Dr. John A. King explains why Father's Day triggers grief and loss for people with PTSD, especially after divorce or estrangement. He recommends accepting the feelings rather than fighting them, using the martial arts metaphor of water flowing around rock instead of pushing back. Practical moves: limit alcohol, exercise early, and make a plan before the day arrives.
Father's Day is coming up. That's, uh, it's going to be a bit of a kick in the nuts for some of us, isn't it? Um, you know, I know a bunch of mates that have, you know, divorce situations or estranged from kids and, um, it's gonna— there's gonna be challenging. It'll probably start like this. You'll probably be doing everything right, um, going along the day, have the meal laid out, done the gym, Got it in there. It'll probably just start coming in like a fog emotionally, a little bit like a cloud bank in the distance. You can see it there and it'll just start to come towards you, maybe before the day comes up, during the day, after, just depending upon how it goes. And a lot of you are probably holding your breath with it, not too sure what to do. So, so here's a couple of thoughts for you. Number 1, accept it's gonna come. Don't get into this crap, I got this, I'll beat this. Just don't. Just accept that it's gonna come. And the old Chinese martial art philosophy of water versus rock, you can either go at this softly or you can go at it hardly. Water has a tendency to, and does over time, wear something down. I've learned, being the sort of personality that I am, that if I try and break through something, it ends up normally breaking something in me. So it's going to come at me. So I'm just going to go with the flow of it. Now I know that might sound anti-intuitive because we need to steady ourselves, but I know there's going to— a sense of grief is going to come, a sense of loss, a sense of disappointment is going to come, and that's okay. So I'm going to flow with that. I'm going to, in my mind, set some limits. If you like to have a drink on the weekend, Set it to 1 or 2 per day or per event, whatever it is. If you have a tendency to get overwhelmed in certain things, pull back just a little bit. If exercise is a really good way for you to cope, make sure that you exercise. Get up a little bit early, get it in before the day to get those endorphins up and going. I think the biggest thing I've found with managing post-traumatic stress and these sort of family things, and I talk about it a lot in Deal With It, Is having a plan before the event, knowing that and accepting it's going to come and managing it. The skill for living life well with PTSD, and that's why I titled the book that way, is understanding that we'll always have to manage this. And that level of self-awareness going into events means that you can get ahead of the storm front. Now, hopefully you'll stay ahead of the storm front. But if you don't, then you'll be allowed to let it go around you. Cheers. Do it well, folks. Do it well.
