Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren vog Obam Here. Today's episode talks about grief and
Speaker 1: panic like symptoms. So if you're not up for that today,
Speaker 1: go ahead and skip this one. And Hey, take care
Speaker 1: of yourself. Okay, I've experienced this sort of grief too.
Speaker 1: But the writer of the article that today's episode is
Speaker 1: based on Carrie. She spoke to the emotion visc early.
Speaker 1: She wrote that on a recent grade, recently afternoon, she
Speaker 1: found herself with a McMansion size case of cabin fever,
Speaker 1: in a hankering for the wind in her hair regardless
Speaker 1: of the weather, coronavirus be darned, so she laced up
Speaker 1: her boots, snapped on her Fannie pack containing pandemic essentials,
Speaker 1: grabbed her raincoat, and high tailed it to a nearby
Speaker 1: state park. Moving blissfully through the misty rain on a
Speaker 1: trail she had hiked a thousand times. She felt high
Speaker 1: on the sweet endorphin rush of well being and at
Speaker 1: one with the world. Where the trail met the l
Speaker 1: a man was squatted on the shore fishing, and as
Speaker 1: she put on her face mask to say a muffled hello,
Speaker 1: the sun peeked out, dappling the water with sparkles of
Speaker 1: light that glinted off the side of his rusty bobbing
Speaker 1: bait pale, which she noticed was emblazoned with the fading
Speaker 1: words old pal minnow bucket. And that's when, out of
Speaker 1: nowhere it hit. A roaring freight train of abject sadness
Speaker 1: crashed into her, leaving her vibrating with heartache, loneliness, and
Speaker 1: a cavernous sense of loss. She couldn't breathe that, she
Speaker 1: couldn't think the landscape around her had morphed into a
Speaker 1: cacophonous blur. She sat down against a tree and bald,
Speaker 1: feeling utterly suffocated deflated. It took about thirty minutes that
Speaker 1: felt more like an eternity, but the amplified sensations subsided,
Speaker 1: leaving her mentally agitated, physically drained, and spiritually bone dry.
Speaker 1: What was it that had temporarily knocked her off her feet?
Speaker 1: Carrie had been blindsided with what's known as a stug,
Speaker 1: a sudden or subsequent temporary upsurge of grief. So what
Speaker 1: is a stug? So we spoke with Laura Silverman, licensed
Speaker 1: clinical social worker and owner of Sweet Grass Integrated Counseling
Speaker 1: and Therapy in Atlanta, Georgia. She said, a stug is
Speaker 1: essentially an overwhelming and almost incapacitating feeling of grief that
Speaker 1: comes out of nowhere. It can occur at any time,
Speaker 1: including many years after a loss, but it's most experienced
Speaker 1: during the first year of grief. Dr Terse Rando, a
Speaker 1: psychotherapist and grief counselor, coined the term stug in the
Speaker 1: early ninety nineties. Randoll likened the stug experience after the
Speaker 1: death of a loved one to waves coming in and
Speaker 1: out from the ocean. Occasionally a tsunami comes along and
Speaker 1: rips our feet out from under us. Silverman shares from
Speaker 1: her own experience. She said, five years after the loss
Speaker 1: of my mother, I found myself sitting on my staircase
Speaker 1: one night, sobbing, convinced that I had forgotten to say
Speaker 1: goodbye to my mother. My husband and son had to
Speaker 1: remind me that I was with her at the end,
Speaker 1: planned the funeral, and did her eulogy. It took several
Speaker 1: minutes for me to calm down and to recall the events.
