[Treasur]

I'd like to start a chat about grief.
Selfish reasons bc post-PTSD has unearthed some unfinished business for me.
Trying to find out how to tackle it actively for myself has left me with some questions about how to do that. And the part that grief plays for some LBS.

I'm hoping that putting words to thoughts will help me do my own work.
I'm hoping that for anyone here who feels the same pull to work with/on their grief, the discussion might help. I understand that this topic might not be relevant for everyone and that people will be at different stages and have different experiences of it.

A lot of info available says some version of 'well, do this' (but doesn't often tell you HOW you might do it.) It talks about seeing a process with some common normal stages and reassures you that you are normal. And it talks about a lot of things we talk about here as LBS.

My sense is that grief is part of the LBS process for many.
But it can be difficult to pin down. So quite difficult to navigate through purposefully. And the concept of 'grief work' isn't always very clear about what you should be trying to do other than a general sense of feeling better I suppose.

Complicated/compound grief is about multiple losses that can feed into each other, and can leave us stuck for longer. And I am not the only person here to have lost more than a spouse and a marriage I know.
Disenfranchised grief is the kind of loss that is not recognised or validated by others as more 'normal' loss might be.

Seems to me that many LBS might have both?

The other idea is that loss includes both primary and secondary losses. The world tends to see the first but working through grief after the first shock is often about the secondary losses that others may not see. And sometimes we may not see, or see and not know what to do with. Or be surprised to find the secondary losses coming up to bite hard much later. (Which is what is going on for me, I suspect)

What do you think? Did you see grief as part of your own LBS process? Was it a priority or not?
And if so, did you actively do things to try to tackle different bits or was it more about surviving it and letting time do its work?
And was there a difference in how you experienced or dealt with the primary and secondary losses?

[Ready2Transform]

I think grief is part of all of our processes from BD. I have come to see the stages of grief play out for me, but I wasn't always aware of that at the time. I had to reach some level of acceptance before I could reflect on the bargaining and denial phases that were so long. The marital grief has been different than the secondary processes, I believe because most I accepted those things immediately. For example, bankruptcy. It has a far bigger emotional impact than you expect, yet I never resisted any part of the process. I let myself feel the pain and still experience consequences, but without avoidance. The marital grief was certainly different.

As a fixer there's always that part of me that looked for logical ways to get grief done and dusted. But grief showed me that that's not how she works.

[Couragedearheart]

Treasur,
This is an awesome subject! I am using online EFT classes to deal with emotions as the come up. That’s been the most helpful. But also just giving myself a little time away to grieve, cry, or rage.
Prayer helps too. And I have some people I can vent too.
Exercise is great for anger and rage and often when I’m angry I’ll go work out just to move enough to work out the anger.
I find separating out the individual issues I’m grieving over and giving each one its own time and thought works better than just the overwhelming sum of it all.
Also I find naming the emotion helps as well.

[Schratz66]

For me grief has been the toughest part to deal with.
I am okay financially, I have a place to live, we did not have kids together but I grieve.
I grieve the loss of the love of my life, I grieve the loss of my life as I knew it, I grieve the woman that I used to be, I grieve for the future we might not have, I grieve for the man he was.

There's not much out there in terms of what helps and working through this grief, so I love that you started the discussion and I am hoping to get some ideas and suggestions on how to move through this grief and come out on the other side.

[Father5]

    Throughout this process I have learned so much about myself and my grief.
I didn't realize I was in victim mode, I didn't even realize what that was. I am a man as I think with most men we don't understand this hurt and dealing with it even less.

  I think I grieved normally at BD when she asked for a divorce. I was upset but normal, what ever that is. Then when I found out about the betrayal that was different, I was hurt and very angry. Beyond what would or should be considered acceptable.

  Now I grieve a little different, it is still there. I miss my wife, my friend , my partner. I feel like I am outcast at some events because I am single and couples don't necessarily invite me to get together's as often.

  As a man I would have trouble talking to other men about it without crying. This added a whole new wrinkle to it. The same added with all of it was a lot to deal with.
Here I was a grown man who's wife just cheated on him crying to another man. I can't think of anything more pathetic, I really have a hard time looking at myself about this.

  I am stronger now, I have grown so much. But I still grieve I still have hope. I guess that is where it is for me now at the moment.

