Therapy Corner- According to LaShonda

 

With the recent passing of Chanel, my 9-year-old Shih Tzu,  year 3 approaching of our Mother’s transition to heaven and with Mother’s Day approaching, I wanted to have a discussion about GRIEF.

 

So that we are clear, grief is not just associated with the death of someone from the physical realm. Grief is also associated with any loss that you deem is significant in your life. It could be the loss of a job or a relationship and yes, a pet.

 

People typically have an idea of what grief should look like and how people should deal with grief. In all honesty, even people who have experienced grief in their lives, can’t tell you how or what you should feel. Their relationship with that person, place, or thing they are grieving,  doesn’t look or feel the same as the  person they are grieving, because relationships that we expect to be the same  across the board, never really is case.

Every relationship has a value. Every relationship looks different and feels different to everyone, including myself. So, don’t assumed that you know what I’m going through because you loss your mother or a pet as well.  It’s just not the same.

Now that I got that out, I want to talk briefly about 3 concepts. They are Bereavement, Grief, and Mourning.

Bereavement is what happens to you. It’s the actual loss. The losing of a love one or a thing of value to you.

Grief is what you feel. It’s the emotional, physical, behavioral, cognitive and social response.  It’s like the crying, sadness, the isolation, the acting out, and the decision making. Even the preoccupation with a specific thing, can be considered as grief.

The Mourning is what you do. The showing of great sorrow and sadness and regret for the loss of someone. Also in an outward act that is recognized around the world, in wearing of black.

 

In textbook terms, what does the cycle look like look?

 

What I’m about to say or describe doesn’t happen for everyone or in this particular order or at particular time, but some experience it at some interval in this life process.

Shock & numbness occurs immediately following the death. There may be denial. I can remember this phase clearly. And I sometimes find myself back in denial, because I don’t want to accept my current reality. Sometimes I’m numb to death around me.

Protest stage is where the shock becomes heightened, you feel angry, you yearn for the person who died and you are preoccupied with thoughts of them. This stage I experienced the longest amount of time after the death of my mom.

Disorganization, where there is a loss of interest in normal daily activities, depression, apathy, lethargy, restlessness, aimlessness, confusion, withdrawal. Sleep disturbances, crying, irritability is also seen.

Eventually there is reorganization, where things start to come together again. You start to look forward to doing some of the activities you used to enjoy. You start to try new things and find meaning in the death. You may experience guilt in here too. I personally felt like I shouldn’t be enjoying my life because my mother isn’t here to share in those moments. My guilt was horrible. I even have guilt with the loss of dog.

Then you move into recovery, where a new “normal” comes about.  I call it my new normal. Life, to me, will never be same as I had to recreate a new life. A new way of doing things.

At any one of these stages we could move into deterioration. We may be going along fine, and something will trigger us and we end up “going backward”. I’m numb some days. I cried a lot, criticized myself, felt guilty, and still experience sleep disturbances. But then I regulate my emotions by not being preoccupied with the death (how it occurred) but the with Life of the love one that is no longer present with me in the physical realm.

 

In essence, grief is a lifelong process. I’ve been grieving pretty much since I was 12 years old, when my oldest brother was murdered. I cry often when I think of him. Or relationships I had with others, that miss.

It’s not a bad thing to experience grief. It’s a natural and can be a very healthy process.

 

If your symptoms are too much for you handle, please immediately consider grief counseling.

Let me know how you feel about the stages of grief or even if you would like to share your experiences with handling grief.

-According to LaShonda

Early on in my career as very young Child Protective Investigator Supervisor, I saw a trend of adolescent females who were very impulsive.  I could never really understand their behaviors for the most part but I later was able to connect those behaviors to the abuse and neglect they had experienced.  I thought then that I would do whatever I could to make a difference in these young ladies’ life.

I felt that my purpose was to help young ladies see past the abuse and encourage them to live the best life possible because they are more than what happened to them.  And guess what? I was thrown right into my purpose, when I was hired as a Program Director at a high risk girls program.  These young ladies had serious criminal charges as well intensive mental health concerns. Some were very symptomatic and had daily thoughts of suicide and/or self-injurious behaviors.

Self-injurious behaviors became the norm and even the young ladies who never coped in this manner started cutting. The common denominator was the pain they experienced as victims of abuse.  Their identified coping skills  were to abuse drugs or others, to numb their pain. We now have to manage criminal behaviors, untreated trauma, substance abuse and  self- injurious behaviors.

I later accepted a position at an adolescent psychiatric hospital here in Florida as a Therapist. Not surprised at all, I was assigned to the unit that housed girls that were in the custody of  juvenile justice  and children and families department .  You guessed it, they had all experienced some form of trauma and were very emotionally overwhelmed.  Thanks to being employed at this hospital, I was able to get extensive training on a modality called Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT).

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a cognitive behavioral treatment that was originally created to treat chronically suicidal individuals diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD). It was developed in the late 1980s by Psychologist Marsha M. Linehan.  It has been shown that it is also effective in treating a wide range of other disorders such as substance dependence, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and eating disorders.

Dialectical means an integration of opposites. The primary dialectic within DBT is between opposite strategies of acceptance and change. For example, a parent of a child that’s deep in their addiction, accepts their child as they are, while also acknowledging that they need to change in order to reach their goal of sobriety. This by no means, excuses the behaviors of others, it’s just called  radical acceptance of who the person is and at the same time encouraging them to change. In addition, all of the skills and strategies taught in DBT are balanced in terms of acceptance and change.

While working with a family whose child was diagnosed with Bipolar, Substance Misuse and borderline features, I explained DBT in layman’s terms.  The parent’s initial response was “so I’m supposed to act like this never existed?” My response is of course not but in order for change to occur and for the mother to not stress herself, she has to understand radical acceptance.  This is your daughter. She is impulsive. She abuses drugs. She has an addictive personality.  So what can you do to change any of that? Nothing but accept her for who she is as a human being and encourage her to take necessary steps to change. That’s a hard pill to swallow, I know, but it’s radical acceptance.

The skills that I teach my clients are easily understood and I’m the queen of homework so I always give worksheets particularly the DBT Diary.

DBT includes four sets of behavioral skills that will help individuals maintain better control over their emotions.

First skill is Mindfulness (Acceptance): the practice of being fully aware and present in this one moment and less thoughts on past painful experiences. It will also give you tools to overcome habitual, negative judgments about yourself and others.

Second skill is Distress Tolerance (Acceptance): helps you to tolerate pain in difficult situations. Builds resiliency and helps you come up with new ways to cope with difficult situation.

Third skill is Interpersonal Effectiveness (Change): helps you to ask for what you want, set limits, ad negotiate solution to problems, while maintaining self-respect and relationships with others

Fourth skill is Emotion Regulation (Change): how to change emotions that you want to change.

There is increasing evidence that DBT skills training alone is a promising intervention for a wide variety of both clinical and nonclinical populations and across settings.

While I haven’t described everything that is involved in DBT, I gave a quick description… According to LaShonda.

 

 

If you wan to learn more about Dialectical Behavioral Therapy please visit:

https://psychcentral.com/lib/an-overview-of-dialectical-behavior-therapy/