Anhedonia. Grief and Loss in the time of Feasting, Snacking, and Partying.

We were not listening to the most religious music going to church yesterday, but there could not have a better "teachable moment."  My son and daughter were actually listening to the words of Santa Baby as sung by Eartha Kitt.  The woman in Santa Baby wants it all and as my daughter astutely noted, she wanted it now!   My daughter is a smart girl.

Stuff is supposed to make people good at the holidays.  It is either supposed to get us in touch with our inner child or it is touching that someone was thoughtful of us and what we like-- and it shows that they cared.

The holidays also have an emphasis on food.  There are many special holiday dishes, snacks, desserts, and drinks.  The food is more than just about the taste (especially if the tradition is Lutefisk), it is the tradition.

With grief and loss A 50-cent word that seems appropriate to consider at the holidays is Anhedonia, which is the inability to experience pleasure.  Presents and holiday cuisine do not bring pleasure or the Christmas spirit and the song Santa Baby does not fit where you are. Holiday food and drink does not taste great.  Parties are just not fun and you may not want to be around people.   The following are possible ways people in grief show anhedonia.

If someone is in the shock/denial stage, there is often little to no room to think about presents.  The world has just been rocked and the thoughts are just somewhere else.

In the anger stage, there may be a number of different manifestations of this uncomfortable emotion. There may be a preoccupation of guilt with anger towards oneself.  There may be anger towards others in your family for their disrespect or apparent thoughtlessness. It may very well be possible that someone is not interested in looking at the Christmas Story and its theology because of anger towards God.  There is too much anger to be able enjoy the season and the meaning.

In the bargaining stage it may be possible that people go overboard trying to recreate Christmas in the way it has always been.  This is the chase of nostalgia. Some people may just wear themselves out trying to do it all, buying it all and recreating the feeling.  Some people may claim that this is really putting off their own grief to be strong for others, and there is no satisfaction.

In the depression phase there is the out and out depression.  Nothing is good. Nothing is pleasurable. Things are empty and numb without feeling.

With anhedonia, the Christmas music can seem like irritating noise. No, it's not the happiest time of the year, and you can take your jingle bells and cram them where the sun does not shine.  Shut up about what you want Santa baby to bring you.  If this is you . . . you hopefully show self-control and keep the words inside your head versus actually saying them and creating collateral damage.

How do we deal with it?  Accept It. 

Sometimes there is nothing wrong with saying that we are in grief and that we are feeling grief.  We have to give ourselves permission to feel grief.   Grief is the normal emotional reaction to the loss of something significant.

The feelings are going to come.  The feelings are going to go.  The feelings come and go when they do.

We don't have permission to say and do anything we want, but it is up to each of us to give ourselves permission to feel.  Stuffing feelings is not always an act of showing strength or maturity.

Accepting that we are in grief means telling ourselves that it is okay to feel what we are feeling. We are affirming that it is normal to feel anhedonia in grief and loss and that we are normal people. Yes, we feel Bah-humbug, but that does not make us an Ebenezer Scrooge.

For the record, if you are having thoughts of suicide, you may want to call your local or regional mental health hotline. If you live in the United States there is a National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255.

Stuck in Grief? 

Being stuck in grief is a little tricky.  Opinions vary as to how long grief should last.  Some people continue to grieve years past the loss to the cost of normal functioning.  There is often a point where the grief is no longer about the actual loss but some secondary gain.  If you wonder if you are stuck in grief, it may be in your interest to go visit a therapist or counselor and explore this.

I hope that this has met a need.  If you like it and think it would help others, feel free to re-post it and pass it along.

Are you happy now Fred? It's Anarchy! How Thanksgiving will be some places.

For the past four years in my work, I have used episodes of the TV show Suburgatory in my therapy groups with kids. It centers around the life of a 15-year-old girl named Tessa, who gets moved from New York City to a suburb by a father thinking it is going to protect her. It ran for three seasons on ABC and in other countries.

At Thanksgiving Tessa is lamenting the loss of her New York City tradition.  However, Lisa, her neighbor and friend appears to have it worse.  Lisa is dreading a number of holiday family traditions which include wearing a dress that makes her look like a Puritan Pilgrim.

