'I Don't Want to Be Here': 20 Normal Grief-Related Thoughts After Your Child Dies

Hi friends,

I hope you are doing well. Since one of the groups of people I help are bereaved parents (yuck-who chose that title?), I thought I would write a normalizing post. Where we, well, normalize all the thoughts I've heard many clients utter after their child has died.

• "I wish I could move on already." The weight of grief can be overwhelming, and some parents may find themselves longing for relief, which can feel like a betrayal to the memory of their child.

• "I should have done more / I could have saved them." This self-blaming thought can arise, even in situations beyond a parent’s control, as parents feel responsible for their child's safety.

• "I feel jealous of other parents." Watching others continue with their lives, especially those with children, can bring up envy, guilt, and frustration. For example, seeing the pictures of everyone else's children growing up on social media, while your image of your child remains static, and perhaps, even frozen at the place where you saw them die.

• "It’s easier not to think about them." Avoidance can sometimes feel like the only way to cope, though it may also lead to feelings of guilt for not honoring the child’s memory more.

• "I feel angry at my child for leaving me." Though it may sound harsh, some parents feel anger toward their child for "leaving" them, especially if the child’s death involved choices or situations the parent might have warned against.

• "My family or partner doesn’t understand my grief." Everyone grieves differently, and feeling disconnected from those who are also mourning can lead to frustration, loneliness, and shame.

• "I wonder if I even want to keep going." or "I don't want to be here anymore." The despair of losing a child can lead parents to question their own will to live, which can be a frightening and isolating experience.

• "Life has no purpose anymore." Losing a child can feel like the world has lost its meaning, making it difficult to care about daily routines, responsibilities, or future plans.

• "I don’t want to talk about them with anyone." Some parents may want to shut down conversations about their child or feel numb or exhausted by discussions, which can lead to guilt about not honoring their child.

• "I regret not spending more time with them." Parents may look back and fixate on moments they believe they could have spent better or differently, even if they were doing their best at the time.

• "Maybe it’s better this way / Maybe it’s for the best." In complex situations, parents may have fleeting thoughts that question the child’s or family’s struggles in life, which can lead to shame for even considering these possibilities.

• "I’m afraid to be happy again." The thought of finding joy after such a loss can feel like a betrayal to the child’s memory, causing parents to feel stuck in their grief. Joy is also a really vulnerable emotion in itself, because in order to feel joy, you have to risk the possibility of pain again. Like Brene Brown says, "We can't selectively numb emotions. When we numb anger, we also numb empathy. When we numb sadness, we also numb joy."

• "I’m disappointed by the lack of support from friends and family." Experiencing this grief can also reveal unexpected disappointments with others' reactions or lack of understanding, leading to feelings of bitterness or isolation. And if you're a people-pleaser, you can feel kinda shitty for not liking the way people in your life did or did not show up for you.

• "I don’t know who I am without being their parent." Parents often define themselves by their roles in their children’s lives, and losing a child can lead to an identity crisis that feels shameful or disorienting.

• "I resent the people who are trying to comfort me." Well-meaning gestures from friends and family can sometimes feel hollow, intrusive, or unhelpful, leading to resentment and guilt for feeling this way toward supportive people.

• "I feel relief that the struggle is over." If the child was ill or the family endured significant hardship, a parent might feel some relief that the suffering has ended, which can be a deeply guilt-inducing thought.

• "I feel disconnected from my other children (or family)." The depth of grief for one child can sometimes overshadow relationships with other family members, leading to shame about not being as present or attentive.

• "I wish I didn’t have to talk about this with people." Grief can be so heavy, that even sympathetic questions or check-ins feel like a burden, creating a conflict between needing support and wanting solitude. Plus sometimes, you just want to go to the grocery store, or church, or to work and not feel the tears well up when someone asks you "How are you doing?" with that sympathetic smile on their face.

• "I wonder what life would have been like without them." It’s normal to reflect on different life paths, even imagining alternate realities, but this can feel shameful, as if it's a dismissal of the child’s impact and presence.

• "I’m angry at the world for not stopping." The world continues on, despite the profound loss, which can feel incredibly invalidating and frustrating, as if people don’t care or the loss isn’t acknowledged by society.

