"Grief Ghosts: Prematurely Buried Grief and the Rise of Grief Ghosts" - Mark Gorkin, LCSW
Mark poignantly describes a "burn-in" phenomenon, and how it leads to what he calls "grief ghosts..."
Mark poignantly describes a "burn-in" phenomenon, and how it leads to what he calls "grief ghosts..."
Definition of Burn-in
Now it’s time to define the newly conceived “Burn-in” and to differentiate burn-in (with its typically more internal, yin energy and “draining” essence) from burnout (with its more external, “straining” yang nature). Akin to burnout, burn-in is also a gradual process by which a person detaches from work and other significant roles and relationships in response to excessive and prolonged stress and mental, physical, and emotional strain. However, in contrast to the external demands, excessive responsibilities, and over (or under) whelming grind of burnout, burn-in involves the silent, chronic drain of harboring unconsciously repressed or consciously resisted lingering and reverberating memories and smoldering emotions connected to recent and past, physical and psychological losses, transitions, and traumas. And, perhaps most disorienting, painful emotions and memories long denied or prematurely buried become the crucible for the birth of “Grief Ghosts.”
Let me simplify this - “Three Step Rise of Grief Ghosts”:
1. Lingering Loss. You experience a painful physical or psychological loss whether from the distant or recent past. The nature of the loss is denied or, more likely, acknowledged but quickly pushed to the back of your mind, out of everyday emotional consciousness. “It’s time to move on.” Of course, the more powerful the loss the greater is the potential for kindling grief ghosts. (In general, lingering, unrecognized or minimized loss + absent or aborted grief x time is the formula for ghostly production.)
2. Prematurely Buried Grief. The energy and feelings connected to the loss and the aborted or alienated grief process means painful emotions and memories are smoldering and reverberating inside. The longer and tighter one tries to keep the lid on this psychic crucible the more potent the condition for this combustible mix to become increasingly pressure-packed and incessantly loud, and to swarm furiously. Clear thought and decision-making processes are scrambled; heightened emotions if not numbed can become overwhelming. Other life transitions, traumas, and losses experienced along the burn-in path may only compound and intensify this fuming and rumbling process if, once again, the grief process is basically avoided.
3. Burn-in and the Rise of Grief Ghosts. Finally, one will implode or explode; constantly smoldering and smoking pain or shame not only is exhausting, it burns away your emotional defenses as well as your mind-body-heart-spirit insides; alas, it may be hard not to make an ash of yourself! Your combustible “burn-in” psychic mix, like the high temperatures and pressure that forms metamorphic rocks, now morphs into “Grief Ghosts.” Or subterranean, conflicting and clashing past and present voices in your head, like colliding tectonic plates, may spark the rise of metaphoric ghosts. Whatever the genesis, you are suddenly dealing with two battlefronts: a) the immediate real world problem in the present and b) and the unleashed spectral presence of formerly dormant, now painful, confusing, and often critical grief ghosts. And your inner reserve and resolve feels depleted if not devastated. You are susceptible to emotional overreaction or regressing to old self-defeating “survival” patterns especially during times of crisis, trauma, loss, and high stress or when in the throes of challenging performance, identity-related transition, and/or intimate relating.