I should have just set this all on fire!
My family and I just completed an interstate move. It’s a great move for us. Puts us closer to family and resources.
There’s nothing like boxing up all your worldly possessions and leaving behind all the connections you’ve made in an area.
Leaving behind your routines and everything familiar to head into the unknown.
Let’s face it. It sucks. Moving sucks. The actual act of the logistical nightmare. Even in the future when we’re using SS Enterprise Movers, Inc. to just beam everything to a new location, it’ll still suck.
The reality is that our minds crave order. And your brain doesn’t know what to do with the final 7 boxes where you stopped caring and just threw everything in together because you just wanted it to be over. Or the jumble of possessions in your new place as you try to figure out the new normal.
It would’ve been so much easier to just burn everything, show up to our house and get all new stuff. Expensive. Wasteful. But infinitely easier.
It’s interesting how even a positive event can have some negative emotions associated with it. Things like moving, graduating, having kids. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past 4 years spent in VA, it’s that as a society we are horribly unaware and uneducated about the impact of our experiences.
We don’t understand or respect trauma!
Now I’m not saying the move was a traumatic experience. It was tough and uncomfortable. It was hardest on our 4 yr old who regressed a fair amount and will take a while to adjust.
But that’s the point! Things don’t have to be traumatic in order to experience grief.
And I saw this time and again in the families I’ve worked with over the years. They didn't know how to recognize grief or trauma, particularly in their children. The families would go through a divorce, multiple moves, experience the death of a loved one or a family member being incarcerated and think nothing of it. They would have no understanding that this could impact them or their children years down the road.
I’d hear things like, “but that was when she was 2!” or “that was almost 10 years ago”. And these were in reference to sexual abuse or the death of a mother.
And sadly, they had little to no tolerance for negative emotions, particularly sadness. The mindset was always, “I had worse growing up” and “suck it up buttercup”.
I am by no means God’s gift to parenting. I lose my cool way more than I should. I have definitely used, “suck it up” myself. There’s a time and place for, “you’re ok”. I get that sadness and grief are inconvenient. Hell, emotions as a whole are inconvenient. But good luck trying not to have them.
Our brains have to process what we experience. Sometimes that takes seconds. Sometimes that takes years. But if you don’t take time to process grief or trauma, it’ll take forever. Period
Edit - This post was created prior to Hurricane Irma bearing down on Florida. Obviously, major catastrophes will cause a lot of damage, trauma and grief. However, the way you deal with a traumatic event right when it occurs is different than dealing with it well after the fact. See my next post on Psychological First Aid for more.
Next post will be on Psychological First Aid followed by a post on tips for dealing with grief in children.
A good resource for better understanding the full impact of trauma is The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk. I'll add a link to that later on
Disclaimer – the author of this post is not engaged in a therapeutic relationship with the reader and cannot give counseling advice without a confidential appointment. Readers should be sure to consult with a licensed therapist in their area or seek emergency medical attention if they are experiencing difficulty.
