Today, is my father's b-day. Next month, it will be two years since he's been gone. Immediately after, I could have sworn it would never get better. I didn't know how people went on with their lives after losing someone so close. I didn't care about anything else. I would go out in public and breakdown and I didn't care who saw me. It was like I was in my own world.
I remember it took me about five months before I was able to talk about him without crying. I could even laugh at old stories of him. Still, the first year was definitely the hardest. I had a hard time accepting the idea that he wasn't coming back. I'd have thoughts like "I need to tell Dad that' or "I should call Dad". Once I even thought I saw him, I mean really saw him. It's when the reality hits that you can't call or that it's just a stranger who resembles him, that's the hardest part.
Now, I still think of him everyday and I know I will continue to for the rest of my life. Though the pain is there, it has dulled. Just like they say, time heals all. Of course, just because the wound has healed doesn't mean that it doesn't still hurt or that there aren't scars.
I hope that this helps those who are grieving. I know that after I lost my dad, I wanted to know that I wasn't alone and I needed to know what to expect. I guess I needed hope that things would get better and I'm here to tell you that they do. Just hang in there.
Labels: Grief, My history
I started keeping a dream journal when I was 12. I had a dream so realistic and so disturbing that I wrote it down and hid it like a secret. I knew then that dreams were important. They could affect you. In fact, I still remember that dream vividly, 18 years later.
It was the beginning of a 10 year stretch of time in which 90% of my dreams were nightmares. I'm talking a lot of dreams too because I typically remember 3 a night. Believe me, they were easy to remember. I am not exaggerating either. I actually went and cataloged my dreams, titling them, numbering them, and categorizing them so that I could get a better idea of how serious the problem was.
The majority of my nightmares were split between my being chased by a killer, a monster, or dogs. I am terrified of dogs and I had been studying serial killers from the age of 13, so it made sense that they may play parts in my nightmares. Monsters were a rarity and probably slipped in there because I was young. The other main component in my dreams was that someone would always be around, see what was going on and sometimes I'd even go to them for help but they never would do anything. I was always ignored.
The obvious answer being that I'm afraid of these things so I have nightmares about them and that maybe I have issues with feeling ignored in my life. I knew that it meant something more than that and that once I figured it out and did something about it, the dreams would cease. Like I said, it took 10 years, but I finally did it.
Turned out that my nightmares were all about a feeling of being out of control. That's actually why I fear dogs in real life, because I can't control them. They're driven by something primal, something I can't understand or reason with. They can turn on you at anytime and that scares me.
I figured that part out pretty early on. That's why I stress that you don't only have to understand why you're having the dreams but that you also need to do something about it. It wasn't until I did something about these control issues that the nightmares stopped.
Once I became more in control of my life, I still had similar dreams but when someone would chase me, I would turn it around on them. I know I had one dream where I stopped running, turned on the guy and lit him on fire with a blow torch. It was brutal but so empowering. I can't even tell you how good it felt to not be afraid anymore.
Labels: Dreams, My history
E ven though my experiences with therapists didn't turn out like I would have liked, I still believe in therapy. Just because the therapists that I had didn't work for me, doesn't mean they wouldn't have worked for someone else. There are many different types of therapists because there are many different types of people. As I mentioned before, I think that timing plays a part as well because my first therapist didn't work for me when I was seeing him, but maybe he would have been better for me at the time that I was seeing my third.
Unfortunately, it's harder to find the right fit than I would have thought. Still, I think it's worth it for everyone. I say "everyone" because there are still people out there who associate going to therapy with being crazy. It's just not the case. Going to a therapist for a sane person is no different than going to your medical doctor for check ups when you're healthy.
Sometimes it just helps to talk and get things off your chest. Whether it's the stresses of your job, or your family, or just the stupid things you see day to day. You shouldn't underestimate how good you can feel when you release those things. A therapist is someone who you can confide in without the worry that they will tell someone and that there will be repercussions in your day to day life. They're someone who can be objective and has no reason to deceive you or betray you. You should never feel strange about going to a therapist.
Don't let money be the excuse. Insurance should pay for it. If you don't have insurance, there are free clinics you can go to. There are also hotlines that you can call. I know because I have worked in these clinics and answered these calls. So, if you do want to talk to someone, there are resources available. You just have to seek them out.
Labels: Therapy
At the end of May, it will have been 2 years since my father passed. A year before that my grandmother had passed. It was at that same time that my grandmother was sick that my father fell ill, but we were so concerned with my grandmother dying that we didn't give my dad the attention that he needed. The doctors were just telling us my dad had a pneumonia. We had no idea how serious it was.
Four months later, we learned it was actually cancer. All I could think was that I hoped his heart was strong enough for him to have it removed because he'd had 3 heart attacks. The reality of it was that, by the time they found it, the cancer had spread throughout his body and there would be no removal. In fact, he was so far along that the doctors didn't even suggest chemo. I had never felt so helpless.
Still, I had great hope. I spoke to my dad about the blessings in his life. I told him that all we learned was that he wouldn't live forever and we knew that, but that he could have years left. I prayed every night and I visualized the cancer leaving his body. I actually convinced myself that if anyone could fight it, it would be my dad. He was, after all, the strongest person I know. In my mind he was invincible.
