Constructive wallowing after a serious diagnosis

by Carolyn Thomas   ❤️   Heart Sisters (on Blue Sky)

If you were a hippopotamus, wallowing would be comfort behaviour – “rolling about in mud or water to cool down or get relief from insect bites.”

But since you’re a human, wallowing is generally viewed by others as a negative response to coping with dark despair (like hearing a frightening new diagnosis with your name on it).  Aren’t we supposed to keep smiling and think positive and just get over it?  “NO!” advises Dr. Tina Gilbertson in her Psychology Today column called Three Good Reasons to Wallow in Despair: 

Her title reminded me of a friend’s advice to “WALLOW WITH GUSTO” when you’re staring down despair. Don’t ignore that sadness.  Lock your bedroom door and pound your pillows. Cry. Swear. Scream. Rage on the pages of your journal. Go for a long walk in the pouring rain. Without an umbrella. Feel all the feels!

And as Dr. Gilbertson reminds us:

“There is one thing even worse than wallowing in that rotten feeling, and that is NOT wallowing in it.”

Her thoughts on the unique mental health benefits of wallowing include:

1. You’ll feel better sooner:  “Sadness doesn’t become worse or last longer if you give it your full attention. It’s inattention that makes bad feelings worse and prolongs them. When you try not to feel what you feel, you’ve got the pain of despair – and then the misery of struggling against it.”

2. Increased self-confidence:  “The source of real confidence is self-acceptance. Trying to appear as something other than you are (e.g., okay when you’re not okay) undermines self-acceptance because you’re telling yourself to hide your own feelings. 

3. Closer relationships:  “Intimacy can’t exist where certain emotions are not allowed.  When you let yourself wallow in your own despair as needed, you’ll feel more comfortable around other people’s sadness. But when you won’t let yourself wallow in your own despair, you’ll likely urge others who are suffering to stop wallowing, too – by saying unhelpful platitudes like ‘look on the bright side’ or ‘think of the future’, or by comparing their situation to the far worse experiences of other people.” 

For over 17 years, a surprising number of my freshly-diagnosed Heart Sisters readers have been telling me some version of this statement:

” I was so disappointed that my ______ (insert one or more:  spouse, best friend, sister, daughter, mother) was not there for me!”

As I wrote in “Choose Your Listeners Carefully“, that commonly experienced disappointment can happen when we have unrealistic expectations of the capacity of other people to “be there”  – especially during a medical crisis.

Some people are naturally empathetic, and seem to know just how to respond  to us during our dark times. (Many of my girlfriends have longtime hairdressers who fit that bill, too!)

So it may seem surprising when I say that those closest to us are not necessarily our most appropriate listeners – despite our expectations that they should/must/will be  – often just because we’re married to them. Speaking of spouses and expectations, psychiatrist Dr. Gail Saltz wrote this about what women expect from spouses:

“Women communicate differently than men. Many women tell me that they really wish their husbands would talk to them like their girlfriends. In fact, they expect this kind of communication – and then often feel disappointed, rejected or lonely when it’s just not the same.”

One of the healthiest examples of “choose your listeners carefully” came from a longtime reader’s comment here in 2019. Deborah explained her thoughtful decision about who to turn to for support after she was diagnosed with a thoracic aortic aneurysm:

“When I was diagnosed, I had enough time before surgery to consider who in my family would be most physically and emotionally supportive during my post-operative recovery.

“I’d already done lots of ruminating and – while I didn’t like this fact – I knew my husband would likely need to pull back his emotional support at some point and I didn’t want that when I needed it most. (He did withdraw at one point, but he was back in supportive mode after about a 24-hour ‘rest’).

“So to be on the safe side, I’d already asked a sister and sister-in-law to be here for me. They were – and they were wonderful!”

This is also when the uniquely personal mental health benefits of constructive wallowing can shine, as Dr. Gilbertson believes.

I know it may seem like crazy talk at first, but one of the important reasons that some of our closest friends or family members may not be the appropriate support people at all during health crises is that what these people want – and need – is for us to feel better.

They want and need to know that our frightening health crisis is being well-managed.

They want and need to be able to stop worrying.

They want and need to stop hearing us talk about being scared or in pain or feeling worse instead of better, because these conversations can make them feel powerless to help.

These wants and needs can also explain the dismissive platitudes Dr. Gilbertson lists in #3 (above).

See also: What NOT to Say When You’re Visiting the Sick. 

Which brings us back to the beauty of wallowing during hard times like these. If you’re surrounded by a number of close family or friends who regularly get together to vent about problems, big or small, you may already be comfortable wallowing publicly with others you trust. If you’re not comfortable, however, wallowing on your own can be the useful “comfort behaviour”  as useful as it is to that hippopotamus!  Advantages include:

• nobody will interrupt you with their own stories
• nobody’s watching or judging
• you control when to start and when you’re ready to stop

It’s important to consider that wallowing and sadness aren’t the same as self-pity, as Dr. Amy Morin writes in her book 13 Things Mentally Strong Women Don’t Do

Sadness, she explains, is a perfectly normal and often healthy emotional reaction to life. Fully allowing ourselves to feel sad can help those emotional wounds begin to heal.

Self-pity, Dr. Morin warns, is much different, and goes beyond healthy sadness:

“When you engage in self-pity, you may overestimate your problems, and underestimate your ability to cope with them.”

And Dr. Morin also advises that when you’re really struggling, don’t hesitate to reach out to a mental health professional. I’m a big fan of people wallowing when they need to, but also a fan of talking things out when they need to (with therapists, pastors, peer-support counselors – or their hairdressers! )

Finally, Dr. Gilbertson suggests these helpful tips for wallowing well:

“Just be there. Don’t try to change your feeling. Name it instead. Let the despair wash over you. Don’t try to shake it off, and and do NOT act on it. Feelings are harmless, but behaviour isn’t.

“And remember self-compassion. Kindness is the appropriate response to a person in pain – including yourself.”

♥

Dog image: Fran Patel, Pixabay

Q:  Have you tried constructive wallowing?

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NOTE FROM CAROLYN:  I wrote more about coping with a frightening cardiac diagnosis in my book, “A Woman’s Guide to Living with Heart Disease”  (Johns Hopkins University Press).  You can ask for it at your local library or bookshop (please support your favourite independent neighbourhood booksellers, or order it online (paperback, hardcover or e-book) at Amazon – or order it directly from my publisher, Johns Hopkins University Press (use their code HTWN to save 30% off the list price).

♥