This heal-along is a companion to my article on the benefits of Sadness and Grief. Ironically, it’s a bit of a sequel to my last heal-along, where I shared the story of my year of rage flashbacks and how they helped me rewire my self-abandonment (Trauma Glossary 2) programming. What happened on New Year’s Eve triggered the same memory that caused my year of rage flashbacks. If you’ve read either one of the links before this one, you know that I have blocked grief. My blocked grief was how I had a year of rage flashbacks.
See also Blocked Emotions in Trauma Glossary 2. Because take it from me, processing our trauma with a blocked emotion is like doing the work with a missing limb and you’ve just got to hope that the limb you have is strong enough to make up for it. Apparently, my anger was a strong limb, because not only did I rewire my self-abandonment, I used my creativity to master the rage flashbacks (also in Trauma Glossary 2). But on December 31, 2021, I finally got around to grieving over my age thirteen trauma.
The Five Stages of Grief:
- Denial
- Anger
- Bargaining
- Depression
- Acceptance
New Year’s Grief: Approximately 3:45pm
I lost the article I had been working on all week. I was adding the finishing touches when it happened. Fifteen hours’ work, a four-page article deleted. “This is not happening. No, this cannot happen,” was all I could think. I was in denial and immediately started bargaining. I even had a tech friend willing to screen share that very evening to help me retrieve it. Alas, even she couldn’t help. It was gone for good.
As I sat there lost in my stupor, I chastised myself with, “Idiot, you get what you pay for with a free writer’s program.” (No tech support, no help retrieving what was lost.) I had an urge to cry but my blocked grief prevented it. I could still see my article so vividly in my mind’s eye, the structure of my paragraphs and turns of phrases, but my blank screen didn’t.
That was my silver lining. I had gone over my article just minutes before the program crashed, which was how I remembered it so well. I also knew from my research on the hippocampus, that short-term memories on average last about three days. Less than that if stress is involved. In other words, I was racing against the short-term overwrite. To rebuild from scratch, I needed to calm my system.
I had an errand to run, and the drive helped me process my feelings. It helped me acknowledge that I felt violated, robbed. I had poured my heart and soul into that article, and it was taken from me. Destroyed. It made me remember the last time I felt that way: the diary incident at age thirteen. I was in a flashback.
My Flashback became My Anchor: Approximately 6:30pm
I realized two things. One, I had no hope of rebuilding my age thirteen diary, but I could rebuild my lost article. Two, my emotions had someone to blame, someone to point at and say, “Your fault!”
My parents had nothing to do with my destroyed article, of course. It helped me shrink my inner critic (Trauma Glossary 2) by expanding my outer one. It helped me forgive my mistake of trusting a free program. That was the first step, though. My emotions still had to be worked through. I could dwell on the past and ruminate on my series of “if-only”, which was what my emotions wanted. Or I could focus on what I could do now, which was what my logic wanted if time travel wasn’t an option. Sorry Logic, no time travel for us. So, I tried listing the keywords but writing anything felt too daunting.
“Depression Stage” Means Grieving: Approximately 9:50pm
I sat down for a moment and looked at my husband. I told him I was in a flashback to my diary incident. Then, as I continued watching him, I said, “You would have been a great father,” to which he replied, “You would have been a great mother.” And just like that, boom, the dam broke, and I bawled over what happened to me at age thirteen. The destroyed diary had taken my last shred of confidence in being a decent mother. My father’s lie had directed my decisions to never have children. I never saw the lie for what it was until my childbearing years were behind me.
My husband held me and encouraged me to get it all out. So many years to cry over, so many questions forever unanswered. What would our children have looked like? What sort of personalities and interests would they have developed? As I sat in my husband’s arms that New Year’s Eve, I mourned the death of those who were never even conceived.
Here’s Anger, Not Far Behind Grief: Approximately 9:58pm
Anger made an appearance, little spurts at first. I grumbled a couple of anti-well-wishes concerning my father. My husband (bless him) validated my karmic fantasies. So, I followed it up with even more demises I wished for my father, including his afterlife. Because hey, sometimes you’ve got to be thorough.
Angering and grieving in concert: Pete Walker is right!
When we can both anger and cry while re-experiencing our early abandonment in a flashback, we can obtain a more complete release from the abandonment mélange.
Complex-PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker
Abandonment Mélange is in Trauma Glossary 2 and I experienced his words that New Year’s Eve. I angered and cried while re-experiencing my age thirteen flashback. My system was calm thanks to my tears and my head space was clear thanks to my anger that accompanied it.
I knew what I needed to do. So, I downloaded Microsoft Word and then I used its Dictaphone instead of typing a single word. (Typing anything that night was way too overwhelming.) I verbally processed my visual memory of the paragraph structure and watched as a page of words turned into two and then three. I had rescued the memory of my lost words right before the year turned into 2022 and in so doing, I secured an easier tomorrow.
January 1st of 2022 kicked off with renewed confidence in my abilities to handle setbacks. I had gone through the five stages of grief in a single night and came out the other side in full recovery. If you’re wondering which article I had lost and managed to recover, it’s this one on Somatic Work.
Can Our Flashbacks Help in Other Real Time Problems?
First, let’s acknowledge that anyone would have struggled with the shock and denial of losing several hours’ work, traumatized or not. Now let’s consider how instrumental my flashback was in helping me recover from that problem. Don’t get me wrong, I will never promote thanking our abusers for anything. All they did was make us scared, angry, depressed, and programmed for toxic shame (Trauma Glossary 2). How we chose to become better people despite what they did to us is who we owe our thanks to, instead.
What I am suggesting, however, is what if, in some cases, our ongoing problems can help us recover faster in real time setbacks? My New Year’s grief in solving my problem was owed entirely to how I chose to work through my age thirteen flashback. Because if not for my age thirteen flashback that night, I’m honestly not sure how I would have recovered on New Year’s Eve.