In fact, the thought process you engage in and the belief system you develop around accepting a medical diagnosis will determine to a significant degree how you will handle it. And it will also determine how you work with your diagnosis as you move forward.

If you remain open, your journey will be hopeful. 

If you are closed off and shut down, your journey may become more difficult. 

To be clear, none of us ever expects to receive a negative health report. Upon hearing that there is a medical diagnosis, it is not uncommon to freeze with fear and apprehension. You hear the words. You possess what you think is a textbook understanding of the diagnosis. And you simply shut down.    

Freezing, becoming fearful, negative, and thinking the worst are common responses after receiving a medical diagnosis. We have learned to become negative after receiving any kind of bad news. Instinctively, you think the worst. Through experience, you have learned to fear any kind of loss of control. 

In thinking the worst after a diagnosis, it is important to recognize that you are also closing off hope and possibility. 

You are closing off other channels within yourself that would likely lead to a better process during your treatment.  Remaining open to a more positive process may lead to a better overall outcome. Remaining positive will relieve you of the burden of depression after a medical diagnosis.    

A first step in moving toward a healthier process involves reframing your health information in a way that widens and broadens your awareness of who you are. What do you bring to the process of your health that expands your whole self, rather than being reduced to depression after a medical diagnosis? 

By reframing, I mean considering the overall health of your whole body. This includes aspects of your health that are healthy and strong. These aspects are able to support other aspects of your body that are currently burdened by a medical diagnosis.

Let’s use cancer as an example.  You may have received a diagnosis of cancer or perhaps have learned that your cancer has recurred. You immediately feel depression after a medical diagnosis like this. But I am suggesting reframing your diagnosis in a way that envisions cancer cells being surrounded and supported by millions of healthy cells. 

Acceptance of a medical diagnosis is enhanced by engaging and putting your healthy cells to good use by staying positive, eating, sleeping, and resting in a healthy way as a step forward.

I am saying that acceptance and refusing to engage in depression after a medical diagnosis frees and restores healthy energy that helps your body fight the good fight.

And I am also saying that by letting go of ego-driven fear, you will more graciously surrender control. You will place yourself in God’s tender care.

You will be enabled to trust that God who knows and sees everything, is right there with you and for you. In fear, you are unable to feel God’s closeness.

Let’s think of it this way. At the moment you receive a medical diagnosis you are betwixt and between where you were, and where you are going.   

The term for this is liminal or transitional space. This space is where you are leaving behind one phase of your life and entering into the next.   

How you choose to move through this space is completely up to you. 

You may not have control over your medical diagnosis. But you have complete control over your attitude and the way you want to carry yourself through the process. 

As someone who needed to make decisions about how I was going to accept and work through my own medical diagnosis, I know that surrendering to the process, foregoing depression after a medical diagnosis, and freeing up my energy to be better connected to God within me, helped me to go through the process better. 

When you accept the process ahead of you after a medical diagnosis, you free your body and soul to feel the Presence of the Spirit. You place your trust in God who loves you and lives within you. This formula does not provide the outcome of a medical diagnosis. However, it does provide a pathway toward your transformation through the process.

In place of depression after a medical diagnosis, you lay down your fear and apprehension to find more of who you are along with God’s holy Presence. 

Perhaps for the first time in your life, you will learn openness. You learn openness to God’s love, supportive love of others through your diagnosis, and love for your own life and all that you are. 

Once you accept that you are no longer in control of outcomes (as if you ever were!), reality opens up. And it provides you an entirely new way of moving through life. 

Fear and depression after a medical diagnosis can be a very lonely place. Once you place your vulnerability and fear into God’s holy Presence, you will become more peaceful and less alone. Others will join the Spirit within you.  Together, you will find strength, not weakness.    

We are all vulnerable in the face of a medical diagnosis. 

However, there is no greater moment than being transformed beyond weakness and fear, into thriving, resilience and hopefully ultimate recovery. 

I have walked this path in my own life. And I am happy to help you if you are beginning your own journey toward accepting a medical diagnosis.  Please contact me here.    

