Bodily Effects of Estrangement

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I thought I’d take some time to practice mindfulness in the midst of one of my more difficult moments today being overwhelmed with grief.  I’ve been having quite a few of these overwhelming moments this week.  I focused on what my body was doing and took inventory of my bodily reaction to the current bout of emotional turmoil.

Here’s the list I came up with from today’s grief event and things I remember from others (I’m sure there’s more):

• stomach muscles clenched
• stomach queasy, sometimes to the point of vomiting
• tight chest
• clenched teeth
• gasping for air, feeling like I can’t breathe
• crying
• sobbing
• feeling like I’m drowning in my tears
• doubled over
• head and neck tight
• muscles throughout my body tight
• toes and feet curled and clenched
• trembling, shaking
• dizzy
• poor balance when walking
• stuttering
• closed eyes
• I bite my lips
• I hide face behind hands or clothing
• I suck and chew on clothing (shirt edge usually)
• aching all over
• sometimes the crying triggers my asthma

And when this happens, all I want to do is crawl into bed and sleep … for a thousand years.

One benefit of mindfully taking stock of my body’s reactions, allowed me to make other choices to help myself feel better.  When I noticed my clenched teeth, I made an effort to relax my jaw.  When I noticed muscles that were being held tightly, I took some time to focus on releasing those muscles as much as I could.

It didn’t take care of everything, but it made a small difference in how I was coping.  A small difference right now can be the difference between life and another stay in the hospital on Suicide Watch.

This has been a bad, bad week.

 

Acute Stress Disorder and Estrangement

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I’m currently working my way through the book, Done with the Crying: Help and Healing for Mothers of Estranged Adult Children, by Sheri McGregor, MA and sharing my thoughts and responses as posts on this blog.

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In the first part of the latest section I read in the book, McGregor suggests that parents experiencing estrangement from adult children shouldn’t be hasty in making major life decisions.  I believe this is much like the counsel that’s often offered after someone experiences the death of a loved one:  Don’t make major changes like quitting a job, or moving, or beginning a new relationship, or getting a new pet.  Anything that would have long reaching repercussions should be delayed until the initial shock and pain dissipate.

McGregor says that in the early weeks following an estrangement, many parents — if they sought professional counseling — would be quickly diagnosed with Acute Stress Disorder (ASD).  ASD occurs in the first weeks following a traumatic event or major loss.  Being suddenly estranged from an adult child (or children) definitely constitutes a personal trauma and loss.

As I thought about my own early days following the estrangement, I experienced the following ASD symptoms:

• numbed, dazed, detached
• haunting memories
• vivid dreams
• difficulty concentrating
• avoiding reminders of my children (people, places, photos, etc.)
• uncontrollable crying
• sleep difficulties

During the first few weeks, whenever I attempted telling someone what was happening with my children, I would experience an anxiety attack.  My heart would race, I would start shaking visibly, I would stutter severely (if I could get words out at all), and I would feel like I couldn’t breathe.  Writing it down doesn’t sound so bad, but what I experienced was truly debilitating.  It was almost like I’d seize up into a shaking, quivering, crying, stuttering, gasping ball of grief and shock.

It was awful.  Truly awful.

McGregor also states that in the aftermath of a trauma people tend to do one of two things.  They reach out to others for support, or they retreat off by themselves.  She compared the people who retreat to someone with a bad burn who would avoid others to avoid being jostled and causing the pain to worsen.  She said neither reaction is right or wrong.  Both reactions are normal and understandable.  Sometimes a person may switch back and forth between the two reactions.

I did both.  I reached out to people (my counselor, my pastor, a good friend), but I also retreated into my home where I could cry and shake and emote without fear or embarrassment.  I definitely felt as if my pain could be intensified by the jostling of well meaning people and their often unhelpful and unintentionally hurtful comments or reactions.

And the fact that the initial weeks of my estrangement from my children happened at the beginning of the holiday season didn’t help.  Acute Stress Disorder and the holidays don’t mix well, I discovered.  Probably had a lot to do with why I ended up in the hospital on Suicide Watch over New Year’s.

What I Can Do to Help Myself

Photo courtesy of Morguefile – http://mrg.bz/16f001

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I’m currently working my way through the book, Done with the Crying: Help and Healing for Mothers of Estranged Adult Children, by Sheri McGregor, MA and sharing my thoughts and responses as posts on this blog.

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In her book, McGregor suggests writing down things the estranged parent can do to help themselves that are specific to their situation.  So here’s my list.

