Hello and welcome to The Healthy Coconut Blog. This blog is dedicated to bringing you information on trauma and trauma healing from a holistic perspective. I’m Gabbie Bodkin, a licensed mental health counselor, who specializes in helping adults heal from childhood trauma, and his blog’s author. Today I’ll be reviewing the role of grief in trauma recovery.
Before you continue reading this post, it’s important that you understand the information I share may be triggering. Please ensure that you feel safe emotionally and have a coping plan in place if you do become triggered when reading this information.
In this post, I'll be outlining:
How grief and trauma are interconnected.
How to recognize grief as a hidden symptom.
How to heal from grief within trauma recovery.
More than two-thirds of children experience at least 1 traumatic event by the age of 16. Traumatic events can include (http://recognizetrauma.org/statistics.php):
Physical, Sexual, or Psychological abuse
Neglect or maltreatment
Community or school violence
Witnessing or experiencing domestic violence
Natural disasters or terrorism
Commercial or sexual exploitation
Loss of a loved one
Refugee or war experiences
Military family-related stressors (i.e. deployment, parental loss, or injury)
Physical or sexual assault
Serious accident or life-threatening illness
Now while all of these traumatic experiences differ widely in the type of trauma and the feelings associated, every single one contains an element of grief.
How grief and trauma are interconnected.
Grief is a natural and emotional response to a loss. It often can be synonymous with sadness, misery, pain, distress, agony, etc. Grief often includes physiological symptoms, confusion, yearning for something/someone, dwelling on the past, and apprehension about the future.
Grieving is the process of adjusting emotionally to the loss, which is unique to each individual.
Here are a few specific trauma examples of how grief and grieving can be an underlying factor in trauma:
Abuse: When a child is abused by an adult whom a child trusts, the child has to grieve their perception of the previously trusted adult. Or the victim may experience grief for the childhood that used to be innocent and fun and is now tainted with fear. Most abuse victims will say that they were “robbed” of their childhood. This type of disclosure illustrates the feeling of loss that the child will then have to process as part of trauma healing.
Neglect: When a child is emotionally neglected, they do not receive love and nurturing feedback from their caregiver, yet they continuously long for that love to be shown. Many adults who were emotionally neglected still hope that one day their caregiver will show love in an unconditional way, yet often the emotional neglect persists and the adult continues to feel a longing for acceptance and love by their caregiver. This continued cycle of recognizing emotional pain and neglect while continually yearning for resolve and closeness is a form of grief.
Serious Accident or Life-Threating Illness: When a child experiences a serious accident or life-threatening illness, they typically grieve their previous view of safety and invincibility. When children are born in nurturing and safe environments, they can establish a worldview that is nurturing and safe. Children don’t typically have fear associated with their safety or the world unless they were taught that “bad things” can happen or witnessed something traumatic themselves. When children experience serious injuries, medical procedures, etc. It’s difficult to make sense of “why” it happened in the first place. They go from thinking that they are healthy and safe and can do most things to feeling unhealthy, fearful about safety, and skeptical of their abilities.
Natural Disaster: Experiencing a natural disaster may include losing a loved one or it may include losing materialistic items, or the sense of normalcy. There are so many things that a person may grieve after a natural disaster and the perspective of “what matters most” often changes as well. They have to grieve belongings, grieve normalcy, and grieve their sense of safety and control in future natural disasters.
These are just a few examples of how grief can show up in every traumatic experience. Childhood trauma is the focus because that’s when the fears and belief systems about one's self, others, and the world become deeply rooted and can manifest into later life patterns that influence thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
How to recognize grief as a hidden symptom.
When you think about your trauma, you can ask yourself these questions:
Do I feel a longing to repair or mend something that is outside of my control?
Do I feel emotions such as sadness and pain when I think about the traumatic event?
Do I experience physical, emotional, social, or spiritual expressions of grief? This may look like sadness, anger, guilt, anxiety, fear, headaches, stomach aches, diarrhea, nausea, numbness, backaches, loss of appetite, trouble sleeping, questioning beliefs about life and the afterlife, etc.
How am I functioning overall? Are these symptoms impairing my sleep habits, nutrition habits, or ability to get my basic needs met?
If you answered Yes to any of the first three questions, it's important that you acknowledge grief as a part of your trauma response and work through healing the grief.
How to heal from grief within trauma recovery:
Practical applications:
Acknowledge the emotions (sadness, pain, doubt, fear, etc.).
Label the loss or define what you're longing for (i.e. healthy attachment, love, control, etc.)
Ask yourself what you need.
Seek support from loved ones, support groups, or professional support including therapy.
Thank you all for reading this post. As always, I hope you found this information useful. This information is purely intended to inform, not to treat. If you are struggling with brain health issues or childhood trauma, speaking to a healthcare professional is recommended to receive a specific plan for treatment and healing based on your individual needs. You can follow along for more posts and psychoeducational tools on trauma and trauma healing from a holistic perspective. You can also check out my website, thehealthycoconut.com, or Instagram the_healthycoconut for more resources or to book a free consultation with me. If you found this blog helpful, please like and subscribe to support these resources.
Disclaimer:
If you find any of this information triggering or do not feel safe being alone with your thoughts, call a support person or 911 if you feel you are at risk of hurting yourself or others. I’m a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, and I help adults heal from childhood trauma. Follow along for more self-help tools and psychoeducation on trauma and trauma healing.
Sources:
Understanding child trauma. (n.d.). What Is Childhood Trauma? | SAMHSA. https://www.samhsa.gov/child-trauma/understanding-child-trauma
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