The post How Acceptance Can Help You Overcome Depression After A Medical Diagnosis appeared first on Geraldine Kerr, PH.D.,LMFT.

“Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, what God has ready for those who love Him”

Prayer is a relationship with God.  It is down to earth conversation with God as if God were sitting right next to us listening, caring, and speaking to us just the way a friend would.    

God is our friend who wants to know us better. 

In fact, God wants us to know ourselves better so that we might make choices and decisions that help us to stay true to who we are. 

The more we stay true to who we are through the gift of prayer, the more peaceful we become.   

So often, we make decisions based on who others would like us to be. 

We turn away from what we know is true for who we are.  We like to fit and belong and be acceptable to others.

When we pull away from our true selves and fail to respond to what we know is true for who we are, we often make decisions or behave in ways that disappoint us.  Then we may feel discouraged. 

In those times, we may also pull away from God, believing that God is disappointed with us too.

But in fact, it is when we are most confused, upset or discouraged with ourselves that God wants to be with us the most.  

God understands that we are all imperfect and that we grow by making mistakes.

God understands that when we grow through our mistakes, we are enabled to move forward better, making more informed choices in the future.

Yes, it is in our moments of need and brokenness that God wants to be there to comfort and guide us. 

God does not turn away from us, we are the ones who turn away from God when we feel bad about ourselves.

Spiritual writer Henri Nouwen has suggested that the essence of prayer is learning to listen deep within ourselves for the comforting inner voice of love.

Although there are many forms of prayer, including formal or rote prayer, the real “work” of the gift of prayer begins in the silence of your heart where God’s inner presence dwells within you and becomes part of you. 

God speaks to your heart.    

God is closer to us than we are to ourselves (St. Augustine). 

There is a big difference between saying prayers and prayer. 

Saying prayers is an activity.  Saying prayers consists of words, which words often lead us to the heart of God within us. 

Through the gift of prayer with words, we often become connected to God’s presence within our heart.

We become aware of the Spirit dwelling within us wanting to feed and nurture us in ways that help us to remain true to who we are in God’s likeness. 

Sometimes we pray without words entering into contemplative space with God. 

Praying without words, or contemplative prayer, is an attitude of the heart that opens us up to the broader meaning of our life with God who is in us.    

Over time, prayer becomes an attitude toward our whole life.  Awareness of living in right relationship with God becomes woven through all our relationships. 

Living in relationship with God becomes part of who we are as a way of life.

It is through an attitude of prayer that we remain open to meaning and purpose in our lives that help us to stay connected to who we are. 

It is through an attitude of prayer that we find ourselves awakening to more of life and the many ways that God shows up in our lives in mysterious ways.

Fostering at attitude of prayer where we develop our relationship with God often begins in the silence of our heart. 

Silence is not always easy.  We like to be in control.  Through silence we develop our relationship – our connection with God — as we learn to trust.

We learn to discern the many ways that God is guiding us and prompting us to go forward in our lives, filled with the wisdom of God’s grace and presence. 

All that we need is a heart this is willing to stay open to the bigger picture of our lives that is becoming clearer to us through the gift of prayer.

A bigger picture experience of our lives might mean becoming aware of deeper meanings that live in and through our life experiences all the time.

This might mean that we move away from our small selves where we think out of dualistic frames, either/or thinking.      

A bigger picture perspective instead helps us to move into our bigger selves, selves that are open to God revealing more to us than we might initially see or be aware of.

A good way to open our hearts to contemplative prayer is by closing our eyes and becoming still, breathing out all that has rattled us into feelings of righteous, while breathing in all of nature and God’s renewing life within us. 

Opportunities for contemplative prayer often surround and enfold our lives in ways that we fail to notice. 

These could include peaceful moments of serenity, awe, and wonder as you are gardening,  folding over the soil and observing firsthand the many forms of life that quietly live beneath the surface of the earth; 

Or the rising of dough as you bake bread;

The transformation of sounds and syllables of toddler babble becoming formed into  a baby’s first words;

Or those moments of seeing shapes formed through clouds in the sky – a heart or some other formation that just speaks warmth, love, and God’s presence to your heart. 

