WhiteknightSenior Contributor
Grief and logic
A thousand times in our lives we face trauma be it grief, depressive episodes or even general tolerance of life and what it throws at us.
I dont know about you but on each of these occasions during that bad period that seems to come and go so regularly, I dont feel the sun is going to rise the next day. Such is the low level of sadness and mental anguish. I simply dont feel life will get back to how it was when I was functioning ok even a few hours ago.
Isn't it logical though, for a person of reasonable intelligence, to remember that this down period will go away as it has each and every time for the last 60 odd years? My conclusion of it is that depression from grief and trauma is so overwhelming of my brain that it smothers any logic of the process of depression. If this is the case then are we thinking straight on other occasions.? For example- anger or mania? I think so.
As a young man my mania was such that its most apparent symptom realised decades later was impulsivity. I'd buy and sell a car every few weeks and every car was the one I'll "have for the rest of my life"!! So where did logic go then? I was smart, reasonable intelligence, had peer people around me in the Air Force and yes, I was immature. But why wasnt logic present when after a short time of falling in love with a super duper Datsun sss did I want a Celica? My mind like the wind changed and there was no logic as I signed the dotted line, lined the sales people with commission and drove off with my baby in heavy debt.
Back to grief. If we can somehow introduce logic into out lives to remind us that life will go on, it will go back to normal routine and it will not continue on and on...we will handle it better. We will give ourselves the time we need to recover all the time in the back of our minds we will know that its logical to believe we will overcome.
I have a laminated note in my bedside draw. It reads-
"tomorrow the sun will rise, even when today the sun appears it will set forever"
It's my own words. When down and lying in bed I reach for it. I dont choose to just remember the words, I physically read it as it then sinks in.
Logic is smothered in our down times just like calmness is absent in angry periods. We have to find ways of overcoming all that grief for a few moments only, to introduce some logical thinking of reality...that normality will return.
WK
