"Children don't get traumatized because they get hurt, children get traumatized because they are alone with the hurt" Dr Gabor Mate
I find that the image of the 5 stages of mourning corresponds well to the phenomenon of dissociation and to the functioning of dissociative identity disorder!
I saw my psychiatrist this week and we talked about depression and suicide.
I wonder a lot about why people, those around me react in such or such a way to this?
Why are the majority of interlocutors afraid and seek to calm and stop the expression of sadness, despair in the other when it is expressed?
Why do they consciously flee or show their will to flee unconsciously (by micro expressions or the posture of their body) in the face of words of distress?
There must be plural causes ...
First of all our education. Crying is inculcated as being a child's whim, a weakness, the fact of being "a sissy, cozy" ... To express by tears and tears his suffering or his discomfort is instilled in us from childhood as "to control" and "not to express".
This therefore induces mistrust and a rejection of society in general towards people who no longer manage to hide their discomfort. People who have a burnout at work, postpartum depression, depression ... All of this is perceived negatively by society as a sign in those who express it and let it appear of weakness, of madness, of depression. 'inferiority. We must be combative, solid, strong in all circumstances. As if showing your flaws would endanger us, as in nature where the weakest become prey for predators. Society expresses this primary and visceral rejection in the form of cookie-cutter judgments and banishment.
Then undoubtedly a part of "religion" inculcated in one way or another. Suicide is still very badly perceived, I think, for partly religious reasons. Religion has always condemned and rejected those who chose to die this way.
And finally, I think that some kind of dissociation phenomenon also occurs when a person tells us about suicide. I don't think there is a single person on this earth who does not or will not have at some point in their life a suicidal thought. Life, living is far from being a long quiet river! And I think that any person will have to face at some point in time with difficulties, traumas, losses, sorrows ...
I believe that suddenly every person who reacts to distress with rejection or fear is actually expressing some kind of rejection and fear of what they themselves may or may have felt at some point. A bit as if she was afraid of catching a contagious disease, of catching depression herself and being invaded by contagion of suicidal thoughts ... As she fights her own distress by rejecting it, she will react strongly. even in front of a person who expresses it in front of her ...
But what is sadness or despair?
It is a feeling, bodily and emotional sensations, thoughts that are expressed in us. Why feel joy, laughter would be acceptable and could be expressed and not the other way around?
Consider another emotion: anger.
Anger can be good, saving. It is an indicator of what we want and what we don't want. It can also be protective and allow us to save ourselves in a situation of danger. It can be motivational and push us to act, to react to a situation that we don't like ...
Anger can therefore be very positive, very helpful in our daily life!
Conversely, anger can also be destructive, pushing us to acts of violence, to transgress the rules of society, morals and to commit crimes or offenses.
I think the key to not going from positive anger to noxious and bad anger is expressing it. Learning from an early age that feeling anger is a right, is legitimate, is essential! Learning to dose it, to express it in an adequate way allows us to make healthy and balanced human beings ...
For me, it is very important to tell myself that I have the right to be angry, that my anger is legitimate. I was raped when I was a child. I was harmed in the sect in which I grew up. I have the right to be angry! My anger is legitimate! I have the right to express it.
The same goes for my distress and my despair.
My sadness is legitimate. I was abandoned. I was not protected when I was a child and even today I feel alone and abandoned, invisible. My sadness is legitimate. I have the right to feel it and express it. Society has abandoned me. The institutions have abandoned me. I have the right to be sad.
What will make a person take action and commit suicide?
I attempted suicide several years ago. My brother committed suicide.
I think it's the inability to openly express this sadness that makes us take action. I think it's loneliness and abandonment that make us act. The shame, the guilt of not being a healthy member of society, no longer finding your place, feeling rejected because what you feel is not accepted and scares the other.
What do we expect from those around us when we express our despair aloud?
Just listening. Just to be heard, that our sadness be accepted as legitimate, as a right to be expressed.
When we can talk, cry, our emotions calm down. Our distress, our physical and moral suffering is diluted, becomes integrated in us.
Expressing aloud what we feel and think inside allows our brain to accept this reality: we are sad, we are in difficulty, we feel and think such and such things. Being able to say it then allows us to look for what will help us to appease that in us, to find solutions, reasons to hope, to fight to live ...
In the 5 stages of grief, there is denial, anger, bargaining then depression and finally acceptance. In our life, we may have to go through a lot of grief! The mourning of a romantic relationship, a job, a loved one who has died, a friendship ...
Depression is one of the stages, the penultimate before reconstruction. It should therefore not be perceived as negative !!!
Depression is when we slowly begin to face reality. It is therefore an important step to accept what we have lived or life and succeed in digesting it, integrating it into our own history!
Depression is a way that our brain finds to integrate our experiences into our autobiographical memory.
Please keep it in mind!
Depression is a positive process! This is the sign that we are looking to move forward, to move forward! Our body, our brain needs this step to get better.
So if we express sadness, despair ... Listen to us. Let us express it, say this pain out loud. Don't scold us, don't tell us "oh no, I forbid you to say that and kill yourself!" If you make us feel guilty or make us feel ashamed by this sentence, all it will do is we will forbid ourselves from telling you how we feel. We are going to keep it all to ourselves and I think this is where it gets dangerous and we risk taking action!
Don't make us feel ashamed or guilty about how we feel. Our feeling is LEGITIMATE, we have the right to think what we think, to feel what we feel! Life is shit sometimes. Life hurts. And to deny and refuse that sometimes life can be like this is denial! Refusing to say this reality will not allow us to move forward and accept and get better afterwards!
Just be there. Listen to us with kindness, look at us, if we accept it, take us in your arms. Tell us that we have the right to feel what we feel, tell us that you hear us, that you understand how much we are suffering. Help us to integrate our pain, our distress, our emotions ...
And if you are caregivers, do not stuff us with pills, likewise, be compassionate people and take time with us, listen to us ... If we are hospitalized for depression, leave us this space to speak, this possibility to finally express ourselves. Do not force us to hide and hide everything, to play the role of the person who is better to be able to leave the hospital. Allow us to express our inner world so that once appeased, we can finally look to the future, hope, projects ... This is your role, not to silence us or force us to dissociate ourselves or strengthen our dissociation!
Depression is POSITIVE !!! This is the penultimate stage of mourning!
This means that we will soon get better, move forward and find how to integrate our painful experience into our history so that it takes its place in our history and the suffering is reduced !!!!!
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