All of these filled with humble, sacred awareness of God’s presence and connection to us in our everyday lives. 

Contemplation is a way of being present to what is inside of our experience. 

Through contemplative prayer and awakening we come to understand that our lives are not insignificant or unimportant.  Rather, what is timeless and eternal is found in the ordinariness of our everyday lives.

Being connected to God in relationship through the gift of prayer opens us up to experiences of oneness, unity, harmony, presence, resonance, wonder, and awe. 

Prayer is knowing God rather than knowing about God.

Prayer is knowing God experientially through our lives and our lived experiences, rather than through objective knowledge about God.

Prayer is feeling God’s love and affection.

Prayer is feeling God’s kindness and caring for who you are.

Prayer is a gift that you open up and give yourself to, a gift that helps you to know more about who you are and who God is within you.   

The post The Gift Of Prayer appeared first on Geraldine Kerr, PH.D.,LMFT.

Who we are and our ways of living have been unalterably changed and re-imagined.      

Not only have we lost lives, but we have also lost contexts. 

We have lost the predictability and day-in, day-out routine of our daily lives. 

The fabric of our everyday lives has been re-woven and re-folded.       

In ways no one could predict, we were catapulted into experiences of trauma and loss. 

To be honest, I see trauma and loss as paths toward new beginnings.

What is making endings through Covid-19 even more complicated is that none of us saw it coming. 

The hard part about going through Covid-19 trauma and loss is that within the framework of this pandemic, our many emotions have been difficult to identify, pinpoint, or express. 

We often feel as if we are in a foreign land.

We may feel alienated from ourselves or from others around us. 

Among our most significant losses are those of family and loved ones. 

In so many instances, we were unable to connect with our loved ones in their final hours. 

Our hearts wanted to join with theirs to say good-bye, but we were unable. 

Our hearts were torn — we felt connected and united with our loved ones – yet we were forced to be together, apart. 

We felt we were abandoning our loved ones in their time of need, the worst kind of feeling there is.

This kind of abrupt ending takes a terrible toll on us.

To have our lives be overtaken by a virus that was alien and unknown has been frightening. 

Even disorienting.    

To watch our loved one become hospitalized, put on a ventilator, struggle for their life and then suddenly die, is an unspeakable experience of trauma and loss.

As days and weeks became blurred into months, and months became a year, there was no slowing the deadly virus. 

Responding to unprecedented needs of those affected by the virus were First Responders including doctors, nurses, emergency medical technicians and medical personnel across the board placed into instantaneous service. 

It did not matter whether emergency medicine was their specialization or not.  Just by virtue of their medical training they were pressed into service. 

Within a matter of months, it became evident that First Responders themselves were at risk for experiencing traumatic loss. 

This loss took the form of loss of control over their personal, professional, physical, and emotional lives as they worked interminably long hours that defied human limits – limits that needed to be defied to meet the needs of the ill, the dying, and their loved ones. 

Striving through strenuously long hours, these First Responders will never be forgotten. 

Their labor of love in many instances kept them distant and removed from their own families.  This was both to stay close to their hospitals after securing several hours of sleep, as well as to remain apart from their families to keep them safe. 

In working these untoward hours under dire and extenuating circumstances, many of these First Responders were pushed to an emotional brink in their own lives.    

With gratitude and compassion, we know that many of these dedicated professionals will struggle with the ravages of post-traumatic stress. 

Re-living intrusive memories of powerlessness trying to save lives that in many instances was unachievable no matter how hard they tried and how much they cared, are occasions of trauma and loss that take a human toll on the caregiver.    

Similar efforts on the part of many medical personnel and First Responders to connect dying patients with their loved ones through cell phones or other means of technology likewise took their toll and will never be forgotten.    

Trauma is the response to a deeply distressing event that oftentimes leads to feelings of helplessness and loss of a sense of self. 

Traumatic responses often stem from situations where one experiences a loss of sense of control, sense of betrayal, pain, confusion, and loss. 

