Loss

 

Loss is the state of being deprived of or of being without something that one has had.  Loss can be a selfish thing.  “I hope that team losses.”  Loss can leave us speechless, and take the wind out of our sails.  Loss is a natural part of all of our lives.  No one is immune from experiencing loss, nor the pain associated with it.

100% of our client’s at Gillis have experienced loss, and most do not have the coping skills for managing it much less the pain and frustration that follows.  After having lost my mother in 1989, I was faced with a loss that I was not prepared to experience.  For days and weeks, the pain was overwhelming.  I felt numb, and some days were worse!  Eventually an acquaintance told me that “I will get over it.”  I remember asking myself, “get over what?”  How does someone “get over” losing their mother, father, sibling or worse yet, a child?  The short answer is you don’t.  However, you can manage that pain or as I learned the hard way, the pain will manage you.

Many of our clients have lost or are in the process of losing their mother, father, and or family.   Managing their pain is the last thing they want to do.  Most would rather run from it, or self medicate it.  It is not uncommon for them to strike out at others.  Our goal is to teach our clients that skill but in order to do so, we have to join them in their pain.  Thus it should not surprise you that working with traumatized clients is traumatizing. 

A former client who had been adopted at the age of 14 after years of abuse, and multiple placements including residential treatment, and foster care shared this metaphor with me.  “I realized that I was in a pit.  I could crawl out but then I kept throwing myself back into the pit.  Therapy and school would give me ladders and rope to make it easier to get out of that pit, but I would eventually throw myself back in.  Soon I learned that I had to stop walking around that pit and change my path to avoid the pit otherwise I would eventually end up back into the pit.”  The good news was that as my client found a new path to walk on, she was pleasantly surprised that she was not alone.  In fact she was never alone.  I was always in the pit with her, guiding her up the ladder or throwing her that rope.  Would it surprise you that we use a lot of rope at Gillis?

Submitted by Gillis Clinical Director, Grey Endres, MSW, LCSW, LSCSW