When it is Too Much to Bear: Finding Our Way Back From Overwhelming Events
SUMMARY: One day we will find our self at a loss for words or direction due to a difficult loss or overwhelming event. This articles acknowledges this dark and heavy place offering observations around ritual, routine, rallying support, remembering and rest to help us find our way back to the light.
My Story Of Too Much To Bear
I was on a campus visit with my 17-year-old son to a local university. Faculty interviews, visiting the dorms and campus buildings, Q&A with an advisor in a personalized one on one experience. Nostalgia, wonder and delight swirled within me visiting this university I had graduated from 24 years earlier. As we approached the door to the dorm my phone vibrated. Caller ID showed the call from the deputy police chief where I served as chaplain. The call went to voicemail as I left the tour and told my son I would re-join him in a minute. Strolling back up the path I called back and the chief’s admin answered. There was urgency verging on panic as she shared an Everett Police Officer had been killed on duty. My body went numb. It felt like I left my body, as though someone else was asking questions of the admin. In this disembodied state I tried to figure out where my son had disappeared to then searched for the car I suddenly had a hard time finding while texting my wife to drive down to take my place on the college tour. I headed north where the entire police department was gathering.
The drive through Eastside traffic to the precinct seemed to take years. My mind was stuck unable to process yet a swirling whirlpool of need-to-dos at the same time. So many thoughts and feelings. So few words. The officer was one I did not know well but I had sat next to him two mornings earlier in briefing. Nearly an hour of this out-of-body sensation before I walked into a packed building eerily silent and packed with solemn faces. On and off-duty were gathered in a state and scene hard to describe. As a chaplain on calls, I feel and experience the heaviness, grief and confusion of the officers or affected loved ones. I touch it while bracketing the full impact so that I might offer leadership, support and care to others. Then, after the storm, I seek my circle of support and care to process my experience. This day, March 25, 2022 was a mix for me. The boundaries and bracketing were overwhelmed and breached. It was too much to bear. And yet…
I wrote this particular experience on March 25, 2024 after reading the City of Everett post honoring the fallen EPD officer, Dan Rocha. It all came back to me with such vividness. These grief-filled and overwhelming events are remembered and up end personal assumptions. The veil is pulled back and we peer into the mysterious abyss that surrounds our life. What we behold there is a sacred wordless space.
The Sacred Wordless Space
I am tackling a series called, Does Joy Really Come In the Mourning? I don’t offer this question with a solid answer or even a one-hundred percent clear hope. It is given with hopefulness. From my present vantage point certainty and clarity have been replaced with uncertainty and ambiguity. This terrified me when younger. Thankfully, as my view has evolved the world has not come off its axis. Something new has emerged. May you find comfort or encouragement in what follows.
What is the right response and the best way to handle that which is too much?
How are we to bear the silence when there are no words?
When our body seems to go forward and life goes on but our mind goes off-line, how do we find our way back?
This territory is a sacred and mysterious one. It is terrifying and dismantling, awful and awe-full. I cannot offer solutions, steps for success or a simple cure. I consider all of this one of the holy spaces of our life. God is present and in my theological place I see it as the Christ-place where we discover a suffering where the living die but the dying continue to live. Artists, poets and creatives spend lifetimes touching on this Christ-place. We may never get over it completely and time may not heal all wounds. I humbly share observations which have landed in a fresh way.
Observations As We Find Our Way Back
These moments plead for immediate crisis care and support. Most will slide in and out of the shock for the first 24 to 48 hours as time seems to both stop and dissolve.
Avoidance of the new reality, or diminishment of the loss, seem hopeful and helpful and perhaps this is what is necessary for a time. However, the time will come when the loss will need to be moved through. There’s no other way. In these times there is an interesting paradox: Nothing we say matters while everything we say reveals something important. It is easy for observers to react to our statements agreeing, disagreeing, correcting and explaining. What is actually needed is witnessing; validating and empathizing with the loss. Silence will be a large part of the conversation. Journaling and recording our thoughts, even the fragments and confusing ones will have value later in the processing and putting life back together. In time words will need to be found, feelings felt, and implications taken in. Meanwhile there are five R-words to capture guiding rhythms as we find our way back.