Guess what... You aren't crazy. You are not losing your mind, or your empathy, or your heart. You're not a bad parent, or bad person. You aren't going to lose it and kill yourself. You don't deserve this pain. You're grieving the death of a person you loved so intensely that it causes a physical ache in your bones when you think of them being gone. You weren't meant to lose a child. You were meant to outlive your baby, the one person you love more than the moon and the stars, and you didn't. They were supposed to bury you in the ground, and instead, you had to pick out a casket for them. You had to plan a funeral. You had to tie up the loose ends of a life that wasn't even fully lived. And you would give anything, ANYTHING, to have them back. And now, your thoughts are racing, trying to reason away the despair. Because your brain's job is to keep you safe. And it thinks that your emotional pain is unsafe. In fact, your mind cannot distinguish between physical and emotional pain, as both activate the same parts of the brain. So your mind thinks that the grief you are carrying is the same as a broken leg or a terrible third degree burn, and it's trying to anesthetize you so you can keep going.

I'm here to tell you, you will keep going, and your brain's attempts at reasoning or production of any of the thoughts above don't make you a jerk or insensitive or bring dishonor to your child's memory. These thoughts are symptoms of a deep love lost, of a relationship and bond that transcends time and space, but may feel intensely one-sided right now. It won't always feel this hard, and someday, I promise you, you will wake up and your first thought won't be to cry or to numb or to avoid your grief. You will think, "What am I going to do with today?" and you will smile again. Not today, but one day in the future, you will feel like you want to be here and there with your child (and you won't feel any guilt for either thought).

And if you need a therapist in the meantime who gets it, like really truly gets it, I'm right here, just a click away.

Take Exquisite Care of Yourselves,

Megan

Lessons from Literature: What's Your Soma?

Hi friends! Have you ever read a book that stood out to you and you can recall its lessons even years later? I have. I can recall multiple novels that have changed the way I view something, which brings me to a new blog series called Lessons from Literature. In this series, I will select a novel with a lesson or deeper meaning that can be applied to the therapy world or life itself.

The first book I'm featuring is 'Brave New World' by Aldous Huxley. Introduced to this dystopian novel in high school by a beloved English teacher, it's chock full of themes and has been compared to the novel 1984 for its relevance to today's world. While I won't spoil the novel for you (I really think it's worth the read), the basic premise is this: the story follows a few characters as they navigate a seemingly perfect society based on the principles of consumerism, collectivism, and a rigid caste system. Not surprisingly, there's a nasty underbelly and a sharp divide between the haves and have-nots. We see how even in a utopia, human beings still need 'something' to help them survive the disconnect they feel inside. And in Huxley's world, here comes the drug Soma. Here's an excerpt from the book that describes the feelings Soma invokes in people:

"And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears—that’s what soma is." - Chapter 17, Brave New World

How does this relate to us, and the lessons we can take from literature? Perhaps the lesson is this: What is your Soma? What 'drug' do you use to "give you a holiday from the facts?" Is it food? Sex? Social Media? Porn? Alcohol? Weed? TV? Smutty romance novels? (Okay, this one hits a little too close to home!) What do you do when all you can do is just be? Like, when it is silent and you're alone with your thoughts, can you stay there? When you're riding the elevator to your office, can you just 'be' without looking down at your phone? When you're taking care of your children, can you just 'be' without having a glass of wine nearby? When you're lonely after another crappy date, can you just sit in the feeling without turning to a false reality for comfort? When you're outside and it's beautiful, can you just listen and breathe and notice the world as it is, or are you unable to let go of the Soma that is noise and music and podcasts and news stations?

Which Soma is keep you back from your goals? Because in the novel, soma is often consumed at greater and greater quantities to the detriment of the user and their perception of the world. In fact, I would argue that Soma is the thing that is keeping the people in the 'World State' from absolutely losing it. Doesn't the World State sound a lot like the modern day world we live in? Always moving at the speed of light, worried about consuming over creating, trying to separate love and joy from intimacy and connection, encouraging all of us to just keep our heads down, keep working, keep doing, keep going, and here, 'take this handy dandy drug so you can tolerate it.' The Soma, at its core, promises comfort and freedom from reality. This addiction to comfort above growth is part of what is holding you, and most human beings back. When we engage in disengagement, we stagnate. We mold. We wither. And, if we don't stop consuming, we become bloated and heavy in our comfort. Then, we lose our sight of empathy and our common humanity.

What can we do about this? Firstly, decipher what your Soma is. There are three clues I use with myself and with clients when I'm talking about something in my life becoming unbalanced or unhealthy.

1. When I am doing something hard or boring, or even something supposedly enjoyable, am I noticing a pattern in my behavior that is keeping me from just experiencing the moment in the here and now?

2. When I do this distracting thing (i.e. possible Soma), do I feel better or worse afterwards? Like, at the end of the day, when I review my life, am I glad I engaged in that behavior? Or do I feel guilt or shame as a result?

3. Is this behavior causing rifts in my relationships, my work, my health or my mood? Another way to ponder this question is "If someone were to tell you that you needed to cut down or cut back on this behavior, would you feel defensive, annoyed or angry?"

