mental health

Nathalie with Katja Faber on Homicide Loss – Effect on the Victim’s Family | Episode 2 Part 1

July 4, 2022 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

‘I wish to be ok with it if for no other reason than I owed it to myself and I owed to my still-living children and those that care about me. Because they have a right to have a full and beautiful life, and having a mother that’s traumatised and overwhelmed by something that she has no control over is not doing anybody any favours.’

Katja’s story is extraordinary and has made waves in the media worldwide. Since the recording of this episode a few weeks ago the court case has taken place at the high court in Zurich, and the killer was convicted. We are planning to do Part 2 of this interview in a few weeks so stay tuned.

About this week’s guest:

Katja Faber is the mother of three children. Following her 23-year-old son’s murder in Switzerland, she used her legal training to work closely with lawyers and the State Prosecutor to secure justice for her dead son. Through her writing at Still Standing Magazine and other grief-related publications, she hopes to break the taboo of homicide loss and child loss. She runs her own fruit farm and is an advocate of ecotherapy as a means of finding healing following a traumatic loss. Katja is a certified Compassionate Bereavement Care® counselor through the Center for Loss and Trauma in partnership with the MISS Foundation and the Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Family Trust.

Topics discussed in this episode:

Homicide loss – how a parent deals with the loss, the grief, the trauma, and the legal system
Self-care, writing, nature, family support, support groups
Siblings’ grief, mothering living children who grieve their brother
Dealing with the media and the added pain caused by media coverage
Judgment or misunderstanding of the surroundings
Re-traumatizing the victim’s family through ongoing trials
The aspect of grief being to some degree public due to trials
How to continue living with the fact that the killer is still out there alive
The importance of accountability

Resources and links mentioned in this episode:

Links

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HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA is produced and edited by me, Nathalie Himmelrich.

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Remember to keep breathing, I promise, it will get easier.

The Pandemic of Grief and Loss

February 14, 2022 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

You and I are not as different as it might seem…

I will never forget my father’s first words on January 19th, 2012 as I finally reached him: ‘You have got to be strong now.’

I knew what he was going to say next and I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want it to become the reality we had been dreading: My mother was dead.

It was only 4,5 months after my daughters were born and the younger twin had died 3 days after birth.

By now, you might be wondering why I started this post with the statement above. Hear me out…

Have you been touched by loss?

In the past 2 years as we all dealt with the worldwide effects of a pandemic, a situation no one would have or could have imagined, we have all been touched by loss in one way or another.

From letting go of personal freedom to move to no longer being able to meet and be close with people, from losing loved ones, through separation of space, different views, ideas, or all the way to loved ones who died from Covid.

Loss upon loss

The losses that we all had to deal with or face, in one way or another, have made grief an experience closer than we might even fully realize.

loss of people through death
loss of personal freedom
loss of health
loss of income, job, career
loss of closeness and intimacy
loss of friendships
loss of freedom of choice
loss of ease with which we decided to go about our lives
loss of relationships
loss of humanity
loss of unity
loss of individuality
loss of trust in self, in others, in society, in …
loss of potential
loss of safety
loss of belonging
loss of connection through isolation
loss of clarity
loss of individual rights

… just to name a few.

Changes and letting go

The increase of fear and worry goes side by side with the changes we all had to go through. Changes inevitably bring emotions: some changes bring relief, others fear, uncertainty, and many if not all mean letting go of what we are or have been used to.

Letting go involves grieving what no longer is. Maybe the grief is subtle, and going under the radar of your awareness. Sometimes it shows up through physical, emotional, or cognitive symptoms such as, for example, a lack of motivation.

Are there any other kinds of losses you have experienced? I’d love to add them to the list. Share them in the comments below.

Photo Credit: Photo by Amin Moshrefi on Unsplash

The Purpose of Grief

September 8, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

Anniversaries, as you know, have a way of being remembered in the body way before they get consciously registered in the mind. It is as if our body remembers first.

And, most important of all, EVERY BODY remembers differently because every body IS different.

Is there a purpose in grieving 10 years later?

… I asked myself. I like to think there is. I don’t know what the purpose might be but I do trust the body is doing its best to integrate loss into life.

What are your thoughts? Why do you think we grieve, why grieving might be necessary?

Grief 10 years later

You might have read in my last newsletter, you will have read that last week was my twin daughter’s birthday and also my younger daughter’s 10th death anniversary.

The following is what I wrote this year on the anniversary:

It’s been 10 years and it still hurts. Most of the time, I’m not actively grieving. But then there are times when it overcomes me. This was today, the 10th anniversary of A’Mya’s death.

This week where birthday and death anniversary collide is usually the most intense in the whole year.

