High Achiever's Edge: grieving

Showing posts with label grieving. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Supporting Friends in Abusive Relationships

READER QUESTION: I have a friend who is in a physically abusive relationship. I love her and want to be there to support her, but I don’t know if I can keep going through the abuse with her. I want to support my friend, but I am feeling traumatized by seeing what she is going through. I don’t think she will ever leave him. What should I do? Would I be wrong if I told her that I can’t be her friend if she stays in this relationship? ~Signed, Traumatized and Torn

Dear Traumatized and Torn,

This is one of the toughest positions a friend could find themselves. It is hard to believe that we or someone we love could be in an abusive relationship and even harder to imagine that we might end our friendship because they will not leave.

DONT FORCE THEM TO LEAVE OR STAY

After discovering that one of our loved ones is being abused, we may experience the desire to give the abuser a taste of their own medicine and then sweep our friend to safety. More times than not, we do not succumb to this impulse and instead choose to empower our loved one to leave the situation.

Sometimes, this approach doesn’t work and our loved ones choose to stay. It’s tough to understand why someone would stay, however, we must respect their choice. If they choose to stay, you can support them by talking with them, letting them know you love them and giving them numbers to domestic violence organizations.

There are a number of wonderful organizations across the country and locally that can help them deal with the affect of the abuse and/or prepare them to leave the situation. For a list of resources, please visit my previous post on domestic violence.

While you should not try to force them to leave, it is also important not to encourage them to stay. Refrain from telling them:

1) how good they have it; 2) how bad things are ‘out there;’ 3) it could be worse; or 4) he really loves you.

These types of statements evoke fear and guilt and those emotions limit the ability to think clearly and further oppresses them. It also prevents them from developing of courage to create a better situation for themselves. Since fear and guilt are often tactics used by the abuser, we want to avoid using the same tactic and cause further trauma to our loved ones.

Instead, we want to have our loved ones come to that decision for themselves so they can own it and reduce their chances of returning to the abuser. If we are witnessing the abuse or if there are children involved, authorities should be called to intervene.

AFTER YOU HAVE DONE ALL YOU CAN DO

If you have done all you can do and your friend chooses to stay, then you have a choice to make – just like your friend does. You can choose to leave or stay in that relationship with her and she must respect your choice like you respected hers.

Being friends doesn’t mean that you have to repeatedly expose yourself to her trauma, especially if that is a choice they made for themselves. Sometimes their choices can have a devastating impact on us.

Making a choice to take care of yourself doesn’t mean you’re a bad friend, it just means that the choice she is making for herself poses a threat to your emotional and/or physical well being. If it has gotten to the point where your overall health is affected, then it is time for your to have a heart-to-heart with your friend.

Let her know that you love and care for her deeply and that watching her go through this is starting to take a toll on your well being. Share with her your concerns and willingness to re-connect when she is no longer with the abuser or in a better place emotionally. Again, give her some referrals to organizations that specialize in helping women in abusive relationships and may be able to help her.

For even more clarity, check out my High Achiever Minute on Anger Management.

Pleasant journeys.

Jinnie

Dr. Jinnie Cristerna is a psychotherapist, RoHun Doctor, author, and national mental health expert located in Chicago, IL. Dr. Cristerna works with talented and ambitious individuals, families, and corporations to help them break through and heal psychological roadblocks limiting their success. To learn more about Dr. Cristerna, go to www.HighAchiever.net

Read more on JetMag.com: http://www.jetmag.com/life/moment-of-clarity-life/supporting-friends-abusive-relationships/#ixzz4UGoFgLsD

Emotionally Unavailable

READER QUESTION: I am a successful female executive in a Fortune 1000 company. I am very attractive, so I’ve been told, and I don’t have any children. I’ve dated men who have fallen in love with me but I don’t seem to feel “love” toward them. Instead, I feel as if I like them, but quite honestly, they bore me. After a few months I am done and move on to the next guy. I haven’t been abused or anything like that. I grew up in a loving two-parent home in a middle class family. I don’t know what is wrong with me–could it be that I don’t know how to love? ~Signed, What is Love?

Dear Emotionally Unavailable,

It sounds like you either haven’t met Mr. Right or you’re unable to connect with others at a deep, emotional level, so you can actually experience and give love. The question then becomes, “What is preventing you from connecting with other people in a deeper way?”

