Real Life Struggles/Support/Vent
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My younger sister and I work together and are a LOT alike in many ways - but I’ve discovered we grieve very differently. She went to work the day we found out after our brother, and said it was the right decision. I fed the kittens and that was it. Today we both went in. She felt energized and comforted being there. I lasted until the last hour when I had to ask to leave because I was about to vibrate apart holding it together.
I feel like I need to keep up with her energy but it is so hard to be around people right now.
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@junipersky said in Real Life Struggles/Support/Vent:
I feel like I need to keep up with her energy
No, you really don’t. Really.
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@junipersky said in Real Life Struggles/Support/Vent:
I feel like I need to keep up with her energy but it is so hard to be around people right now.
I’m a real-life grief counsellor (I know, right? Me, helping people?) and this is a natural and normal thing to feel - both the need to keep up, and the need to isolate.
Both are potentially dangerous for you.
Grief is a process that can take a long time, there’s no timeline you should set for yourself, but it might be helpful to set some mild expectations for how you want to process through the grief. Not a timeline per se, but things you’d like to get back to doing in some reasonable-to-you time.
Don’t punish yourself if you can’t do all of them by the time you expect to, but complete withdrawal is something to keep an eye on.
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I’m very much trying not to. Just finding that my already abysmal social battery is even smaller than normal.
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@junipersky said in Real Life Struggles/Support/Vent:
I feel like I need to keep up with her energy but it is so hard to be around people right now.
Everyone grieves differently. There is no right or wrong way to do it. Just make sure whatever way you grieve, it suits you. Be kind and gentle on yourself during this process, because, really, you are finding /your/ new normal for yourself after your brother’s passing. That’s not going to be the same as your sister’s new normal.
I say this as someone who lost my mother at age 22 in 1996, where it took nearly 20 years for me to heal, and then my husband in 2019, where it took me 3 years for me to finally feel like I could get back out into the world actively outside of work again; part of that was compounded by the pandemic, but most of it was the grief spirals I’d find myself in. Take the time you need.
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I got an email about the Intuit TurboTax settlement today and had to laugh.
Wow, thirty whole dollars???
For me???that’s not even a quarter of what they misleadingly charged me in 2017 but ok, things are looking up!!
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@Wizz same I laughed and I’ll use it to buy myself a drink!
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I took over my brother’s audible account after he passed. Should this be a thing inherited? Probably not. But I’ll pay the money to keep it going for now. I’m listening to the books he listened to, and finishing the series he never will be able to.
It is bittersweet. On one hand, I’m really happy to have this connection with him.
On the other hand… lord he listened to some awful misogynistic science fiction. >.>
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I just fully finished a really tough clinical rotation today. I’m not exactly sure why I expected I wouldn’t, but I had a pretty rough time of this whole exit process. For context I worked as a clinical psychology extern at a VA residential facility for homeless veterans who often had substance abuse issues loaded on top of PTSD, depression, anxiety (typically) and serious mental illness (more rarely). Since my emphasis is in trauma, I worked with people who were highly traumatized using primarily cognitive processing therapy, but occasionally prolonged exposure in addition to substance abuse treatment. During my final staff meeting, they did this thing called Thanks & Goodbyes (T’s & G’s) which is usually done with residents graduating from the program.
The thing that got me the most was that I kind of assumed I was a background player, largely unnoticed and just nose-to-the-grindstone working with my patients. I had a large-ish case load and only taught a couple classes (dialectical behavior therapy, and CBT for Substance Use Disorder). It hit me that I kind of internalized this idea that I was separate from the team, so when people started expressing gratitude or talking about how they appreciated this or that about me I had no idea how to hold it and felt extremely awkward in the moment. I also have a history of substance use, and was very grateful to be able to help people who were currently in a material position that was similar to how I’ve lived in the past. A couple of my patients this year relapsed upon release from the program, and at least one of them died as a result of overdose following relapse, so I won’t say I did a perfect A+++ job, but I always did the best I could and advocated hard for everyone. Having been in that world, I know what it’s like to go through the sobriety/relapse cycle, and fall into an old habit that might be beyond your old tolerance.
Anyway, due to a lot of other things in my life (child, spouse, research, work), I generally feel like I don’t have space to hold the kinds of emotions that I need to have about this experience, and I need to get it out somewhere else I fall into bad negative patterns (see above). So, here I am writing about it, I guess.
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@junipersky said in Real Life Struggles/Support/Vent:
On the other hand… lord he listened to some awful misogynistic science fiction. >.>
There is a lot of that. Sometimes, I think it is harder to find science fiction that isn’t that.
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Old sci-fi from say… pre 2000’s, I give a little bit of a pass. Yes, annoying af, but I figure they are parroting their upbringing.
Post 2000’s?! That is just WILLFUL misogyny.
Also, side rant. I somehow ended up on straight white man with a grievance against LGBTQ+ issues tok, and I do not like it. They are so sneaky and start out like they are going in one direction but then pivot into bull shit, so I watch most of the video so TikToc feeds me more of the same even though I hit the block button on the creator!
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@junipersky I hate that. I had to do some industrial strength algorithm pruning on YouTube due to liking RPGS + computer games + history. This apparently means I desperately want neckbeards telling me how women ruin everything, and a whole bunch of Nazi-adjacent nonsense. And even after you block and say ‘stop showing me this’ and get it pruned down?
All it takes is one damn ‘crossover’ sort of video before it all comes flooding back.
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@junipersky ngl a lot of my algorithm is just videos of koalas slowly being cute. it’s times like these that I’m grateful.
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Dealing with the nuclear bomb that is stage 4 pancreatic cancer in one of my favorite people to walk this planet, I gotta say it makes you plug all the energy leaks in your life very very quickly. When people say they no longer have tolerance for bullshit when things like this happen, it’s a thing. Feeling guilty for having any kind of joy is a thing. Feeling a desperate driving urge to drop everything and fly across the country to try and not feel useless as the person you love and their family drown in the real, heartbreaking, fucked up tragedy of it all is a thing. So I’m sorry I’m not around. I’m sorry I’m quiet. I’m sorry that all of my focus is on something so harrowing and important; I have to bear witness to this. I’m not going to choose anything different.
ETA: I can’t keep screaming with my family about this, so the void of the Internet will have to do.
I draw things! http://www.mahaldoodles.com
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@crawfish With things and real issues such as that, I don’t believe there’s any need for an apology required.
Do what you need to do.
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@crawfish I’ve been exactly there. It sucks so much. Screw anyone who can’t give you some grace right now.
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It’s a harrowing experience. I know how you feel.
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Yeah, fuck cancer.
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Waiting weeks for the new lenses in your existing frames to be put in. I remember when reading wasn’t mean to give you headaches.
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