I’m your host, Dr. Jennifer Levin. I am a grief therapist and the founder of From Grief to Growth, the host of the podcast, Untethered: Healing the Pain from a Sudden Death, and I am the creator and author of the Growing After Traumatic Loss course. I provide support, guidance, and teachings to help you with the aftermath of chaos, trauma, and grief.
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 get through the struggles, pain, trauma, and chaos of an unexpected death.
When your loved one dies suddenly, your initial reaction is probably a combination of shock, pain and disbelief. Very shortly thereafter, and maybe even at the same time, you will want to understand everything that happened to your loved one. Depending on the event or circumstances, you will begin to collect all of the information you can, and and every single detail will become very important. Unfortunately, for many of you, there may not be enough information to answer all of your questions.
As a result, you may not understand exactly what happened to your loved one when the actual loss occurred, and in some circumstances, how they actually died. Living with these unanswered questions is beyond maddening – it is a crazy making experience that can result in even more pain, anger, frustration, distraction from your grief, and can even complicate your grieving process. You may begin to doubt yourself, your relationship with your loved one, and other people involved. Your world may begin to feel uncertain, unsafe, and you realize that you are not in control.
Today’s podcast is titled, How do I live with the Unanswered Questions and the Uncertainty, and it was written for all of you who are living in the unknown. In this episode we are going to focus on what is like to live with uncertainity and why the unanswered questions related to a loved who died suddenly can feel so detrimental to your healing. We will explore concepts such as loss of control and catastrophizing, and I will provide you with several different ways to manage living in the unknown and how to develop some answers of your own to help bring on some peace. Finally, we will review ways that you can manage your feelings about living with uncertainity when they become intense.
Living with uncertainity and the loss of control
Before we dive into our discussion about living with unanswered questions, I want to spend a few minutes talking about what it means to live with uncertainity in general. Today’s world is full of uncertainities. The Pandemic, the polilitical climate, the environment and finanacial instability are impacting our well being no matter what side of these issues your support. Like it our not, right now we must learn to live with so many unknowns and important issues that are beyond our control. As humans we do not like to feel out of control. It does not feel good physically or emotionally. We like to think we are in charge of everything!
The sudden death of your loved one is an event completely out of your control. It is the ultimate reminder of how little control you have in this world. We explored this concept a bit in Episode 2 of this podcast series when I explained the theory of shattered assumptions. You may recall that according to this theory, your assumptive world makes up how you view yourself and others, and how you believe the world should work. You live with the assumption that your corner of the world is safe and predictable and follows a sense of order.
Now that you have experienced the sudden death of your loved one and the assumptions you had about how the world should work have been shattered, your loss of control has been heightened. It is so hard to feel like we don’t have control in our lives. You may realize how vulnerable you really are. You may be scared. Scared for yourself and scared for other people in your life that you love as well.
Why living with unanswered questions is detrimental to your healing
When you feel out of control it can show up in many ways. You may be experiencing anxiety, excessive worry, or find yourself trying to control others. You may be feeling depressed and may be experiencing sadness or wanting to isolate or withdraw from people you love. It is also common to experience physical symptoms such as body aches, headaches, stomachaches, changes in your appetite, or sleep problems. And you may find yourself engaging in unhealthy behaviors such as alcohol or other substances, eating, shopping, gambling, or other actions to as a way to re-establish a sense of control. You know as well as I do that these behaviors are just a way to numb your pain and they are nothing but a false sense of control that are detrimental to your healing.
Catastrophizing
When you are left living with the unknown you also have a tendency to do what is called catastrophize. Catastrophizing is when you take something negative that has happened or could happen and then predict the absolute worst consequences that can be associated with the negative event.
Let’s use an example of someone living with cancer who is waiting for a scan to determine if there has been a reoccurrence. Most people will catastrophize and fear the worst, the cancer has returned, spread throughout their body and will shortly die without any evidence to support their conclusion. Few people are able to think about the possibility that the cancer has not returned at all and that may be an option.
Now let’s talk about catastrophizing when it comes to a sudden loss. When we think about the final moments of your loved one’s life or the circumstances surrounding their death we also tend to catastrophize. Please bear with me here – yes, the fact that your loved one did not survive is the absolute worst outcome possible. There is no question.
However, you may be catastrophizing all of the details around the event. It is so common to fear they were in pain, scared, and alone, and everything possible was absolutely horrific.
I would just like to present another possibility for you to think about as well. What if they felt no pain? What if they did not know what was happening? What if they felt peaceful? What if they felt the presence of others? What if they died knowing how much they were loved? I had a client once whose loved one was in a car accident and there was not a lot known about the last few minutes of his life. Of course, she assumed the absolute worse. However, we took some time and made a list of every possible outcome that could have occurred during those last few minutes of her son’s life. My client reported that this exercise brought her some peace to know that there were other possibilities that may have happened besides the worst ones that she had imagined. If you are in this situation and you find yourself catastrophizing about what the last few minutes of your loved one’s life may have been like - I invite you to do the same. Make a list of all the possible scenarios that could have occurred at the end. You don’t even have to choose one, just be open to the fact that is possible that the worst case scenario did not happen.
