“Good Grief” - Working Through Grief

5 Stages of Grief

https://www.washington.edu/counseling/2020/06/08/the-stages-of-grief-accepting-the-unacceptable/

denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance 

First I want to express that everyone grieves differently. The order for the stages of grief can be moved around depending on how that person grieves a loss. Going through any sort of loss whether it’s small or large shouldn’t matter. If you find yourself grieving then you should help work yourself through the stages of grief. Luckily for me I had a huge support system and incredible therapist who I still work with. She helped me navigate my stages of grief and live a normal life again after my injury. Writing out where I was at mentally in my process of grieving was extremely therapeutic for me and looking back at the technical stages of grief, it is easy to see which stage I was in at certain points of my hospital stay.

For me, I was grieving the loss of the my old self. 

Denial- From the moment that I came-to in the hospital, I couldn’t believe that something so severe had occurred to me. I went from perfectly healthy to absolutely shattered in a millisecond. I was in denial that my body was not able to function the way that it had for 23 years. The obvious denial for me was the specific injury prognosis. “Paralysis? No way, I don’t accept that.” I was grieving the loss of my old self. This was actually the easier one to work through. The hard denial for me was accepting that my stay in the hospital wasn’t going to fix my paralysis. That is how hospitals work right? You get hurt, go to the hospital and they make you better... right? I would constantly rack my brain thinking that there has to be some crazy surgery or experimental therapy that can fix me. There is no way that this hasn’t been figured out yet. I would get so frustrated when anyone would say that I was healthy enough to go home or that I must be so excited to get into my new house. Sure, I wanted to go home... but if I left the hospital paralyzed then I was going to stay paralyzed and that wasn’t an option. I wanted to go home in a healthy body and experience life sitting on my ass when I wanted to relax, not when I wanted to be mobile. It wasn’t until I actually started to get out and adventure away from the hospital that I realized that simply getting used to a new normal way of life was actually therapeutic. I am still improving physically and mentally away from the hospital. I can absolutely look back and say that my biggest hurdle with denial was realizing that the hospital wasn’t a cure-all.

Anger- When I realized how I was injured I was livid. A friend playing with a handgun? This has to be some twisted joke right? Out of everything that could have happened to me from four and a half years in the Army, this is what does me in? I couldn’t believe it. And then I would think about what a pain I was being to all the nurses and doctors. All of the emotions my loved ones were going through... I wasn’t worth that, right? Just Ranger up, and get out of bed. I started feeling helpless on top of what my body was going through. And then the court case and trial started which forced me to start asking myself questions that I wasn’t ready to face. I felt overwhelmed. Between trying to heal my body, focus on getting to therapy appointments, get myself established with a new Army unit, continue a relationship with my girlfriend and family, deal with a trial and re-establish my mental health all while trying to kick myself off of the pain-meds that body craved... I felt like I was drowning. My life was chaos and that made me unbelievably mad. I felt so out of control and reliant on other people and that made me mad. My independence was gone and I was stuck dwelling on everything that I had taken for granted and that made me mad. I was just mad. In time my life settled and my checklist of ‘things that were pissing me off’ was completed and put behind me. I worked through my anger stage the best I could. Looking back, I get embarrassed at some of the stuff that drove me nuts. Nobody questions me about it but I know that this was a tough hurdle for sure.

Depression- I have never been clinically diagnosed with depression throughout all of this and I am pretty proud of that fact. That isn’t to say that I didn’t experience depression-like symptoms. This rocked my whole world and it felt like it was nothing but bad news coming back to back. I started seeing a psychologist at the hospital and she helped me so much. At first our sessions consisted of breathing exercises and meditation which almost always put me to sleep. It didn’t take much to knock me out at that time. My body was so exhausted. I have always been pretty open about all of my emotions and thoughts about my injury (hence the blog) but venting with my Psych Dr. was easily one of my best decision. I hit one extremely low point probably 2 or 3 months into my recovery where I felt like I couldn’t catch a break. I thought that it was just bad news after bad news. I was getting absolutely pummeled by bad news. I started avoiding eating and drinking and lacked all motivation to make my therapy appointments and recover. I knew that it wasn’t okay but I didn’t care. That’s when I knew that I needed help. Because I had the wherewithal to understand that my emotions or lack-of emotion was detrimental to my recovery, I wasn’t diagnosed with depression. I just needed an outsider POV and my psychologist gave me just that. She showed me all of the good that was happening around me. She showed me that I was so stuck in my head on all of the negative (understandably) that I was missing the things that were going right. I was shutting out the good stuff around me and it was toxic. Noticing the blessings around me was a monumental turning point in my mental health and I haven’t looked back. I am extremely proud of that and I am forever grateful to my psychologist and everyone that helped to lift me up. 

Bargaining- So here I am, mentally okay and slowly making progress. I prayed so hard for progress. Any progress. Any new movement or feeling. Just anything. I was so bitter that nothing was happening and I couldn’t understand why God would let this happen to me. Blaming God was absurd and I knew that, but I needed an explanation. I was a God fearing man my entire life and look were it got me... I thought that maybe if I forgave the man that shot me that God would let me walk again. I was trying anything to bargain with a higher-power. I thought that as long as I had anger and resentment in my heart that I would remain paralyzed. Maybe if I proved that I was a good man, I would wake up and magically be healed. This was just a new test and I just needed to reprove my worth. I would have done anything to be healed. This one wasn’t too hard for me to work through because the final stage of my grieving came pretty quickly. Acceptance helped me move through my bargaining and brought me back to God. 

Acceptance - This was my final push up the mountain. It felt like I reached the peak and was finally able to take a deep breath. I could turn around and look back down the mountain slope and see everything that I had climbed past. Accepting my injury and all that comes with it was eye opening. As I progress through this injury, I am still accepting more and more. I found that this final stage has taken so much stress off of my body and mind. Again this comes back to my mental tug-of-war that I wrote about a few posts ago. 

As you can see, my stages of grief went in order. I have a pretty good example of grieving just because my injury was so life changing, but that doesn’t mean that someone is irrational for grieving something small. You should never have to validate your grieving. I hope that by writing my experiences with the stages of grief that I can show someone hope and strength. Someone that may not know that they’re in a stage of grief can realize that they are strong and that it all works out in the end. Grieving is rough so if you have made it through any trauma then I applaud you. I also applaud anyone that has helped a friend, loved one, or even a complete stranger work through their stages. Let’s take care of each other. 🙏🏻

God Bless