One third of the episode is devoted to Lisa's struggle with her mother, Shelia.  Lisa takes Tessa's suggestion to tell Shelia that Lisa is not wearing the dress.  Lisa's brother Ryan then refuses to wear his vest that complements the dress.  Shelia takes her anger out on her husband Fred.  "Are you happy now? It's anarchy!"

Shelia sends Lisa to her room, and then turns up the thermostat to be persuasive.  Lisa goes over the top to prove her point  (You will have to see it for yourself) and disrupts Thanksgiving Dinner.

Subgatory is a comedy, but it anything like it happens at your house, people will likely do anything but laugh.  When over the top stuff happens at your holiday, chances are you cringe.

Shelia

Many mothers, matriarchs, and queen bees act like Shelia.  They are so determined to preserve traditions that they are willing to dominate and decimate to get people to conform at the cost of the relationship.  Shelia makes you want to hate her because she does not care what other people feel.  It is her way or she will punish you or destroy you.

Lisa

Like Lisa, many people feel that some traditions are humiliating or embarrassing and uncomfortable. They want the holidays to be fun and not beholden to some old tradition that has no comfort or security to it. They are willing to fight for change even if others suffer from the collateral damage.

Tessa

A side plot of this episode is Tessa missing what used to be.  Like Tessa, some of us grieve the loss of traditions sometimes. There were times when people got together.  Those were good times. They had meaning.  We don't have them now.

Us.

Sometimes watching something we relate to can be helpful as we survive.  We may need to laugh.

If you are interested in finding the show Suburgatory online, It is Thanksgiving, Season #1.  There are a number of online video sources that claim to offer this show.  I cannot guarantee how safe they are.   I make the usual disclaimer that I have no financial stake in your watching this show or buying a copy of it.

I hope that you were helped by this, and if you liked it, feel free to repost and pass it on.

Thanksgiving: The Attitude of Half-Full

Thanksgiving in the United States is one of the holidays where there are a lot of cultural traditions.  It is characterized as a family holiday where families get together and eat hearty, savory, and flavorful foods. Maybe people will pray a prayer of thanksgiving to God or the God of their understanding.

It seems that in a search to make it more meaningful or interesting, some reflection will be done upon the story of the Puritans or Pilgrims who sailed over in and landed in what is now the Massachusetts in 1621. They came for their religious freedom and almost all died except for the beneficence of the aboriginal people who showed them how to grow food and survive the harsh winter.  They held a feast and invited the aboriginals we still call (albeit erroneously) Indians (or now political correctly native Americans) in the name of gratitude and celebration.

The United States holiday of Thanksgiving came into existence in 1863 by the declaration of Abraham Lincoln as a day of

Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national           perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the  lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.  (http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/thanks.htm)

Advertising: the Shaping of our Attitudes 

Moving forward to the 21^st century, it has amazed me that it has become another day for commercialism, oh yes, there will be many people who will gather with close families and have their family traditions, but there will be far more people focused on the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping.

 The retail advertising machine has been pumping out commercials and ads for the past few weeks of fantastic sounding deals for this year’s hot deals on electronics, toys, and clothes.  The commercials as part of the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade Broadcast will be bright and festive and imparting a message that buying great gifts for the ones you love will make you complete because you are not complete.

We live in a world where the information overload of advertising has pointed out to the majority of us that there is more stuff that we do not have than have.  We are faced with the temptation of an attitude of focusing on the negative and the emptiness. 

Advertisers sadly do not encourage a positive attitude of fulfillment, they create an attitude of perceived need and discontent to motivate us to spend our money on their product.   One of the outcomes of the messages is that you and I do not have everything they think we are supposed to have.   They paint us as having a glass that is half empty.  We do not have everything to fill the glass, and they often create the illusion that they can fill the glass with their good or service that we should buy.

                Attitude: What you think and what you feel about it. 

Thanksgiving as an Attitude

In my job I have to think a lot about attitude.  Many parents come in and say, "my kid's got an attitude."  In those cases it is really an adolescent being defiant and oppositional towards the parent and the kid not really having "an attitude." To get some change going, I have to challenge the use of the term "attitude" and "what it means" if I am going to get the family to consider changes. 

