Last week two people wrote comments to some blogs. Needless to say, I was very pleased. These blogs will become the healthy and healing tools I hope them to be when folks start responding not only to me but to each other. Both of the comments were great and I will respond with blogs directed at the writers specifically but with the rest of you looking and chiming in.

The comment for this blog was at the end of one that had already passed into the archives so, most likely, most of our readers did not see the comment. 

A young man wrote that his wife of one year and ten days had died four weeks ago of a possible drug overdose. Throughout their brief marriage he had tried without success to help her get off of the drugs. Now, in spite of friends telling him he is not at fault and that he had tried everything possible to help her, he still blames himself and wonders what else he should have or could have done. He feels anger at himself and at his wife, but does not want to be angry with her.  He finished his comment with "I feel like I should have done more but I just don't know what." 

May I respond.

I cannot imagine the depths of your pain and loss over your wife dying just one year into your marriage. For her death to have been so sudden and so senseless makes the pain even deeper and harder to understand. As the shock begins to wear off you are now experiencing the anger that comes with grief, and all of the explanations in the world will not make these feelings go away. Getting a new way to think will not automatically create a new way to feel. The feelings are real and normal and must be worked through rather than be explained away.

There is anger in grief. Sometimes we do not recognize it as anger and call it something else like hurt, disappointment, or being upset but all of these come from the same emotion as anger. When these kinds of things happen we get mad inside and we should do so. 

The problem is that anger does not float well. It needs a place to focus, matter of fact it will find a place to focus. It can focus on God, on the physicians, the people who sold her the drug--anyone can be the focus of anger without creating much of a problem. The problem comes when we focus it on ourselves. A lot of the guilt people feel is really anger turned inward. When it does so we start obsessively playing the game of "If Only."  Everyone plays some of that game, but I am talking about doing so obsessively, building elaborate cases to prove it is our fault. While that is happening, anything anyone says to give relief only intensifies the feelings and frustrations.  May I suggest some steps I hope will lead to some relief?

First, recognize that what you feel is normal. You are not going crazy. Tell yourself that right now your are very angry about the death and have no place for the anger to go except toward yourself so for a while you will do a lot of self blaming. In time the anger will lessen and you will see things in a new light but right now that is where the feelings have landed.

If you can accept this as normal the feelings will lessen much sooner. The harder you fight your feelings the more they intensify and you end up expending far too much time and energy telling yourself how you should not feel the way you feel. 

Second, find a safe person or so to talk with. A safe person is someone who will just listen and not try to explain how you should think or feel. When someone does that, it intensifies the feelings of something being wrong with you all over again. Tell them up front you just need to talk without their comments or suggestions.

Third, find outlets for your anger. Sometimes it helps to do something physical. Hit something with a hammer or throw rocks at a pond. Find a safe place to go scream if you feel like doing so. Any type of physical release can sometimes help. 

Fourth, write out your feelings. Writing helps order the mind and some how gives insight into feelings.   

__________

Doug invites you to log in and post comments at the end of each blog entry. He looks forward to hearing from you.