Living Through Personal Crisis

Living Through Personal Crisis

Ann Kaiser Stearns, Ph.D.

Idyll Arbor, Inc. – Smashwords

Idyll Arbor, Inc.

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(c) Copyright 2010, Ann Kaiser Stearns. All rights reserved under International and Pan American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transcribed, in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the publisher.

License Notes

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Most of the names in this book have been changed and, in most cases, the identities of the persons whose stories are told have been disguised in order to protect the confidentiality and sacredness of friendship and of the counseling relationship.

In memory of my mother,

Margaret O. Kaiser

And to honor my daughters

Amanda Asha and Ashley Anjali

Contents

Preface to the First Edition

Preface to the New Edition

A Personal Note

Acknowledgments

Not to Be Afraid

Things Will Never Be the Same

Feelings of Guilt and Self Blame

Unrealistic Guilt

Realistic Guilt

Moving Beyond Guilty Feelings

Physical Expressions of Loss

Anxiety

Aches and Pains

Appetite

Sleep

Anger and Bitterness Can Be a Good Sign

Anger

Childhood

Interrupted Life

Protest

Dealing with Anger

What One Gets Is What One Resists

Delayed Mourning

Please Don’t Misunderstand

The Importance of Self-Caring Activities

Friends

Empathic Persons

Basic Care Providers

Destructive People

Sexual Needs

Avoiding Major Decisions

Anticipating Difficult Days and Dates

Expecting Unexpected Trouble

A Slow Readjustment Back to Life and Work

Time Away from Work

Daily Routines

The Awful Kindness of Others

Unusually Prolonged Grief

Atonement Themes

A Suffering Script

A Fateful Constellation of Events

Idealization

When Professional Help is Needed

My Story

A Soldier’s Story

A Childhood Loss

Too Much Crisis All at Once

A Traumatic Loss

Unspeakable Grief

Finding Professional Help

Sometimes Medication is Needed

Time Does Heal—But There Are Always Scars

Following Loss—The Fear of More or Still Greater Loss

Reliving Old Losses

Delayed Happiness

Some Survival Defenses Become a Way of Life

Battle Stripes

Cue Points for Evaluating Your Own Healing Process

The Ability to Cope with Life

Symbols of Transition

Learning from the Loss

Moving Forward

Integrating the Loss

From out of the Ashes… New Life

Resurrection

What You Have Experienced Belongs to You

Life is What It Is

Moving forward: Stories of Hope and Triumph

Tony: Triumph in the Aftermath of 9/11

Lynn: A Cluster of People Helped Her Triumph

Derek and Renée’s Healing Journey

Appendix

Notes

For Further Reading

To the ancient Egyptians

the phoenix was a legendary bird, consumed by fire,

who rose up from its own ashes

and assumed a new life.

From our own ashes

we also must recreate ourselves, our lives.

— Ann Kaiser Stearns

Preface to the First Edition

This book is about the small and large losses that happen to people, experiences that plunge them into a period of adjustment. It is for those of you who are moving through a mourning process and for those who are struggling with depression and other symptoms of distress, not yet having realized that you are grieving a loss of some kind.

Not so long ago I experienced a period of personal crisis. As part of an almost desperate attempt to get hold of myself, I submerged, double overtime, into my work. My workaholism itself would become a problem later on, but in a mourning process we don’t think about such things. We’re too busy just surviving in whatever ways we can.

I felt that something had to be learned or gained from the all-encompassing personal turmoil I was going through. My loss was overpowering. I needed a strategy for survival, and my strategy became a program of personal learning. I consumed the grief literature as someone else might have consumed alcohol. I reviewed what my experiences to that point had taught me about coping with life in the face of loss. I wrote stacks of notes on the healing process of persons with whom I had worked in crisis counseling. Always with the person’s knowledge and permission, I recorded many of my therapy sessions with men and women struggling with loss. I took advanced courses at several universities.