I have came up with my own simplified definition of attitude as "what you think combined by what you feel". Our attitudes are dynamic--always shaped by our times, situations and expectations, but I hold that we can manage them. 

Thanksgiving seems to imply that we know we do not and cannot have everything: Our glass is simultaneously half-empty and half-full.  We recognize that we have something in the glass.  We look at what we have combined by how much worse it could be.  

Sometimes we do not truly have thanksgiving until we have suffered or been afraid in some form or capacity.  

Thanksgiving suggests our vulnerability as human beings.  Yes, we worked for things that we have, but as the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible notes, time and chance happen to all.  It could be worse as corporations fold, people lose their jobs, and do not have the money the use to.  People in other parts of the world do not have the food they need because of droughts and blights and war.  Suffering has taught us that we are subject to conditions outside of our control. 

If it is not suffering that has engendered the attitude of thanksgiving, it may be fear.  Many of us has had the near misses where our imaginations have taken us to the "what if" thought.  Our imaginations create the worst case scenarios.  We we pull ourselves back to reality, we might feel some relief and thanksgiving, and realize our glass is half full. . 

Sometimes We Must Count Our Blessings and Make Our Glass Half Full. 

The piece that I have tried to fit in is that when we are emotional, we tend to be concrete or black and white in our thinking.  We tend not to see the shades of gray.  It is all this or all that.  This can be the case when there has been a death.  We may have to drag ourselves to count our blessings in a way to get our minds into a better attitude. 

Counting blessings can be difficult if not seemingly in possible.  You are getting your mind on what you do have. There is an old Christian hymn "Count Your Blessings."  It suggests, to "name them one by one."   

As I mentioned my previous post, my father died about three months ago. I won’t be able to call him.  I may think about calling him a few times during the day because that is what people in grief and loss may do. Otherwise

• I aim to be thankful for my having had my father around for as long as he was. 
• I will be thankful for the times he put up with me.
• I will be thankful for the lessons he taught and the love he showed in the way that he could show. 
• I will be thankful that my mother is still with us.
• I will be thankful for my wife and kids.
• I will be thankful for my health.
• I will be thankful for what I have. 

I will be counting my blessings.

As noted before I have written 85 other posts about other topics.  Feel free to browse and see if there is something that may help you.  One more thing, if you like this, feel free to re-post and pass it on.

Grief and Loss: It is real this holiday season

In evaluating whether I want to add to the this blog this year, I looked at the good old Google Analytics, there have been almost 2400 views of the blog, and that is enough for my vain self’s ego to write again this year. I myself feel more reason to write and reflect this year with the passing of my father on Labor Day. (For those of you outside of the United States, Labor Day is the first Monday of September.)  For me grief and loss is real this year and I think I wanted to share my journey this year at the holidays—and maybe that will lend some personal credibility and not just because I am also a professional.

It serves to say here that my family is spread out. For you technical types we are “disengaged.”  We all live our lives in different states—hours or days away from each other.  For reference I live in Kentucky and my parents live/lived in Florida.  We occasionally if but rarely talk as a family, and if my family members talk amongst themselves about this—I doubt they will tell me, or one of them will act as a spokesperson (approved or unapproved).  If you are that self-appointed spokesperson, keep it to yourself unless you are going to compliment me about what a great writer I am.

The following account is my personal story line.  I have shown respect to not share much of what my family members have said or expressed; their feelings are not my feelings. It frames where I am going in this year's posts on surviving the holidays.

The Story

On the day Dad died, I had an answering machine message from mother that she had called the emergency medical services to take dad to the hospital.  I could not contact her because her cell phone was not working and apparently she did not have Dad’s cell phone.  I called my brother in another state and my brother who is a minister (and who knows some tricks having to do a lot of hospital visitation) was able to figure out which hospital to which Dad was taken.

I posted on Facebook a prayer request for my father.   A bunch of my ‘friends’ clicked on like and commented that they were praying.  I remember feeling numb but I continued with my errands and tasks since it was a holiday.  We did not go downtown to the riverfront as planned because we were waiting on information.

