We have decided to publish this as a topic because we can relate to and resonate with this term in our grief journey. Although we have this blog and have been going for almost four years. My sister and I are still quite dissociated and disconnected from our loss and our experiences over the past six years…..
Please see Fragmented Grief which covers:
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1. Introduction to the topic
We have decided to publish this as a topic because we can relate to and resonate with this term in our grief journey.
Although we have this blog and have been going for almost four years. My sister and I are still quite dissociated and disconnected from our loss and our experiences over the past six years.
Fragmented feels like the best way to describe how we feel about our life, pretty much of the time.
We often say we had no clue how much our lives were going to change the day our Dad was hospitalised in September 2016. But literally, we really never did.
It was a horrendous seven-month experience with the worst end result. Our Dad is no longer here with us. We never saw it coming. When we say that, we do not mean we were naive to the fact he’d been diagnosed with a serious life-threatening condition, but we truly believed he could have come through it.
We also often say we are not the same people we were before. This is not only for the main obvious reason, the loss of our Dad. But it’s also the entire experience throughout these past 6 years.
Through counselling and talking to people, something that became quite apparent to me is that I lock memories away in a vault and leave them there. I forget they are there until a conversation or a situation occurs that almost forces me to acknowledge and remember.
Something else which is quite apparent with my sister and I, within our dissociation and disconnect, we do not associate our loss to ourselves, even though we know it is real. Sadly, our Dad is no longer here, but we do not connect to this well.
A most recent example of this would be, coming across our Dad’s order of service book. It is not something we often look at, so when looking through it, and my brain registering what I was looking at. It instantly felt weird. Like what was our Dad doing in that book.
In honesty we feel broken, and damaged, just to name a few emotions.
Every single process and situation, we’ve had to deal with it’s taken pieces and pieces of us away each time.
We would always try to have a balance and separation between dealing with things when our Dad was in the hospital and then when sorting his affairs through Probate, but we quickly lost the ability to have that divide and separation. Everything started seeping into one. By this we mean the way our:
- Self-esteem
- Confidence
- Ability
- Decision making
- Anxiety
- Self-worth
It left us feeling obliterated by everything we were dealing with. We lost the ability to pick ourselves up out of these feelings in our daily life.
We became very introvert and realised we were extremely anxious in almost every single thing we did/do.
Quite often we speak about living our life through bubbles. We have a topic on the blog about this which goes into further detail.
When saying this we mean without realising our life was in bubbles.
- The hospital bubble upon our Dad’s first admission
That burst when talks were happening of him being discharged
- Discharge to home bubble
- Readmission to hospital bubble
Our Dad passing away and being catapulted or slingshot off the hamster wheel we were on.
From there, there have been many other bubbles, and to date, we have struggled to pull ourselves out so that we are fully living alongside the world rather than existing in it.
So, with all this, we lock all these feelings away in vaults as it makes getting on with new things that occur easier to handle. It is one of our coping mechanisms.
We also wanted to do this topic in case there are others who might be feeling this way.
Please see Fragmented Grief:
2. Fragmented and Grief
2.1 What happened to a person who experiences fragmentation?
“When a person experiences severe trauma, their identity, including personality and emotions, goes through a process of fragmentation. This is when the body divides traits and feelings, and groups them into smaller sections, keeping some of them hidden until a safe space for expression is provided”. (31 Jul 2020).
2.2 What does it mean when life is fragmented?
“Well when we are living a life that feels fragmented and divided—we are essentially experiencing a strong sense of being separated from ourselves (for example, our voice, our “true self” or what we really believe, really want to say, and really want to bring into action, but are somehow stuck into not revealing that” …(8 Oct 2017).
2.3 What does fragmented mean in mental health?
“Definition. Mental fragmentation is a phrase used to describe the mental state of someone who has memories written into their brain from multiple sources over time, especially those who are heavy multitaskers. When multitasking, the brain does not store related memories in one place, but in small pieces”. (25 Jan 2011).
2.4 What is fragmented dissociation?
“Dissociation of traumatic events is often associated with fragmentation of memory. After a traumatic event, people often dissociate from the experience by separating memories from the emotions involved. In peri-traumatic dissociation, the memory of the trauma is fragmented because of how the information is encoded”.
2.5 What causes mental fragmentation?
“Fragmentation is thought to result from a lack of elaboration of the memory due to high emotion and dissociation during the traumatic experience (e.g., van der Kolk, 1987)”.
3. Our final thoughts
My sister and I are on a continuous journey of learning and discovery, as well as continuous healing. As we learn we share, as we share we grow. We hope this platform we have created might help to make a difference for people who might be going through something similar.
4. Our YouTube video
Grief Probate Journey 