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I lost my father and then 10 years later my brother to suicide. With my father, I already had a therapist, so I worked through it with her. With my brother, I d

I lost my father and then 10 years later my brother to suicide. With my father, I already had a therapist, so I worked through it with her. With my brother, I didn’t have one and I was about to travel alone to a foreign country for a few years. I was much more isolated and I explicitly thought, “Nope. I am not going to feel this right now.” Grieving my father took 2 years or so to overcome. Grieving my brother took about 4 years. They were different situations and relationships, so I can’t ascribe the difference solely to therapy. I will just say that for me, the only way to get the grief to go away is to feel it. Journaling, music, solo hikes, therapy, whatever it takes. The nice thing about therapy is that it holds you accountable. You have to think about it for an hour a week. Now, you can bullshit your way through therapy and stick to surface stuff, but then what’s the point. If you really crack open the shell and let the anger, despair, confusion pour out, it will eventually get better. Either way (therapy or no), it is like a deep cut. There will be a scar. It will never go back to how it was before. But I hope you find some peace.

smeej 5y ago
Sometimes it's more like an amputation of an arm than a deep cut. At first, the pain is blinding. All you feel is the pain. If you can get the bleeding stopped, eventually the pain subsides, but things aren't ever really "normal" again. You find a new normal. You even learn how to do almost everything in your daily life with one arm. You adapt, and you may even thrive. But every so often, something happens and you're genuinely stumped how you'll handle it with one arm. It reminds you of the loss, and in that moment, the frustration and the loss and even the pain comes back. You'll cope with it, like you coped with learning everything else you needed to learn right after you lost your arm, but it never goes all the way away. You just get better at living with it.
- lanstin 5y ago
  That is a tremendously accurate way to describe surviving terrible stuff.
- rland 5y ago
  I think this is less a simile and more a physical reality. What is your arm but a series of sensations and connections in your brain? Your arm is a physical thing; but to the extent that it exists to you, it exists in your brain. So I think the loss of an arm is probably very similar in an actual not just a metaphorical sense. Although I would easily choose losing my arm over losing one of my loved ones.
- Hnrobert42 5y ago
  You are genuinely stumped about having one arm, huh? :-p

smeej 5y ago

Sometimes it's more like an amputation of an arm than a deep cut. At first, the pain is blinding. All you feel is the pain. If you can get the bleeding stopped, eventually the pain subsides, but things aren't ever really "normal" again. You find a new normal. You even learn how to do almost everything in your daily life with one arm. You adapt, and you may even thrive. But every so often, something happens and you're genuinely stumped how you'll handle it with one arm. It reminds you of the loss, and in that moment, the frustration and the loss and even the pain comes back. You'll cope with it, like you coped with learning everything else you needed to learn right after you lost your arm, but it never goes all the way away. You just get better at living with it.

lanstin 5y ago
That is a tremendously accurate way to describe surviving terrible stuff.
rland 5y ago
I think this is less a simile and more a physical reality. What is your arm but a series of sensations and connections in your brain? Your arm is a physical thing; but to the extent that it exists to you, it exists in your brain. So I think the loss of an arm is probably very similar in an actual not just a metaphorical sense. Although I would easily choose losing my arm over losing one of my loved ones.
Hnrobert42 5y ago
You are genuinely stumped about having one arm, huh? :-p