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Understanding Traumatic Grief - Najwa Awad | ISNACON 2019

October 17, 2019Najwa Awad

Therapist Najwa Awad discusses the stages of grief and the cases in which grief can be a source of trauma. Listen and learn tips on how one can heal from it.

Transcript

This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
Asalamualaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. It's nice to see some familiar faces from the last session that we had. Jazakallah khair for coming out and thank you Sara for introducing the concept and Dr. Altaf also for talking about how grief can intermingle with our faith and sometimes make us feel better and sometimes it can make us feel worse. So there are so many myths when it comes to grief as they had mentioned before. That there is a certain time table. Grief should last three days or one year. Or you shouldn't cry after a certain amount of time. Or if you're not crying there must be something wrong with you that you're not grieving the way that you're supposed to. There are so many myths whether they are religious or societal. We as human beings are very uncomfortable with pain and especially with technology today we're so used to instant gratification. So we expect when something bad happens to us a quick fix. But subhanAllah it's a process and grief is really individualized. You can have triplets, same genetics, same upbringing and they can react to grief in three completely different ways. And it's important to know how the grief process works because that by itself clears up a lot of myths that we have. And so I hope to kind of just talk a little bit about the stages of grief. So people have a concept of what is normal within the bounds of grief. And then Sholay will talk about what may be considered traumatic grief or complicated grief. So when something really bad happens to us whether it's the death of a loved one or we lose a job or your home goes on fire. Oftentimes the first stage is disbelief.
We cannot believe what happened and this can be a really scary thing when we are experiencing grief. If someone really close to you dies and you don't cry or you're just like this doesn't feel real. That can be a really scary thing. Did I not love the person enough? And so it's really good to know that that's a starting point for where a lot of grief is. Now however I do want to say that the grief process is not always linear. I'm going to go through the stages just to give an overview. However you can skip through stages. You can go back on stages. So the first one is denial. After that we go to anger and that's where you start to see the whole grief process intertwined with religion. And when people are angry they could be angry with themselves. Oh I should have been more kind to this person. I should have said such and such to this person before they died. It could be anger with the person who died. They were so reckless. You know they shouldn't have been riding that motorcycle. This happens with Muslims but I hear it happens more with people who are not Muslim. Direct anger towards Allah. Allah why did this happen? And anger, there is healthy anger and there can be destructive anger. And inshallah I will talk about ways to navigate through those two things. But what I want people to walk away with knowing is that if you do get those thoughts, those passing thoughts that Sara was talking about, this is an expected response to grief. There is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with your Iman. Shaytan knows what hurts you the most. So it's very easy for him to see, okay this person is grieving. Awesome. So Allah is not the enemy. Shaytan is the enemy. He is the one who whispers these things to us. So after anger, then we go to depression.
That's when we feel sad. Your sleep might change. Your appetite might change. This is kind of the classic face that we see with bereavement. When people are really, really sad. And this is where the should statements start to come up. So one thing that we talk about in this chapter is the whole concept of I should do this. I should feel better. I should do better. And when we have these unrealistic expectations for ourselves, we generally make ourselves feel much worse. And so what can happen, and if you go to, I think it's chapter 2, right? We have this nice graph. So when you say, I should have more Iman. I should have gotten over this by now. Then you start to project unrealistic expectations on Allah too. Okay, well Allah must think that I'm not a good Muslim. So I feel worse. So then what's the point in trying? So maybe I shouldn't do X, Y, and Z. Maybe I shouldn't pray today. Maybe I shouldn't do this today. And then you don't do them, and guess what? You feel a lot more worse, right? Then you're like, oh, I didn't do this. My Iman is not strong because of my grief. And then it just becomes this really ongoing cycle. So when we start to eliminate the should statements from our head, and we think about what's right and healthy for me in this moment, it can clear up a lot of that baggage that we carry. And after the depression phase, a lot of times there's bargaining. You know, say you lost a job. Allah, I will fast. And I've actually heard of someone do this. I will fast every Monday and Thursday until I get this job. If you see a family member doing this, just leave them alone. It's part of their process. Let them go through the process in a way that feels good for them. But that is also within normal limits that we think, okay, maybe if I do this, this will happen. And then lastly, there is acceptance.
It's not that you're okay with what happened, but it will sting a little less. And that anchor that you've been carrying around that's so heavy will be more manageable. It won't be as heavy to carry around. It's not saying I'm okay that my son died or I lost my family members at war. But it's, okay, now I can go on with my day-to-day knowing these things and not being so consumed by them. So when we look at this whole spectrum, this whole circle of the stages of grief, and we see ourselves mourning or we see loved ones mourning and getting stuck in certain places, the most powerful thing we can do is really just be with them where they are and connect with them. When we start to include these should statements, then people are going to feel much worse. And so now you're probably wondering, okay, well, we talked about the stages of grief. How do we honor our feelings but then move through them at the same time? And so we know in psychology if you suppress feelings, they will always come out one way or another. Like if you suppress whatever it is, it might come out in a panic attack or you're going to have headaches or stomach aches. So it's important not to suppress, but that doesn't mean that you get consumed in the feelings either. And so it's this balance of how can I process through my difficult emotions, how can I acknowledge them but continue to work on them? And really that, in the process of grief, it's having the intention, I'm going to have the intention to get through this process in a way that feels okay for me and to the best of my ability. So if tomorrow the best you can do is get out of bed, then alhamdulillah, you got out of bed.
