Complicated Grief

 Persistent complex bereavement disorder is not an official diagnosis in the DSM-5, but is in the section of "conditions deserving further study." The symptoms, which also need to be chronic or recurring for more than about a year, are:

Indefinitely yearning/longing for the deceased or ex

Preoccupation with the circumstances of the deceased’s death or the circumstances surrounding the end of a relationship

Intense sorrow and/or distress that does not improve over time.

Difficulty trusting others

Depression

Detachment and/or isolation

Difficulty pursuing interests or activities

A desire to join the deceased or the presence of suicidal or self-harming fantasies

Persistent feelings of loneliness or emptiness

Impairment in social, occupational or other areas of life 

This experience used to be called "complicated grief."

I feel like this applies to my life since about 2016. I honestly cannot say I have had a whole lot of relief and freedom from grieving, including grief that feels multigenerational and transpersonal, or even global and in regard to the whole energy of being on this planet, I feel like my version of functionality is more having learned to live with grief. I guess there have been flashes, when I am completely alone, out camping somewhere. And falling in love, but that's a whole other conversation. 

I used to feel like I could grieve, and let go, and move on, but at this later stage of life, especially as I stick to a daily meditation practice and get my ear really close to my own ground, so to speak, I am discovering more and more that I was deceiving myself, and the "letting go and moving on" was often merely distracting myself, finding a shiny new relationship, staying busy, doing a geographical cure, etc. 

I mean if "healing from grief" or "letting go and moving forward" is just denial, forgetting, the formation of emotional scars and calluses, etc., then it's not really letting go and moving forward. (We are only undeceived of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm- TS Eliot). It's still holding on and carrying forward, but just out of the way, pushed into the shadows. It all just goes under the bed, or in the trunk, or up in the attic, or whatever location metaphor you want to use. 

Maybe all grief is complicated, and the blessed for whom it's just "the grieving process" and they come out of the other side free and clear and ready to "move on" are the real anomaly, and the rest of us destroyed humans are just complicated grievers. 

Also, if there's complicated grief, maybe there should be other adjectives for grief. Mysterious grief. Annoying as fuck grief. Tiresome to everyone who has to listen to it over and over again grief. Absurd grief. Ecstatic grief. Passive aggressive grief. Living through the loss of every familiar inherited value system and paradigm grief. Total global environmental catastrophe grief. 

I have a former student, who, at age 29, was just diagnosed as autistic. We sometimes chafe against labels, but, for her, the diagnosis and the framework has offered her the first flash of possible freedom and self-understanding that she has had in years. Being diagnosed with persistent depressive disorder back in 2017 provided a certain amount of clarity for me. So now, when I go into my next counseling situation, which I hope will be soon, I'll have a label: persistent complex bereavement disorder. Nice.