Hacker News Reader

Comment by tarun_anand | Hacker News Reader

I saw the title of this post, once, twice... and thrice... I kind of sensed what was on the other side...I didnt want to click and read it because I was/am still going through the same grief.

I lost someone young in my family to Covid last year. The chilling words "We have lost him" came on Whatsapp as the entire country was in lockdown and we were in a different city. I cannot forget it and keep going over it, over and over again.

I am sharing this to let you know that this happens to a lot of us. This grief will not go away. I just relive it everyday for some time. I am also a workaholic so it helps that I dont have much time to think. Yes, lots of people talk about therapy, meditation and a lot of things but I have never found anyone who is suffering to have gotten help from these.

Just live with it, what cannot be cured must be endured.

View on HN

I lost my father and then 10 years later my brother to suicide. With my father, I already had a therapist, so I worked through it with her. With my brother, I didn’t have one and I was about to travel alone to a foreign country for a few years. I was much more isolated and I explicitly thought, “Nope. I am not going to feel this right now.”

Grieving my father took 2 years or so to overcome. Grieving my brother took about 4 years. They were different situations and relationships, so I can’t ascribe the difference solely to therapy.

I will just say that for me, the only way to get the grief to go away is to feel it. Journaling, music, solo hikes, therapy, whatever it takes. The nice thing about therapy is that it holds you accountable. You have to think about it for an hour a week. Now, you can bullshit your way through therapy and stick to surface stuff, but then what’s the point. If you really crack open the shell and let the anger, despair, confusion pour out, it will eventually get better.

Either way (therapy or no), it is like a deep cut. There will be a scar. It will never go back to how it was before. But I hope you find some peace.

Sometimes it's more like an amputation of an arm than a deep cut.

At first, the pain is blinding. All you feel is the pain.

If you can get the bleeding stopped, eventually the pain subsides, but things aren't ever really "normal" again. You find a new normal. You even learn how to do almost everything in your daily life with one arm. You adapt, and you may even thrive.

But every so often, something happens and you're genuinely stumped how you'll handle it with one arm. It reminds you of the loss, and in that moment, the frustration and the loss and even the pain comes back.

You'll cope with it, like you coped with learning everything else you needed to learn right after you lost your arm, but it never goes all the way away. You just get better at living with it.

That is a tremendously accurate way to describe surviving terrible stuff.

I think this is less a simile and more a physical reality.

What is your arm but a series of sensations and connections in your brain? Your arm is a physical thing; but to the extent that it exists to you, it exists in your brain.

So I think the loss of an arm is probably very similar in an actual not just a metaphorical sense. Although I would easily choose losing my arm over losing one of my loved ones.

You are genuinely stumped about having one arm, huh? :-p

> Yes, lots of people talk about therapy, meditation and a lot of things but I have never found anyone who is suffering to have gotten help from these.

I know nothing about your life and I also find the "endure it" school of thought very appealing - not sure why. That put, you shouldn't discard those options you list without trying them yourself - if you haven't yet. What works or doesn't work for other people shouldn't matter to you, give it a try, being happy is worth it.

Thank you. I will try for sure. I hope someday this thread will be discussed again and I can share my experiences.

> what cannot be cured must be endured

I would have used the word accepted instead of endured but I think you are trying to say the same thing. Enduring involves fighting or some sort of friction at least - whereas if you can accept that the pain is going to be there you will maybe create some space for yourself and some relief. Hopefully.

I'm sorry you have to go through this but never give up trying to be at ease.

Thanks and yes, its clearly an acceptance...

I think sometimes it sort of helps to just run through explaining something so many times that I get tired of talking about it. It's not quite the same as a "fix", like you said. But eventually over enough iterations the story of the traumatic event becomes less painful - almost like playing a song enough for it to go from "love" to "boring/repetitive".

I think it works for people who are a bit extrovert. I tried opening out and explaining but havent been able to do so.

Doesn’t have to include other people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com