Years ago, I received one of those phone calls that you don’t forget. It was a call to inform me that someone I knew had taken their life. Their pastor’s wife asked me to go with them to the house to be with the family. It was one of the most harrowing and heart wrenching experiences of my life.
Even though I felt intimidated by the enormity of the pain of the situation, I believe it’s always worth it to push through and show up. But additionally, the request was for me, the therapist, to walk a bereaved family member through some trauma therapy to reduce the traumatic impact of the death scene. In that moment, all of my experience as a counselor and as a human came in alignment and I was so glad to offer this service in the worst moments of someone’s life.
I never would have said this at the time (because it’s imperative that support only flows one way in these types of instances), but it cost me something emotionally to show up in this capacity. It required that I find my “off switch” that I can hit so I can shut my own stuff down and be of service to someone more directly impacted than me.
Showing Up for Others Has a Personal Cost
I know I’m not the only one with an off switch. I’ve heard first responders talk about this after responding to nightmarish 911 calls. I’ve heard moms talk about this after their husbands leave and they have to wake up and get the kids to school the next day. It’s true that life goes on while life is falling apart and sometimes you don’t have the luxury of feeling it all in the moment.
I was able to flip the off switch to not be emotionally overwhelmed and show up and do what’s needed. I’m so glad I have the capacity to do that. But here’s the problem I encountered, and I wonder if anyone else has had this experience: once it’s switched off, it’s hard to find it again to turn it back on.
The off switch is easier to find than the on switch.
Once the “heavy lifting” of the services was in the rearview mirror, I went home and expected to crash. Expected to be hit by a tidal wave of my own emotions and reactions to the intensely grievous events that happened. But do you know what happened? Nothing. I tried to tap into the feelings, talk to my husband, and even pray. Nothing. So, I just went to sleep and woke up the next morning and kept living my life.
But what if the capacity to shut it down so you can handle your business also means that you have difficulty finding the “on switch” when you actually could address what has occurred?
Have You Ever Been Stuck Emotionally?
I’ve written previously about how I wasn’t really raised to be in touch with my emotions so I’ve had to do some work to get that part of my inner world up to speed and I drew on some of those ideas to help process as best I could but the general sense of “stuckness” remained.
This experience really hit me hard, yet I couldn’t find the doorway to access it emotionally. Externally, you may have thought I wasn’t upset. But I was. It was devastating to me on multiple levels. I just couldn’t “get there” emotionally. I was stuck.
I felt like a total weirdo. Months went by and I still couldn’t tap into my emotions. I knew they were just living inside of me, hanging out in my body. Ultimately I just told myself, “this isn’t happening.” I decided to process what I could without the emotion piece and just pay attention if something else came up about it.
Then, it happened.
The Emotional Tsunami
My son and I were throwing a football back and forth in the living room. I said to him, “hang on just a second, I gotta look at something.”
The next thing I knew, my glasses had flown off and my face was throbbing. I had been the recipient of a perfectly thrown spiral straight to the face.
And then the tears came.
I immediately started sobbing uncontrollably. There was nothing that was going to be able to hold back the flood. My son went and found his dad, and I could hear his sweet little voice, “I think I broke Mom.”
They both came to me and hugged me. I somehow was able to blubber out, “It’s ok. This isn’t…about…the football.” And because I am married to the most emotionally evolved man on the planet, my husband got it right away and the two of them just held me. He told our son, “She’s ok! She needs to feel this. Let’s love on her!”
I felt like I was crying for everything that had broken my heart, that I hadn’t been able to release from my body in the last 6 months or maybe even longer.
Experiencing the Release
It felt like I had been braced and holding my breath for quite some time, and the release of that brought incredible peace.
I had been carrying all of these intense emotions inside of my body:
- The overwhelm.
- The unconscionable heaviness of it all.
- The feeling of helplessness, because nothing truly fixes the heartbreak of death and grief.
- Deep gratitude to God for being perfectly equipped and positioned to be of some small service.
- And of course, frustration over my complete ineptitude at feeling my feelings at times.
I can’t say that I recommend this approach of hoarding and then letting the dam burst. It’s not what I would encourage anyone to do. But it’s what was available to me at the moment. And I knew not to let this opportunity pass me by!
