are seen to be OK, and others are indications
of something being wrong, the person being “less than.” Real men
aren't supposed to be afraid. When something bad happens, it's OK,
though, for men to get mad and attack the problem. However, a lady
isn't supposed to get angry. If someone else is openly sad, people
often stand around and don't quite know what to do or how to deal
with it. Tongues are either tied or end up tripping as people don't
really know what to say, but don't feel comfortable saying nothing.
Movies and TV shows repeatedly go back to the idea that falling in
love is important and good. For all the good stuff in some of the
New Age thinking, there's a lot of it that says that the “bad”
feelings (read: “uncomfortable”) are things that should be
avoided or shut away...or are signs of a lack of spiritual
development.
Guess what, folks. Feelings are just
as much a part of who we are as thinking. Just because we're brought
up to put more emphasis on thinking doesn't change that. Sometimes
strong feelings will end up dragging thinking behind them in their
wake. To me, it makes sense to think of them like waves. A small
one doesn't really do much to the ability to think, and to choose
what to think about. However, a big one—like a sonic boom or a
tsunami—will yank whatever's there into its wake. If it's too
strong, thinking doesn't really happen until the energy of the wave
starts to dissipate. Even if it's only medium strong, sometimes it
just pulls the thinking along behind it. And often the assumption is
that that's a bad thing.
Don't get me wrong, those experiences
are certainly uncomfortable. The times I found myself having to lean
against the side of the shower or crumpled up at the bottom of the
stairs crying because the sadness roared through me were not fun.
The times at work when my frustration erupted like a fireball from an
explosion and led to me snapping at people who really didn't deserve
it weren't fun. Heh, neither was having to go and apologize
afterward. The times where I would be getting ready for a trip and
suddenly find myself almost paralyzed with anxiety about the most
miniscule or ridiculous things was definitely not fun.
However, there have also been times
where going with those emotions have led me to and through things
that I don't know I would've looked at or gone to otherwise. She had
never told me what she'd want done with her body if she died. I had
to go off a best guess based off conversations that only lightly
touched on the topic. The place that just felt right to go is hard
to get to, with some decent risks of getting hurt if one isn't
careful. It wasn't easy, but it's been a decision—based mainly off
how it felt—that I haven't experienced any regret about. Plenty of
people thought I was horribly mistaken for wanting to read through
some of her journal files, that it was just pointless self-torture.
It kept feeling like something I needed to do. If I hadn't, I
wouldn't have found out how long she'd been depressed and suicidal,
or that it had been going on long before we ever met. If I hadn't
been willing to go with the nagging feelings of guilt that had come
up about whether I'd had anything to do with her suicide, I wouldn't
have looked at everything as deeply as I had and come to know that it
wasn't about me. Hell, if I hadn't gone with the feeling that I
needed to see her body before it was cremated, I probably would've
had a lot longer time of having the thoughts come up that maybe it
was a mistake, maybe she was still alive....maybe she would come
back. Seeing her body, and the shape it was in, was hard, but since
then I haven't had those kinds of thoughts come up.
We have both, thinking and feeling. We
end up having to learn to deal with both. That doesn't mean trying
to figure out how to make one run roughshod over the other at will.
It means learning what each one does, how each one works. What each
has to offer and where its limits are.
There's just not another way to really
get all the way down and out, to find the path that will lead us through the abyss and ready to go on to better times.
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