I needed to sit on this for a few days, because there was such a download of information and concepts.
It had been a struggle that day, because I told multiple people – I don’t know how to handle grief.
It’s not that I haven’t been taught or that I don’t know the process, but it’s how I handle it personally. Within and emotionally. My grandfather has not passed and as Lycana put it bluntly, I was stuck in a limbo of grief, because I couldn’t go see him or talk to him and just waiting for the text that he passed. But back to Tuesday, which this this next part was all a part of…
I had expressed that I don’t understand the grieving process that I have. I go through bursts of where I forget what’s happening and block it out. I’m more emotional over everything. I’m feeling so much more acutely with insecurities and problems that crop u. I have these random bursts of crying in the middle of the night. I’m not sleeping or hardly.
I was laying in bed watching a comfort movie, it was about 3am. One of my demons steps forward, though to this point I still don’t know which one it is (I figured out writing this that it was Dro – my Choas/Necrosis/Desire Alchemist). But in truth, it doesn’t matter as much as the message and perspective does. I had just finished with one of those moment where I was going back and forth between crying really had in grief and then just feeling nothing and closing off, then back to crying hard again. Hence why I never really “got” the grieving part.
I told him this. I expressed how bad I felt because I’m in this grieving process and feeling shame that I feel the need to sexual intimacy because that is a release. And he told me that Sexual Intimacy or Orgasms are essentially a release, not just energetically and physically but emotionally. Usually it is something that is stress relief, but it would be understandable if there is a buildup of emotion that is trapped for there to be a need for a release that orgasms would be desired. He also reminded me that I am also feeling a hormonal surge due to having that time of the month, so that’s contributing, and I cannot control what my body is needing.
After that conversation, I just laid there and felt so detached. I felt so drained. Yet, the thought came back to me. “Why do I grieve the way that I do?”
Dro decided to answer me with this. He said that it’s not that I don’t have the ability to grieve normally, it’s just that my brain is different. I process things so differently.
As a DID system and someone with C-PTSD, the brain is going to handle grief differently. It could be this way for many, but with the DID and C-PTSD, dissociation is very much a reality when it comes to things that are upsetting. Grief being one of those.
Dro asked me to think of the stages of grief. So I did. Anger, Denial, Bargaining, Depression, etc.
Dro then told me to look at how PTSD and trauma is handled and processed in the brain – the exact types of process that grief does. There’s anger and denial, bargaining, depression, acceptance… and just all of those aspects that you find with grieving are also processes that trauma/PTSD goes through.
Now his point was made. The reason that I suffer so much during grief, is because my brain handles it that way that it handles trauma. I dissociate the pain and the problem, so to speak, and branch that off into trauma boxes. So I will hold onto those until my brain and body process that grief in a non-objective way, to then heal and move forward. It can be something that people who have been through a lot of trauma will or can experience, that their brains will handle it as a trauma rather than an emotional pain.
That blew my mind. It explains why I do not handle grief at all well and why it will absolutely wreck my life until it’s sorted. Because I absolutely will shut down most days and completely block of all of the grief, forgetting it.
Dro did point out that because I have DID that I may take it to the extreme and actually forget/dissociate the grief into a trauma alter, where when I do remember or am reminded, I end up go through the trauma of it all over and over again.
So I’ve been sitting on this for a few days because it was SO explaining why I don’t function in grief and over death (of someone I know). Because my brain has been wired to treat upsetting things as trauma, therefore treating my grief like a trauma – which gets re-traumatized every time I dissociate those feelings.
