I have been recognizing lately how often it is necessary to grieve the loss of a child, parent, or spouse who is still living. The family member may be lost to addiction, mental illness, a cult, a possessive spouse or a spouse who has found someone else. It is complicated by the existence of hope that recovery or common sense will prevail. I’m often told that it would be easier to deal with if the person had actually died. There is always hope that the addicted member will find the ability to find a path back towards a future rather than the chaos they are entangled in. A family member who becomes psychotic and loses touch with reality creates incredible pain for those who love and care for that person. It can become even more distressing if the family member is a threat to them. I find too often that parents lose contact and relationship with a child because of a spouse who is too possessive and threatened by their family. I often hear people say “I never saw it coming” when a spouse or significant other leaves them for someone else. The endearing memories from the past feel like only yesterday and one wonders how could this have happened. A support network of friends or a spiritual faith can be helpful, however, the grief that one feels is real and painful. Accepting the loss can be just as real as if the person died and often my perception is that it is worse.
Adapting to being whole
I commonly work with the ego states of clients. Ego states are the dissociative states of individuals, usually identifiable by the age at which they became active. I view individuals with complex trauma on a continuum of dissociation. Those who did not want to be in the stressful environment in which they were raised are going to find the need, if they are resilient to dissociate for the purpose of managing the unhealthy environment. With highly traumatized clients who are highly dissociative those ego states create an experience of having a mind that is fractured, with a seemingly constant input of data coming in at the same time from different sources. The work of those ego states in therapy is to recognize they are safe in present time and that it is no longer necessary to maintain the constant responsibility they have been engaged in since their creation. They allow a person with a traumatic past to manage the stability of the self while managing daily activities. Once they recognize the adult self is able to manage daily life in a safe environment the ego state is allowed to be less engaged and be quiet and eventually integrate into the adult self. Most highly dissociative individuals believe that when this occurs they will be finished with therapy and all will be normal. I caution them that there is more work to do. It takes time to adapt to being “normal” and some previous trauma needs to be processed in present time, particularly if it has been placed in a “container” when working with the ego state. Their relationship with everyone around them changes and both the client and those they interact with have to adapt to the change and learn to trust that the change is going to be permanent. Significant people in their life often have difficulty with the change. Life can be challenging to those who have learned one way of coping with stressors, mood swings, emotions, and everyday events when they find they not longer are affected by them in the same way. Communication with others changes when they find themselves reacting to situations differently than thwy would have previously. Relationships are transformed and sometimes a partner does not like the change. Boundaries with others changes. New possibilities are presented and goals are redefined.