Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren vog Obam Here. Today's episode talks about grief and panic like symptoms. So if you're not up for that today, go ahead and skip this one. And Hey, take care of yourself. Okay, I've experienced this sort of grief too. But the writer of the article that today's episode is based on Carrie. She spoke to the emotion visc early.
She wrote that on a recent grade, recently afternoon, she found herself with a McMansion size case of cabin fever, in a hankering for the wind in her hair regardless of the weather, coronavirus be darned, so she laced up her boots, snapped on her Fannie pack containing pandemic essentials, grabbed her raincoat, and high tailed it to a nearby state park. Moving blissfully through the misty rain on a
trail she had hiked a thousand times. She felt high on the sweet endorphin rush of well being and at one with the world. Where the trail met the l a man was squatted on the shore fishing, and as she put on her face mask to say a muffled hello, the sun peeked out, dappling the water with sparkles of light that glinted off the side of his rusty bobbing bait pale, which she noticed was emblazoned with the fading words old pal minnow bucket. And that's when, out of
nowhere it hit. A roaring freight train of abject sadness crashed into her, leaving her vibrating with heartache, loneliness, and a cavernous sense of loss. She couldn't breathe that, she couldn't think the landscape around her had morphed into a cacophonous blur. She sat down against a tree and bald,
feeling utterly suffocated deflated. It took about thirty minutes that felt more like an eternity, but the amplified sensations subsided, leaving her mentally agitated, physically drained, and spiritually bone dry. What was it that had temporarily knocked her off her feet? Carrie had been blindsided with what's known as a stug, a sudden or subsequent temporary upsurge of grief. So what
is a stug? So we spoke with Laura Silverman, licensed clinical social worker and owner of Sweet Grass Integrated Counseling and Therapy in Atlanta, Georgia. She said, a stug is essentially an overwhelming and almost incapacitating feeling of grief that comes out of nowhere. It can occur at any time, including many years after a loss, but it's most experienced during the first year of grief. Dr Terse Rando, a psychotherapist and grief counselor, coined the term stug in the
early ninety nineties. Randoll likened the stug experience after the death of a loved one to waves coming in and out from the ocean. Occasionally a tsunami comes along and rips our feet out from under us. Silverman shares from her own experience. She said, five years after the loss of my mother, I found myself sitting on my staircase one night, sobbing, convinced that I had forgotten to say goodbye to my mother. My husband and son had to remind me that I was with her at the end,
planned the funeral, and did her eulogy. It took several minutes for me to calm down and to recall the events. She continued. The problem with the stug is that when we're experiencing one, it feels like it's all there is, that it will never end, and in that sense, it's very scary. A stug can also leave us feeling completely alone, because it's extremely hard to describe to another person how
we're feeling. Because a grief attack tends to come out of the blue and is so consuming, it appears to be disproportionate to what's happening at the moment, this can leave people around us baffled and unable to help. Stug is often accompanied with feelings of confusion, loneliness, deep sadness, regret, and more. It's often experienced a sobbing, numbness and ability to think, and physical pain. It comes with such strength the people often describe it as hitting a wall or
having a older land on them. Some have described feeling like they're not themselves during a stug, leaving them feeling untethered from everything they understand about themselves, about their world, and even about their relationship to God or the universe.
A stug is profoundly linked to the connection or relationship we shared with our deceased loved one, so the annual cycle of birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, and even the change of seasons may magnify our greek Likewise, retirement graduations, the birth of a child, weddings, events where our loved one is profoundly absent. These may activate painful emotions less predictably, our senses may be ignited out of seemingly thin air by a particular song, scent, food, or film that we associate
with a loved one. In the case of the author, carry, she was stugged on a random day in the middle of the woods by an old minnow bucket exactly like the one her father, who had died fourteen years previous, possessed that she and her brother, who had died eight teen months previous, used to play with as kids. Silverman said, nothing happens in a vacuum. The nature of the relationship we had with the person were grieving, the nature of their death, and how we were taught to express our
feelings all impact our grief experience. All of this combines to create a painful stew of longing, shame, guilt, loneliness, and heartbreak. So a stug may be driven by many layers of unresolved issues with our loved one. It may be driven by feelings of helplessness, at being able to prevent their death or suffering. It can be the result of pent up emotions that had no place to go.
Our emotions create physical reactions in our bodies. Our brains and bodies are not separate entities, so as with any powerful burst of emotion, experiencing a stug can be physically exhausting, and Silverman emphasized that it's important to take care of your physical self by finding a quiet place to take
a break, drinking water, and focusing on breathing. She explained that once calm, some people find it helpful to talk or just sit with someone, and for others it helps to stay solitary but engage with something that feels pleasant in some way. She said that can be as simple as looking at the blue sky, listening to the wind in the trees, or drinking a cup of warm tea. As unpleasant as a stug is, it's important to note that it is temporary. It will pass, even though it
can feel like it's going to go on forever. The fact that you've had a stug doesn't necessarily mean that it will recur. What it does mean is that you had one, got through it, and now no you can handle it if it happens again. We live in disquieting times on many fronts, as millions of people in communities across the globe or coping with a multitude of threadbare emotions, including grief. Silverman says that it can help to keep that collective experience in mind as a sense of connection
and commonality. She said, We're not alone. We're connected to every other all on the planet, and none of us has lived our lives without experiencing grief and handling hard stuff. If you're listening to this, you made it through, so you can do hard you. We can get through hard times and this moment in history together. Today's episode was written by Carrie Tatro and produced by Tyler Clay. For more on this and lots of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is a production of
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