Grief - The Loss Of Our Old Self

[LSNP]

Thanks for starting this thread. I grieve the old me almost every second of every day. I used to be innocent and naive and hopeful.... now I am jaded and pessimistict and sad. I don't know where she went. She's clearly not coming back.

 

[Iam]

There had never been another me, at least not that I can remember. I grieve that the little girl I was never got to be naive, innocent or feel loved. I grieve that, it is with me every minute of every day.

 

[Elizabeth]

I too grieve the girl/woman I could have been. I am not completely unhappy with myself, but I find that I wonder what I could have done and where I would be if not for the childhood I endured. The grief seems to be a cyclical thing with me. I recently had a very difficult bout of grief, triggered by brain scans images of ppl with PTSD. I got so upset and mad. My very brain has been altered.

However I am a good person worthy of love and caring. All these thoughts can get caught up in my head until my thoughts just spin like a hamster on its wheel, I don't really get any where. So I grieve when triggered, I am being a kinder person to myself these days.

 

[curiouser]

I use to grieve for the "old" me, spent several years feeling angry and sad about how I was so changed by it all, wishing I could go back. Spent years trying to answer the whys, and wondering what if it had never happened. Now I guess I just have a different perspective about it.

Life doesn't stand still, everything including me, is constantly changing in some degree. Even if the trauma had never happened to me, I still wouldn't be the same person I use to be back then before my trauma, today. I might be married to someone else, had kids, lived somewhere else, who knows what experiences I would have had differently, that would have changed me in different ways for better or worse than who I am now. Maybe I wouldn't even be alive right now had my life path been different, and I never experienced my trauma.

When I look at things in this perspective, it makes it easier for me to not feel such a loss for someone I wouldn't be now anyway, regardless of if I had or had not experienced my trauma.

 

[James B.]

If you grieve, give yourself over to the grief, find the beauty and spirituality in it, and move on.

Give thanks to your mind/body for the ability to grieve, and have emotions. Validate the authenticity of your experience, and know that you are normal, having suffered and survived. Find acceptance in your daily life as you go through the grief, either here or in your domestic situation - you must have acceptance. Be humble and bow down to the healing process. For it is sacred, and timeless. Let go...be healed, and live fully.