Sadly I got the horrible news last week that a good friend and sadly taken his own life. While I have experienced the loss of loved ones before this was when I was younger and I don't think I fully understood what grief was and the impact it had on me. Partly for my own benefit (but hopefully others to!) I wanted to write down some of my thoughts about how autism has changed/ impacted my grieving process. Like always, if you have met one autistic individual you have met one autistic individual. These are my views and experiences and doesn't mean that it will be the same for my fellow neurodiverise pals.
As a nursing student I was taught about the grief process, I always liked the Kubler-Ross cycle as it looked quite clear and ordered.
However I am quickly realising that while I can see some aspects of this cycle I have experienced grief that looks a little less organised and maybe more like this:
I have found the process exhausting and confusing. Autistic individuals often struggle to understand, process and express their emotions. I have noticed this more than ever over the past week. Grief is confusing for all of us but then throw in on top of that a real struggle in being able to understand your own emotions.
I have found this really frustrating.
I have found mood cards really helpful in processing and understanding my current emotions. I have previously talked about these in my post 'Surviving vs Thriving'. I have found this particularly helpful when trying to communicate my thoughts and feelings to others to allow them to support me in the most helpful way.
Another thing that I have noted over the past week is the language around death and dying. In British culture we like to brush around the topic and not say the harsh truth 'X has died'. Instead people like to use language such as passed away, fallen asleep, passed on, no longer with us. Putting my nursing brain on again we are often taught the importance of not using these terms with children and instead being direct (X has died). I have realised that this is important for not just children but for those of us that are more literal thinkers. I have found it really helpful telling myself in a social story type narrative. It is okay you are feeling sad, X has died.
Reinforcing this statement I think has helped me process the sadness and confusion. This has also been my go to when I am having tearful moments to remind myself its okay to be feeling how I am. This is something that I think should be normalised. Instead of saying to someone who is grieving, I'm sorry for your loss (this has been said to me a number of times and I don't understand it, why are you sorry. You've done nothing wrong?!) I feel a far more comforting and helpful approach would be I can see you are sad, that's okay because your friend has died. Acknowledging the obvious helps to reinforce the reality of what has happened.
Another aspect that I have really struggled with is getting the balance of stepping back a little bit to allow me the time and energy to grieve but also knowing that the break in routine will add to the stress and anxiety that I was already feeling. With the way that my shifts worked I had three days off after I found out this news which turned out to be really helpful. I created my own structure for these days, not putting too much pressure on myself and doing things that I enjoyed to allow me to rest while having structure to my day.
I decided not to take any time off work as I don't think this would have helped me. However that doesn't mean that this would have be the same for everyone in this situation. I am really lucky that my work place has been really supportive, I found it helpful to let a few collueges know about what I was going though so they could subtly support me as and when I had wobbly moments at work.
The final part of grieving that I want to reflect on from an autistic point of view is peer support. It is so important to be able to grieve with others however for those that find social situations challenging this can be difficult. I found it really hard to know what I wanted to do/ who I wanted to be around in the initial days following hearing the news that my friend had died.
I was emotionally exhausted trying to process my on thoughts and I didn't feel I had any energy to spend time with anyone else. Having said this there was a part of me that wanted to be with the others in my friendship group for the peer support of each other. I found it really hard to find the balance. For me the thing that ended up working best was having 1:1 company from friends rather than in bigger groups. I also found that doing things while being with friends talking things though was helpful, for example I went for a swim with a friend and while doing some lengths of a pool we both sounded out how we were feeling which was so helpful. I found that this made it less emotionally intense and was actually really helpful for me (and hopefully others!).
Dog cuddles/ company also have played a very important part in my coping mechanism over the past few days!!
So I think that is all I have to say. It probably makes no sense but like I said at the start I was partly doing this for selfish purposes to help me process all that has happened over the past week or so. I think the most important thing to say (and to remind myself) is that there is no right or wrong way to grieve, it is such an individual process but such an important process that takes time.
Comments
Post a Comment