Counselling is like trying to photograph a gecko skeleton

I wasn't sure what to expect when I became a counselling client. Here is how it worked out for me.

Regrouping after realising something was wrong

Living in the tropics we have geckos flitting all over our house. My son was fascinated when he discovered a gecko skeleton on the floor and asked for my phone to take a photo. At first he was frustrated. He couldn’t see anything on the phone screen.  Taking a photo up close with auto focus was harder than he thought. After some playing around he found the gecko on the screen and eventually we got it clear enough to take a photo.

It reminded me of how a year and a half ago I came to realise that annoying blur on the edge of my life was actually something. I wasn’t just going to get over the weird feeling I had when I thought about the start of my husband’s chronic illness.  Even though it had been more than 5 years it was still an issue. I felt like I had been defeated by my emotions and needed to regroup although I didn't even know what the blur was.  

The word prompts for A Chronic Voice blog link for this month help describe the last 18 months.

Regrouping. Investigating. Boosting. Setting. Reviving . 

Read on to find out more and visit over here to see what other chronic illness bloggers up to in May. 

Investigating the issue

Counselling sessions gave me a chance to say what I was actually feeling, not what I thought I should be feeling. All those years ago when my husband was debilitated by dizziness, it didn’t seem like the problem was that big. People who I asked for help told me I would probably be fine soon.

But early 2018 I realised what happened in 2011-12 was still impacting me. I spend two years feeling like my husband was dying or dead. I only came to realise was a big deal after having to articulate the emotions I had during those years. The first counsellor (TFC) called this unresolved grief.

To help process this grief TFC suggested journaling. In theory it sounded good but I didn’t really feel like I had anything to write about. Even though I journal and blog I came up blank at that suggestion. Where would I start?

At last the blur had a name, it became a shape, something I could talk about.

Boosting my understanding

After the second counsellor (TSC) heard my frustrations of not being able to get over it she said it had probably changed my brain. TSC called it “big T trauma”.

Despite planning a “fail proof” trip back to the place where it happened (Australia) I still had that weird horrible feeling. I had been calling it anxiety.  I thought I was scared of something that might happen in the future. But that weird feeling I had when I was forced to think about the events was not anxiety about the future.

I was actually re-living a feeling I had had in the past! My brain was tricking me.

This clarity relieved a lot of frustration.

The blur that became a shape now had a more defined outline.

Our son took a blurry photo of his watermelon drink

Setting out to learn more

So there I was realising finally that I had suffered grief and trauma back when my husband was first sick then I read about a type of traumatic unresolved grief.  

I was excited to find a more specific way to describe it: Ambiguous loss.

This concept popped up on my screen thanks to Marilyn Gardner (the third counsellor?).

From The Frozen Sadness of Ambiguous Loss

 “  "I move on and find out there are two types of ambiguous loss: One is that the person/place/family is physically absent, but psychologically present, in that they may reappear. This can be loss from divorce, moving, boarding school, migration. The other is that the person is physically present, but the core of who they are is absent. Examples of this are people with dementia or alzheimers." 

It had  felt like my husband was absent but he was actually physically present so it didn’t look like a loss. Reading more from Pauline Boss, who coined the term, things makes a lot of sense. It explains why the magnitude of my loss wasn’t acknowledged. The loss was unclear.

I feel like I could write much more about this but for now I’ll just say it is such a relief to have someone else explain what happened and why it is so painful after not being able to explain it for so long.  

I wrote about this feeling of clarity the week I first came across it. You can read it here: Frozen Sadness.  Interestingly at the time I did note here that he felt more present when he was away in Cambodia while I was still back in Australia.

The shape on the screen had even more than a clear outline now, I could see some details.

Reviving my going forward strategy  

I’ve found some clues to help me go forward. Looking at my timeline of post trauma events I can see what helps and what doesn't.

Where I felt forced to be in certain situations it just made me feel worse. “Rip the Bandaid off” was my method at one point when I thought it was something I would just have to get over; but so far that seems ineffective. Ignoring it for years also didn’t help.

Writing about it is one thing that helps. I think I’m going to call my blog the fourth counsellor. Perhaps it’s because I’m recalling the memories myself without the presence of the weird feeling.  I think TSC mentioned this would help separate the memory from the stress hormone reaction. And TFC also mentioned writing. An example 5 ways living with an undiagnosed illness in the family is stressful. Also this has more about writing.