Ways I Can Help Myself:

• Don’t drink.  In my case, it can actually be life-threatening because alcohol is a dangerous combination with some of the medications I take.  Alcohol can also loosen inhibitions which can cause a loss of rational thinking.  A dangerous thing when you’re feeling suicidal.
• Seek counseling from professionals.  Fortunately I was already seeing a counselor at my university to help deal with some issues about returning to Grad school.  After I spent a week in the hospital on Suicide Watch, I also started seeing another counselor in my community because I knew as soon as I graduate in June, I’ll lose access to the school psychologist.
• Stay in closer contact with people who previously were on the edges of my life.  I was so close to my kids, I didn’t feel the need for many other relationships.  Now I see this was a huge mistake.  It left me almost completely alone to deal with things.  I need to make an effort to rekindle friendships.
• Set up an emergency contact person.  Due to my tendency to slip into severe depression and suicidal thoughts when the pain gets to be too much for me, one of my counselors recommended I  have someone set up who I can call, day or night, who can come over and keep an eye on me.  Not to counsel or to help, but to be there and help me make the decision if I need to go the hospital or not.  Last time I had to drive myself to the hospital which was super scary now that I look back on it because I was very tempted to drive off a bridge or crash my car the entire drive.
• Get exercise and fresh air.  I joined a local gym and work out several times a week now.  I try to take regular walks, and when the weather’s nice, I go to a local beach and bask in the sunshine.  I live in rainy Western Washington, so sunshine is essential to combat Seasonal Affectiveness Disorder (SAD) which I don’t need to add to my current list of overwhelming emotions and sadness.

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The Early Days of Estrangement

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What follows is my response to the questions and exercises in the first part of the book, Done with the Crying: Help and Healing for Mothers of Estranged Adult Children, by Sheri McGregor, MA.  I’m going to start working my way through the book in the coming days and sharing my thoughts on this blog.

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My estrangement from my three adult children began after a misunderstanding on Thanksgiving night. The timing was awful.  For nearly the entire month of December I was in shock.  How could my children desert me at the holidays?!

I was so alone, so sad, so shocked.  In Done with the Crying, McGregor states that the initial feeling most parents feel when an estrangement begins is shock.  That was definitely the case for me.

Unbelief, confusion, helplessness.

I waited for them to call or email.  I wanted to talk and help clear things up.  I wanted to listen.  I tried to contact them throughout the holidays, but was met with silence.

When I asked if we could meet with a neutral third party (a counselor or a family friend who’s a pastor) to begin some sort of communication, I received a curt email response that said, “We’re not ready for that.”

That was six months ago.

Will they ever be ready?

Without any sort of communication, we can’t even begin the process of reconciliation or understanding.  They’ve also cut off all contact with my dad.  My dad said yesterday on the phone that he doesn’t even care at this point about reconciliation with them, but he’d just like to see us all have a civil relationship so we can all attend family gatherings and holiday events (and even funerals) at the same time.

Pain.  Isolation.  Silence.  Abandonment.  Betrayal.  Judgement.  A broken heart.  Loss.  Anxiety.  Fear.  Powerlessness.  Defeated. Devastated.  Depressed.  Suicidal.  Numb.

Like walking through a thick fog.

This was the new hurtful reality that suddenly presented itself.  I couldn’t get my mind around it, no matter how hard I tried. And as a single mom, I had no one who shared these feeling with me.

The first month was so overwhelming.

I felt like I’d lost my identity.  I’d never realized how much my personal identity tied into the idea of being a mother.  Now that I didn’t have that relationship with my children, I felt so lost.  I suffered a major existential crisis in addition to the grief and shock.  The pillars of my life had been knocked down and shattered under me.

The pain was so great, that each night during December I self-medicated with alcohol.  I couldn’t bear going to bed and being alone in the quiet and the darkness with nothing but my thoughts, my misery, my memories, and my tears.  So I would drink until I could just lie down and pass out on my bed.

Every morning when I woke up, my first thought was, “Wow.  That was the worst dream ever.”

And then I’d remember.  It wasn’t a dream.  They really were gone.  They really had cut me off.

I really was alone.

~ The Estranged Mom

 

I’ve Been Reading on Estrangement

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I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading about adult children who estrange themselves from their parents and it seems that new spouses/partners seem to have a lot to do with it.  It’s also common for it to begin after an adult child begins counseling.

I can attest to the fact that two of my childrens’ significant others have played a large part in not only encouraging this estrangement, but actually doing a great deal to instigate it from the beginning.  And both of the children with the difficult SO’s also began seeing counselors at about the same time.  I’ll go into that more at a later time.

Also, when families are super close (as mine was), sometimes when the adult children have the need to do some of the normal separation from their parents that comes with growing up, they don’t know how to do it, so they just cut their parents off completely.

I just think it’s interesting that there are patterns to these sorts of family situations that don’t really have much to do with the actual state of the relationship between parent and adult child.

On another note but still related to things I’m reading, I’ve just started into a book called Done with the Crying: Hope and Healing for Mothers of Estranged Adult Children by Sheri McGregor.  So far, it looks like it’s going to be a helpful read.  At the end of each section, the author has some questions for thought and recommends writing out the answers to give you a chance to connect to parts of yourself that you can tap into by doing something physical rather than just thinking about answers to the questions.

I’ve read the first chapter, but came to the questions at the end and wasn’t sure what to do with them.  Then it dawned on me they could be good to share as posts on this blog.  You can join me as I work my way through the book.

Until later …

~The Estranged Mom