....it's complicated

Grief, loss, change, pandemic, Avril Lavigne, Dr. House, Roy Kent. It's all here.

I spent the most recent weekend with my best mate, exploring a different city to our own. It was the first time I’d been away for leisure, rather than for work, since before my son was born. Sitting on the tiny balcony at the accommodation, overlooking the vast cityscape, we reflected on how different our lives were compared to the last time we were able to spend time away together. We discussed the usual things - relationships, work, hopes and frustrations - and reflected on how life had dealt us more complexity than we had anticipated. Perhaps our younger years were sheltered in naivety, but we’d both developed high-level skills in re-aligning our expectations on what our relationships, and lives, would look like. We also became experts at working through the complicated feelings of grief for the loss of real and anticipated elements of life.

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I am no stranger to loss. Not only have I lost people close to me, I’ve also meticulously studied the workings of bereavement counselling experts (as well as Dr. House - please understand this reference, please). Grief is uncomfortable, non-linear and completely “unfixable”. And while in my professional life I am very skilled in holding this discomfort for clients, I am personally horrendous at it. I know that I cannot hold uncertainty, I cannot “be okay with not being okay”. I have gone through an entire process of “being okay with not being able to be okay with not being okay” (yes, it is as exhausting as it sounds). I lean into my toolkit of “first step” coping mechanisms, which usually look like a combination of powerlifting, interior decorating/pointless furniture re-arranging, and picking up at least eight hobby projects (all of which will remain unfinished). It works for me. But, there are times where I recognise that not even these foolproof strategies are enough, and I’ll reach out to another professional.

Weeks ago, I reached out to my old psychologist to “pre-emptively” get support for the complex grief and loss of infertility, fertility treatments and (potentially) early miscarriage. Again, I am no stranger to this area, but instinctively I knew that it might hit a little differently this time. Sitting on the stiff couch in my psychologist’s new office, I mentally went through the reasons I had made the call to revisit counselling additional to the infertility issues - pandemic (and loss of what I thought the last three years, the first years of my son’s life, would look like), spouse’s health issues (and the complicated/anticipatory/what-the-fuck grief and loss that comes with that whole thing combined with the previously mentioned reasons). But I had an awareness that right at the front of my consciousness was the work issue.

Having worked so hard to be boundaried and categorise my “work issues” separate to my “life issues”, I told my brain that this was something I had already discussed (and would continue to go over and over with) my supervisor. Work should not take over any part of my real life. Surely I could focus on one of those other crucial topics for the next 50 minutes? Despite my best efforts, the current dominant force in my psyche took over, and I mulled over the last 12 months of work. It’s complicated. I didn’t hold back, reflecting on pouring my skills, knowledge, heart and soul into a project which was supposed to embody the values (both professional and personal) that I hold so dear.

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My initial involvement in the project came at the most opportune time. Right in the middle of the pandemic restrictions, parenting a toddler, caring for an unwell partner with a rare disease undergoing treatment. I’d guess most people would take stock of the chaos at home and respond to the offer of the project with “fuck no”, but not me. Like I said, in times of crisis I cope by immersing myself in my toolkit of all-consuming endeavours. In my previous life, when the other mechanisms hadn’t worked, I’d go onto my “next level” strategies - this was with alcohol. But this time, booze would be replaced with work (but it’s meaningful work, I tell myself ad nauseum). When I reflect on this as a therapeutic professional, it makes complete sense - we know that when we are experiencing trauma, we use whatever coping mechanism we can to survive the day-to-day.

I am good at my job, I get meaning and validation from pouring my skill and knowledge into something that has meaning for me, so why wouldn’t I give it my all? Had my brain allowed me to spend a moment thinking about the sheer weight of everything else I was carrying during that time, it would have debilitated me, and I had a family to support. So immersing myself into the only facet of life I had any modicum of control over was the crutch I needed to get by. And like any coping mechanism, it served me well and fulfilled its purpose…. until it didn’t. Reflecting on this with my psychologist, she helped me identify why this was now causing stress - because it’s complicated. It’s moved to a space of uncertainty. And there is so little control I have over that, so I have to “be okay with not being okay” with certain elements of it (cue Roy Kent - FUCK).

“Complicated and anticipatory grief are still forms of grief. You are still going to experience the normal loss feelings and responses”. We don’t discuss this enough, in so many areas of life. In infertility/fertility treatments, in post-COVID life (what would life look like if we hadn’t experienced this fucking pandemic?), in relationships. I understand why we don’t - it’s uncomfortable, it’s messy, and there is no answer. It doesn’t fit in with our linear, one-directional way of seeing life. But in understanding this, we can see why it’s so difficult to articulate that we need support with it, so dealing with these forms of grief is often done in individual, “unhelpful” ways. If we can’t describe what we are feeling and why, how can we be expected to ask for and receive help?

It sounds trite, but let’s try to normalise responding to “are you okay?” and “what’s going on?” with “I don’t (fucking) know".