The blur, became a shape, with an outline, then a few details and now with writing feel clearly defined.

So there you have it. Its only the tip of the iceberg but hopefully this gave you an idea of how counselling for me has been like focusing in on what it is going on and finally seeing the details. 

  

Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash

What happens when you don't give yourself an opportunity? {fmf}

My relationship with thankfulness soured when I realised I'd used it to paper over pain. At the time I thought I was doing the right thing, being thankful. I've been wondering and trying to get a new perspective on this. I don't want to continually feel cynical every time there is an opportunity for gratitude. I don't want to stop being thankful altogether. 

I think I found what I was looking for today when I read this Power's Out Protocol on A Life Overseas. On the surface it is about how one American family is coping with heat and humidity (here in Cambodia) while the power and water keep going on and off like twinkle lights. Well, maybe more off than on. If you've lived in tropics you know how essential a fan and water are when the temperature is hovering around 38 degrees (which is about 100 degrees if you are from Myanmar, Liberia, America etc). And the humidity... 

Step One of their protocol was to give themselves the opportunity to acknowledge how hard it was (actually they suggested swearing). It wasn't until step FIVE the author said it was time to say something you are grateful for. 

From step one:

"1. @#(Q^&#!!!! (bleep)

We don’t STAY here, in the first step, but we do allow it. The alternative is to try to rush past reality, forcing ourselves and our children into a hazy universe where Christians are never uncomfortable, where Christians aren’t allowed to feel (or voice) difficult emotions, and frankly, that’s not very Biblical."

And from step five: 

"5. Say something you’re grateful for
This isn’t just some kitschy saying, belonging on hand towels at your grandmom’s house. This is actually evidence-based. And Biblically-based, turns out.

This is step five, NOT step one. That’s important. We do want to shepherd our kids and ourselves into an overarching attitude of gratefulness. But forcing gratefulness too soon just leads to hypocrisy and resentment." 

So I think that is what I've been looking for. It is not that thankfulness is bad but when I was in pain I skipped past step one, I didn't give myself the opportunity to realise things were hard . My pain was an ambiguous loss, related to invisible illness so it wasn't obvious to me or those around me. I just skipped over that fact that I felt like I had lost my husband and went straight to all the many things I could be thankful for- food, friends, shelter.

"So my husband is in unending pain, but at least I have bread and milk."

...free write for five minutes flat on a one-word writing prompt:opportunity ...

   

Offering Comfort {fmf}

The other day was a long hot day of being around my kindergarten aged children. I was exhausted and wishing I could take a break. But that night I was reading a bit about young children going to boarding school,and the pain this causes and felt glad, that despite the stress I could be around mine 24/7.

Having that perspective helped me, but I remembered a time when it was actually harmful.

Many well meaning people  said things which sounded comforting when my husband was sick, so I said “thank you”. I could see they thought they were giving me a soothing mug of chamomile tea, but if felt like they were stabbing me with a blunt knife.  

“At least things aren’t as bad as they could be.”

“But you have so much to be thankful for.”

And I also talked to myself in this way. From this distance of over 6 years later it feels like these conversations made things worse. Like I was ignoring the fact I was going through something like the trauma and grief of losing a spouse  (although he wasactually present despite it feeling like he was absent) and just focusing on thing like how nice it was to drink milk again after living in Cambodia for five years.  

Why did I say thanks when I was being stabbed? Was it because I thought those words should help, because in previous times of stress they had? Was it because I was confused about how I felt as I didn’t have my husband to talk to and work it out? Was it because I wanted to let people feel like they had helped me and end the conversation on a high note? Whatever the reason I’m glad to be reading Megan Devine these days.

 Photo by Nicole Honeywill on Unsplash

Linking up with Five minute Friday.  free write for five minutes flat on a one-word writing prompt. (OFFER)

Not really sure {fmf}

"At its best, I think all the arts allow us to tell ourselves our own story. The canvas or the page or the theater is always willing, always open to receive, and to mirror back, that which needs to be said. It's a gesture from the inner world to the outer one. In a way, we let a thing be true when we express it in creative form. In telling ourselves a story, we give shape to something real. In sharing what we create, we give others a chance to enter our world, if even just for a moment."