When I had released all there was to release…the peace came. True shalom.
I was also incredibly tired. I seriously needed that! My body needed that. My soul needed that. I’m so grateful the release finally came.
Isn’t There a Better Way?
After some time, I wondered to myself: is there not a better plan than to just sit around and wait for someone to throw a football at your face? Is there nothing better than to store everything up and then, without any rhyme or reason, there’s some straw that breaks the camels back and I no longer have any say so in the matter of just holding it all in??
I know I can’t control everything but I would like to be able to move “emotionally processing difficult things” out of the chance category.
How to Do Our Best at Processing Our Worst
So, what would I recommend as an approach for processing big, overwhelming emotions? Well, gosh. I’m not even sure! Some people (like my husband) have such emotional fluency that they can feel their feelings without an act of congress. But what are the rest of us to do?
I recently wrote on the blog about how there’s hardly ever going to be one thing that fixes everything. And processing emotions and grief is no different, unfortunately. Nothing is going to work across the board for everyone, all of the time. But here are some things that work some of the times.
But I’d like to share some ways I’ve made some improvements in this area of my life.
With curiosity and compassion, I have become a student of my emotions and expectations that are fair to place on myself. The best I could figure in walking through this myself is that learning more about my much wider than anticipated array of emotions, and how to gain access to them, would give me this release more regularly and with less overwhelm.
Feeling openly helps me understand myself more and take better care of myself, but an added benefit, it helps me love others more empathetically and deeply. Nobody’s giving out awards for doing this type of work, but I can personally attest to the benefits that this work can bring.
Recently, I lost another friend to cancer. Although, I still can sometimes feel a little handicapped in processing grief, I can look at this recent experience and see I have grown. I realized I needed to be more intentional about processing emotions. Here are some ways I’ve learned to do that.
Ways I Have Found to Be More Attuned to My Emotions
Share the Stories
I won’t go into all the details, but I “felt” through this one. I processed by telling people close to me “who my friend was”, the many wonderful things about her. During this storytelling I felt reminded and validated in my soul that our friendship really mattered and it was full of a ton of vitality and beauty. I was able to feel my love for her and to keep loving her through the sharing.
Create a Last Rite of Intimacy
A thing I do when someone I care about passes is spend the next church service with the express purpose of worshipping the Lord with my friend. It is a last rite of intimacy with this person and I love imagining what their perspective is on worship at that moment. I truly love tapping into grief and beautiful gratitude at the same time. To me, this practice feels like walking my friend home to the gates of heaven. In a single moment, I can face the reality of my broken heart, while sharing my thanks and praise that He has released her from the sickness and pain of this world and welcomed her home with open arms.
It is raw emotion, with the most trusted person in the universe, Jesus. Yes, my heart aches. The tears are brimming, but with a gentler release. I feel like I’m wrapped up in brother Jesus’s arms and he is leading us both to his dad. It’s our group hug before we say our goodbyes. But the goodbye is necessary to grieve in a healthy way. Try it, I know words cannot do this experience justice.
Journaling
Processing through journaling is a tangible way to release your feelings physically. It also helps to just consciously write what you do feel or think as an opening to find the pent up emotions. Sometimes it’s a list. Sometimes it’s whole ideas. Often it wouldn’t make any sense to anyone but me. Through journaling, being in touch with my own stuff feels more like a muscle I can work out over time, so when I really need it, it’ll be ready.
Share with a Trusted Friend
You may have been the trusted friend to comfort others who are left behind or even a loved one in their final journey. But it wasn’t meant for you to hold it all into eternity. It is okay, normal, and helpful to share with a trusted friend. Someone who can be there for you, as you were for others. You know how meaningful your efforts were. You deserve the same.
The Football in the Face May Be the Pivot
With all of this said, experience tells me that most of us still must go through the football in the face event.
Yes, sorry, it is sort of the pivotal point of change and growth.
I have shared this story about a football to the face with enough clients to know that I am not alone in having an “off switch” that allows people to handle their business in high stress situations. And everyone I know who has this switch also struggles with getting it turned back on.
So if you get a football to the face and the dam breaks, let it happen. It is a step forward. I promise.
And let me know when yours happens. It’s a big club. We want to welcome you and help you through it.