Most important, I grieved my own grief with friends, with two different therapists over a period of several years, and within the setting of a women’s discussion group. As so often is the case with grief, my older unfinished losses were unleashed. While mourning the loss of my husband through divorce, I began to release feelings of loss having to do with my parents, my childhood, and my concept of myself. For the first time in my life I felt the full range of my human emotions: love, hate, anger, sorrow, guilt, fear, shame, self-blame, and, eventually, joy.

Out of all those feelings came a series of lectures on the subject of living through personal crisis. These lectures were presented to young adults, senior citizens, and every age group in between: I spoke to homemakers, office and factory workers, business and professional people, college and graduate students. I also gave numerous presentations to physicians and nurses; ministers, priests, sisters, and rabbis; funeral directors, psychologists, social workers, counselors, and police officers; and to many others in the human service occupations. The response of these hundreds of people made me realize that what I had learned about loss was valuable to many more persons than myself.

This book deals with a subject experienced at some level by almost everybody. I have avoided the technical and clinical language that we professionals in the field and college professors are prone to use. It was important to me that my work be readable by anyone with an interest in understanding loss.

The book is written for the person who is now hurting or who has struggled with troublesome and hurtful feelings in the recent past, as well as for the person’s family and friends. Perhaps you are suffering a present loss or an old one never really brought to rest, and you feel powerless to help yourself. Or perhaps a loved one has suffered a loss and you feel uncertain about how to help. You need to understand your loved one’s grieving process.

The book was also written for me. Once and for all, I wanted to make peace with my own losses. Unresolved pain keeps us from being complete, content people. Writing this book has helped me to let go of that pain.

Sometimes I think I’ve managed to come through my own losses because I’ve been so caught up in trying to understand the grief of others. But it works both ways. I’ve had to grow more accepting of the craziness, pain, and pride of grief in myself in order to become an effective helping professional. Nobody wants a teacher, therapist, or friend who presents himself or herself as being without vulnerability to suffering. We learn best from people who are human beings.

As a young adult, with my first hospital patients to care for, I sought out the counsel of a beloved professor. Working with gravely ill patients on a university hospital’s medical ward had provoked within me a storm of unsettling memories. For several weeks I periodically sat in my professor’s office weeping. He was a man with young children and I knew that his wife was dying of cancer, but he listened attentively. Finally, I told Dr. Goodling that I felt guilty speaking of my losses and crying for myself. Surely, I said, his sorrow was more profound than mine. In the years since then, I’ve quoted many times to my own students my professor’s powerful reply. Don’t let my suffering, he said, rob you of your own.

You may also have to give up the idea that you aren’t entitled to mourn because others have greater sorrows. All of us have both the right and responsibility to take our losses seriously. Grief, when ignored or denied, can do us in, harming us in dozens of ways. Facing our losses is part of how we find our freedom again. That’s how healing begins.

Preface to the New Edition

Since I wrote the first edition of this book, everything has changed and nothing has changed. What has changed is that acts of senseless violence worldwide and in America have hit closer to home and taken to new levels both human suffering and courage. The truck-bomb murder of 168 men, women, and children in a government building in Oklahoma City as well as the copycat school shootings and mass killings in churches, synagogues, post offices, and other settings have stunned us with the realization that many evil, destructive deeds occur in unlikely places and even at the hands of homegrown terrorists and troubled teens.

Three thousand innocent people — Americans and citizens of many other countries — tragically lost their lives on September 11, 2001. In the free world, and perhaps more than ever before in the United States, we were united in mourning, compassion, outrage, and resolve.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with repeated military deployments, have taken an enormous toll in lost lives, disability, and mental illness. Tens of thousands of soldiers have been overexposed to extreme trauma and their families overly exposed to emotional distress and financial hardship. They need and deserve the support of friends, employers, their communities, and government programs and policies.

Since the earlier edition of this book, something else causing pain in millions of people’s lives is the expanding prevalence of cyberspace crimes. Sexual predators now use the Internet to prey on countless children while other predators scam, scheme against, or steal the identities of the elderly, the unemployed, and anyone else who is vulnerable. All of these events cause enormous grief and require a long and difficult healing process.