Traumatic reactions vary widely among persons and encompass prior histories of loss that may be reactivated by the current loss. 

One way of conceptualizing and understanding the kind of loss that we are experiencing through Covid-19 is through understanding ambiguous loss.  Understanding ambiguous loss helps to serve a function of putting words to losses that are not easily grieved or mourned. 

Losses that are not easily identified, grieved, or mourned abound within the collective grief that surrounds us all.  Examples of this might include what we go through and what we are feeling as we watch our young children unable to attend school in person, longing for them to be back with their favorite teachers and friends. 

Along those same lines may be myriad, yet murky feelings we ourselves are going through, as both parents are working from home while simultaneously becoming home tutors for their children.

Across the country, graduation and proms were cancelled on the spot as students and parents found themselves overwhelmed and controlled by a virus that had no boundaries.    

Families no sooner dealt with disappointments about unfulfilled graduation ceremonies, when in rapid succession they had to deal with ambiguous loss surrounding entrance to college. 

Not only were students and their families challenged with the spread of the virus on campus. 

They were also challenged by attending classes remotely from their dorm room, while simultaneously having college experiences that were far from “normal”.      

The list of our ambiguous losses has piled high.

Not being able sit shiva or have a formal religious funeral ceremony for our loved ones has triggered emotions that are simply too difficult to readily classify or categorize.    

There is a communal sense of loss as we stand in long lines waiting to gain entry into grocery stores.  Once we step in, we immediately observe limits placed on specific items to prevent hoarding, so that those behind us may have access to their items as well. 

Similarly, we cannot lose sight of the essential workers at the check-out lines.  Relieved that their jobs are secure, they nonetheless face risks serving the needs of the public.   All too often they have felt unrecognized for the role they have played in helping us all get through.

We feel sad that our children are unable to socialize with other children — their peers — to engage in normal developmental play and discovery.  We know how they too, are longing for the way things “used to be” yet lack the words to even express why they feel out of sorts.  Rather, they will often act out their frustration for playtime with other children and teachers, as well as their much-needed recess time.

We long for the day when we can just enter the lobby of our bank, rather than wait on long lines at the drive-up window to complete our transactions.  Through masked greetings everyone is pleasant but strained feeling a loss of normalcy. 

Houses of worship with drastically scaled-back in-person numbers are another example of grief and loss that is not consciously stated, grieved, or mourned, but felt, nonetheless.  Religious leaders feeling restrained by these limits, often strike out at elected officials in attempts to stretch the rules a bit more for their congregation. 

Routine doctor visits and laboratory appointments have been put on hold in many cases to avoid contact and interface with medical facilities and personnel.  Although in many instances this is a prudent decision, there is also a nagging sense of anxiety that one may be overlooking some important aspect of their care that needs attention. 

In essence, we have lost places, projects, possessions, professions and protections through the pandemic.  

Because our losses in many instances are ambiguous, they are fuzzy.    

Our losses are fuzzy because they lack clarity.  We cannot pinpoint them. 

Our losses are interrelated, loss of something here leading to loss of something there.

And in their fuzziness, we are less clear about specific aspects or ripple effects of those losses, except to know that what we previously had is gone. 

Predictability is gone.

And when predictability is gone, we may experience aspects of our identity as being gone too. 

Under normal circumstances we knew exactly what to do and how to grieve and mourn persons or things that we have lost in our lives.

We are used to, and long for, closure to our loss.

Covid-19 and the pandemic are showing us different ways of being. 

And living. 

Covid-19 is showing us a different way of knowing ourselves and each other.

Covid-19 is showing us how to live through loss.

Covid-19 is showing us how to make meaning through our loss.

Covid-19 is showing us how to awaken to new possibilities in our lives.

Going beyond our prior models of resolving our loss, we are learning how to live through it and go beyond it.

I dare say, we are coming through the other side with some powerfully new skills, tools, and awareness for mediating our lives through these fuzzy times.

These times allow for our consciousness to be raised.

When have we ever been as aware of who we are and who our neighbor is, as we are now?

