The Hypnotic State of Ruminating on Grief, Loss, and Family Dysfunction at Christmas

Much of the last several weeks have been busy.  I came up with ideas to write about but could not develop them until I went Christmas shopping with my wife this past Friday night at the mall.

Yes, I wanted to write more about grief and loss over those we loved who have passed.  I thought about the service of memories I went to where my church remembered the 22 people who had died during 2016.  I thought about continuing about reflecting on my continued life without my father who died Labor Day 2015.  But I found myself engaging in my different coping methods aka working on my other writing project and being busy at work.

When our life is not about family matters we are fine, but our mind turns sour when we think about family.  Well, back to Friday night, a time where I was slowing down and thinking about family and Christmas. 

It was pretty frustrating looking for a Christmas gift for some avoidant family members. They rarely call. They are controlling as to when they come.  They do not invite us to their house and so I have not talked with them in about two years.  I do not know what they currently like or are interested in. I was trying to show loving thoughtfulness and I found myself feeling frustrated for most of the shopping trip.  

Two posts ago, I wrote about avoidant family members.  Yes, their avoidance is best not taken personally, but this experience of walking through shopping malls going from store to store brought to mind how consumed we can get in emotion thinking about them.  Depending on how much power the avoidant family members have, we can find ourselves ruminating hours upon hours upon the sad, sorry state of our relationships or our losses.

Ruminating is one of those hypnotic states we can get sucked into until we decide to stop.  Ruminating can go on for hours or days.   Ruminating seems to be easier with higher levels of sadness and anger. Ruminating is also easier when there is nothing else going on.  As we ruminate upon issues that are never going to be resolved we unknowingly compound our emotions.

Despite any elegant analysis or description of such situation, the compounded emotion when ruminating is brutal and robs us of both time and energy.   When we ruminate it can be like diving into a pool of emotion and it is hard to get out of the pool because the water is warmer than the air temperature. 

The Challenge

The obvious coping skill with ruminating is to stop it.  It is a matter of not thinking about the painful subject matter, or at least getting our minds off of things that we cannot solve.  At least for Christmas, it is helpful to read or watch movies, or the old classic--go volunteer somewhere. 

Such painful subjects are indeed tough to put out of our minds. We may have to play a head game with ourselves that it is not doing any good to dwell on the dysfunctional family members or the people who are no longer with us.   The first line of defense is recognizing that ruminating about emotional topics can make us get into a hypnotic state of emotion if we them let them.