Megan Devine 

The Unexpected Practice That Helped Me Cope With Grief — When Nothing Else Could

My husband was dizzy. 

For two years. 

For no reason.

That was over 5 years ago.

But now things are manageable. So I wasn't really sure why it felt so good to write about The Dizzy Monster in my spouse for My Migraine Brain a few years ago, or if it was a good thing to be doing. But the other week when I read this Megan Devine article I felt confident about it. Writing about grief is "a gesture from the inner world to the outer one".

"Tell the story until you don't need to tell it anymore" came up in a Facebook group last month. I think in relation to trauma recovery.  This made sense of what had been going on for me recently. Life has settled down now, no major changes or stressful things, but my recent blogging includes a dark blindfolded photo. I was unsure why something like that felt so good, but now I'm thinking of blogging as post counselling therapy.  I'm feeling confident that it is a useful thing to be doing. 

End of 5 min.

The posts I was thinking of while writing this one:

7 ways invisible illness is like reverse culture shock 

(Or why I prefer scorpions stings to visiting my passport country)

Allowing Emotions in 3 things I learnt in 2018
Linked up with A Chronic Voice

5 ways living with undiagnosed illness in the family is stressful
Linked up with A Chronic Voice

Linking up with Five minute Friday

... a one-word prompt every week, and you have the opportunity to free write for five minutes flat on that one word, then join the link-up...The word this week is confident. 

Photo by Oli Dale on Unsplash  

5 ways living with undiagnosed illness in the family is stressful

I couldn’t have articulated it at the time, it was too overwhelming. 

But now all these years later, and with the help of A Chronic Voice‘s  Link up prompts I’m able to explain some of the things that made the initial years of Soeun’s sickness so hard. I also want to share this with the Velvet Ashes community while the theme is "marriage".

My husband was consumed by an incapacitating, invisible, incurable disease. I didn't have any of the physical symptoms but it had a huge impact on me. 

The stressors listed here are about what it was like before we had a diagnosis; he is still sick but now but we are not in crisis. We have a name and a way to manage it.  Although some stressors are still part of our life this list is mostly in past tense. 

I’m thankful for chronic illness websites and counselling that helped me identity these stressors , I hope this list can help you and your family too.

Prompts this month: Adjusting. Hoping. Surviving. Befriending. Awakening

 1. Adjusting to unexpected change

We didn’t know we were adjusting to a new normal. It only dawned on us years later. We weren’t given a warning or time to prepare. It took us by surprise. And even after the symptoms started we kept making plans, thinking that he would get better soon. It was always about waiting to see the next doctor to work out what was wrong and how to cure it.

2. Hoping in vain for health

I was always eager to see what was around the next corner. What would the next doctor say? What would the next test results reveal?  Always hoping there will be answers or something new to try.  It was horrible seeing Soeun in pain for so long, I kept hoping it would end. Surely he will be healthy in a few weeks’ time? The frustration of watching him in pain and not knowing why motivated me to keep waiting to see that next doctor, or try that lifestyle change.

 3. Surviving without him

“When will my husband get better?” morphed into “Will he ever get better?” and we just had to live day by day.

A heavy pile of symptoms had swallowed him up. It was hard to imagine him ever coming back to life. Physically present, with all normal test results, looking healthy- but it felt like he was absent. I missed the person he was before he got sick.

Without Soeun daily stressors were harder to cope with; I was used to talking to him about everything. Happy experiences also became hard to deal with as I had been used to sharing everything with him. I discovered it was hard to enjoy anything if Soeun couldn’t enjoy it too. I didn’t know how to function without him, or even how to articulate that’s what was happening. And it felt selfish to focus on my own pain when I wasn’t even the sick one.

Living with uncertainty. Not knowing why he had gone, or having medical acknowledgement that something was wrong, not having a treatment plan, not knowing if he would come back to life or if he would be like this forever? Or would he actually die? Just surviving.

4.  Befriending and social isolation

We had just moved to a new community when the symptoms hit.  People started befriending us...well trying to anyway. When we were invited to events it became to frustrating and disappointing. We would say “yes” to an invitation but on the day Soeun would be sick so I would end up going by myself, or not going at all.

As a few one-offs that’s kind of OK, not so OK when it becomes the norm. I hated not being able to keep commitments, not being able to show people they are important to us by spending time with them.

