Carolyn Hax: When there’s so much loss you can’t feel your grief (or much else) anymore - The Washington Post

Dear Carolyn: I lost my mom in 2018 and 18 months later my dad, right at the start of covid, so I watched his funeral on an iPad. Then spent a year surviving the pandemic with school-age kids, a demanding job, and anxiety. Just got vaccinated and feel … no more hopeful.

My favorite uncle died this week and I feel “intellectual sadness” — can’t think of any other way to describe it — but haven’t cried, not even when telling my kids or talking with my cousin. I think of my parents with a sense of vague sadness. I love my husband and can’t think of anyone else I enjoy more, but when I think about my love for him, it feels intellectual versus visceral. My kids I love intensely but that’s about the only emotion I seem to feel right now.

For what it’s worth, nobody can tell that I feel dead inside. I talk, I laugh, I work, I sing and dance with the kids, I make jokes, but deep down I’m untouched by it all. I know I’m utterly and completely burned out. Could that be it? Is this grief and trauma, and I just need to trust that my inner self will return?

— I Feel … Hardly Anything

I Feel … Hardly Anything: I am so sorry, for all of it and for the amount of it.

If you can take a couple of steps back, then I think you'll see what I see — that your body has used the means available to it to protect you from all of this pain and grief. It's too much for you to be fully, emotionally engaged with so many wrenching things at once, so you've tripped a mechanism that's shutting you down in self-defense.

Numbness and detachment are common responses to grief. (“Fearless,” with Jeff Bridges, is a memorable take on this. Or a “This American Life” episode from Memorial Day weekend.)

On a certain level, they’ve done their job. You’re still working and child-rearing and loving your husband and kids; you’re still thinking clearly and cracking jokes. The emotional fail-safe has kept all the accumulated pain from debilitating you. Good. But it’s obviously not a state you want to remain in.

When the numbness and detachment outlast their usefulness, then it's time to get help. So in this framework, your question becomes: Are you still in a typical healing process, or has your healing process stalled? Is this numbness protective or dangerous?

Don’t wait for an answer — in case the stall is the start of a spiral. And don’t treat it as a dichotomy, either, that you either “trust that my inner self will return” or get help. Trust yourself and get help to ensure there’s a strong net to catch you as you do this important work.

Grief support groups are generally accessible (relative to therapy) and plainly appropriate here, but if you have access to one-on-one therapy, then follow that track, too. See who and what fits. Any names you get still require due diligence, but your primary care physician, a local hospice provider and local churches, hospitals and funeral homes can often steer you to grief support resources, and Open Path Collective is a network of therapists offering reduced rates.

Take care, and I hope this finds you as you’re feeling better already.

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June 16, 2021 at 11:02AM
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Carolyn Hax: When there’s so much loss you can’t feel your grief (or much else) anymore - The Washington Post
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