Grief: how long does it last?

[mary_poppins]

Hi all. This week I started grieving my parents. I had the epihany that they'll never change (actually I realized that both my parents adore each other because they are each other's narcissistic supply and they have teamed up to destroy me and my brother's lives and it is working since we all three have depression, addictions and are chronically lonely and dysfunctional in relationships).

I think something in me snapped and I now consider a clean NC from them with the possibility of never seeing them again (and I'm fine with it).

In the past, I thought father was not an abuser because he cared-he did not overtly abuse me. However, he did encourage my mother's abusive behavior and treated my pets awfully, some pets I had died because of him. So he might be a PD person, too. And there's no way I would ever wanna be in some sort of communication with them, LC for me feels like a slap in the face.

But it is hard to grieve. I feel extremely tired and depleted after crying so much. And it doesn't feel like this grief is gonna go anytime soon. What is a reasonable amount of time to grieve these abusers? And does it get better after a while? Because I certainly feel like nothing good is gonna happen in the future and things are pretty foggy right now.

[frogjumpsout]

Hi marypoppins,

Just wanted to say that the grief does get better, that the hopelessness that comes with it leads to thoughts that aren't accurate (like that there's nothing good for you in the future.) For me, it's been on and off, and still very much on sometimes, but I went NC about 3 years ago and my life is definitely better now.

Sending hugs, if that's something you'd like!

[Cat of the Canals]

My husband and I were just discussing the grief/mourning aspect of our respective relationships to our PD parents. There's an analogy for grief that someone came up with where it's described as a ball inside a box. On one wall of the box, there's a "pain button."

"In the early stages, the ball is very big. You cannot move the box without it frequently hitting the pain button. It rattles around on its own in there and hits the button over and over again, sometimes so much that it feels like you can't stop it – you can't control it – it just keeps hurting.

But as time goes on, the ball gets smaller. It doesn't disappear completely and when it hits the pain button, it's just as intense, but generally, it is easier to get through each day."

(There are some drawings of the ball in the box here if you're a visual person: https://www.hospiscare.co.uk/how-we-help/advice-support/talking-about-death-and-dying/why-grief-is-like-a-ball-in-a-box/ )

I wish I could tell you the grief goes away completely at some point, but I don't think it does. I just can't envision waking up one day and feeling A-OK about the things I never got from my mom. I do think it gets less intense over time... for the most part anyway. But grief is not a straight line, either. There are days where I might feel like, "Yeah, my mom sucks. That's life, I guess." and I can brush it off. Other days it feels like a horse kicked me in the chest. Take it a day at a time.

[treesgrowslowly]

Hi mary_poppins,

I have found the info that Cat linked to very helpful as well. Another visual I found helpful is the one described here:

https://whatsyourgrief.com/growing-around-grief/

Both visuals help us to see how grief 'exists' in our bodies, but that over time, we won't have it activated all day long. With tending over time, we continue to grow, and that growth allows us to slowly but surely build a healthy relationship to the loss we have had - a loss that will never not be a loss in our lives.

I lost my entire FOO system after going NC, and that loss will always be part of my story. My life is an on-going practice to live with the losses I've had, and to nurture my emotional system. I think that Peter Levine's work with emotions has been helpful to me because he emphasizes the work we can do to relate to the emotions we feel.

Early in my grief work I was a mess because I had not been taught how to have an empathic relationship to my own emotions. Every time I felt the emotions of grief - anger, sadness, despair, etc... I was also enduring a flashback from being a child and having to suppress all of those emotions.

It is a bit of mind---- to realize that one's capacity to grieve was also stolen by the PD parents. They had abused me right out of a sense of self, where I could recognize my need to grieve and tend to it.

Instead of learning about grief throughout childhood (like a normal childhood would provide) I was now an adult, and had to face the emotions of grief without an emotional system that could recognize itself. I did have a therapist at the time that helped me learn to relate to my own emotions.

Lindsay Gibson (who wrote the book Adult children of emotionally immature parents) says that a healthy childhood includes having a parent who can say "oh you look sad, are you feeling sad today?" and she says this is crucial to a child's development because that is how we learn what to do with our own emotions.

Her teaching about this helped me a lot because it validated what I endured while grieving...that I had not been given any permission to say "I'm sad today" or "I'm crying a lot about a friend who moved away". The whole time I was a child, grief was not allowed in our house. That in itself messed me up.

As an adult, I had no clue how to actually allow grief emotions to simply flow out of me. It always got merged with a triggered state where I could feel how abandoned I had been when I needed to express sadness as a child.

I am sharing this because if anyone else can relate to that, I want them to know that it is a process to untangle the grief (in the present) from the flashbacks to childhood. Be patient with yourself. The body definitely wants to untangle these things and heal from the trauma.

I came to appreciate the grief process as an essential aspect of human growth and self-actualization work. Those of us who learn how to allow a grieving process do find a lot of growth as a result of allowing this process.

Trauma informed grief counselling can be helpful. They may be able to sit with you to discuss what sorts of grieving experiences you needed as a child, such as when pets died. My PD mother got enraged with us when we expressed attachments to any animals, and so grieving pets who died was also not allowed in my FOO.

