Hi everyone and welcome to Untethered: Healing the pain from a sudden death. I am Dr. Jennifer Levin and I specialize in traumatic death and helping individuals through the struggles, pain, trauma, and chaos of an unexpected death.
The title of today’s show is Sudden Death: A greater understanding of trauma and grief. This is such an important topic when it comes to living with a sudden loss. For many of you, it is the hallmark of a sudden death – not only are you faced with grieving the loss of your loved one who died suddenly, but you are also left with a myriad of trauma symptoms related to how your loved one died, what you saw, or what you experienced.
Now, it is important to stress that not everyone who experiences the sudden death of a loved one will develop trauma symptoms after their death. A trauma response is a very individualized response and influenced by many different factors which we are going to explore in this podcast. But imagine for a minute that your house burns down one night when you are asleep. Please be aware, if this has happened to you, this example may be triggering. But just for a moment, think about what it would be like to be awakened from a sound sleep, in the middle of the night. You and your family are forced to evacuate and watch your house burn to the ground. Fortunately, everyone inside survives. This is a traumatic experience shared by your entire family, but your entire family is going to respond differently to this trauma. Most likely, immediately afterwards, all of you are going struggle with some form of a reaction to the event that you all endured. But in time, some of you are going to be able to return to normal functioning with minimal distress. Others of you may have longer lasting trauma symptoms that may include nightmares, fears of going to sleep, rumination or constant thoughts about you having to evacuate. You may choose to cope by abusing alcohol or drugs and have difficulty with concentration or focusing at work or school.
We normally associate trauma, especially the mental health condition, post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, with our veterans who have fought wars and served in battle. The fact is you can experience trauma from a diverse set of situations. Today we are going to focus on some of the trauma symptoms that you may be living with after your loved one suddenly died. We are going to explore some of the factors that increase your risk for developing trauma and some of things that actually protect you from a trauma response. Finally, we will also talk about the difficulty of living with both trauma and grief and when it might be helpful to seek outside support for your trauma symptoms.
The realities of living with a sudden death are unimaginable. Whatever you are experiencing after your loved one died suddenly is completely normal, or as I like to say, on par. There is no right or wrong way to respond to the loss of a loved one who dies suddenly. Whatever you are experiencing is a normal response to a very abnormal situation that you never imagined finding yourself in. The presence or absence of the symptoms that I am going to describe today has nothing to do with the love or the relationship you had with your loved one – it is simply the way your body or your system is processing or expressing it’s grief, trauma or pain. Do not compare or judge yourself with others who may be in similar situations. Today I just am providing you with more information so you can be better informed about what trauma looks like.
Trauma symptoms
It is difficult to predict what type of trauma reactions, if any, you will experience following the sudden death of your loved one. However, most responses usually fall into four categories. These include physical, emotional or psychological, cognitive and behavioral responses. Let’s start with physical ones.
Physical Reactions
A trauma response can include feeling physically poor. Common complaints include headaches, stomach aches or nausea, and lack of appetite. Many people have difficulty sleeping, feel fatigued, or weakness and even report feeling shaky along with a pounding or rapid heartbeat, or even sweating. It is also common to have body aches and pains and that existing medical conditions that you are already experiencing get worse. When ever I work with clients who are experiencing serious physical discomfort after the death of a loved one, I strongly encourage that they go see their doctor to make sure they are okay physically. You need your physical health to get through grief and trauma.
Psychological and Emotional reactions
Your physical health is not the only thing that struggles after a trauma. So does your psychological state. As such, you can have psychological or emotional reactions such as fear or increased anxiety which we call hypervigilance also known as “waiting for the other shoe to drop”. Irritability or restlessnesses is also very common along with feelings of sadness, helplessness, hopelessness, or even numbness. Many people report feeling detached and isolate themselves from others after experiencing a traumatic event. It is also common to experience survivor’s guilt because you did not die like your loved one.
Emotional reactions can include reliving or re-experiencing the trauma and this can occur in the form of nightmares or disturbing dreams, intrusive thoughts or images, flashbacks or rumination which is replaying the same scene in your mind over and over again. Emotional reactions from trauma often feel very big and are difficult to regulate or control. One of the hardest parts about these emotional reactions is that the coping mechanisms we use in our day to day lives may be no longer be effective and new coping mechanisms are needed.
Cognitive Reactions
Trauma also messes with the way we think. The most common cognitive reactions reported usually include difficulty concentrating, feeling confused or distracted. Many of my clients have described feeling like they are living in a fog and that their thought processes are slower than normal. It can be very difficult to feel grounded and in control when your thinking is fuzzy, and you don’t trust your thoughts.
Behavioral Reactions
Finally, the trauma response can influence the way you behave, making you unrecognizable to yourself, family, and friends. It is common to engage in high-risk behaviors, substance use, socially isolate, to minimize the trauma and/or to have a strong desire to talk about what has happened with as many people as possible so that you can process your trauma experience. When the body and mind are in severe pain erratic behaviors can appear in search for relief.
After the sudden death of your loved one you may be experiencing some of the physical, emotional, cognitive, or behavioral trauma symptoms I just described. We are now going to take a look at what makes a person more likely to experience symptoms of trauma and what factors might be protective of these reactions.
According to the National Institute of mental health there are several risk factors that can increase your risk for developing a trauma response after the sudden death of your loved one.
These risk factors include:
* Number one - A history of trauma, especially childhood trauma such as bullying, domestic violence, or parents with a mental illness, substance abuse problems or who were incarcerated.
* Second, being injured or seeing someone die, for example your loved one, may also increase the risk of developing a trauma symptoms.