I talked with nurses a few times during the day in the Emergency Department and then in the Critical Care Unit. I could not actually talk with Dad or mom.  The emergency room nurse repeatedly told me that Dad was stable the two times I called. On the third occasion I was told Dad had been transferred to the Critical Care Unit and I was forwarded there.  The Critical Care nurse told me that mom had left the hospital to go let out the dog, and I could not talk with Dad.  I then finally got mom at home at about 8:00 that night.  She discussed Dad’s grave condition and that Dad may not make it and if he did make it he would have to be in a nursing home.   I got mom’s permission to call my uncle/dad’s younger brother in another state to inform him of Dad’s condition.  In the midst of the phone call to my uncle, mother rang in (through call waiting) to let me know in a desperate voice that she was going back to the hospital because they called and said that Dad was dying.

I had shut down my computer for the night by about 10pm.  I was waiting to hear back from mother. I got no phone call. I did not sleep well, waiting in suspense as to whether or not Dad made it through the night.

The day after

I got up 5:00 a.m. because it was my normal time and I had responsibilities with getting the kids to school and work. I still had the number of the Critical Care Unit.  I called and talked to the nurse I had talked to the night before.  She told me in a patronizing and annoyed tone of voice that my father had died the previous night at 8:39 and my mother had already released his body by phone to the mortuary.  I then numbly and ignorantly texted my uncle and copied my brother on it that I had information from the hospital that Dad had died the night before.   My brother called immediately asking if I meant for him to get the text.  I told my brother that I had not had a call back from mom and I called myself, and I assumed nothing.  My brother apologized that I had not been called last night.

My uncle texted back that he had learned from Facebook the night before that my father had died.  I then got online and found that one of my nephews and nieces had posted that my father/their grandfather had died.

Yes, I was annoyed and irritated about having been kept in suspense. But I was trying to be mindful and understanding that we were all in shock.  When we are in shock, we are not detailed oriented and not necessarily empathetic as people; we are not in a giving place.  My first impulse was that I really wanted to call the hospital administrator in Florida and complain about the insensitivity of the borderline personality nurse who should have had a lot more tact in telling a son that his father had died.  Telling me stuff may have been a HIPPAA violation, and that could have been especially punishing of the nurse and cost the hospital, but I try not to be a malevolent type; she was the safer object for my anger at the time.  Okay, I was moving from the shock stage to the anger stage of grief within 10 hours, I likened myself to the author of Ecclesiastes who kept his mind sharp even when he was getting drunk on wine.

My wife had told our kids while I was riding the exercise bike that my Dad had died.  I would have liked to be the one to have said it, but okay.  

I decided to go ahead and go to work.  There was no house to go to and sit with other family members and cry, and I was not one for sitting home alone.   While waiting at my son’s bus stop I heard George Strait singing

Let me tell you a secret about a father's love

A secret that my daddy said was just between us

You see daddies don't just love their children every now and then

It's a love without end, Amen, it's a love without end, Amen

 (Love without end Amen Aaron Barker writer, Muy Bueno)

I asked myself, as I fought the tears, whether going to work was a good idea?   I was a stubborn person who had fought through office politics and a doctorate, and I was going summon the stubbornness today. 

 I told my immediate coworkers that my father had died. A few of them expressed anger as to why I was working.  I emailed my boss and told him of the situation and that I would let him know of family plans.

There was nothing more self-righteously gratifying in giving her the intangible bitch-slap of telling her in almost a whisper that my father died last night.  The information morphed her stupid smile into embarrassed shock.  

One self-righteously satisfying moment was when one of the school teachers on the hospital unit I work came up with a cheesy smile and told me to smile in a playful tone.  There was nothing more self-righteously gratifying in giving her the intangible bitch-slap of telling her in almost a whisper that my father died last night.  The information morphed her stupid smile into embarrassed shock.  She apologized and then went into an angry “why I was at work?”   The correct response would have been for her to immediately shut up and creep away, but she silenced herself within 10 seconds.   