It became easier not to make plans, and then we didn’t have the disappointment of breaking them.  So I came to dread invitations, but also dreaded that people would give up inviting us.  

The Chronic Traveller has a more poetic way to describe this- The Well of Despair.

5. Awakening and unsolicited medical advice.

I didn’t have a way to describe this at the time; it was a nameless struggle. When we shared our medical issues with people they tried to help- so why did that make me want to scream? I should be grateful for help.

It wasn’t until years later I came across websites such as The Mighty, Fruitful Today and My Migraine Brain and found others had the same struggle. The awakening was such a relief and I allowed myself to feel the bitterness that had confused me at the time. I was able to move on from delayed bitterness when I read words from a Christian teenager:

"I have to choose to respond graciously and not be bitter towards people for misunderstanding what I’m going through. They have never been chronically ill so they can’t possibly know how hard it is. Jesus has demonstrated so much grace toward me and He is teaching me to reflect Him in my relationships."

Ally, on Fruitful Today

This issue was described in a positive way recently by Erica on A Chronic Voice 7 ways to be a better friend to the chronically ill:

"2. Listen Without Trying to Provide a Solution

Sometimes I’m just frustrated and complaining. I’m not looking for you to fix the problem – I just want someone to listen. I’ve more than likely tried or heard the suggestions or advice you have to offer. Listen with an open mind and really hear what I have to say."

********

Its seems partners of the invisibly ill are likely to either end up with their own health problems too, or the relationships breaks down. I don't have any stats on that, just from the situations I've seen. When your partner keeps saying they are sick but the doctors say they are fine it looks like they are lazy and unwilling to pull their weight;  leaving may feel like the only option for some if this goes on over time.  I refer to Soeun's sickness as '"our sickness" which sometimes ends up being confusing, but its a mindset I find helpful.

Its only in recent years I've had counselors who listened first and found out the actual issue. My pain was seen, they used words like grief and trauma. At the time, all those years ago I didn't know how to explain it, and the only help I received didn't seem to have any positive impact. 

If its a choice between divorce and PTSD, I'm happy to take the trauma. But hopefully there is something in between. If you know someone in this situation it might help them to find ways to work out what is happening for them emotionally.  In last month's linkup I wrote about this under Allowing Emotion and posted some grief resources which might be helpful.

 Photo by Tony Rojas on Unsplash

Frozen sadness conveniently sums up my whole blog... {fmf}

Five Minute Friday Link up time! Word prompt: Convenient 

... a one-word prompt every week, and you have the opportunity to free write for five minutes flat on that one word, then join the link-up...

The Frozen Sadness of Ambiguous Loss is a blog post that conveniently ties together two of the main things I'm reading and writing about these days, so I was excited to read it yesterday.

Marilyn Gardner writes about her Adult Third Culture Kid life and as I've mentioned before (Between Seasons) I started reading her books and blogs to learn about Third Culture Kids (TCKs) but also found I related a lot as a third culture adult. Expat life in a cross cultural family is one of the things I read and write about most at the moment, and TCKs  are part of that. The losses of the TCK is what she was writing about here, but buried at the bottom of a paragraph I found this bit which I bolded:

"I move on and find out there are two types of ambiguous loss: One is that the person/place/family is physically absent, but psychologically present, in that they may reappear. This can be loss from divorce, moving, boarding school, migration. The other is that the person is physically present, but the core of who they are is absent. Examples of this are people with dementia or alzheimers." 

It reminded me of a post I wrote back in 2012 when my husband was sick. It was like when he was physically present he was actually absent (being absent feels like he is more present).  At the time I couldn't really explain to anyone how painful that was, and it felt like there was no reason why it would be painful. This unexplainable struggle is the other main thing I've been writing, the impact of chronic illness in the family, and here it is, mentioned in a post about TCKs.

"This is it!"I felt like yelling.

And I read on, the author had the same moment ..."At this point, it comes to me: this is it! "

*******

An example of my recent TCK thoughts:

6 reasons why my offspring's childhood is different to mine

An example of my recent thoughts about emotions related to chronic illness:

3 things I learnt in 2018

3 things I learnt in 2018 {A Chronic Voice Linkup}

If I had a magic wand to make suffocated emotions, plastic waste and tiredness disappear I wouldn’t be writing this post.