When have we ever been as aware of contributing to the local food bank to help others?

We have worked hard to remain social and connected, although apart.

We have found ways to worship through mainstreamed services and we have found ways to shop for groceries online and through store-front pick-up.

We stayed off the roads and out of airplanes for months and connected more closely with ourselves and our loved ones.   

We had conversations with our children that we might not otherwise have had. 

We have bought more flour, baked more bread, exercised harder, walked longer miles, and Zoomed through more business meetings and working relationships than we might have ever been aware of doing except for the pandemic.  

Not insignificantly, we have found out how much we need each other. 

We have learned how much we need ourselves to awaken to new hope and possibilities that exceed and go beyond the limits of Covid-19.

In many situations we were forced to make decisions that were for the better. 

We shopped less. 

We stayed home more. 

We befriended and got to know ourselves in ways that incline us to love ourselves and others more. 

We made choices that are meaningful for who we are.

And although none of us know what the world will look like as we begin to place Covid-19 into our rear-view mirrors, we know a whole lot more about ourselves as we begin this leg of the journey. 

We know that we are strong, and that we are filled with hope and possibility. 

We know that every hope and possibility begins with each one of us.

And we know that to the extent we collectively extend hope and possibility to each other, we are helping to create a loving, more healed pandemic space.  

The post The Covid-19 Pandemic: Moving Beyond Trauma and Loss into Hope and Possibilities appeared first on Geraldine Kerr, PH.D.,LMFT.

Initially, I found myself unable to understand exactly what was happening. How could a virus suddenly be overtaking our world? I hardly knew what to think or feel as complexities of COVID-19 were being discovered and then reported at rapid-fire pace from around the world.  

It all seemed so surreal.  To some extent, it still does.

Not only was loss of life becoming a shocking reality of the virus, but also the speed with which the virus was spreading.  On a more concrete level, other losses were being incrementally felt as well, such as loss of everyday routines, patterns, ways of thinking and coping, being and working, earning and living, shopping, traveling, recreating, worshipping, all of it.  

I felt myself surrounded by anxiety and fear all around me in media reports as well as multiple list-serves one by one announcing conferences and other venues that were being canceled. Months, sometimes years of preparation for these events, now gone. I myself, was scheduled to leave for Switzerland to present professional papers at a conference, all of which was canceled by the Swiss Government hours before I was to get on the plane. 

Swimming in all this hype and confusion, I knew instinctively and innately that these reactions and fears are not going to abate anytime soon.  

This is too big.  

But as I sat with my own feelings, I pondered what underlying emotions and fears might be driving the intensity of reactions being seen and felt so keenly. What is the primary button or what might be the primary feeling that is creating dread and panic for some, if not many or most?   From an even wider lens, what life lessons might be learned from COVID-19 that in the long run, will help us become stronger more viable people?     

I am a psychotherapist who specializes in painful feelings and changed realities stemming from grief, loss, and trauma.  

Almost immediately I became aware of difficulties COVID-19 is causing us not just because of obvious physical risks posed by the virus, but because COVID-19 is also presenting us with unprecedented issues of grief, loss, and trauma. We are not accustomed to living through pandemics. And this pandemic is surrounding and confronting us with issues of isolation, loss, and trauma, that as a culture we have worked long and hard to avoid.    

Let me put it this way. We are a feel-good culture that lives in a relentless quest to be happy. And for the most part that may not be a problem. Of course, feeling good feels good! The issue now, however, is that we simply do not know what to do with our painful and conflicted feelings of fear, loss, or trauma. We simply have never learned the skills and tools to deal with emotions that for the most part, we have worked so hard to avoid!      

You see, we’ve been taught in a lot of ways to avoid our feelings of loss and grief. In fact, maybe our relentless quest to be happy and to feel good represents an unconscious way that we learned to avoid painful feelings of loss. Grief and loss in our culture are simply taboo on many levels. Too often these feelings are pathologized, as we have been taught to avoid, deny, push away, and run from these difficult emotions.  