   
   

So I pose a challenge to you today, figure out what your Soma is, and work on replacing it with something else. Ask yourself, "What would I be doing if I were recovered from this addiction?" Don't focus on what you will lose, but put your sight on what you will gain. You may lose comfort, but you will redeem your resilience and growth for the future.

Take exquisite care of yourselves,

Megan

When Doubt Turns Into Desperation: A Peek into Obsessive Doubt and OCD

Hi friends! I hope you are doing well. Today, I'd thought we'd tackle a specific type of problem that shows up in the therapy room with many of my clients: obsessive doubt.

If you're curious about 'obsessive doubt,' think of it like super intense anxiety. It's when you can't stop worrying about what might happen in the future, or what could have happened in the past. Like, are you really in love? Did you pick the right partner? Could you have hurt someone without even knowing it? Did the doctor miss something during your check-up? Is the world gonna be okay? Will you have enough money? The person with obsessive doubt struggles to trust their senses, their memories, their actions, even themselves, at their very core.

When the uncertainty train leaves, it takes us to the land of obsession. This is where doubt turns into desperation. We start obsessing over things, creating stories in our heads that make us super anxious and scared about things that haven't even happened. And then, to feel better, we might start doing things over and over to try to feel safe and calm. Like... counting, or googling, or asking our best friends to listen to us describe how much we love our partner and all the reasons why, or creating budget sheet after budget sheet to make certain you have enough money. Compulsiveness can look like reading the news multiple times per day, scanning for 'feel-good' articles to prove to yourself that there's still good in the world, but then distrusting them when you do read them, because after all, there's so many bad, awful terrible news stories out in the world, too.

Make no mistake, people who aren't in therapy have doubts, too. All people do. But most humans have doubts that they can then turn off or move away from, because they know living in fear and doubt keeps them stuck, paralyzed, unable to move forward.

Let's use one of the doubt-based questions above: "What if the doctor missed something at my last wellness check up?" What is the potential consequences of this happening? The person plagued with this doubt might find themselves struggling not to overreact, and their inner monologue might sound something like this,

"I just noticed a strange mole on my body, and I went to the doctor last week and they looked at it and said it seemed fine, that it didn't meet the criteria for any further testing. They're a great doctor, and I usually trust them, but what if? What if they missed something at my check up? What if it's melanoma and I am completely at stage four and it's terminal and I die? I once read a news article where a women's melanoma was underneath her skin and she didn't start showing signs until it was too late. I'd feel like I let my family down if I don't get this checked out again and I die and leave them all here without me. I better go google pictures of melanoma for the next two hours, while I wait for the doctor's office to call me back so I can go back for a biopsy."

Does the above story sound familiar? Maybe your anxiety or doubt doesn't hang its hat onto that particular hook.

Maybe you instead are terrified of making the wrong decision in future colleges, careers, life partners, places to live, etc. Perhaps you find yourself awake at night laying next to your loving, kind, thoughtful partner of 23 years and you're suddenly struck with the thought, "What if I don't love them enough?" And then you can't stop worrying about that. If you don't love them 'enough,' then don't they deserve to be with someone who can love them better? What if you have to get divorced because you don't love them enough?' When you can't get this thought to calm down, then you rush into googling, 'How do you know you love your partner enough?' The search results spike your anxiety further though, because the first article that pops up is titled, "When Love isn't Enough." Cue the pounding heart, the dry mouth, the tears, the nausea in your stomach.

See how quickly things can escalate? Whew! I was starting to get a bit nervous just thinking about it. But at the core of all these uncertainties is the basic question: "Am I secure?" Our minds are always on the lookout for potential threats, and you know what's risky? Stepping into new areas of your life. Anxiety acts as a signal, reminding you to recognize your current needs, which usually involve safety, assurance, and confidence in yourself and your perceptions. It's crucial to trust what you can see, feel, touch, taste, and know in the present moment, and rely less on your imagination, which often creates doubts to steer you towards safety and away from danger.

The next time you experience a thought like the ones above, or even one that sounds like a statement, ask yourself "What else could it be?" This question will open your mind to the other possibilities, and maybe, just maybe, give you a chance to breathe in a tiny bit of air before you allow the doubt to drag you underneath the rough, choppy waves of uncertainty. Life is uncertain, and the thing is, none of us make it out alive, but we can still make it good. We can still make it good.

And if you find yourself needing further support or intrigued by this blog post, I'm always just an email or a text message away to get you started on the treatment you need to help you heal in the midst of doubt and fear.

Take exquisite care of yourself,

Megan