[Anon]

Great topic Treasur.   I find I am dealing with grief now a lot more than I did in the early days.   The more I rope drop, the more the grief rolls in it seems. 

I'm in the final stages of there being nothing left of my old life or the ties that bound us.   Our house will be sold soon, then the next step is to sell the rental house.   I thought I wanted to live there but I've since decided that won't be a fresh enough start.  There are still many ghosts in that rental house too, since we lived there years ago. 

By spring, I expect there to be no ties of any kind and no reason on this earth why we should contact each other again.  This has been my goal for about the last year.  The complete and total dropping of the rope.   Yet as that day comes closer, my grief grows in leaps and bounds.

It's almost as if,,, while still connected either financially, legally, or emotionally,,, I was able to delay feeling grief.  I was able to put it off.   Anger helps with that too.   It allows me to stay connected albeit in a negative way.  But now when all the legal and financial matters are close to being finalized,,, and my loss fully realized,,, the grief is almost overwhelming.  I cried everyday during the first year since BD,, then rarely in the second year,, now back to crying daily in the 3rd year.   I am finally allowing myself to feel the full horror of what happened and begin the slow work to get through it.

[Standing Strong]

Wow, super deep topic T.......

Going to be following and reading this thread.... so much to learn 

-SS

[Treasur]

SS - not a topic for everyone but maybe really important for some of us

Anon - yup, me too. Which felt a bit odd hence my starting this collective chat. I wonder if some of the loss isn't real while we are still on the MLC battlefield in some way. Or perhaps it is just a different kind of grief or grieving something different.

Father - it is hard for many men to talk to other men isn't it? Often men talk about the tough vulnerable things with their wives...but when your w is the subject, where do you go? Funnily enough though I wonder if both love and grief are fuelled by a kind of hope actually.

66 - you've put your finger right on it. The grief can be about so much more than just the loss of a person...no wonder it can take a long time eh? But let's try and figure it out together I hope

Courage - i agree..grief seems to start out like a big tangled ball...takes a while to pull the strands out and name them. But if we can start to do that for ourselves, I think we might be able to do more than just try to outlast it.

Ready - there is something about almost making friends with our grief for a while isn't there? And seeing the balance between the more cognitive bits and the bits that are more intuitive or instinctive almost. People talk about stages and grief does seem to have a kind of flow and rhythm of its own, but with different flavours maybe? I have been a champion of avoidance ha ha (although to be fair PTSD saved me as well as stalled me for a while)...so sounds like I could learn a bit from your experience 

[terra]

Grief is the primary issue for me and it’s definitely complicated — both in the diagnostic sense and by recurrent contact with MLC.

I think we’ve both mentioned EMDR before and I’m about to target original grief for a new track of sessions. But this past bad year re: h and ow2, and the loss of our good dog, helped me differentiate between the levels of grief. For me there finally is a hierarchy. Father loss first, oldest and deepest. Then h to MLC. Then the good dog. Other grief beyond those three is far lighter and less substantial, less impactful, and is easier to reconcile or cope with in the moment, and to move all the way through. So for anyone for whom grief IS a topic, I think it is important for us to dial in on what grief really came first, and is it resolved. And I would recommend EMDR as a first and gentle means of “getting there”, because your own mind and body in that setting (in my experience) can be trusted to bring you expediently to the original memories and safely out again with just the parts that you need to carry forward for later reprocessing.

This year has been a lot of grief work for me and some of it had to be active. Going to places that held those facts, seeing the facts with my own eyes, exercising/exorcising something of it immediately after facing it, and then going for the paper data — the facts as they are written formally on record.

Feeling it is gruesome, horrible, beautiful, and overwhelming. And then things click and maybe something of it is distilled or honed fine and the rest of it falls away. HB has said that  mid life as a time of processing so many things and learning so many lessons and that once a lesson is truly learned it never has to be learned again. I have to say I have found that to be absolutely true this year, and I am so glad and feel much relieved and lighter. Stronger. Still fragile right now but clear that ultimately it’s going to be simpler and better as I keep moving through.

Acting for or through or toward it, where action can be taken, has also been really important. A means of visibly making progress.

I’m glad you started this discussion. It’s definitely important here.

[Finding Joy]

I’m not sure what I can contribute, but I’m for sure reading along.  This grief process seems to be long and in layers.