But what is the long-term effect of having looked away from painful feelings? Specifically, what effect has avoiding feelings of trauma and loss had on you as an individual, and what effect has avoidance of painful feelings had on us as families, communities, and entire cultures?

THIS, I THINK, IS THE INVISIBLE GIFT THAT COVID-19 OFFERS US.

The truth is, pain, loss, and trauma are part of life – not just your life or mine, but everyone’s life. What makes painful feelings unbearable is the shame and guilt often associated with them. We feel so alone and isolated when we are in pain.  This is a real paradox. Because the truth is that without buying into that shame – by instead facing and dealing with our painful feelings – we actually gain relief.  

A big part of the dilemma is that we have never been encouraged or taught “how to” create an emotional home for painful feelings of trauma, grief, and loss.  In fact, we have been taught to “stuff” those feelings down; to reject and disown them “as if” they are toxic and the feelings themselves are the problem.  In short, we have been taught to look the other way to avoid painful emotions.

This simply does not work.

One thing we can learn from COVID-19 is not to be ashamed of our feelings of fear.

By contrast, once we learn to own and become comfortable with our painful feelings, we gain a great deal. Our painful feelings can become a mirror for us to look into and to draw from, so that we better understand exactly what we are feeling. Our feelings help us to know who we are. Once we open ourselves up to our fears of COVID-19, a bigger picture exists that can help guide us to what we personally need to learn from COVID-19. Understanding what we are feeling through fear and loss informs us about who we are and want we want and need, to know how to show up better in the world for ourselves and those we love.

So how do you do that? How do you create an emotional home for painful feelings? First and foremost, I believe you need to really absorb and believe the meaning of what you are about to read. That is, that when you lose someone or some thing that holds a special place in your heart, it is more than healthy and fitting that you feel your pain deeply. Allow your Self to feel and absorb fully whatever you are feeling, without in any way feeling defective or inferior for feeling it. These are your feelings based on who you are. Your reaction is relative to your loss. Your loss is personal and contextual, based on your life and your relationships. You are the only one who knows what you have lost. And grief is a process we all go through as we work hard to comprehend and understand the meanings of our loss.  

Believe in your Self and your feelings, allowing no one to label, shame, or otherwise criticize your reaction.  

Once you’ve become comfortable accepting that grief is a normal, healthy response to loss, let’s talk about creating an emotional home for those feelings. By that I mean allowing your Self to know what you are feeling. Don’t hold your painful feelings back or filter them; rather, become user-friendly with whatever those feelings are. Call them by their right names, write them down if that helps, but do not shame, criticize, judge or in any way negatively criticize your Self for having them.  

Your painful feelings are as important and significant to the whole of your life just as your feel-good feelings are!

Once you’ve labeled and accepted these new feelings into your emotional home, sit with them. Try to hear what they are telling you and how they are guiding you toward what you feel. Stay with the feelings and sink deeply into and with them. What are your painful feelings revealing to you about your Self, who you are, and what you care deeply about? What meaning is connected to your loss – whether it is loss from Coronavirus or loss more broadly in your life?  

What does resistance toward painful feelings represent to you in general; and more specifically, how can you become more open and engaged with these feelings rather than feeling frightened or defensive of them? What are you learning from COVID-19 that helps you understand more about who you are?  Other than putting up walls to resist and defend against your feelings of fear, what might you do instead to slow down your reactions and work with your fears instead?  

Are you able to recognize and identify that working with fear actually minimizes and reduces your stress during this time of change rather than intensify it?  What have you learned from COVID-19 that helps you to know more about who you are? 

As you move beyond avoidance of painful feelings into developing and maintaining your emotional home for difficult feelings, your emotional life will be broadened. COVID-19 inherently holds an unspoken and invisible gift for all of us. That is, a gift of understanding and working with feelings of trauma, grief, and loss. These feelings are part of all of our lives. COVID-19 might just be a catalyst guiding our growth in ways that will serve us all well long after the virus is over.   

The post In Our Feel-Good Culture, What Can We Learn From COVID-19? appeared first on Geraldine Kerr, PH.D.,LMFT.