From Chapter 28, Grieving Losses: "We grieve what we value; we grieve in proportion to our afftection." -- from memorial to Jane Austen, Winchester Cathedral.
"All the many complex issues involved in PTSD must be disentangled for recovery to proceed. Grief is one such issue. All events that are significant enough to cause PTSD involve loss, yet grief often gets buried in the struggle for survival. Perhaps you were too numbed to grieve. Perhaps you were too busy or were discouraged from grieving. Perhaps some aspects of the trauma still feel so overwhelming that you have avoided them. These reactions are all normal. However, continually avoiding the normal, healthy feelings of grief keep unresolved memories of loss in active memory, emotionally charged, and likely to intrude.
"Grief memories are processed much like other aspects of traumatic memories at your own pace and when you are ready. Losses are confronted and processed so that meaningful adjustments and adaptations can be made in our lives. Of course, adjustments can only be made if we clearly acknowledge the nature of our losses. We can't adapt and find new ways to satisfy the void if losses are not confronted. Losses that are buried -- not explored, experienced, and expressed -- can erupt at inopportune times, resulting in a host of physical and emotional symptoms. The more we fear facing the pain of loss, the more we remain in bondage to the past. So it is important to process our losses." page 248.
The above paragraphs begin a several page chapter that offers useful and comforting information to make sense of the complicated mourning that is involved in recovering from and living beyond trauma.
