Grief

Grief... It's so common yet so uncomfortable. It feels so unknown. Most importantly, it isn't reserved for just death.

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The five stages of grief are pretty well-known but I will give a brief summary of each...

Denial: this is almost always experienced when grieving. It's a way for people to protect themselves from reality.

Anger: this is commonly how people react to reality setting in. The pain hits and when it does, it hits hard.

Bargaining: sometimes people ask "what could I have done?" or in one case for me "why did this happen?"

Depression: this causes more than just sadness. It can also include uncertainty, regret, or fear.

Acceptance: this includes radically accepting reality. For those of you not involved in mental health support, this means accepting reality as it is without trying to change it.

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It's important to note that the stages of grief don't have to be done in order. They don't even have to all be felt.

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What made me decide to write about this?

Well, I've been struggling with grieving a couple different things... I've been missing my grandma like crazy lately even though it has been 7.5 years. I know grief doesn't have a timeline but that doesn't change judgement from other people. I have had "family" say imply that losing someone I loved and trusted, more than anyone, should be less painful. (It's not... I still have flashbacks to watching her suffer, nothing I could do, and the day she passed.)

On top of that, I still have very strong grief about my eating disorder. The grieving process started at the beginning of December, nearing the end of my partial hospitalization program. I broke down during dinner and my therapist pulled me right after dinner. I have a bad memory but how I felt and acted is something that I don't think I will ever forget. I was pissed... At her, my life, and most importantly, my own actions. As I was crying, I yelled at her, "You're a fucking bitch!" She is the one who made me cry. She knew I needed it more than anything and I didn't believe her. I didn't think grieving an eating disorder was possible, even though it had been mentioned in multiple groups prior to everything. I thought that they were spewing bullshit.

For two weeks straight, I cried at every meal, every snack, and had panic attacks when it was time to eat, especially if others were around me. I wanted to engage in behaviors more than ever before.

Now that it has been a few more weeks, I've really improved with binging and purging. I managed to hit three weeks without doing it after doing it several times a week for years. However, I have had symptom swapping. I really thought I could avoid it happening. I thought if I just fought hard enough, it wouldn't happen. That wasn't the reality... I started to restrict a lot more than before. I have been fighting like hell to not need the help I needed before.

I've just been alternating between anger, bargaining, and depression. A lot of days are anger that I ever did this to myself. There is always bargaining about, "Please let me feel better. I'm trying so fucking hard." The depression usually mixes with the anger (which makes sense based on the anger iceberg that I learned about pictured below).

I made the anger iceberg very simple because I couldn't find the folder that has more detail but basically... Anger is a secondary emotion, so there's always something beneath it and that "something" is, more often than not, sadness. That's another thing that was drilled into my head there but based on the knowledge I had, I understood completely.