Why Does Grief Sometimes Come in Waves?

A grief attack, sometimes called a Sudden (or Subsequent) Temporary Upsurge in Grief, can feel debilitating -- but they are temporary. Learn more about STUGs in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren vog Obam Here. Today's episode talks about grief and
panic like symptoms. So if you're not up for that today,
go ahead and skip this one. And Hey, take care
of yourself. Okay, I've experienced this sort of grief too.
But the writer of the article that today's episode is

(00:23):
based on Carrie. She spoke to the emotion visc early.
She wrote that on a recent grade, recently afternoon, she
found herself with a McMansion size case of cabin fever,
in a hankering for the wind in her hair regardless
of the weather, coronavirus be darned, so she laced up
her boots, snapped on her Fannie pack containing pandemic essentials,

(00:44):
grabbed her raincoat, and high tailed it to a nearby
state park. Moving blissfully through the misty rain on a
trail she had hiked a thousand times. She felt high
on the sweet endorphin rush of well being and at
one with the world. Where the trail met the l
a man was squatted on the shore fishing, and as
she put on her face mask to say a muffled hello,

(01:05):
the sun peeked out, dappling the water with sparkles of
light that glinted off the side of his rusty bobbing
bait pale, which she noticed was emblazoned with the fading
words old pal minnow bucket. And that's when, out of
nowhere it hit. A roaring freight train of abject sadness
crashed into her, leaving her vibrating with heartache, loneliness, and

(01:27):
a cavernous sense of loss. She couldn't breathe that, she
couldn't think the landscape around her had morphed into a
cacophonous blur. She sat down against a tree and bald,
feeling utterly suffocated deflated. It took about thirty minutes that
felt more like an eternity, but the amplified sensations subsided,

(01:48):
leaving her mentally agitated, physically drained, and spiritually bone dry.
What was it that had temporarily knocked her off her feet?
Carrie had been blindsided with what's known as a stug,
a sudden or subsequent temporary upsurge of grief. So what

(02:08):
is a stug? So we spoke with Laura Silverman, licensed
clinical social worker and owner of Sweet Grass Integrated Counseling
and Therapy in Atlanta, Georgia. She said, a stug is
essentially an overwhelming and almost incapacitating feeling of grief that
comes out of nowhere. It can occur at any time,
including many years after a loss, but it's most experienced

(02:30):
during the first year of grief. Dr Terse Rando, a
psychotherapist and grief counselor, coined the term stug in the
early ninety nineties. Randoll likened the stug experience after the
death of a loved one to waves coming in and
out from the ocean. Occasionally a tsunami comes along and
rips our feet out from under us. Silverman shares from

(02:53):
her own experience. She said, five years after the loss
of my mother, I found myself sitting on my staircase
one night, sobbing, convinced that I had forgotten to say
goodbye to my mother. My husband and son had to
remind me that I was with her at the end,
planned the funeral, and did her eulogy. It took several
minutes for me to calm down and to recall the events.

(03:14):
She continued. The problem with the stug is that when
we're experiencing one, it feels like it's all there is,
that it will never end, and in that sense, it's
very scary. A stug can also leave us feeling completely alone,
because it's extremely hard to describe to another person how
we're feeling. Because a grief attack tends to come out
of the blue and is so consuming, it appears to

(03:37):
be disproportionate to what's happening at the moment, this can
leave people around us baffled and unable to help. Stug
is often accompanied with feelings of confusion, loneliness, deep sadness, regret,
and more. It's often experienced a sobbing, numbness and ability
to think, and physical pain. It comes with such strength
the people often describe it as hitting a wall or

(03:59):
having a older land on them. Some have described feeling
like they're not themselves during a stug, leaving them feeling
untethered from everything they understand about themselves, about their world,
and even about their relationship to God or the universe.
A stug is profoundly linked to the connection or relationship
we shared with our deceased loved one, so the annual

(04:21):
cycle of birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, and even the change of
seasons may magnify our greek Likewise, retirement graduations, the birth
of a child, weddings, events where our loved one is
profoundly absent. These may activate painful emotions less predictably, our
senses may be ignited out of seemingly thin air by
a particular song, scent, food, or film that we associate

(04:45):
with a loved one. In the case of the author, carry,
she was stugged on a random day in the middle
of the woods by an old minnow bucket exactly like
the one her father, who had died fourteen years previous,
possessed that she and her brother, who had died eight
teen months previous, used to play with as kids. Silverman said,

(05:05):
nothing happens in a vacuum. The nature of the relationship
we had with the person were grieving, the nature of
their death, and how we were taught to express our
feelings all impact our grief experience. All of this combines
to create a painful stew of longing, shame, guilt, loneliness,
and heartbreak. So a stug may be driven by many
layers of unresolved issues with our loved one. It may

(05:28):
be driven by feelings of helplessness, at being able to
prevent their death or suffering. It can be the result
of pent up emotions that had no place to go.
Our emotions create physical reactions in our bodies. Our brains
and bodies are not separate entities, so as with any
powerful burst of emotion, experiencing a stug can be physically exhausting,

(05:49):
and Silverman emphasized that it's important to take care of
your physical self by finding a quiet place to take
a break, drinking water, and focusing on breathing. She explained
that once calm, some people find it helpful to talk
or just sit with someone, and for others it helps
to stay solitary but engage with something that feels pleasant
in some way. She said that can be as simple

(06:12):
as looking at the blue sky, listening to the wind
in the trees, or drinking a cup of warm tea.
As unpleasant as a stug is, it's important to note
that it is temporary. It will pass, even though it
can feel like it's going to go on forever. The
fact that you've had a stug doesn't necessarily mean that
it will recur. What it does mean is that you
had one, got through it, and now no you can

(06:34):
handle it if it happens again. We live in disquieting
times on many fronts, as millions of people in communities
across the globe or coping with a multitude of threadbare emotions,
including grief. Silverman says that it can help to keep
that collective experience in mind as a sense of connection
and commonality. She said, We're not alone. We're connected to

(06:59):
every other all on the planet, and none of us
has lived our lives without experiencing grief and handling hard stuff.
If you're listening to this, you made it through, so
you can do hard you. We can get through hard
times and this moment in history together. Today's episode was

(07:21):
written by Carrie Tatro and produced by Tyler Clay. For
more on this and lots of other topics, visit how
stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is a production of
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