Processing loss before it happens – part 2

Hi,
Thanks so much for your coaching on this. It is helpful to know that anticipatory grief is a very real experience. Since this ask a coach, she has then moved into a care home but seems to be recovering amazingly well from the stroke for now.
It’s interesting that my brain is trying to downplay this grief, because I think partly that it is to protect me from feeling something painful – but also that it fits into this sense more widely in my life of feeling like I have to downplay or minimise my feelings and experiences, like they’re not as valid as other people’s or that I don’t have permission to take up that space.
Some of this comes from my relationship with my mum, I’m sure – growing up there was a pattern of her giving me the silent treatment when I did something she didn’t agree with. And ditto around a challenging coming out involving unrequited feelings for a friend, which was also minimised and invalidated at the time.
I know these might sound unrelated, but I definitely spot a pattern of me not thinking I have ‘the right’ to feel things, or take up that emotional space -and that if i do, I am a burden…
Also, I really like the thought: “Right now, she is alive. If anything changes, I’ll deal with it then.” And it is comforting in the short-term. But I also feel some self-imposed pressure to ‘make the most’ of time I have with her now. Especially in terms of the ‘gifts of knowing time is short’ – because there’s that sense that I should be calling and visiting more while I can, but also the realities of daily life and stress that get in the way. So maybe some guilt around not doing more?
What is also most scary with this is probably that it’s the first time in my life I’ve been confronted with the very real realities of mortality with someone I’m close to. It makes me think about my parents… (Also an aunt is currently ill with cancer, and was seriously ill and hospitalised this week, so that’s scary right now too). And of course my own mortality, too!
I’m very aware it’s a luxury to be only thinking about all of this at 31 btw…
But maybe this is happening on a bigger scale in my mind.
Do you have any tips on unravelling this and maybe taking the existential intensity / pressure out of it all?!
Thank you!

 

Answer:

Mortality is such a human thing to confront, reject and embrace all at the same time. If you were to make spending time with your grandmother during this phase of life a part of your regular reality (daily/weekly), what could that look like? Notice where you have black and white, either/or thinking emerging here. You get to choose a way to engage that boosts you up…that fuels and energizes you and your relationship.

If this is the first time in your life that you’re facing the death and illness of beloved family members, in what way does it make sense that it seems pressurized and creates existential intensity? What part of you needs love and compassion while experiencing a new phase and perspective on life?