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Byron's avatar

Hi Karen,

That’s quite a comprehensive list and I definitely experienced lots of those things after my dad’s death.

Some other things that came to me…

I wish I’d taken the opportunity to talk to a counsellor at the time to help process my feelings. When work offered it, back in 2008 at the age of 21, I looked at the person like they had two heads! - “therapy is for people who are mentally unwell” was my thinking - “I’m just sad because my dad has died”… I had none of the understanding of mental health back then - it even just 15 years ago it wasn’t anywhere near to being ‘normalised’ as it more or less is now.

I feel that could have really helped set me up better - instead of having the anger start hitting me 10 years later after another experience triggered it.

On the subject of anger, that was a big one for me - but not angry at my dad. Partly angry at the woman who caused the accident and caused his death. But not entirely at her - and that was the hardest thing I found, was having anger with nowhere to direct it - I wished sometimes that I was religious, so I could blame god and be angry at him. But no, just nowhere to direct it.

And, as it turns out after many months of counselling a decade later, it wasn’t just anger I was feeling. The anger was all that could get out because I’d been suppressing my other emotions - holding back the sadness. Trying to protect the people around me and ‘be strong’.

Switching off my state of depression like a light switch because ‘enough was enough’ and because it was impacting my wife and my job and my chances of being able to get a mortgage if I didn’t hold onto my job. External pressures that directed me to just ‘switching it off’. And as it turned out, that’s how I felt about my emotions for a decade - I barely cried over that period - and it felt like there was literally a switch in my brain that had been flicked that wouldn’t allow the emotion out, that I needed to feel.

So it became anger - anger at seemingly tiny things, that would boil over and cause me to punch a wall in rage. Or at it’s worst as I was processing this anger - punching myself in frustration - feeling my mind was broken, like I was broken.

And that took more time to heal. To learn to ‘be kind to myself’ - I’m still working on it.

So that’s a lot of my experience - there’s so much to it that it’s no surprise you can fill a book. It’s a lovely idea.

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