We were shocked by the terrible suffering and loss of life resulting from the Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the Haitian earthquake. The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s has threatened many lives in an all-encompassing way — jobs, homes, family, health, and security. As I write these words, our country is experiencing a new surge of hope — but we may suffer through more losses before we can all come to healing.

* * *

What has not changed is that people still get to the other side of a significant loss or personal crisis only by going through it, which is why the title of the book stays the same.

Hurting is a necessary part of everyone’s healing, but so is hope, regardless of the nature of your loss. Virtually all of us suffer from some form of depression, have to deal with frustration and angry feelings, struggle with sleep problems or conflicted relationships, experience guilt or self-blame, or all of the above.

In order to build a rewarding life in the aftermath of tragic, disappointing, and painful events, most of us look for coherence. We try to make some kind of sense out of our loss. It’s a necessary part of healing that doesn’t change.

People survive a personal crisis when they learn something from it. It is never easy. But when we learn to use pain for something redemptive, such as eventually being able to help someone else, our crisis or loss is transformed into something that makes us stronger.

An event leading to what felt like meaningless sorrow or injury can bring hope or healing to someone else. Often it’s someone we love dearly whom we are able to help. As time goes on, dozens or even hundreds of people are helped by the lessons burned into us by pain.

Even when you think you don’t want to learn from tragedy — such as the death of your child or a horrible violent act done by a cruel person — it is still the case that we best honor someone we love and give meaning to our loss when we choose to go forward and refuse to be destroyed.

What hasn’t changed is that Living Through Personal Crisis still speaks truth and offers hope. Those who are hurting and who yearn to rebuild a fulfilling life will find a healing path here.

A Personal Note

Thanks to the late and influential syndicated columnist Ann Landers, this book became a national bestseller and is now published in seven languages. She repeatedly recommended Living Through Personal Crisis and wrote in her column that Never in all my years of recommending books have so many people written to thank me. She quoted the appreciative words of many readers who were helped by my book in various cities nationwide. I will always be thankful for the doors that flew open after that.

From the time I was a teenager growing up in rural Oklahoma and New Mexico, finding ways to help other people has given meaning to the losses in my own life. Through college teaching, writing books and articles, counseling, interviewing inspirational people, lecturing around the country, or meeting people through radio and television work, I’ve grown stronger and learned so much from the life stories and healing journeys of others. As you continue to read this book, I hope that you also will feel encouraged and be strengthened in moving forward with your life.

Acknowledgments

This book was made possible thanks to the very good work and emotional support of Joan Kesselring, freelance editor Ilene McGrath, Sandee Widomski, and Judith Vetter Douglas. Ashley A. Stearns and Dawn F. Reyes helped with the typing. Joanne Munden helped in more ways than I can count. Reverend George Merrill, and Drs. Van Richards, Marilyn Persons, Richard A. Goodling, and David Hobson provided helpful early encouragement and criticism. Norma and Jack Danz, Eleanor and Frank Fink, Naomi and Steven Shelton, Dr. Al Marshello, Marian and Blake Wattenbarger, Margaret and Bill Keys, and other friends were wonderfully supportive, too. I was encouraged to write this new edition by Mark Doyal of Glow Communications, LLC, and supported by my close friends Rev. Keith I. Pohl and Roberta Pohl, Dorris Hoyle, the Wattenbargers, Cherry Marquez, Burt and Linda English, Colonel Kim Ward, Professor Jan Allen, Dr. Janyne Althaus, Dr. J. Raymond DePaulo, Jr., Dr. Donald Slowinski and Val Slowinski, Betty Beall, Charlie Metz, Melissa Hopp, Rev. Mary Gaut, and my department chair, Dr. Tim Davis. My lawyer, Anthony Elia, has contributed the expertise, calm demeanor, and steady support for which any author would be grateful. Also deserving of special thanks are Diane Bliss, Josette Marano, and Jamie Westrick of Detroit Public Television. They recruited and guided me in presenting a PBS program, which they produced, to be aired nationally with this book as one of the gifts to public television contributors. My daughters, Amanda and Ashley, were awesome in giving their love and affection. Our border collie, Panda, was right by my side as well.