Speaker 1: She continued. The problem with the stug is that when
Speaker 1: we're experiencing one, it feels like it's all there is,
Speaker 1: that it will never end, and in that sense, it's
Speaker 1: very scary. A stug can also leave us feeling completely alone,
Speaker 1: because it's extremely hard to describe to another person how
Speaker 1: we're feeling. Because a grief attack tends to come out
Speaker 1: of the blue and is so consuming, it appears to
Speaker 1: be disproportionate to what's happening at the moment, this can
Speaker 1: leave people around us baffled and unable to help. Stug
Speaker 1: is often accompanied with feelings of confusion, loneliness, deep sadness, regret,
Speaker 1: and more. It's often experienced a sobbing, numbness and ability
Speaker 1: to think, and physical pain. It comes with such strength
Speaker 1: the people often describe it as hitting a wall or
Speaker 1: having a older land on them. Some have described feeling
Speaker 1: like they're not themselves during a stug, leaving them feeling
Speaker 1: untethered from everything they understand about themselves, about their world,
Speaker 1: and even about their relationship to God or the universe.
Speaker 1: A stug is profoundly linked to the connection or relationship
Speaker 1: we shared with our deceased loved one, so the annual
Speaker 1: cycle of birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, and even the change of
Speaker 1: seasons may magnify our greek Likewise, retirement graduations, the birth
Speaker 1: of a child, weddings, events where our loved one is
Speaker 1: profoundly absent. These may activate painful emotions less predictably, our
Speaker 1: senses may be ignited out of seemingly thin air by
Speaker 1: a particular song, scent, food, or film that we associate
Speaker 1: with a loved one. In the case of the author, carry,
Speaker 1: she was stugged on a random day in the middle
Speaker 1: of the woods by an old minnow bucket exactly like
Speaker 1: the one her father, who had died fourteen years previous,
Speaker 1: possessed that she and her brother, who had died eight
Speaker 1: teen months previous, used to play with as kids. Silverman said,
Speaker 1: nothing happens in a vacuum. The nature of the relationship
Speaker 1: we had with the person were grieving, the nature of
Speaker 1: their death, and how we were taught to express our
Speaker 1: feelings all impact our grief experience. All of this combines
Speaker 1: to create a painful stew of longing, shame, guilt, loneliness,
Speaker 1: and heartbreak. So a stug may be driven by many
Speaker 1: layers of unresolved issues with our loved one. It may
Speaker 1: be driven by feelings of helplessness, at being able to
Speaker 1: prevent their death or suffering. It can be the result
Speaker 1: of pent up emotions that had no place to go.
Speaker 1: Our emotions create physical reactions in our bodies. Our brains
Speaker 1: and bodies are not separate entities, so as with any
Speaker 1: powerful burst of emotion, experiencing a stug can be physically exhausting,
Speaker 1: and Silverman emphasized that it's important to take care of
Speaker 1: your physical self by finding a quiet place to take
Speaker 1: a break, drinking water, and focusing on breathing. She explained
Speaker 1: that once calm, some people find it helpful to talk
Speaker 1: or just sit with someone, and for others it helps
Speaker 1: to stay solitary but engage with something that feels pleasant
Speaker 1: in some way. She said that can be as simple
Speaker 1: as looking at the blue sky, listening to the wind
Speaker 1: in the trees, or drinking a cup of warm tea.
Speaker 1: As unpleasant as a stug is, it's important to note
Speaker 1: that it is temporary. It will pass, even though it
Speaker 1: can feel like it's going to go on forever. The
Speaker 1: fact that you've had a stug doesn't necessarily mean that
Speaker 1: it will recur. What it does mean is that you
Speaker 1: had one, got through it, and now no you can
Speaker 1: handle it if it happens again. We live in disquieting
Speaker 1: times on many fronts, as millions of people in communities
Speaker 1: across the globe or coping with a multitude of threadbare emotions,
Speaker 1: including grief. Silverman says that it can help to keep
Speaker 1: that collective experience in mind as a sense of connection
Speaker 1: and commonality. She said, We're not alone. We're connected to
Speaker 1: every other all on the planet, and none of us
Speaker 1: has lived our lives without experiencing grief and handling hard stuff.
Speaker 1: If you're listening to this, you made it through, so
Speaker 1: you can do hard you. We can get through hard
Speaker 1: times and this moment in history together. Today's episode was
Speaker 1: written by Carrie Tatro and produced by Tyler Clay. For
Speaker 1: more on this and lots of other topics, visit how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is a production of
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