Lessons I learned from Grief

I still have the photo of the clouds outside the hospital window. It had been pouring rain all week, and this day the rain had lifted leaving a pale blue sky with fluffy clouds and rings of pink, reminding me of cotton candy. After a week that felt like a storm of fear, sadness, anger and pain, the night sky looked so peaceful and light as if the impending death might be okay. The next day my dad peacefully passed. 

As a therapist, I’ve helped  navigate clients through grief, but losing my dad showed me its profound complexity. Grief isn’t just sadness; it reshapes everything.

Grief taught me that I needed to slow down, and that life isn’t about “how much” you accomplish.

For myself, grief was the catalyst that put me into complete burn out. Grief caused me to question every aspect of my life while simultaneously stripping me of my own energy. At the time I felt like a failure, like I was no longer capable of achieving. As a reminder, ADHD is a neurobiological disorder that causes deficits in executive functioning skills including organizing and planning, working memory, emotion regulation, time management, initiation and inhibition. These skills are responsible for helping us accomplish basic life tasks such as cooking, cleaning, managing a schedule, taking care of personal hygiene and more. As someone with ADHD I have my own struggles with managing executive functioning deficits. Over the years I have acquired skills to manage them and those skills take effort to regularly engage in. Grief is such a powerful experience that trying to cope with it stripped me of my ability to also manage my executive dysfunctions. 

Showing up to work took everything out of me. Getting to work was challenging because my body felt heavy. It was literally weighed down with sadness. In between sessions I would cry, pull myself together and then keep going. At the end of the day I was so drained from trying to “keep it together” that I was unable to complete basic executive functioning skills. 

Grief gave me the permission I needed to unmask. 

Before becoming an ADHD therapist I tried very hard to hide my own ADHD. Before losing my dad I was in the process of starting to get more comfortable talking about my personal experience with ADHD. I had already begun to have conversations and be forthright with my “quirks” rather than trying to hide them out of shame and fear of rejection. However, as I mentioned above, grief made me reflect about what my purpose was for masking and why I felt the need to mask. I also just did not have the energy to try and keep the mask on, and truthfully I no longer cared what others thought. I’d think to myself “so what if they think I’m chaotic? If they dislike my energy, that’s on them. I don’t need to tone myself down for others’ comfort. Essentially I learned that masking myself was to try and make others feel comfortable, but it caused me too much energy and discomfort. Through this process I have developed deeper, more meaningful friendships where I no longer “hide” myself, and my friends accept and celebrate me as I am. These friendships truly carried me through my grief, bringing light, love and joy into my world when it felt so dark and heavy.

Grief taught me to accept my own humanness 

As a woman with ADHD I have spent many years trying to be “perfect,” the perfect student, therapist, friend, employee etc. I used perfection as a coping mechanism to mask my executive dysfunctions, constantly overcompensating for my executive dysfunctions in an effort to not “mess up.” Once again, grief made managing my executive dysfunctions, what felt like, nearly impossible. Thus, I began to reject conventional ideas of therapy and the “therapist being removed,” and instead allowed myself to be seen by my own clients. Now, I did not make their therapy about me, but rather stopped trying to force myself to sit still in session. I would make mistakes and have a laugh with my clients about my own forgetfulness and find repair with them. What I experienced was a profound transformation in the therapeutic relationship. My clients no longer viewed me as a “perfect person” but someone whom they could relate to, who gave them permission to also just be human.

Our sessions were no longer centered around “achieving perfect emotional intelligence and ultimate healing.” They were now focused on cultivating radical self acceptance and compassion, learning to see the beauty in imperfection and rejecting perfection as a standard. It was no longer needed to pursue something “perfectly” but enjoying life for what it is, imperfect.