How many times….
I have wondered how many times I would find myself here. I think I’ll let someone I respect as a phenominal lyricist say for me what I cannot say.
It seems to me sometimes that I have a rare knack for landing in the middle of situations that bring me to this place. No matter how one finds themselves here …. a terminal illness of one you love, a move when you’re ten and you wave to a best-friend as you drive away, a pet runs away, divorce, broken connections of relationships, an unexpected accident or tragedy… I think no matter how you arrive at this place, grief is never pleasant or easy. Good bye is just not something easy to hear. “The end” rarely felt like
Instead I find that it is constantly more like
No book by Kulber Ross fixes the pain even if it helps us understand it.
Or according to Changing Minds.org the extended grief cycle sounds like:
- Shock stage: Initial paralysis at hearing the bad news.
- Denial stage: Trying to avoid the inevitable.
- Anger stage: Frustrated outpouring of bottled-up emotion.
- Bargaining stage: Seeking in vain for a way out.
- Depression stage: Final realization of the inevitable.
- Testing stage: Seeking realistic solutions.
- Acceptance stage: Finally finding the way forward.
(http://changingminds.org/disciplines/change_management/kubler_ross/kubler_ross.htm)
I’ve read Dr. Paul Brand’s book, The Problem With Pain. Here are a few quotes thanks to Stauros’ Notebook:
All down the ages people have reacted against victims of leprosy. They have been called “lepers” and turned out of society. The disease has been said to cause rotting away of tissues and fingers falling off. Now that we understand the disease a little better we know that most of these problems are not due to the germs of leprosy. The germs simply destroy the nerves of pain. Once pain is gone, patients destroy themselves.
Pain Frees
It is pain that allows me to be free. When I started to study medicine I would probably have said that my purpose was to relieve pain and suffering and to save lives. Today after a lifetime of treating those in pain and those without pain I would say that my purpose is to relieve suffering and to improve the quality of life. The main difference is that then I thought of pain as an enemy, while today I think of it as a help, indeed as an important element in the prevention of suffering.
How often I have heard people complain about God when they have pain. They do not blame God for giving us a signal that tells of disease or injury, but why make it so unpleasant and why not make it easy to switch off? Now I know why. Today there are ways to switch off pain. Pain killing drugs quickly become addictive because the addict seems to be living in a problem free and pain free world. We are seeing more and more of the results of this in our hospitals.
Easing Pain
Even when we know that pain is good and beautifully designed, we still have to face the problem that it some times goes on hurting even when we are doing all we can to get better. When we are busy even severe pain may pass unnoticed. There seems to be a gate – a sort of bottleneck -which limits the number of impulses of all kinds that can get across from the body to the brain. I remember in World War II how soldiers who had been severely injured would tell of how they lifted their helpless buddies and run to safety on legs. They said they scarcely felt the pain. Later, in the silence of the hospital ward those same soldiers would cry out from the pain of the hourly injections. When we understood the role of activity, we can often make pain very much more tolerable simply by keeping busy and active, and especially by giving all our sensory nerves a lot of sensations to carry.
Mind-Pain
Whereas pain, when it comes from in the body, is usually quite precise and quantitative in relation to its cause, when it gets up to the conscious mind its significance varies enormously according to how it is interpreted. Fear multiplies pain. A sense of helplessness multiplies pain.
Confidence diminishes pain. The realization by the patient he can do something also helps to minimize the pain.
How to Master
In ancient civilizations and cultures of India and to Southeast Asia where pain and hunger, disease and death, have been for centuries a part of every day life and where easy relief of pain by medication has not been available the people have developed a realistic attitude towards pain. The personal mastery of pain has become an important part of yoga and other forms of discipline. In the West we have come to think of pain as an unwarranted intrusion into our lives. Above all we have come to think of it as something that should be immediately suppressed. The whole thrust of television advertising repeatedly asks only one question about pain. How quickly can it be relieved. Product A relieves it 20 seconds faster than Product B. There is no hint that before the pain is relieved it should be understood and its message should be listened to.
Pain as Friend
Athletes are perhaps the only segment of our society who study pain and who deliberately impose stresses upon themselves. They rejoice in the fine interplay between stress and pain and exhilaration. If they achieve mastery over their own body, pain is no longer an enemy, but a valued friend. I believe that all of us, early in life, should deliberately cultivate the same attitude toward pain. It is not an enemy from outside, it is part of ourselves communicating with ourselves, it is expressing a need, it is explaining a condition, it is identifying a need for help.
(http://www.stauros.org/notebooks/v01n4a01.html)
I deeply respect Dr. Kubler Ross’s information. I’ve observed and experienced the stages. Mentally I can agree with the research. And I can mentally grasp Dr. Brand’s logic. I can mentally accept pain as a friend or messenger. I can agree with my head that pain is purposeful and wise men listen to it. But to my heart and head it still feels like
“All we can do is keep breathing…” -Ingrid Michaelson
Filed under: life, music, purpose, relating well, Uncategorized on September 5th, 2010
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