There are many ways to deal with a personal loss. Some ways are healthy, and some not.
I am someone who has a very unhealthy way of processing loss. I may cry once or twice, but even that is the most minimal amount. After that, I just flip the switch on my emotions. I don't even do it deliberately, it just happens. One moment I am hurting, and the next I am empty and numb.
Once that switch in my head is flipped, I stop feeling entirely. I may seem happy, I may seem as if I move on, but in reality that is all an act. I simply don't feel. And this emptiness can last for months, and even years.
I learned to do this at a very young age. Not because I didn't like feeling pain, because let's face it, no one likes it, but because every single emotion I ever felt was made into a weapon and used to manipulate and abuse me. Succinctly put, my father wasn't a very nice man. But that's a post for another time.
Because I learned to stop feeling in certain situations at such a young age, unfortunately this habit spread out to all kinds of different feelings, affecting everything else at the end of the day, as it is wont to do. It took me a very very long time, and a lot of help and patience form my best friend, to start breaking that habit. Although I am afraid that it does still have a tendency to happen.
But my way is just one of many. Where I suppress my emotions and have it lead to many negative situations as a result, many people have a healthy way of dealing with it. These people allow their emotions free reign. When they feel pain, they show it and ride the feeling out. This is the best option.
Giving your emotions free reign is healthier, as this lets you experience it in the moment, and process it in a continuous and uninterrupted fashion. Because you are able to do it inn this way, you do not experience the negative side effects that methods like suppression or drinking and doing drugs to forget the pain invariably causes. Although, it does have its own set of problems.
Because there are so many ways to deal with pain, those that show it freely tend to be judged because of it. Many people don't see it as the positive thing it is, but they see that person as weak and childish because they let themselves be controlled by it. Yes, there are also many people that completely overreact and make a very big fuss where it is not needed in these cases, and this can be extremely annoying. But this is not everyone.
Because of the people that make such a big fuss over small things, a stigma is attached to those that process their emotions in a healthy way. And many people are not afraid to make their opinion known about this. This leads to them starting to suppress their emotions and not process it because they don't want to be continuously judged for it. And this is the absolute last thing that should happen.
Because they start to suppress it due to fear of judgement, people who do this when it is not actually in their nature, tend to suffer more from the negative effects. Most often it is these people that turn to methods like drinking and drug use in order to forget about it. Because it is so against their nature, they have to take extreme steps in order to cope in those situations.
There are very few people that can be in that situation and be able to see that they need help in order to manage it. These handful of people tend to go to professionals for help. They need the safe environment in order to process. But out of this handful of people, there is even less of them who openly admit seeking help, because of the stigma that is attached to that.
When you seek help, a lot of people have a tendency to either think that you are crazy, or that you are looking for attention. Simply because they don't understand the need for help. I personally am all for seeking help. In fact, due to certain things that happened to me, it is something I greatly want to do myself when I am capable of it.
Seeking help in order to cope with feelings like loss, or abandonment, or any problem is not a weakness. In fact, I am of the personal opinion that it is a strength. It is far too easy to suppress or forget pain. It takes a very strong person to admit that there is something wrong and that they truly need help for it. Losing yourself is easy. Seeking help when it is in mans true nature to deny that he is weak, is a lot harder to do, and requires tremendous amounts of courage and determination to be able to do.
If you seek help for something that is a real problem to you, you are not weak. You are not a coward. You are not a drama queen. You are having trouble with something and you need professional help in order to cope, because its effects are so intense that you cannot manage alone.
For anyone who seeks help, or anyone that suffers from depression as a result of loss or any other negative situation, please follow the links below to Destroy Depression and Online Therapy. These groups have the resources you need in order to process your problems, and they can help in many ways.
https://www.online-therapy.com/?ref=271714
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