Continuing our chat about habits and taking a look at what really drives us, let’s talk about elephants. These incredibly large and powerful animals can weigh as much as 13,000 lbs. and live as long as 70 years. I remember as a child, being at the Circus and getting close to the elephants. Before I knew it, the elephant’s tail literally slapped me across the face and I didn’t know what hit me!
But that painful memory is not why I bring up the subject of elephants. Rather, I am bringing it up because the thing we don’t see at the Circus or the Zoo, are massive restraint systems to keep the elephants from charging the buildings or the crowds. We don’t see chains that could safely contain a 13,000 lb. animal, securing the elephant to the ground. We may see something small and non-sturdy connecting the large elephant to the floor like a rope, but it equates to what would be a paper bracelet for us.
Apparently, starting at a young age, elephants in captivity are restricted from moving too far away from a particular spot. Each time they try to move, a rope, or other type of restraint pulls their necks. Eventually, they learn not to yank on the rope, so as to avoid the pain of tension. This “habit” (not pulling) is driven by a belief (it will hurt if I do) and results in an action (or non-action in this case, not to pull.)
Psychologists call this transference. And the same rules apply in our human habits. We seek pleasure and avoid pain. When we do something enough it becomes automatic. But sometimes even after the need for the habit no longer exists, we continue the “action” anyway. We don’t notice when the restraints are no longer there and continue the habit without ever getting curious about whether or not it is still appropriate.
For example, I used to have an automatic hamper. I’d walk over, waive at it, the lid would open and I’d dump the clothes. Perfect! Until I got a new hamper that was NOT automatic. But here’s the point: I still waived over the lid of the non-animated hamper a million times before I got used to it. I felt and looked ridiculous, but kept doing it until I could interrupt my automatic response based on a circumstance that no longer existed. In other words, I had to step in between stimulus and response, and choose an alternative action: opening the hamper with my hand.
We all experience this. But we especially see this when we are grieving. From a practical level, there are the obvious shitty reminders that tell us we are still looking for the person even though they aren’t coming back. Or maybe we still call for them or think we hear them. Then we remember, “Oh yeah, that’s right I can’t call out to that person anymore, they’re gone.” It takes a while for our neurology to catch up and learn this new non-sensical world.
Another way we experience these habits that no longer fit in our environment when we have lost someone, is that we can get caught in a pattern of shaming ourselves. Society teaches us to apologize (saying “Sorry!” Every time we start to cry or express sadness) for grieving, and to at least keep it hidden and for a designated period of time, but time limited nonetheless. When we are new to grief, society teaches us early on that we are expected to resume our lives as if this loss never occurred. That is the goal. To “get back” to being ourselves.
And that goal is a lie. There is no such “getting back.” The longer I live without two of my children who died years ago, the more confident I am that trying to restore some sense of a “pre-loss” existence is not something that takes time. It’s not something that should even take place at all. And the idea that we “should” be able to pull this off, on someone else’s time table, or at all is just a lie.
So bringing this altogether: Elephants, restraints, habits, grief, lies and all, I conclude this:
If we are feeling badly about ourselves because we are still sad, or feeling too tired to get up because we are depressed, or anesthetizing with a drug of choice because it’s the only way we can stop trembling, then we are grieving. And since we already feel like hell, let’s interrupt that the “habit” of trying not to feel, what we feel, and stop hiding when we do. We have received all the cultural messaging that has bombarded us before, and after this loss. We learned not to share our grief. We were rewarded for “doing better.” But this habit needs to be broken.
We don’t need add pain to our lives by being stuck in a place that we are not allowed to expand from. We can let go of restraints, and restrictions. These are our fractured hearts and our stories of survival, which are always being written. So own yours, right along side your pain. Both need a voice but neither require a rope.