1. Not To Be Afraid

The main thing in life is not to be afraid to be human.

— Pablo Casals

Bereavement comes from the word reave, meaning to be dispossessed, to be robbed of something belonging to oneself.i When a woman has a mastectomy, something is forcibly taken away, a possession rightfully hers. When a man has a heart attack and has to change his way of living and working, something is taken away, choices and decisions that previously belonged to him. When parents lose a child, they are dispossessed of something very precious.

In words that have been attributed to Camus, The order of nature is reversed. Children are supposed to bury their parents. When people of any age undergo the trauma of war or are otherwise victimized by violence, their sense of safety can never be fully restored. Suffering the ordeal of a divorce or the loss of a loved one by death often leaves one with a sense of having been robbed, dispossessed. Having a miscarriage or finding oneself unable to have children — one can see how these losses also could be experienced as losing something rightfully one’s own.

Many other situations can carry a sense of irrevocable injury: rape, betrayal, chronic illness, the birth of a handicapped child, the breakup of a love affair, the loss of a job, abortion, the loss of a dream or goal, the loss of personal belongings in a fire or flood, a major geographical move that involves leaving behind one’s roots and friends. There is also, of course, perhaps the ultimate dispossession: facing the loss of one’s own life.

There is another kind of grief that many of us encounter. Usually it happens in our 20s or 30s, sometimes later. We begin to realize that our childhood was as it will always be: a broken family, an alcoholic or mentally ill parent, a loved one who died prematurely. Even in the happiest of families there are sorrows of various kinds. Our parents and siblings are as they will be. We can’t change them. We can’t make them happier, or healthier, or more careful of themselves, or less misunderstanding of us. Grief sets in, for the events of the past are unalterable, and the sense of loss may be experienced as a death.

Life involves almost all of us in losses of significant magnitude. When I was 20, I thought that all of my dreams were capable of being realized. If an older person said I couldn’t have it all or control it all, I was insulted. What is clearer now is that there are choices we make and there is the reality that in pursuing some of our dreams we leave other dreams behind. Through both events of our own making and events beyond our control, we come to realize our human vulnerability. It’s a realization that none of us likes to face, but it’s something we can come to understand.

Grief is not a mental illness. It just feels that way sometimes. If you had all the symptoms of grief but no loss experience that triggered the multitude of your troublesome feelings and behaviors, that would be a different story. In that case, you might need a full psychological and medical examination.

Sleeplessness, anxiety, fear, intense anger, suicidal ideas, a loss of interest in activity, a preoccupation with self and with sad feelings — you may think these all add up to going crazy. Actually, each of these things can be a part of the grieving process. You probably don’t need professional help, just an understanding of the battle you’re fighting.

A young woman, soft-spoken and poised, was talking with me. It had not yet been 48 hours since her brother’s death by suicide. Theresa seemed older than her 18 years. She was not crying, although an occasional wetness came across her eyes. With extraordinary rationality, Theresa outlined why she wanted to begin counseling. She spoke in a monotone as if reporting a non-newsworthy item on a news program. She had wanted, she said, to overcome her self-destructiveness for a long time. She wanted to learn to take better care of herself; her brother’s suicide was a reminder of her own suicidal thoughts in the past. Continuing in a calm voice, Theresa, who had just come from the funeral home, began to speak about her brother. Her strange sense of presence is typical of very early grief. She was in a state of shock. In the first several days our emotions are blunted and the impact of the loss has not been fully experienced.

At first we are apt to move back and forth between a calm frame of mind and tearfulness. We feel bewildered and stunned, although often we are quite capable in