So, what happens after death, after grief no longer runs your life on a daily or regular basis?

Grief triggers will bring up memories

The following I wrote yesterday:

Today, as I watched the Grey’s Anatomy series, the tiny premmie in the NICU died. I watched the mother in the scene hold her baby for the first, last, and only time… “I’m not ready yet”, the uttered through tears streaming down her face, as he stopped breathing. That was me, 10 years ago.
And I remember with every fiber of my being the gut-wrenching pain as well as the honor to hold her as she drew her last breath.

Triggers will come up, no matter the time that has passed since the death. For me, it isn’t about avoiding triggers. It is about riding the waves and letting them wash up the shore until the sea has calmed down again.

And then there is life, continuing

The week of birth and death anniversaries has come to an end… and life goes on… and continues… turning and turning like the big Ferris wheel 🎡 currently in our village.

The hardest part of grief is learning to go on living without them.

Regulation of the Nervous System

September 2, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

Regulated

Human beings have a nervous system. This nervous system comes into play on a daily basis.

When a nervous system is regulated, blood flows naturally and effortlessly, moves into the higher-order part of our brain. In a regulated state, we have access to our social engagement function, creativity, higher-order problem solving, and complex perspective-taking to the current level of our cognitive development.

Having a regulated nervous system is essential to well-being and the potential of thriving as a human being.

Dysregulated

When dysregulated, however, this higher-order brain function shuts down by degrees depending on just how activated (triggered) our nervous system becomes.

Triggers can for example be

being exposed to intense noise, activity or movement
trying to accomplish too much in too short of time, rushing
being in a highly stressful environment, such as at work or home
sudden shock, for example being fightened by a loud noise or through an attack
violence to the body, as subtle as through blood being taken

As an effect, we lose access to our ability to engage socially, often felt as social anxiety.

We lose access to creativity and problem solving, which often feels like stress.

We lose access to perspective-taking, often felt es rigid and stuck thinking.

As a result, we tend to experience some heightened aspect, or a combination of

fight
flight
freeze
fawn

“There are two types of people in this world. Those that are traumatized, and those that are traumatized but they don’t know it.”
Gabor Mate

Regulation is a priority

Being regulated, therefore, should be a high priority in the way we approach life.

A truly regulated state, however, only exists in relation to other human beings, referred to as co-regulation. We are socially wired and our nervous systems need others to feel safe.

Co-regulation versus self-regulation

A dysregulated state is essentially a child state, and a child is incapable of feeling safe without the presence of a calm adult. Regulation is learned by modeling and through co-regulation in attuned and secure parenting relationships.

When there is a lack of a safe, calm other – either because that is the reality one finds on in or because prevailing attachment patterns block one from being able to recognize and move towards this form of security, then alternative regulation strategies are enacted.

Self-soothing (self-regulation)

Examples of self-soothing (calming down an anxious nervous system) are:

calming strategies, such as breathing in a specific rhythm
going for walks in nature
using specific scents an essentials such as in aroma therapy

Self-soothing is a strategy, a technique to help one get by, but it won’t solve the reason why the nervous system is in an anxious state, to begin with.

In regards to attachment styles, this technique is most often used by anxious types.

Auto-regulation (self-regulation)

This strategy tends to focus on taking one’s mind away from the intensity of interpersonal stress, often by seeking other forms of intensity.

Examples of auto-regulation are:

exercising with high intensity or in extreme sports
using drug or alcohol
watching movies or series, usually dramatic or action intense
sex
applying oneself in certain types of intense breath-work or meditation
working through high focus periods
using emotional cathartic prelease processes

All these intense energy-focusing activities shift one’s focus away from the triggering event while maintaining the activated state within the nervous system. This seemingly highly productive strategy is over time taxing on the adrenals, kidneys, and the nervous system health.

In regard to attachment style, this technique is most often used by avoidant types.

Co-regulation

Co-regulation, however, is an experience of entering a regulated nervous system state in and by the presence of another, or multiple, human beings.

It is often so natural that we don’t necessarily recognize that we are in it.

Examples of co-regulation are:

connecting to your beloved
playing and having fun with another human being
feeling the care of attuned parents
looking into someone’s eyes without even saying any words

Ways to co-regulate are:

Touch – such as holding hands, sitting shoulder to shoulder, back-to-back or in a simple embrace with another human being
Breath and gaze – which involved breathing together while maintaing some form of eye contact
Verbal – through active, embodied listening and reflective mirroring

Co-regulation AND self-regulation

All of those kinds of regulations have their place and are highly necessary. At times, self-regulation is the only available option, yet, co-regulation is vitally important. Even more so in today’s situation.