Rituals become an important parts of this journey. Rituals are things we do that have significant meaning. We may not realize a ritual until we stop by a Starbucks and order a specific drink, sit on the couch to watch a show, or pull out decorations for an upcoming holiday. Suddenly the memories and emotion floods us. Everyday tasks can become rituals. These emotionally-charged activities can feel too much and we may prefer to avoid them. This is a part of the honoring, grieving and moving through the pain. Recognize the rituals as they come to awareness.
Routine is an anxiety calming method. Daily, predictable activities carry us through life and reduce stress: Meals, exercise, morning coffee, recreation, church service, and weekly friend get-togethers are routines serving as ladder rungs to hold onto and climb out of the abyss. Folks may return to work very quickly which can seem the last thing they should be doing. Work often offers an valuable support system in their co-workers and the familiar routine is soothing and anxiety-reducing. Welcome the routine and the new additions to the routine.
Rallying support from capable and mature individuals. The sweetness of life is lived with others. The darkest of life requires others. Treasure those who know how to be quiet, hold whatever is stirring within and are able to honor the rawness or lack of words. The depth of those who know suffering is felt and recognized by those facing more than they can bear. Contact with others is absolutely essential. Are we feeling adverse to conversation and someone hovering? Do we need a break from the heavy and a chance for light? Needing someone to only listen or tell us it’s gonna be okay? Tell the person rallied for support what we need.
Remembering and memorializing the experience, the individual, the lessons learned, the loss and accompanying scar. This happens in formalized memorials or informal ways of expressing the loss. Story-telling is a valuable practice in finding our way back. I’ve sat with many families in late-night hours listening to them share stories of their loved one. I have sat with men unexpectedly and painfully released from a job and husbands stunned by their partner’s sudden departure. These one-on-one journeys begin with: “Tell me the story of what happened…” This simple activity is powerfully cathartic for men. The stories fill in and change as they are told becoming a defining, transformative story of their life.
Resting. Perhaps the greatest coping strategy available to us is one wholly counter-cultural. We fill our minds, days and relationships with busyness. The biblical sense of rest is ceasing. Stopping. Rest is being present and allowing the waves to come rather than scampering up the sand and away from the cold waters. Rest is giving room to put back together the broken pieces in a “re-membering” way. It re-familiarizes our head, heart and body with one another. It may be stillness and quiet, or it may be recreation and noise.
Which of these five have you found helpful in finding your back?
After Covid, We All Need to Find Our Way Back
Parents hope to mediate the harm and overwhelming experiences of their children. A noble and understandable ambition. My generation born in the 1970s and 1980s, the Gen Xers, have enough mental health knowledge, financial resources and cultural clout to mitigate much for our children. As the generation raised in the latch-key world we vowed to do different raising our children becoming “helicopter parents” hovering over our children and protecting them from pain and any event too much to bear. Yet try as we might our children have encountered loss, pain and overwhelming events. The greatest of such in eighty years was the worldwide lockdown due to Covid. Covid is one of those events that has been too much for our kids to bear. Few have found words for that experience. Most have just moved on unaware of the implications rippling through their life today. Compound this event with phone calls like the one I received on March 25, 2022 and our body finally says, too much. For many in our generation parents were unable to prepare us for the sacred, wordless spaces and guide them in the way back. We are invited to give to the next generation some of what we’ve had to find on our own. It’s not if or when they’ll need it. They like us are already looking for the way back.
What resonates for you in this article?
How have you handled that which is too much?
What words have you for your overwhelming events?
Do you have a story you would like to share with someone ready to engage it in a meaningful way?
Could you use someone to walk with you find your way back?
Reach out if you would like to talk further or help in finding your own way back from your overwhelming event. Contact Mike Wright