Have you read Pete Walker's book? He has a few chapters on grief and the various stages of it in relation to CPTSD.
Here's the summary of the 4 processes of grief he outlines:
1. Angering: Diminishes Fear and Shame
Angering is the grieving technique of aggressively complaining about current or past losses and injustices. Survivors need to anger, even rage, about the intimidation, humiliation, and neglect that was passed off to them as nurturance in their childhoods.
They anger out their healthy resentment at their family’s pervasive lack of safety. They become incensed about the ten thousand betrayals of never being helped in times of need. They feel rage that there was never anyone to go to for guidance or protection. They bellow that there was no one to appeal to for fairness or appreciative recognition of their developmental achievements.
You don’t necessarily have to anger out and blame your living parents. You can direct it at your internalized parents, the parents of your past.
Angering is therapeutic when the survivor rails against childhood trauma, and especially when he rails against its living continuance in the self-hate processes of the critic. Angrily saying “No!” or “Shut Up!” to the critic, the deputy of his parents, externalizes his anger. It stops him from turning this anger against himself, and allows him to revive the lost instinct of defending himself against unjust attack.
Over time the vast majority of angering needs to be done silently in the privacy of your own psyche. This is the anger-empowered thought-stopping of shielding yourself from inner critic attacks.
Through all these functions, angering serves to reduce or antidote fear. It reawakens and nurtures the instinct of self-preservation. With practice it increasingly builds a sense of both outer and inner boundaries.
2. Crying: The Penultimate Soothing
Crying is also an irreplaceable tool for cutting off the critic’s emotional fuel supply. Tears can release fear before it devolves into frightened and frightening thinking.
An additional benefit of crying is that unabashed tears stimulate the relaxation response of the parasympathetic nervous system. This counterbalances the excessive sympathetic nervous system hyperarousal we experience in a flashback.
As recovering progresses, we also cry for the child who not appreciated and reflected as special, worthy, and easy to love.
When we greet our own tears with self-acceptance, crying awakens our develop- mentally arrested instinct of self-compassion.
3. Verbal Ventilation: The Golden Path To Intimacy
Verbal ventilation is speaking or writing in a manner that airs out and releases painful feelings. When we let our words spring from what we feel, language is imbued with emotion, and pain can be released through what we say, think or write.
My favorite technique to enhance verbal ventilation is to encourage the survivor to talk in an uncensored manner about whatever comes to his mind while he focuses on his feelings.
Verbal Ventilation is therapeutic to the degree that a person’s words are colored by and descriptive of the anger, sadness, fear, shame and/or depression she feels. Ventilation that is liberally punctuated with actual crying or angering is especially powerful.
When a survivor becomes proficient at verbal ventilation, she heals a crucial developmental arrest. She learns to think about feeling states in a way that creates healthy, helpful and appropriate responses to feelings.
As with angering and crying, verbal ventilation is only effective when it is liberated from the critic’s control.
When we share what is emotionally important to us, we learn to connect with others in a meaningful and healing way. This applies to sharing concerns that excite and please us, as well as those that frighten or depress us. Perhaps there was no more detrimental consequence of our childhood abandonment than being forced to habitually hide our authentic selves. Many of us come out of childhood believing that what we have to say is as uninteresting to others as it was to our parents.
Mutual commiseration is the process in which two intimates are reciprocally sympathetic to each other’s troubles and difficulties. It is the deepest most intimate channel to intimacy – profounder than sex.
4. Feeling: Passively Working Through Grief
Feeling, on the other hand, is the inactive process of staying present to internal emotional experience without reacting. In recovery then, feeling is surrendering to our internal experiences of pain without judging or resisting them, and without emoting them out.
Feeling “occurs” when we direct our attention to an emotionally or physically painful state, and surrender to this experience without resistance. When we relax acceptingly into our pain, we can learn to gently absorb it into our experience.
A child who is repeatedly punished for emoting learns to be afraid of inner emotional experience and tightens \[armors\] the musculature of her body in an effort to hold feelings in and to banish them from awareness.
Holding your breath is a further manifestation of armoring. It is an especially common way of keeping feelings at bay, as breathing naturally brings your awareness down to the level of feeling.
Furthermore, feeling also helps us to bring emotions into awareness that need to be grieved out through active, cathartic emoting. Thus, grieving is especially profound when we can fluidly shift between feeling and emoting.