Slowly but surely you will identify some of the things that help you to relate to your own grief as valid, important and maybe even sacred time to give yourself. Where I live there were no groups to support survivors who had gone NC. But a grief group would have been helpful had I found one during the first year after going NC. It would have been helpful to be around people who were also grieving the loss of FOO through NC. I was alone when I went through NC because no one where I lived recognized NC at that time. What I did was seen as selfish, and my grief was ignored. I hope others find more community support because I do think it can help.

That said, even without any community support I did find my way through the first year of grieving after NC and you will too. Pete Walker's book on C-PTSD helped me to understand why flashbacks were so enmeshed in my grief work. As a child of narcissistic parents, I had no memories of being held when I felt sad.

This made my grief work as an adult very triggering, and Walker's empathic explanation on how to address flashbacks helped me SO much.

What has been helpful to you so far?

Hugs to you,

Trees

[Boat Babe]

Thank you everyone for your input - this has been very helpful right now as I am really struggling (again) with historical loss. I think that having had childhood trauma (be it abuse from a parent/s with PDs or other stuff on the ACE scale) and therefore the loss of a happy and loving and supportive childhood sets us up for unskillful choices in adult life, leading to more trauma and loss AND makes all subsequent losses so much harder to bear as they activate the primal loss AND we don't have the tools/experience to deal with it in a healthy manner. No wonder so many people struggle with addiction and desperate mental health conditions.
One of the ways that I keep going is that I know, from experience, that black moods do not last (nothing lasts!) and that if I just hang on and look after myself (diet, sobriety, exercise, connecting with good people) this too shall pass. Hugs to everyone, especially Mary Poppins.

[JustKat]

Hi Mary Poppins,

Grief is different for everyone, but it's never easy and does take time. For me, grief was a process that evolved as my family situation changed. First, there was the grief after going NC. Then there was the grief after my Nmother and, later, my enabling father, passed away without ever attempting to make things right with me. That was followed by grieving the loss of my two siblings, who are alive and well but have been turned against me.

One thing I can tell you is that it does get better with time. I have to echo Cat of the Canals in saying that it never goes away completely, but it will lessen or change over time. In my case, I'm no longer grieving the loss of my family, but I do grieve the childhood I didn't get to have. I grieve the years of my life wasted trying to please a raging narcissist. I grieve small things too, like sentimental items (childhood toys and such) my Nmother stole from me. That may sound weird, but it's been my experience.

I do believe that we grieve because we're good people with good hearts. Narcissists don't grieve, but their victims do. We've been through so much, and there will always be things that we'll grieve over. But the amount of grief will change, and the pain will lessen. Just be kind to yourself and allow plenty of time to go through the process. It's normal to grieve, and it's okay to cry and scream and be angry about the things you're grieving over. Be patient with yourself and know that it will be better soon.

[completelyperdue]

Hi @Mary Poppins

This article was super helpful to me when I first went NC with my uNPD/HPD mother: https://www.daughtersofnarcissisticmothers.com/daughters-with-narcissistic-mothers/no-contact/lights-no-contact-essay/

The grief was there at first for a while, but time and therapy helped a lot with those feelings. It eventually got to a point where I stopped thinking about my uNPD/HPD mother for days, weeks, and even months at a time, and I got to where I really healed a lot of old wounds that would be poked with every contact with my uNPD/HPD mom.

Grief is a process and there are stages, and you will float back and forth for a while too and that's perfectly okay.

The best thing out of all of this is that you have a much healthier life in the end.

Sending big hugs

[Uncertain Grief]

I am also wondering how long the grief lasts.  My PD mother just passed away four days ago from ovarian cancer, and my stomach is in a knot as soon as I wake up in the morning.  I don't know if it is from feeling guilt for not spending more time with her or grief for the relationship we never had.  The loss of my mother feels very different from the loss of my alcoholic father 8 years ago.  I don't like having such a strong emotional feeling that I can't define or explain.

I can only imagine how difficult it is to cut all ties with a PD parent or family.  Grief and loss are not simple emotions when dealing with people like this.  I can relate to your pain and wondering if the grief ever goes away.  I guess, just as all things do, it will pass.  I just joined this forum, and it seems to be a wonderful resource for sharing, caring and support.  I hope your grief becomes less and less as the distance between you and your parents increases.

[Lalitha]

I am in deep grief at the moment, for my inner child who never had a half decent parent and who suffered so badly. For the death of the fantasy that my FOO will ever change. I grieved for it all previously but going NC has allowed me to really face it and begin to accept it. As a kid I was expected to behave like a robot, emotionless. I was once laughed at by my NPD-M for crying when a relative died. So I think it is only in NC that I finally feel safe enough to grieve fully. I've been crying on and off for days. I don't know how long this phase will last but I have learnt that if I fall into my old patterns of distracting myself by keeping busy and numbing the emotions it's not going to help long term. I keep thinking of that kids book, we're going on a bear hunt. 'we can't go over it, we can't go under it...we'll have to go through it.'

[xredshoesx]

i'm 52 and have spent the majority of my life NC with my biological mother, and am VLC with my biological father.

my trauma is a shadow and the grief still comes in waves.  i just bob up and down in it when i need to and don't let it drag me under if that makes any sense.  i allow myself to express the anger, sadness, acknowledge what it is from and then make peace again with my decision and my journey.

be gentle with yourself.  it definitely is a process.