Let’s say you’ve ruled out not being into the guys you’ve dated, that leaves you being unable to connect with men emotionally. When this happens, the first thing that comes to my mind is some form of attachment disorder or alexithymia.

Attachment disorders are disorders that occur after a trauma of sorts is experienced by an individual rendering it difficult to bond appropriately with another person (e.g. Bonding too quickly with strangers or not at all). Alexithymia is a more of an inability to know or describe how you are feeling (e.g. I think I love you, but I might just feel excited; I can’t be sure.). Both pose a problem in developing and maintaining healthy intimate relationships.

In either case, you would be described as “emotionally unavailable” and it is important to explore the reason(s) you’re unable to form an attachment to others. Again, it could be as simple as you just aren’t into the guys you’ve date (fair enough) or despite what you’ve stated above, something happened when you were younger (usually between birth-6 years old, though it can become progressively worse over time) at an emotional level, that thwarted your emotional development.

This doesn’t mean that you were abused, it simply means that you may have experienced an emotional trauma like rejection, shame, neglect, or something to that effect, and it really stuck with you. For example, some children are hard to soothe and others lack the interaction needed in order to develop an emotional bond with their caregiver.

The best way to get to the bottom of your emotional unavailability is to work with a reputable therapist. Working with a therapist who is seasoned in attachment disorders can help you figure out where things went awry so you can heal and become whole.

If you are a high achiever, you definitely want to work with someone who is familiar with your disposition and can help you navigate the emotional terrain during your journey.

While I could say more about attachment disorders, I want to stay focused on your specific question so as not to get too lengthy and complicated in this post. I hope this was helpful in thinking about your specific situation as you begin to pull the pieces together.

If you would like to do a self-test for alexithymia you can go here or if you would like to do a self-test for attachment disorder you can use this link.

Pleasant Journeys,

Jinnie

Read more on JetMag.com: http://www.jetmag.com/life/moment-of-clarity-life/moment-clarity-emotionally-unavailable/#ixzz4UGkLo7vW

Grieving the Loss of a Child

READER QUESTION:
I lost my child to gun violence. He was just a baby. I can’t function and I have three other children who need me. How do I grieve my son’s death and live my life? My other children are suffering because I can’t let go. It hurts so much. –Signed, Lord Take Me!

Jinnie’s Response:

Dearest Devastated Mother,

My heart aches for you and your children. The hardest thing a parent can do is bury their child. Feelings of pain, distress, helplessness and devastation are beyond words and there is nothing that can bring them back as they once were.

When a child has crossed over and gone home, memories of them can feel tortuous and any personal happiness a parent may experience can feel like a betrayal to the loss of their child. There are so many feelings that surge through the mind and body of a parent, that sorting through them can be so exhausting they shut down and just “go through the motions of living.”

It may be hard to believe, but it is through your pain, your devastation, and your helplessness that you will heal.

To answer your question, “How do I grieve my son’s death and live my life?” you should know that there are no shortcuts to grieving and that we all grieve in our own way. With that said, counseling is the best way to work through grief as it helps you to release emotional pain and integrate the loss into your life experience in a healthy way.

The goal of counseling is to bring relief to the client and help them become conscious of and make peace with their thoughts and feelings so they can function in this world.

I personally use Heart Centered Hypnotherapy in conjunction with psychotherapy with grieving clients. I find that they are better able to work through their feelings whether it be pain, guilt, sorrow, regret, anger, confusion, or internal conflict in a shorter amount of time and experience relief and acceptance better than in counseling alone; but that is just my experience.

What matters is that whomever you work with is someone you trust and is there to support you through this process.

Discovering how to let go, and then doing so, is powerful as nothing is promised to any of us. Learning how to let go not only helps us heal, but it allows us to learn what it means to truly be grateful for those people who enter our world and touch our lives. No one is ever truly gone when they leave this world–they have just moved on.

As for your other children, they will never take the place of your son nor should they; they are their own persons. Allow the love you have for your son who crossed over to manifest in your other children. Loving and raising them in ways that are truly your own and without regret.

Whenever a child leaves this world, there are lessons to be learned–that is their gift to us. It’s okay to be scared, but don’t let your fear deter you. Open their gift, and allow yourself become better for it.

With Love and Light. I wish you pleasant (and courageous) journeys …

Jinnie