It was just as I'd learned with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' 5 Stages of grief. After denial, there was an anger in me like nothing I'd experienced. I tried desperately to channel those feelings into something positive. I started painting my basement. We had planned on completely re-doing the walls before painting and so it wasn't a good idea and I knew it. I just needed to keep busy, to keep my mind off of what was happening. One day my husband questioned why I was doing it, and it sent me into an utter rage. I didn't want to tell him why. I didn't want to talk about it at all.
Bargaining came next. Once you realize the reality of the situation, there's a desperation. You start offering anything you can to try and persuade God to change the inevitable. It's a sad state of being. A different kind of sad than the next stage, "depression". Depression makes the most sense given the situation.
Acceptance, now that's the hard one. I'm still working on that one.
Labels: Grief, My history
My Grandfather died when I was 9. A year later, my grandmother followed. Those were my first experiences with loss. It felt like a huge thing at the time. Then, in my teen years, I lost two friends and my half brother all on separate occasions. It made a hard and confusing time in my life even harder and more confusing.
However, nothing compares to the pain of losing my father. He was the planet around which my life orbited. After I lost him, I fell apart. I told my husband that if our life together was a plant, it would die because I couldn't water it at that time. So, my husband started bringing me cacti. That's the type of man my husband is.
After four months, he became so concerned about me that he asked me to go talk to someone and I did. A third therapist, another woman, supposedly specializing in grief counseling. First thing she did was ask me to write my father a letter talking to him about any unresolved issues. Well, that was fine and good but when my father died, it was of cancer and not a heart attack like we'd all prepared ourselves for. So, my dad actually had nine months before he passed and we'd said everything we needed to. Still, I wrote a letter saying good-bye. I don't know how helpful it was but it didn't hurt.
In the next sessions, my husband joined me for support. The therapist started telling us we needed to get passed the pain. I thought it was too soon to tell me to get over it. I was no where near ready. In fact, it's almost been 2 years and I still don't know if I'm ready. The point being that I didn't think she should tell me when I'm ready. What I wanted from her was someone to listen. I wanted my first therapist, "the wall". Turns out he did have a function.
While my husband and I were seeing my third therapist, we got pregnant. It was our first, after years of trying and we were ecstatic. I thought this was surely God's gift to us to help us move passed the grief. I was wrong. We lost our baby a of couple months in. I can't even describe the anger that I felt.
Throughout my father's whole ordeal, I'd managed to keep my faith. When I lost my baby though, I lost my faith and I cursed God. It's not something I'm proud of. I just felt so lost. I couldn't wrap my brain around the dreaded "why?" question.
Fortunately, we got pregnant again 3 months later and we now have a healthy baby boy. My faith is restored. I know that I am blessed.
Labels: Grief, My history
T his was my first experience with a therapist:
... my father had his third heart attack and was told that he wouldn't have long to live. I became extremely depressed. So, I started going to a therapist myself. It was nothing like I'd expected. There was no lying on a couch, crying, while being asked questions about my childhood. In fact, there wasn't much to it at all. The guy that I saw barely said anything to me. I felt like I was talking to a wall. He did, however, send me to a psychiatrist who pumped me full of meds that made me start hallucinating that people were attacking me. When I told the guy, he actually advised me to stay on them. There I was, seeing people run at me, defending myself against people that did not exist, and he tells me it's okay.Needless, to say, but I stopped seeing both the therapist and the psychiatrist.
The next therapist I saw was a woman. I told her up front that I didn't like that my previous therapist didn't talk and that he put me on meds as an answer to my problem. She then assured me that she would be different. Well, she was and she wasn't. She did talk more but then she slowly convinced me to go back on medication. To her defense, the drugs helped; but I made a very common mistake.
After I started feeling better, I thought great! I can stop taking the pills and I don't need to see a therapist anymore. Turns out it was the pills that were making me feel better and when I put a halt to them, my happiness halted as well. Things got better with my dad though and so I decided to let it go.
The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth because, even though I was feeling better, I didn't think psychology should be about handing off pills to everyone who walks through the door. I would have much rather had a therapist talk me through the emotions so that I could deal with these types of things better in the future as well.
Turns out I really needed that because when I finally lost my dad, I completely fell apart. My husband was so concerned that he asked me to go see someone and I did. A third therapist, another woman, supposedly specializing in grief counseling. First thing she did was ask me to write my father a letter talking to him about any unresolved issues. Well, that was fine and good but when my father died, it was of cancer and not a heart attack like we'd all prepared ourselves for. So, my dad actually had nine months before he passed and we'd said everything we needed to. Still, I wrote a letter saying good-bye.
In the next sessions, my husband joined me for support. The therapist started telling us we needed to get passed the pain. At only 4 weeks since we'd lost him, I thought it was soon to tell me to get over it. I was no where near ready. In fact, it's almost been 2 years and I still don't know if I'm ready. The point being that I didn't think she should tell me when I'm ready. What I wanted from her was someone to listen. I wanted my first therapist, "the wall". Turns out he did have a function.
In summary, I haven't had the greatest experiences with the therapists that I've seen. However, I do still believe in therapy. I know there has to be some good ones out there. I'd love to hear your experiences with therapists.
Labels: My history, Therapy
