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Key points
- Like any good armor, emotional armor serves to protect the brain from harm.
- No one grieves the way you grieve. It is yours. You will shift through the many phases of grief in your own time.
- There is no right or wrong when it comes to understanding grief.
After loss, the experience of trauma often emerges. When you lose someone or something that’s important to you, you’re invited to dance with the power of loss and grief. It’s not simply a sad story, it is a new aspect of the self that’s rarely, if ever, invited by you into the realm of being.
- How do you move when feeling so overwhelmed and stuck?
- How do you create a safe haven and respite from the pain of loss?
In my book, "It's Grief: The Dance of Self-Discovery Through Trauma and Loss", I walk readers through what I refer to as the 11 Phases of Grief from my clinical observations.
Meet My First Phase of Grief
Phase One Is the Emotional Armor Phase. Like any good armor, which serves to protect from harm, this phase offers protective mechanisms to create that safe place when the mind is feeling as if it's on fire with disorganization, overwhelm, and disorientation. Rarely do we plan for loss, and even when you know it's going to happen, there is still some sort of psychic surprise, as if somehow, the odds were going to be beaten.
Think of this phase as the safe haven, the place you will revisit many times. It provides your soul with a needed chance to re-group, rest, and restore. If you think about numbness, one aspect of emotional armor, it is preparing you for the next phase in the journey through grief. Like a knight going into battle, donning emotional armor protects you from the slings and arrows of intense emotions. This allows you to enter battle feeling as if you’ve got some external protection that serves to also internally protect the most vulnerable parts of you.
The emotional armor phase includes several subcategories of protective mechanisms. Certain manifestations of these subcategories will call more strongly to you. Your responses are as individual as your fingerprint. You might need to retreat and shelter; blocking off emotions and creating distance: I call this numbness. Others may expose and expel those emotions to process them manically, or hyper-emotional. Some of the experiences in the emotional armor phase will most likely be layered; numb in one moment, protesting, in the next. The switch between two extremes can be jarring, and it is a normal reaction to loss.
Numbness, hyper-emotionality, denial and protest, and shock.
These protective mechanisms are automatic and normal; you cannot control them, they are like emotional reflexes that serve to keep you safe from the overwhelming emotions that threaten your sense of self and well-being. This is similar to physical reflexes, such as instinctively shutting your eyes or blocking your face when a perceived threat approaches.
Let’s walk through the subcategories:
Numbness
- Emotions are hidden and inaccessible.
- You experience paralysis, an inability to take action or make decisions, and you are indecisive as a result of not being in touch with emotions and thoughts.
- Apathy holds you hostage and you have no desire to take part in the world.
- This numbness is to repress the strong emotions as a result of the loss.
Hyper-Emotional
- Frenzied emotional overload, irrational, unpredictable.
- Bouts of crying, moaning, babbling, behaving unreasonably, and even contempt for grief itself.
- Although you are feeling strong emotions, this mechanism serves to replace feelings and thoughts specifically from what has happened, not ready to process quite yet.
Denial and Protest
- Attempt to make what is, disappear.
- Refusing to engage with what is and not seeking help since there is “nothing” to help with.
- Protesting facts keep denial alive, as it is the mind’s way of avoiding the truth.
- Anger feeds protest, fueling the fire to keep denial alive.
- Denial can be healthy because if we were to think about death, loss, and trauma every day, we would be driven mad; it is critical to human survival.
- Denial can be unhealthy when it keeps you stagnant and unable to engage in healing and processing.
Shock
- Occurs in both the body and the brain, especially the amygdala, when you experience or re-experience personal or psychological loss, disbelief contributes to the wave of shock.
- Often mingles with numbness, hysteria, and denial.
- Affects all functioning such as breathing, sense of calm, ability to think clearly or focus, stability, and steadiness in the body.
Other subcategories of the emotional armor phase include seclusion, confusion, and chaos. No matter the subcategory, when this phase subsides, you may experience something like an emotional clearing or release, or catharsis. Catharsis can feel empowering as it offers a freeing perspective; realizing grief is not taking over you and that there is more beyond the encompassing but temporary state. Grief is no longer this mysterious and powerful force that knows no bounds. It is something you understand better. You understand how it functions and what its boundaries are.
You will shift through the many phases of grief in your own time. As this is a respite phase, you may revisit this first phase as a way to take a psychic break, to regather your senses.
However, sitting within the emotional armor phase allows you to go back into the struggles of your grief, with greater agility and understanding. Initially, you may find yourself in this phase, coupled with the other phases. Remember, the response to loss does not follow any certain pathway. It is non-linear.
This first phase gives you the ability and agility to dance with the other phases. They come in pairs and sometimes in threes. You are in this place, and rather than avoiding the dance, you need to figure out how to partner with what feels like an adversary. This dance can be challenging, yet, your healing will be more productive when in process with your emotions rather than avoiding them.
Imagine a leak in the ceiling. Sure, you could put a bucket under the leak and catch each drop to protect the floor, but the bucket will eventually overflow. If you don’t understand where the leak is coming from, you’ll need to replace the bucket over and over again each time it overflows. Each time an emotion from grief leaks out, and you store it until you are ready to engage with it, dance with it, and let it know you are willing to meet it where it's at, yet, you will not be controlled by its power.
Withdrawal can happen during this phase as well; you may think it’s better to be alone while you are finding your way through the pain. Although everyone’s experience is unique to them, you’d be surprised how many people share parallel experiences. And, no one grieves the way you grieve. It is yours.
Options such as online discussion groups where care and guidance are offered, talking to a friend or family member, or reaching out to a counselor, prove you are not alone.
Grief is not easy. Instinctually, you may want to hide away, and bravery shows up in different forms. It might be a brave move for you to be more alone, as you contemplate the next steps. There is no right or wrong when it comes to understanding grief.
If you think this is about strength, great. If you think this is about a mindset, great. Step into your fear, knowing you have the emotional armor phase to keep you safe when you need it.
The pain and heartache you feel can ultimately lead to internal illumination, growth, and partnering with your grief, instead of acting as if it's the enemy.