* A third risk factor is being exposed to a dangerous event or the actual traumatic event that took your loved one’s life
* Fourth, experiencing feelings of horror, helplessness or extreme fear
* Fifth, having insufficient social support or resources to help you cope after your loved one died suddenly.
* Sixth – dealing with other major life stressors in addition to the sudden death of your loved one that may include problems at work, financial stressors, family problems or health even events, and finally,
* having a personal or family history of mental illness or substance abuse.
So, you can see there are many variables that influence how you are going to respond to a trauma, including the sudden death of your loved one, outside of the event itself. I hope this sheds some light on why everyone responds so differently – it has to do with your personal history, the current life circumstances you are coping with, the resources you have available, in addition to your family and personal mental and physical health. The good news, however, is that there are protective factors against trauma symptoms. Many of which are within your control. Let’s explore these right now.
Perhaps the most important protective factor against a trauma response, is a strong social support network. It is so important to have a good group of family and friends who can be there to help you with the physical, emotional and logistical issues associated with your trauma and loss.
Second, research has shown that being resourceful and having good problems solving skills can also be a protective factor against a trauma response. After a sudden loss your needs are going to be complicated and diverse. It is important to know what you need and to be able to figure out how and where to get those needs met.
Finding a way to help others or to give back when you are struggling can also be a shield against trauma. Giving back and volunteering to serve others less fortunate than yourself can be a meaningful way to keep trauma symptoms at bay by shifting the focus away from yourself and feeling good by providing for someone else.
Next, be willing and open to look for meaning in the event that you have experience. This can be extremely challenging when you are living in the after math of sudden death however, I have worked with countless number of clients who have been able to discover meaning and peace associated with their loss after the passing of time.
Finally, it is extremely important to have healthy coping mechanisms to help you with the stressors of trauma. Trauma brings chaos into your life and you need to find a way to maintain a solid self care routine and stress management techniques to protect yourself from future trauma symptoms.
The National Institute of Mental Health also cites the following as protective factors or resiliency factors against trauma. They recommend you:
First - Get help from others. You can get help from family, friends, therapists, support groups, clergy or any source that allows you to process your trauma in a healthy manner.
Second, try and accept your feelings. One of the hardest parts of grief and trauma is living with difficult, big feelings. It is an extreme challenge to learn how to accept what you feel, without judgement and learning to be okay with the uncomfortable. Getting help from others can help you with this step.
Third, develop coping strategies and a willingness to learn from your experiences. Coping strategies are imperative to help you through intense periods of anxiety, depression, grief and panic attacks, or whatever you are feeling. Our last podcast – 5 things you can do right now to start healing walked you through the frozen orange technique and a grounding exercise you can use when your emotions are feeling overwhelming.
Finally, be willing to deal with difficult situations despite your fear. Many people avoid the circumstances associated with their trauma after the event that they have experienced. Give your time, but when you are ready there are ways to deal with these difficult situations so that they do not take over your life.
Living with both trauma and grief at the same time
When trauma and grief occur simultaneously, trauma does not just get added on top of grief, together they create a powerful force that cannot be underestimated. Traumatic grief is so different and needs to be understood.
It is important to realize, at times, the symptoms of your trauma response and your grief reaction may compete with one another and in the beginning, I want you to know your trauma response is usually going to win.
It is so essential to understand that early on your trauma can interfere with grief process. If the symptoms we talked about earlier in this podcast are not taken care of, they can be extremely destabilizing and you will not be able to grasp what has been lost with the death of your loved one or how you go about grieving that loss.
True grief work cannot begin until the acute or severe trauma symptoms have been contained and you are in a safe place to begin the first steps in healing.
you may benefit from seeking outside help for your trauma.
I often get asked – how do I know when I need to get outside or professional support to help cope with trauma symptoms after a sudden death. Personally, I think professional support can be beneficial to anyone who has experienced a sudden loss of a loved one. But my main criteria when answering this question has to do with evaluating the impact of your trauma symptoms on your ability to function on a daily basis. In other words – if and when you start to experience symptoms interfere regularly with your sleep, your ability to take care of yourself, to take care of others, perform your responsibilities at home, work or school, then it is time to seek outside professional support from either a trained physician or trained mental health professional.
My goal for today’s episode was to provide you with an appreciation of what a trauma response may look like after experiencing a sudden death of a loved one by describing some of the physical, psychological, cognitive and behavioral responses that many people experience. I hope that you have a better understanding of why everyone responds differently to a traumatic event and knowledge about some of the risk factors that can influence the development of trauma symptoms. I also encourage you to engage in some of actions to protect yourself from a trauma response. When it comes to trauma and grief they are such a powerful combination and please remember, early on that the trauma usually wins. When it doubt, it may be beneficial to seek professional support especially when your functional status is compromised.
In our next podcast will be Wednesday, July 20th and will be titled: But I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.
Before closing today – I want to mention that I am having a special online workshop on Saturday – July 16th from 9-12 – Grieving a Sudden: How to stay connected and present while you heal. Please go to my website – www.fromgrieftogrowth.com for more information. Registration opens Tuesday July 5th.
Thank you so much for joining today’s episode of Untethered Healing the pain after a sudden death. If you know someone who is living with a sudden or unexpected loss, please tell them to subscribe to our podcast. You can also find me on Instagram @fromgrieftogrowth and on my Facebook page From Grief to Growth. Don’t miss my Facebook lives every other Wednesday morning at 9:00am PDT. Be sure to like my Facebook page and sign up to be notified when I go live so you don’t miss announcements and opportunities to interact with me. Bye for now. Thanks for tuning in today!