If the next week after that it's maybe going back to your halaqa, then it's going back to your halaqa. So it's not putting unrealistic expectations on yourself. And with anger, if you're getting thoughts of anger or even maybe the anger about Allah, it's crucial for a Muslim to be able to detangle these thoughts. With depression, with anxiety, with trauma, what happens is we want to isolate. It's embarrassing to say these things to people, right? But that is also a tactic of shaitan. One of the best things a Muslim can do is reach out to a trusted advisor. It can be a friend, it can be a therapist, it can be an imam. Because the sooner you start to detangle these thoughts, the better. But the longer you sit with them, say you sat with them for six months or one year, do you know how devastating that could be to your imam, to your men? So being proactive, even if you don't get relief right away, and that's a misconception about grief, is if I go to this one therapy session or if I talk to this imam one time, I'm going to get over it. But they say it's a process of getting over grief because it's a process. There isn't like, okay, so I'll go do X, Y, and Z. You're going to feel better. That's not how it works. One way I like to look at it is having a really big puzzle. And so you bring out the puzzle, you work on it, and then you set it to the side. And the next day, you bring it out again, you work on it, and then you set it to the side. So those are the stages of grief, but then there's also stages of recovery. Once you acknowledge, once you've kind of come to understand what has happened, the devastation of your loss, then the next thing is to process through it. And again, there's no quick way to do it, and I'm going to circle back to this. So the next step is to process, and then after that is to kind of adjust to life with your loss.
So if you lost your job, saying, okay, I lost my job, there's nothing I can do. So it's going and saying, okay, I'm going to look for a new job. If your spouse dies, then it's, okay, how can I, without pushing myself, get back to my day-to-day routine with this loss? And then the next step after that is maintaining connection with the loss after it's already gone. So we know through Islam that you can make dua for the person after they pass. You can do good deeds on their behalf after they pass. And keeping in perspective the akhira, we also know that this is not necessarily the end, that you might see them in the hereafter as well. So finding spiritual connections to your loss can help you navigate through that and still maintain a connection to what you lost, although it's not there in front of you anymore. Signs that things that maybe grief is not going as people would typically expect is maybe if you're suicidal or you just cannot get out of bed day after day after day. This is something that might be called traumatic grief or complicated grief, and it's useful to see a professional for that. I also kind of want to note that kids grieve differently than adults. Kids will not necessarily go through these stages. You might see them clingy. You might see them bed-wet. They might throw tantrums. And so the best thing you can do for a grieving child is just to be there unconditionally. You can still set boundaries, but that love and that support is the most useful thing that you can do. So what are tools you can do when you're in this grieving process?
You're not going to have a quick fix, and the same what works for your friend might not necessarily work for you, and what works one day might not work the other. So making a list of things that are therapeutic and healing for you, so during times of distress you can easily go to your list versus you're feeling terrible, then it's going to be much harder to access those tools. So some common ones. Immediately after a loss, it's very useful to scale back. If you have lots of responsibilities or things going on that you can cut out of your life, be sure to take those out, even if it's just temporarily. So I'm not saying stay home and don't do anything, because that can also be not good for your mental health. But stick to the basics. Stick with praying. Stick with maybe eating dinner with your family. And that way you will have much more energy to be able to work on that grief process. We just did a Q&A, and I gave an analogy. It's like having a lot of browsers open at one time, and you know how it slows your computer down? That's how grief can be and trauma can be. So once you start to eliminate some of those browsers, inshallah, your system should pick up. And journaling is a great way to process grief. Some people like to write letters to the deceased. Some people might sit after salah and just talk with Allah about their grief. And it sounds silly, but one of the reasons that it's useful is because you're getting it out of your system. There's lots of sisters here who might have long hair. What happens if you don't comb your hair every day? It becomes a tangled mess, right? And it's the same thing for our thoughts. Whether it's you're talking with someone or you're writing out your thoughts, you have to organize your thoughts, especially during times of calamity.
Otherwise, everything will get jumbled up, and it's really hard to tease things apart. Club talking with supportive friends is very useful. If you don't have anyone in your life that you can talk to, support groups are amazing. And now, alhamdulillah, we have the Internet. It's very easy to be able to access support groups. And if you're in the middle of nowhere, you can still connect to those people who are in a similar situation as you. Creative outlets is very healing in trauma and grief. And again, it sounds overly simplistic or even silly, but things like painting, gardening, cooking, they have these healing properties and can be a temporary relief from not just the monotony of day-to-day stuff, but from grief, especially when we're really in the midst of it. And then staying active. Staying active is very useful as well. When we have trauma or depression, we kind of want to sit still. We want to isolate. We want to stay in. And it might be really difficult, but just that walk around the block, just going, you know, you can even work out at home, it really does wonders. They say, like, regular consistent exercise is as powerful as mild antidepressants. And so it can be very healing and even protect you from depression if you're not going through depression at the moment. So these are just some suggestions for tools. You can always go to Google and make up your own list. You don't have to go through grief to even make this list. It's good to have this all the time with you because, subhanallah, in life, we're always bombarded with whether it's stressors or trauma or grief.
So for more information about should statements and about grief, please check out our Yaqeen series. We go into much more detail about dealing with trauma and with grief. Chapter 2 does that, and I think we have another chapter coming up. I think maybe it's chapter 5. No, it's chapter 7, inshallah, where we will be talking about grief in more depth as well. Jazakum khair and assalamu alaikum.
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