Similarly, if your loved one died in a situation where there are a lot of unknowns or unanswered questions, it might be helpful to create a narrative or an ending that is acceptable to you – one that brings you peace and comfort rather than live with one that plays on your worst fears and concerns. If you don’t really know what your loved one was thinking or feeling, why assume the worst? You know your loved one better than anyone else. You know how they think and how they react. Rather than let fears dictate your emotions take some time to develop answers that make sense for you and your loved one’s situation. Create an ending that you can live with and that provides you comfort and is supported by the information you have.
Coping tools
So what do you do when you are left to live in the midst of uncertainty? How do you live with all of these unanswered questions? What do you do when you feel completely out of control? That is what I want to address in the rest of this podcast.
First –I want you to make a list of everything you can control. Write it all down. This is going to help you realize what you are responsible for in your life. When you think about it, the major things in life that you can control are your thoughts and your actions. How you choose to view the world and what actions and behaviors you take to care for yourself and what you can do towards others.
Second – make a list of everything that you cannot control that are specific to your life circumstances right now. These are the things you need to learn how to let go of or to tolerate. This is not going to be an easy task, but by writing it down it puts it in front of you in black and white. Some people have actually found a sense of freedom when they realize they need to stop trying to control things that were never within their control in the first place.
Next – I want you to make a list of all of your unanswered questions regarding the sudden loss of your loved one. I mean all of your questions – everything from why did this happen to me or my loved one? To.. What were you doing at this place at this time on this day? No question is too big or too small. Get it all out from within you and all onto paper. Next to each question on this list, identify the person or persons who can answer this question. Perhaps it is a doctor or the police. In essence, you could purse the answers to these questions at sometime in the future if you wanted. However, if the person who can answer the question is only your loved one or the universe/God or your higher power then things are going to be a little tricker. You do still have a few options.
Try going back to the recommendation about developing an ending or narrative that makes sense to you that you can live with. Since your loved one is not going to be able to answer this question right now, ask yourself if you are comfortable developing a narrative based on your relationship with your loved one with the information you have available. Are you able to create answers that will bring you peace? If not, I recommend that you learn to live in the uncertainty.
How to live with uncertainty
Like it or not, we are all becoming experts at living with uncertainty. You have been doing it for years without even knowing it. However, in today’s times you are more aware of the presence of uncertainty than ever before. I have five suggestions to help you when your feelings of uncertainty become intense.
1. Start off by acknowledging the existence of uncertainity in your life right now, validate it’s presence and allow yourself to feel any of the feelings that accompany it. As we discussed earlier, these feelings usually resemble anxiety, but not always.
2. Tell yourself that you are okay. Use any affirmations or grounding exercises that will help calm you down when you are experiencing anxiety.
3. Focus on the present moment and the things you can control right now. Even though things are uncertain right now, you only need to focus on the present and what is in front of you. Don’t think about your future.
4. Notice if you are engaging in any catastrophizing and remind yourself that the worst case scenario does not always come true.
5. Finally, remind yourself of all the previous periods of uncertainty that you have survived and the skills you used to cope with that stressful time in your life.
When you are grieving, there are so many things that may feel uncertain and out of your control. It is so easy to get lost in the fear, uncertainty and unanswered questions. You can paralyze yourself with worries about what your future will look like without your loved one or all of the unanswered questions about your loved one’s death. Be careful not to let all of the uncertainties in your life and all of the unanswered questions become distractions. Although these uncertainties and unanswered questions are beyond unsettling, it is important to find a way to live with them and manage them so you can continue to move towards healing.
Review of podcast
The goal of today’s podcast was to highlight the uncertainties that we are all living with right now and focus on the complexities of these uncertainties when they are associated with a sudden loss. We also discussed what is it like to live with unswered questions and several techniques that you can use to manage uncertainties, unanswered questions and living with the unknown.
My next podcast will be on Wednesday, August 17th and will be titled Guilt, Shame and Regret are Killing Me.
Thank you so much for joining today’s episode of Untethered Healing the Pain After a Sudden Death. For help with a sudden and unexpected loss, please sign up for my free mini course, where I will teach you about the 3 Truths About Living With A Sudden and Unexpected Loss. Please visit www.fromgrieftogrowth.com to sign up.
Take care of yourself and bye for now.
Thank you for listening today. Be sure to subscribe to my podcast so that you never miss an episode. For help with a sudden and unexpected loss, sign up for my free mini course, where I will teach you about the 3 Truths About Living With A Sudden and Unexpected Loss. Please visit www.fromgrieftogrowth.com to sign up.