Optimal thriving as a human being does not, cannot, and will not (while we remain human) occur in isolation.
Damien Bohler

Depression – Questions And Answers

February 2, 2011 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

sad woman — Photo by Munga Thigani on Unsplash

Is something wrong with me?

There is a lot of stigmas attached to depression and people suffering it themselves often think that there must be something wrong with them to be feeling that way and that they should be able to turn it around. Depression is not a character weakness, but it is an illness. We wouldn’t tell a heart attack patient to ‘just get on with things’ but to visit a doctor to treat the heart attack. The same applies to people with depression. Depression needs medical attention and can, in most cases, not just be dealt with by the client.

Is it true that in many instances depressive illness will naturally remit?

Interestingly this is true. After a time period between six to twenty-four months it may subside. The fact though remains that suffering from this psychic pain is as intolerable as physical pain and it is therefore not encouraged to just wait until it goes away. In addition, the depressed person has nothing to show to validate their feelings, which in many cases makes it worse.

Isn’t taking drugs just avoiding reality and avoid facing how you feel?

Yes, but the drugs improve your ability to cope with the circumstances. Depression renders patient less able or unable to access their normal problem-solving abilities and they often feel a lack of self-confidence, which means that whatever the problem, it always seems harder or impossible to deal with.

The medication also restores the ability to feel emotions to the normal level, which means that the patients can still feel their sadness but also experience the other side of the emotional scale.

Will I get addicted to the medication?

No, antidepressants are not drugs that induce addiction or dependency. It’s not required to increase the dose to reach the same relief over time. There are usually no withdrawal effect when you stop taking them, however it is not recommended to just stop them because you feel better. You feel better because you’re taking them. Discuss this decision with your doctor.

How long does the medication have to be taken?

Most people will be on a treatment for six to nine months but the time can vary according to the individual and the circumstances.

When will I be able to stop them?

It’s not recommended to stop them if you’re just going through some stressful period in your life, like facing a divorce, moving house, anniversaries of death, significant loss or some other traumatic event. As mentioned above this needs to be discussed and planned with your doctor.

Depression – See The Signs In A Loved One

January 30, 2011 By Nathalie Himmelrich 4 Comments

black man — Photo by Kevin Domfeh on Unsplash

If you have a family member dealing with dark moods or depression but you are not sure if it is serious enough to go and look for medical help, this article will clarify your observations and help you make the right decision.

It’s in the experience – not necessarily in the word

Depression is one of the words that have found its way out of the medical dictionary into people’s everyday language. Clinical depression is however an illness and has not much to do with feeling depressed about something which passes after a short period of time. This is an illness and has nothing to do with a character flaw or any personal faults or deficiencies.

If you want to clarify if your loved one is suffering from depression you will notice the following symptoms:

1. Loss of interest or pleasure in all activities

People who suffer from depression significantly lose interest in things that they previously enjoyed. This change might happen slowly or after a significant incident causing stress in their lives.

2. Changes in weight or appetite

This could be either significant weight gain or loss, depending on the person.

3. Changes in sleeping patterns

Loved ones may experience sleepless or restless nights, might be unable to sleep or wake up early in the morning, might sleep too long or too much, and in general, feel more depressed in the morning.

4. Fatigue or loss of energy

Not just because of the above-mentioned sleeping patterns but also due to the effects of the illness itself, these people feel a lack of energy and therefore also lack motivation.

5. Low self-confidence paired with irrational thinking

They often speak of worthlessness and hopelessness and have generally lost belief in themselves and their abilities. Their beliefs are not based on reality. In many cases, they experience inappropriate guilt or are preoccupied with physical disease.

6. Mental challenges

Depressed family members may have trouble concentrating, remembering things, or find themselves unable to make decisions.

7. Thoughts of suicide

Many individuals with depression have reoccurring thoughts of death, or suicide or may wish not to be here and feel that the people around them are better off without them. Some also attempt to take their own lives. It is important to talk to your loved ones about this and ask them directly. Avoiding the topic does not make it go away.

8. Physical changes

You might observe various physical changes from disinterest or less interest in physical appearance, walking with a bowed stance, or slouching. They may lack expression when talking or it may seem that talking comes with great effort.

In addition to the above loss of sexual drive is common.

9. Feelings of sadness or irritability

Depressed individuals are experiencing sadness, ‘a dark cloud’ hanging over them, feel irritability, and often see only the negative in any given situation. This is connected to their irrational thinking plus the hormonal changes in the brain.

10. Restlessness or decreased activity

Some might feel restless or battle with a sense of boredom.

Remember that not all the symptoms are necessary, however, if you notice four or more of the ones mentioned for a time period longer than two weeks I suggest you contact professional help.