As I navigate my community from one day to the next, I continue to experience the omnipresent nature of death and dying. It’s everywhere. Nearly every day someone I know is trying to navigate their grief, just as I am. And this is not bad news necessarily, more like just the way it is. As Eckhart Tolle says, “Life is a terminal condition.” There are no surprises about what the end game is for all life forms, including humans.
Since we will all die and also lose people we love, I think a lot about how to build space where our grief is not only allowed, but welcomed. I have written extensively about the importance of honoring our pain, just as we honor our joy (which can be shocking if this is the first time you are hearing about this concept.) Getting still, and letting everything be as it is can be profoundly transformative.
But even though we know this in theory, we still resist, run from, anesthetize, fear and even deny our pain. We may feel like it will completely take us over if we allow it to exist at all, which results in more running, hiding, and armoring up. There are many costs to doing this. But here is one we don’t talk about enough. Let’s call it the grief threshold.
When we brace against pain, we may think it is the safest, least dramatic and private way to “hold it together” and “move forward.” And on the surface that may even be true, some of the time. But I don’t think we fully appreciate how all aspects of our lives are affected by stuffing pain down. We think we are presenting a “strong” front (which I am not suggesting is actually a good idea) by being active, social, and continuing to move forward. But it still bubbles up.
Consider this anecdotal experience to illustrate what I mean, by “bubble up.” Recently, I was at an exercise class. When the instructor arrived, she was disheveled, shaky and very tearful. As she began to set up for class in the front of the studio, she shared that she’d been involved in some type of upsetting driving incident on her way to the class. The more she spoke, the more shaky and teary she became.
I felt like it was me up there, trying not to cry and trying so hard to carry on. I’d experienced this dynamic countless times over the course of my own leadership career. One minute I had “it” together, but then with one small unexpected change or disappointment I could be overcome with tears, anxiety, stress and I would be unable to breathe let alone get myself out of it. I was fragile and I knew it.
Like the time I was traveling for work and mid-way through a major presentation, I looked down and I noticed I’d put on a navy skirt from one suit, with the blazer from a different navy suit. It sent me reeling. Instead of laughing it off as a funny, human mistake, I used it as a springboard for a sneak self attack. I was expressing stuffed grief, not really upset about my clothes. Before I understood the risk of my grief “bubbling up” it was ALWAYS brewing just below the surface, waiting to attack when I least expected it.
Instead of this little wardrobe aberration staying in context, as a “nothing” type incident, I felt crushed. I was distracted from my presentation and shaking. I felt like everyone could “see” that I was out of control, scared to death, and barely hanging on by a thread. I couldn’t laugh this, or anything else off because my grief was always waiting for me just under my breath. Which I learned to hold often. Until I learned about the bubble up and what was ACTUALLY happening.
So when my exercise class instructor was shaky, I recognized the bind she was in and wanted to help. I started to speak slowly but loudly, and invited our class including our instructor to take a few meditative minutes to transition to the present moment. I led a short meditation neutralizing the low level energy that had taken over the room. We welcomed healing, compassion and deep patience to infuse our bodies and our minds. And within a few minutes, I passed the session back to the instructor who went on to lead a great class.
In the days that followed a few individuals who were at that same class approached me to say thank you and acknowledge the way I’d stepped in and seemed to know what to do. It was very kind of them to share this appreciation and it pleased me to know I’d reached people in a warm way that I hadn’t planned on.
I chose not to share “why” I seemed to know how to step in. But it was because I recognized the grief threshold dynamic. I knew from too many personal experiences that when we are in grief, and especially when we are running from it, day-to-day challenges and demands get overwhelming. If we don’t make space for our grief, it finds a way to wrangle out, disguised as a more ”acceptable” problem.
Finding ourselves in a situation where we may have once felt annoyed but not ruled by our reactions, and now feel overcome by them, usually means we react to our environment in a way that is not commensurate with the situation. IE: Putting the wrong skirt and blazer together, becomes an earth shattering situation instead of a silly thing that no one else probably even noticed.
Or when a stressful driving situation like that of my instructor, that certainly imparted fear, but became a major situation resulting in a tearful lack of emotional control instead of a frustrating delay, the reaction and the circumstances don’t match. This can be a clue that someone needs our support.
As my instructor struggled initially, I recalled her sharing with the group a while back that she was a widow. And when the tears kept coming, and her shakes were not relenting, I realized she was probably in a bubble up. Her grief threshold was low and she’d been pushed over the top of it with this motor vehicle situation.
After class I gave her a big hug and told her it had been a great class. I don’t know her well enough to ask about her husband that passed, or to ask her how she is tending to her grief. But I knew the scene well, and recognizing the “bubble up” enabled me to support and encourage someone through theirs.
If you have ever tried to pack a suitcase with too many clothes, or poured a beverage into a glass that was too small for it, or ate too much at Thanksgiving and found your pants restrictive, or tried to carry too many things up or down the stairs, you too, know the bubble up. It’s the proverbial “straw that breaks the camel’s back.” It’s when everything bubbles over the threshold of the pain we can actually tolerate.
Since all of our muscles are always busy resisting grief and loss pain, there are none to step in for extenuating casual circumstances, like the wrong blazer, or a stressful drive. So we bubble up. Our grief takes us over until we can get back under that threshold.
Once we learn to recognize this principle, our attention can move from defensive, to one of curiosity as we turn our efforts towards answering a new question: Is there anything we can do to raise that grief threshold, and experience fewer bubble ups?
Mercifully, the answer is absolutely. Thoughts about this will be shared in a future post. For now, just know that self care is the only way home. That will point you in the right direction.