On pondering 2018 with this month’s A Chronic Voice link up prompts I noticed 3 things I learnt that caused to me consider some new habits. It turns out all 3 of them involve toxins/nutrients cycling though a system.  So here they are:  In 2018 I learnt about the importance of Establishing,Breaking and Allowing. 

Establishing good eating habits

Disruptions to our family life came in the form of my fatigue and other symptoms. Over the last few months life for my chronically ill husband was forced even slower. Unconfirmed, but likely due to anaemia from me not absorbing enough iron. (At this point I can hear everyone getting ready to tell me to eat leafy greens and make sure I have Vit C with that.)

Although this isn’t new information for me, the importance of it was driven home last year, something so simple and obvious.  If I want to have energy to support my husband and look after our energetic, curious children I need to get the right nutrition. 

Breaking up with plastic

We have no garbage truck to whisk away our bread bags and milk cartons since we moved out of town. All our rubbish stays with us in one form or other.  If we can’t compost it, or send it out to be recycled we either burn it (breathing in the smoke), or bury it (so it becomes part of the soil that gives us our water and food). 

Horrifying! Is this a mini version of what’s happening on the whole planet? All the rubbish/trash has to go somewhere.

My parents were upcycling before the word was invented, so thinking about the environment and waste is not new. But if my yard and house are filling up with coffee packets and shampoo bottles I’m going to need to pay more attention to moving towards zero waste.

Allowing Emotions

A familiar sight caused me to double take while scrolling Facebook. It was a picture of the emotion chart my counsellor gave me that I didn’t know I needed.

Under it was written: “The 'Emotion Chart' My Therapist Gave Me That I Didn't Know I Needed”

The colour coded wheel starts with general emotions in the centre and fans out into more specific ones (see photo, credit unknown). It helps identify what you are feeling.

A long time ago in a country far, far away my husband was sick.  His illness was debilitating over a period of two years, but still mostly invisible to doctors and others. Soeun’s health is manageable now. That was a stressful season of life but we have been out of crisis for more than six years. We’re glad it’s over!

 Or is it?

Invisible emotions can spring from invisible illnesses. So much loss and grief at the time, but it wasn’t allowed or acknowledged.

The ubiquitous yard stick of health problems kept appearing “At least he doesn’t have cancer”.

Papering over the pain with thankfulness helped me get through each day.

When I tried to explain what was happening people reacted as if I had a paper cut on my finger when really it felt like my finger had been hacked off by a blunt axe.

It actually felt like my husband was gone and I didn’t know if he was ever coming back. (I’ve since been told losing a spouse is one of the most stressful life events.) But that was too huge to feel and also felt silly to say out loud as the doctors said he was fine, all his tests were normal.  And the doctor I went to see about my mental health also said I would be fine in a few months. Plus, Soeun was the one in pain, why was I complaining?

On the surface Soeun was just dizzy, and mostly without a diagnosis, medical tests ruled out all the diseases he didn’t have. And he’s pretty much fine now. So what’s the problem? When I’m explaining the circumstances I feel like there is no problem.

This is what I see out my window. Even in "winter".

Using the emotions chart revealed something unexpected. It was like the shock of opening the curtains and seeing the palm trees in tropical Cambodia covered in cold snow. When the counsellor asked me to check off which emotions I felt during that season it revealed huge losses and grief!  

Unseen losses mean they might be unexpressed for years and may need to be unravelled somewhere down the track.

Or as Sarah Schuster on The Mighty put it:

“Because of course, feelings you don’t feel don’t simply go away. They don’t seep into the ground never to return again. In fact, it’s more like the water cycle. Whatever the earth absorbs eventually comes back as rain. Except in this version of the water cycle, the more water that goes unused and unprocessed, the bigger the storm. Water you ignore comes back with fury, demanding your attention, raining big, angry drops on your head.”

So I don't have a magic wand to deal with the tiredness, trash and tears but potentially I could turn these into new year resolutions. I'm not willing to make such a commitment on the internet though, but it will be interesting to ready this again next January.   

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Another article and video also helped me to keep thinking through "Allowing Emotions". Have a read & watch. It makes so much sense and was so eye opening for me.

The mistake I made with my grieving friend  on Huff Post.

And this video from Refuge in Grief , Megan Devine: