Tag Archives: support

What’s missing from the picture

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As some of you might already know, this period is rather tough for me, as I’ve recently lost a loved person. But this has also given me the context and space to better understand myself and my emotional dynamic, as I’m passing through the whole grieving process.

Grief is, to put it in a poetic way, the daughter of love. Is what’s left when a dear person leaves us. It doesn’t matter if we talk about someone’s death or about being left by those we were holding dear. It is loss, and loss is painful. That easy.

But this whole pain is never just about the present moment. More often it is about the future moments that person will be missing from our lives. Maybe our first job, our graduation, our wedding. Milestones where we’d love that person’s presence around us.

Currently, my main struggle is to accept that there is no such thing as a right way of living the grief. That the fact that I’m active on Social Media, paint my nails and I’m not wearing only dark clothes is not the expression of me being over it. It’s hard because of the social conditioning that surrounds this kind of moment. The social imperatives of what should and should not be done in such contexts.

Here, though, the grief is about something else. About the small gestures that no one else will be doing for us again. About the way that person smiled or comforted us. About the moments that person will be missing.

Grief is a void. An empty space, a trace left by someone we’ve deeply cared about. And managing it might be hard and uncomfortable at times. It’s personal, intimate, and unique, there is no such thing as two individuals grieving in the same way.

I can only share what I’ve learned so far, hoping it will help more people with their mental struggles.

  • It’s okay to feel good

At first, the moments when I was feeling good, authentically good, were followed by guilt trips. As if I wasn’t doing things right if I could, still, feel good. Until the moment when I realized, sitting in the sun, that she wanted me to feel good. To be happy. And if that person wanted me to feel good with my life while she was part of it, she definitely would have the same attitude now.

  • Stick to a routine

One of the best things you can do during a tough time is sticking to a clear routine. Small habits, daily practice. It helps you adapt to the new reality: a reality where that person is no longer living. But you do still live there, so try to make it easy, not a burden.

  • Do things that make you happy about yourself

It doesn’t have to be a big thing, it has to make you smile. For me, this moment was while cutting the first flowers from my garden and putting them in a vase on my desk. I was happy to see their beauty, feel their fragrance, and I’ve smiled thinking about how much she loved this kind of thing.

  • Revisit your memories with that person

I’m not sure if our loved ones ever leave us, to be fair. There is a part of me that likes to believe that they still hang around somewhere, laughing at our clumsiness and bad decisions. And I might be old-fashioned, but do you remember those photos with you? Go and pass through them. Revisit those moments, the details of the memories you’ve got together. Remember the things you’ve learned from that person. I remember often things she loved, or things she has told me. I also know that, as long as I don’t forget, she’s not dead. Because people die only when those that could tell stories about them will die.

  • Plan your future

Grief tends to make you live in the past. Don’t. Instead, do your best and plan your future. Do it how you feel it. Maybe put together a vision board, or set some goals you want to reach, this is all up to you. Just take the time to reflect on it and establish the small steps you need to take. Your loved ones, even if they’ve passed away, will love to see you succeed.

  • Reach out for support

Say it after me, loud and clear: I’m not weak for needing help. I’m not weak for needing help. Because it’s true, you’re not. Just a human that has to pass an incredibly challenging period of their lives. Talk about it. Be honest about it. Let your dear ones know that you struggle with integrating that loss. It’s okay. It really is. Some of us need more help than others, and it’s perfectly fine. This, as I have said before, is a deeply personal and intimate process. If you feel like the help of a counselor would be beneficial, go ahead and make that appointment. No one has ever been born ready for such life contexts.

This is what I’ve learned so far about dealing with a loved one’s loss. That you need to maintain your composure and take things slowly, one day at a time, without any kind of guilt trips or remorses. You did your best, and definitely has been enough for them, as it should be for you as well. So try to give yourself some credit. It doesn’t seem like it, but you’re doing a great job. And one day, the sun will shine again, as bright and warm as you remember it used to.

Building on ruins

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This is a piece I’ve deeply thought about writing, as I can’t tell myself that I’m a fan of cheesy writings. However, this is about me, about you, and everything in-between, a little longer Thank You note.

 I can recall starting this column in November 2019. It was a gloomy, cold day, and I was feeling low. I was trying to find something to do that would actually make sense, something that would help both me and others. So I thought that it would be a good time to actually put my Psychology knowledge and my personal background to good use. This is how Tuesday Conversations started: from the mix of the thought that I’m not able to write consistently, the need of finding meaning in my life, and the wish to tell my story.

This is how the blog column got to cover all kinds of topics, talking about feminism, suicide, eating disorders, anxiety, saying no, or creating boundaries for the interaction with other people. And I’ve been up for a pretty big surprise, have to say. Not only I have found that I actually can write about various topics consistently, but I have also discovered that there were people that needed these topics to be addressed.

It seemed like those were not just parts of my story, but parts of a whole bunch of other stories which have, by now, found their voice. It was like the tribe I didn’t know I was belonging to found me without me asking for it to happen.

And this brought me to one of the most surprising conclusions so far: something can be built from scratch, even if the foundation is a ruin. Ruins are not dead. Even if what you build is a narrative, a story having her focus on aspects that have been rather hidden than put on display your building has meaning and a purpose to serve.

I can’t help but remember a thing a friend told me when we were talking about writing, drawing, and letting our writings and drawings roam free on the internet: I have always wondered how it feels to write about things so intimate and to share them with the world. It was that moment when I understood that I don’t see the things I’ve faced or the things that hurt me in the past as a private area of my life. Not anymore. Once they stopped hurting, they turned into stories to be told about passing through dark places, as I believe that no one should ever pass through dark times alone.

For me, life means stories to be told, as they are the best way to actually put together a group. Because a problem that no one talks about is a problem that doesn’t actually exist. And mental health has been for too long an invisible problem to keep being ashamed of it, especially when that shame affects us all.

Obviously, it was and still is a process that leaves me speechless every now and then. I write, I post, and it happens to look at those materials and tell myself Did I really write that? Whoa. as my 16 years old self would rather have died than admit there’s something wrong with her. This column helped me not just bring some issues to light or help other people recover, but it has also given me a measure of my evolution. I’ve read the writings and seen how far I’ve come, sometimes without even noticing the evolution,  the direction of the process.

In the end, this is how we learn, by doing things and looking behind us every now and then. And this is how one gets to understand that healing is, indeed, a process. Something beautiful, something spectacular, something deep, unique, and extremely personal. At the end of the day, there is no actual recipe for fast healing and even the thought of a universal recipe to heal one’s wounds sounds like a fantasy plot.

Just like our traumas and our life history, our ways of healing are unique. There are no two individuals with the same way of healing their wounds or the same way of living through their suffering. Actually, the mere idea of it sounds absurd as one is reading this. But this doesn’t involve that there are no common points, as they certainly do. The beauty of it though is the fact that you can’t find those common points without being brave enough to step in the lights and tell your story. You don’t even have to tell the world all of it, or to use words. You can sing, dance, paint, act, sculpt, run, draw, photograph, even film your story, your way out of the hurting. You have total freedom when it comes to how much you’re feeling to express about your journey, and you have total freedom when it comes to the way you choose to do it.

Tuesday Conversations, my mental health column, will go on. I’m deeply thankful for all the wonderful people I’ve met along the way, for their support and critics that helped me make it better, and I hope that more and more people will become brave enough to start telling their stories. Your stories matter, your feelings are valid, and your healing process is worth it. You, as individuals, are worth love, appreciation, respect, support, and help. Go into the world and allow yourself to get them.

The G that comes around

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The first word starting with G that comes to my mind is Gangsta. The second one is Guilt.

But guilt is also one of my oldest visitors, as I have always been an introverted perfectionist. It was always easier to take the blame myself than to look for the person that’s actually guilty. And it took me years of inner conflict to see that, more often than not, guilt is an atavism, a toxic, unnecessary emotion.

Let me be clear: unnecessary, not useless. Guilt is, in fact, a very important emotion, as it stands for our inner moral compass. We often feel guilty when we say or when we do something wrong. Something that hurts or even harms the others. Something breaking our moral principles, and probably the society’s ones as well.

This only means that guilt is an emotion with huge destructive potential, as it is so intense, and people tend to feel guilty for so many reasons. That’s how I define guilt trips: unnecessary feelings of guilt. It takes us by surprise when we decide to cut off someone or to say No, it takes over whether it is or not the case to do so.

Obviously, all feelings are valid, and no one is ever allowed to tell you what to feel or not. But guilt is a legitimate feeling in very few cases. If your words or actions are not putting anyone in danger, if you don’t harm them or become a threat to their well-being or existence, your guilt doesn’t have a reason to exist.

Actually, I have the feeling that the thing we often label as guilt is, in fact, shame. A feeling that guilt is very often coming with as a pair. Try to put I feel ashamed for instead of I feel guilty when you tell how you feel to someone else, or even to yourself, and observe how it feels. If it rings true, if it is, indeed, guilt, and not shame… Just try and pay attention to yourself, even take notes of the process in your diary, if it helps you. If anyone would ask me, I’d say we feel, 9 out of 10 times, shame. But as shame is associated with being dirty, guilt becomes a more popular substitute.

However, there is another possibility, even if darker. To feel guilt as a result of your past experiences. If you grew up in a household where you used to be the guilty one for whatever happened or to be accused because there was the easiest way for the accuser to deal with their frustration or rage, there are chances that you’ve internalized the It’s all my fault mindset, successfully applying it today. In other words, toxic environments often create grown-ups that believe that they’re to blame for whatever goes wrong in their lives. Just like in their past, when they were blamed either way.

And this is how guilt becomes a toxic, irrational feeling, instead of a legitimate one, the moral compass that helps to separate good from harmful. By being used by the powerful figures of the grown-ups as a way of dealing with their negative emotions while avoiding taking full responsibility for their actions or words.

The best thing is, however, that one can work and break-up with the toxic mechanisms learned along with life. We can set ourselves free of whatever harms us mentally and spiritually. But this only happens while working together. When we tell our friends that they’ve crossed our boundaries again. Or when we tell them how their words or actions make us feel.

It also counts as healing our old wounds when we ask ourselves Is this what am I really feeling? And if not, then what is it that I am feeling? and observing ourselves. Looking at our patterns: the type of people we feel attracted to, the kind of contexts that we find ourselves jumping into, the kind of feelings that we allow to express themselves freely.

Because what we tend to label as guilt, is rarely actually guilt, and mostly a  mixture of rage, shame, and remorse. Three very different feelings, with different triggers, but which tend to pass anonymously, being labeled as guilt.

Managing guilt trips is, as any other remarkable change, a matter of work. A matter of understanding what’s triggering the feeling, of the life experiences that root it, and of questioning one’s mechanisms. It is about asking yourself How am I acting when I feel guilty? and How can I act different and healthier, instead? It is also about questioning one’s close people, as they can see some angles which are unavailable to you.

And, as dealing with any emotion, is about understanding it, about being patient with yourself, and asking for help. For the support, a specialist could provide, and especially asking for your loved one’s support and patience. Unlearning emotional patterns is a bit harder than building them, as you’re discovering new ways of being yourself. Your real, uncontaminated from other people’s unhealed traumas, self.