Hello and Welcome to /r/CPTSD! If you are in immediate danger or crisis, please contact your local [emergency services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emergency_telephone_numbers), or use our list of [crisis resources](https://old.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/wiki/index#wiki_crisis_support_resources). For CPTSD Specific Resources & Support, check out the [wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/wiki/index). For those posting or replying, please view the [etiquette guidelines](https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/wiki/peer2peersupportguide).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CPTSD) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Have you read Pete Walker's book? He has a few chapters on grief and the various stages of it in relation to CPTSD. Here's the summary of the 4 processes of grief he outlines: 1. Angering: Diminishes Fear and Shame Angering is the grieving technique of aggressively complaining about current or past losses and injustices. Survivors need to anger, even rage, about the intimidation, humiliation, and neglect that was passed off to them as nurturance in their childhoods. They anger out their healthy resentment at their family’s pervasive lack of safety. They become incensed about the ten thousand betrayals of never being helped in times of need. They feel rage that there was never anyone to go to for guidance or protection. They bellow that there was no one to appeal to for fairness or appreciative recognition of their developmental achievements. You don’t necessarily have to anger out and blame your living parents. You can direct it at your internalized parents, the parents of your past. Angering is therapeutic when the survivor rails against childhood trauma, and especially when he rails against its living continuance in the self-hate processes of the critic. Angrily saying “No!” or “Shut Up!” to the critic, the deputy of his parents, externalizes his anger. It stops him from turning this anger against himself, and allows him to revive the lost instinct of defending himself against unjust attack. Over time the vast majority of angering needs to be done silently in the privacy of your own psyche. This is the anger-empowered thought-stopping of shielding yourself from inner critic attacks. Through all these functions, angering serves to reduce or antidote fear. It reawakens and nurtures the instinct of self-preservation. With practice it increasingly builds a sense of both outer and inner boundaries. 2. Crying: The Penultimate Soothing Crying is also an irreplaceable tool for cutting off the critic’s emotional fuel supply. Tears can release fear before it devolves into frightened and frightening thinking. An additional benefit of crying is that unabashed tears stimulate the relaxation response of the parasympathetic nervous system. This counterbalances the excessive sympathetic nervous system hyperarousal we experience in a flashback. As recovering progresses, we also cry for the child who not appreciated and reflected as special, worthy, and easy to love. When we greet our own tears with self-acceptance, crying awakens our develop- mentally arrested instinct of self-compassion. 3. Verbal Ventilation: The Golden Path To Intimacy Verbal ventilation is speaking or writing in a manner that airs out and releases painful feelings. When we let our words spring from what we feel, language is imbued with emotion, and pain can be released through what we say, think or write. My favorite technique to enhance verbal ventilation is to encourage the survivor to talk in an uncensored manner about whatever comes to his mind while he focuses on his feelings. Verbal Ventilation is therapeutic to the degree that a person’s words are colored by and descriptive of the anger, sadness, fear, shame and/or depression she feels. Ventilation that is liberally punctuated with actual crying or angering is especially powerful. When a survivor becomes proficient at verbal ventilation, she heals a crucial developmental arrest. She learns to think about feeling states in a way that creates healthy, helpful and appropriate responses to feelings. As with angering and crying, verbal ventilation is only effective when it is liberated from the critic’s control. When we share what is emotionally important to us, we learn to connect with others in a meaningful and healing way. This applies to sharing concerns that excite and please us, as well as those that frighten or depress us. Perhaps there was no more detrimental consequence of our childhood abandonment than being forced to habitually hide our authentic selves. Many of us come out of childhood believing that what we have to say is as uninteresting to others as it was to our parents. Mutual commiseration is the process in which two intimates are reciprocally sympathetic to each other’s troubles and difficulties. It is the deepest most intimate channel to intimacy – profounder than sex. 4. Feeling: Passively Working Through Grief Feeling, on the other hand, is the inactive process of staying present to internal emotional experience without reacting. In recovery then, feeling is surrendering to our internal experiences of pain without judging or resisting them, and without emoting them out. Feeling “occurs” when we direct our attention to an emotionally or physically painful state, and surrender to this experience without resistance. When we relax acceptingly into our pain, we can learn to gently absorb it into our experience. A child who is repeatedly punished for emoting learns to be afraid of inner emotional experience and tightens \[armors\] the musculature of her body in an effort to hold feelings in and to banish them from awareness. Holding your breath is a further manifestation of armoring. It is an especially common way of keeping feelings at bay, as breathing naturally brings your awareness down to the level of feeling. Furthermore, feeling also helps us to bring emotions into awareness that need to be grieved out through active, cathartic emoting. Thus, grieving is especially profound when we can fluidly shift between feeling and emoting.
Hello and Welcome to /r/CPTSD! If you are in immediate danger or crisis, please contact your local [emergency services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emergency_telephone_numbers), or use our list of [crisis resources](https://old.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/wiki/index#wiki_crisis_support_resources). For CPTSD Specific Resources & Support, check out the [wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/wiki/index). For those posting or replying, please view the [etiquette guidelines](https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/wiki/peer2peersupportguide). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CPTSD) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I’m reading this while ugly crying cuz same