***TRIGGER WARNING***
This post will talk about grief and how it affects our mental health. Please only read on if you feel strong enough. Alternatively, for help and support please visit the mental health and suicide prevention support lines page on this website.
***TRIGGER WARNING***
Unsurprisingly, I have a hate/hate relationship with grief that’s only grown stronger as my bereavements have piled up. Death mountain has a summit that is completely unreachable yet I still try to get there, as I mentioned in my recent post about the Grief Express Train. The reason it grows so quickly is not just because people or things that I love have now been lost, it’s also because I worry about the things I’m going to lose. I know everyone gets scared about things going wrong, and the worst case scenarios, but as someone with a personality disorder, I find myself able to catastrophise future events with an annoying level of clarity.
Catastrophising is a common symptom of most mental illnesses. I find myself worrying incessantly about things that haven’t even happened yet, and as a result, my anxiety continues to skyrocket. It’s a vicious cycle that also seems to have an unreachable summit.
I guess the worst type of catastrophe always surrounds loss. I don’t have a lot of love in my life, but im lucky to have a handful of people whom I just couldn’t survive without. I love them so deeply that I simply can’t imagine life without them and although my circle is small, I hope that everyone reading this also has someone that they mutually love and respect in their life. However, as Queen Elizabeth II said, “Grief is the price we pay for love”, so by loving the people in my small circle, I’m also exposing myself to potential heartache one day. The problem is none of us know when the time will come – it could be tomorrow it could be in the next 50, 60,70 years. What we do know is how much it’s going to hurt if and when we lose that person or object or animal or pet or other thing we love deeply.
I assume that, when other more balanced people get anxious about events that may or may not occur, they have a way of successfully managing that worry or possibly the ability to put it to one side until a more appropriate time to consider it appears. I don’t have those abilities yet. I still face a problem head on even when the problem is several miles away from me. I just want to be prepared, I just want to make sure I’ve covered every eventuality, I just want to make sure that my actions will fix the problem when it comes. If the problem occurs, more than anything, I want to mitigate as much negativity as possible from entering our home and causing us pain.
But we can’t control death and we can’t control when these catastrophic events will happen. With that in mind, I found myself recently considering how much longer our own dog has got. She’s 10 now, but her health isn’t the best. She has problems with her eyesight, her skin and her energy levels. They’re all small problems, but when you add them up you become a pet owner with something to worry about. I don’t just consider how painful it will be when we lose her, I consider how painful it will be to tell our daughter, how she’ll feel, how we’ll feel, how long it will take us to recover, and obviously the hardest thing of all – what will happen when she finally goes? I want nothing more than for my dog to be happy, healthy and living with us for the longest time possible, but because we love her to the ends of the earth, we’re going to pay a price.
By planning and being a forward-thinking pet owner I believe that I’m managing the situation in the best way I can, so my family finds the grief journey an easier one to travel. Still, all this planning for an event that has no specified expectation time is catastrophising at its finest.
Obviously not everyone feels like a disaster is constantly approaching. At the other end of the worry spectrum sits my partner. When I try to engage with him about my concerns over the dogs health, my anxiety that she’s going to get poorly and we might lose her one day, he would much rather fix her health straightaway head-on, but only when it’s a known problem. He won’t entertain spending time deliberating potential disasters with me, he’s one of those people that won’t waste energy on something that hasn’t even happened yet. Although I can’t adapt, I know his way of thinking is more healthy.
But my grief concerns stretch far wider than just our animals and our family. I can catastrophise about possible losses that concern inanimate objects things I’ve written, things I want to achieve in life, and memories that I don’t want to forget.
For example, when I purchased a new pair of trousers recently, I was absolutely thrilled at how well they fit and how comfortable they were. Rather than just enjoy that single pair of trousers, I convinced myself that I’d never be able to find another pair of them again and once this pair are threadbare, I’ll be devastated and unable to source a replacement. So what did I do? Instead of just enjoying one pair of trousers, like a normal human, I purchased another pair within weeks of the first sale. Thankfully they were reduced, but looking at it retrospectively, I know I was over compensating for some pointless anxiety.
So the question I have to consider now is how do I stop the apocalyptic levels of catastrophising I entertain internally, and become a person who understands loss is a fact, and though it will always hurt, it can’t be avoided.
I’m unsure, but I feel that talking about the old unresolved losses helps to find acceptance, even if it’s only partial. Some people are undoubtedly more unlucky than others when it comes to the bereavement tally, but they aren’t all living in the worry-farm that I’ve created.
Don’t feel ashamed of finding loss difficult to bear but I do feel sad that I can’t manage all this better, so I think it’s right to talk about it and normalise our fears.
Bereavement charities such as Cruse offer free one- to-one counselling to cover subjects like this, and help people come to terms with losses in the past, and whatever’s in the future.
If you feel that your grief is becoming difficult to manage, always on your mind, worrying about the future, then talking to one of these services might help. Of course, your GP should be able to help with appropriate mental health support too, and I’d always advocate talking to them to enable any long-term recovery.
For more information you can visit the grief page of this website, or the mental health and suicide prevention support lines page for a list of charities who can help.
More than anything, if you understand what it’s like to constantly worry about painful events that might never happen, the please know you’re not alone.
Look after yourself and thanks for reading.
Creative Steph 