Awkward Following Days

I asked for permission to place an obituary in the daily paper of the metropolitan area in Iowa where we grew up and called home before Mom and Dad moved to Florida.  Even though connections had died or dispersed, I thought Dad needed to be honored.   I chose a recent picture of Dad instead of some picture from long ago.   Only two parties made comment on the online registry book, well Dad did not spend his time and effort there being a civic pillar of the community.

I also went on a retreat with my son to a church camp on the Friday following Labor Day.  I felt somewhat awkward, but I was going to press on. I was not going to sit at home and do nothing.

As the days went by I got sympathetic comments from people at church.  Some of the condolences were smooth and some were awkward.  Some were patronizing and some were respectful.  One that particularly struck me as awkward was from one of the older, self-righteous types, with a hearing impairment who continues to refuse to use the microphone at church business meetings.  He gave his condolences with poor eye contact and embarrassed smile and almost joking tone of voice.  Overall, it was awkward, because some of the people who never talk to me  . . . talked to me.

My mother announced about a week later that she was not going to have a memorial service for Dad.  She was going to hold onto the ashes and we could in-urn them together after she died.  She mentioned that we should move on and not hold onto anger.   It is not in good taste here to go into the dirty laundry, but on the one hand I thought one ill-mannered family member’s utterance was reminding me why we live the distances that we do, but then another part of me said, “What’s the difference anyway?”

Family aside, different people in my community wanted to do something for me.  The flowers from the church were nice but awkward.   The office wanted to give me a gift—I told them to make a donation somewhere.  As far as I was concerned, as part of my disengaged family life, I was moving on and I was focused on my own business and my own life as I had always done.

My brother the minister flew down to Florida and got some of my father’s things.  He came back through Kentucky on the way home driving Dad’s van with some of Dad’s possessions.  I accepted a number of things that had meaning to me.  Among his possessions I have Dad’s slide projector and film projector (still in their original boxes), his tool box and some of his Bibles (the man had about 30 of them).  I also asked to have his college annuals as he and I graduated from Iowa State University.  It was surreal that I had possession of some of Dad’s things that he cherished and protected, my kids will get my stuff one day too.

Still in Process

I got to talk with Dad on his 80th birthday.  He had gotten his copy of my book that I had published through the Springer Publishing Company.  He had already read the publisher’s proofs of it and he said that he was proud of what I wrote.     

I don’t have any regrets—I came to appreciate Dad as a human being with all of his weaknesses and quirks, but also his character and his values.  He was not an athletic person and tolerated my high school macho pursuits of baseball, football and wrestling and he sat smiling as I struck out, got pinned in wrestling matches or warmed the bench.   He did cheer me on as I got my masters degrees and was there to see me get my doctorate. I was fortunate to have him in my life—even if it was from a two-day travel distance and in the form of five minute conversations every few months.  

For the past 10 years, I knew that time was limited.  I hugged dad whenever I saw him and I made sure to have told him that I loved him.  I made the most of those moments as I knew that many of my peers had lost their parents by then. 

As I write this I admit that I am still grieving Dad and I will grieve him.  There were days early on where I felt essentially like I had just woken up from anesthesia and as if I was wearing concrete shoes.   Short of the George Strait moment, I am myself but more tired and not exactly motivated to do all that much--even work on my next book idea.  

Because he has passed on, the holidays will be different. This Christmas, going to Florida is off the list. I will not be sending Dad a playful novelty or thoughtful book as a Christmas gift.  I will not be talking to him at Thanksgiving or Christmas on the phone.   How I experience those differences is yet to happen--and I plan to blog on them tastefully.

Going up the letter of abstraction one rung, I have personally realized when writing this, that when you are from a disengaged family, you keep the distances from each other because it is about you living the way you want to live or you are surviving the crap from when you were close. So even in the midst of being struck with grief you are more likely able to continue living the way you do because the deceased loved one was out of sight--out of mind anyway when he or she was alive.  It follows that when you stop and ruminate, you get distracted from the life you have sought to create and live by moving away, therefore, the holidays present the challenge and thus the journey of surviving. 

Closing note:

I have written about many different topics on this blog over the past three years.  Feel free to go back in the blog.  The most popular post has been my one on Ebenezer Scrooge.  I hope that you are helped by reading this.