San Diego Therapist Blog: Regina Huelsenbeck, PhD

....goes the Green Day song. This song is based on Billie Joe's (Green Day lead singer) experience of living through seemingly interminable grief after his father's death. He longs for the pain to end. The grief hangs on him, his constant companion.

"Here comes the rain again...drenched in my pain again" are poignant lyrics describing the experience of grief. As time goes on, you seem to feel alright for a moment here and there, but suddenly you are "drenched" again in the heaviness of it all, and you're completely and totally helpless. Like a sudden thunderstorm, grief pours from the heavens. The feeling washes over you like a wave, and you simply cannot shake it, you ride it.  

Grief and loss bring us to our knees. Very few things in life can provide suffering like losing someone close to us can. Grief is not only related to literal death. It also appears with other great losses, for example: the ending of a relationship (divorce) or the loss of one's innocence, youth, or agility (aging).

Grief can become heavy. We wish someone could "wake" us when it ends. But we cannot jump over grief, any more than we can skip the month of September. We have to walk through it. And September can feel like a very, very long month.

However, likewise, grief is also responsible for awakening, enlivening and individuating our persons. Individuation is a term clinicians often use to describe the process of becoming who we are, which is exactly what Billie Joe says in his song, "Drenched in my pain again, becoming who we are". In walking through grief, in being present to the whole experience of it, amazingly, bizarrely, you somehow are molded; somehow you expand from grief? Grief can actually heal you.

CLICK HERE for definition of "individuation" on wikipedia and read the Carl Jung explanation.

Sometimes we have to live through September. Surrender to September. The dawn will come. If this is where you are, you are exactly where you are supposed to be right now. Have faith and continue to be present through September. September will end; it always does, every year. 

Today, let's talk briefly about the Serenity Prayer...

God* grant us the serenity

to accept the things we cannot change,

The courage to change the things we can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

Most of us are familiar with this prayer and have probably heard it or said it several times. The prayer is short, sweet and empowering.

But what does "Serenity" really mean?

Serenity is a state of mind. Serenity is the state or quality of being calm, or tranquil, having composure, calm, peacefulness, or peace. Serenity is having the presence of mind, or said another way, having the presence to your own mind, to your surroundings, and to your life.

The prayer is essentially saying, God grant me the "presence" of mind to see my circumstances, my mind, and my life clearly today. God grant me this presence, so that I may see the truth, and make choices from this clear and present state.

The prayer also asks for acceptance. Accepting one's current position or set of circumstances can be one of the most difficult things we must learn do. It is VERY HARD sometimes to accept exactly where you are at this moment. We often want to manipulate it, eat something, drink something or somehow change it. We want to jump over ourselves and get to where we are going. But first, we must accept. We must start from where we are. ONLY then can we begin to move with compassion and grace into changing or moving from this current position.

God* grant me presence to whatever my life holds for me in this moment. Allow me to be fully alive to my life, fully here for all of it. I wish you full, gentle, and complete presence in your life today.

 *Note to reader, please substitute whatever word for God which is meaningful for you.

In my work at the university, I see many trauma survivors; releasing guilt is a major focus in treatment. It's often imperative to release guilt to loosen the hold of PTSD symptoms (see below for general definition and description of PTSD symptoms).

Truly, many of us carry guilt about different things that have happened in our lives. We often believe that if we had just acted differently that things may have turned out better. "IF I had only taken his keys that night". "IF I had just been a nicer person or a better student, mom and dad would have stayed together". "I never should have gone out with her, I had a bad feeling and I should have trusted myself". 

3 basic ways we experience guilt:

1. We feel guilty that we did something that we should not have done, OR we feel guilty that we didn't do something that we should have done. (behaviors)

2. We feel guilty that we thought something that we shouldn't have thought or we feel guilty that we didn't think something that we "should" have thought of. (thoughts)

3. We feel guilty that we felt something we should not have felt or we feel guilty that we did not feel something that we should have felt.(feelings)

Kubany, a Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) clinician and researcher has said that if he only had one hour to work with a trauma survivor (specifically he works with domestic violence trauma survivors) he would spend it on releasing her guilt. He went further and said that if he only had 10 minutes to spend with a victim of DV he would spend it on Hindsight Bias.

Hindsight Bias is basically blaming yourself now for decisions that you made before you knew what you know now. You cannot make a decision back then from the knowledge you hold today (knowing the outcome of the event). But we argue, "no, I had a feeling that something bad might happen". However, this is NOT the same thing as knowing the specific outcome of the traumatic event. You only attained that specific knowledge after the event, and not before. This is an important thing to keep in mind when we are blaming ourselves. We simply can't possibly know then what we know now. 

"A loving heart is the truest wisdom" ~ Charles Dickens 

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3 basic symptom categories of PTSD:

"To express unafraid and unashamed what one really thinks and feels is one of the great consolations in life"

~ Theodore Reik (20th Century German Psychoanalyst)