Tumbling down Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

At a time of personal crisis, one concept that helped me understand the turmoil I experienced and assisted me back on the road to recovery was Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. For those unfamiliar, Maslow was a psychologist who came up with a pyramidal concept of needs. There were five initial levels that later evolved to eight and (working from bottom to top) encompass basic needs (physiological, safety, belonging, esteem), mid-level development (cognitive, aesthetics), and top level needs of personal growth and striving for the greater good. Maslow postulated that one’s lower needs had to be met before one could move on to mid-range then higher level needs.

It has been reasoned that at a time of crisis, for example after a flood or earthquake, people’s needs return to basics – food, water, shelter. During crises, there is little need for cultural or experiential activities. As basic needs are met, as people rebuild their lives, they move on to building a safe environment, finding companionship, earning an income, contributing to society, then on to higher levels.

How does this apply to the crisis of the corona-virus? 

Rather than an acute single loss, there have been a series of losses, affecting not only individuals or nations, but the entire global community. You can see from the above hierarchy what has been lost. The upper layers, the middle layers, the lower layers. We have lost experiential and artistic endeavours with the ending of overseas travel, sporting and cultural events. We are unable to dine at restaurants, cafes, bars, go to movies or have large gatherings. The flow-on effects has meant a loss of financial security with people losing jobs, businesses closing, and financial and investment markets in turmoil. People have had to go into isolation, physically separating from loved ones and social contacts. Here in Australia, as elsewhere, we have lost that stable foundational second level of protection of our health (with the threat of the virus), our secure economic position (with so many businesses closed down), and an erosion of our civil liberties (it being mandated where we can and cannot go).

What does this mean?

Each step down each level is a loss with a grief process (shock, anger, sadness) for each loss endured. Everybody has lost the second foundational layer. For those who had them, the experiential layer is also gone. However, not everyone has lost financial security, companionship or their place in the world. Thus, the extent of pain felt and grieving for losses differs for individuals. For those with mid-levels intact and some semblance of normality, ‘keep calm and carry on‘* may be a solution. For others where major changes have occurred, people need time to adapt, then with courage respond in a meaningful manner. We have seen that whereby people in isolation are now undertaking artistic endeavours or contact with friends and family by virtual means. However, for those who have tumbled to the bottom layer of the hierarchy, everything has changed. For those people, fear and uncertainty are normal reactions and a survival response is key – that of fulfilling basic needs of eating, sleeping and finding comfort in some way.

My Responses

My losses have been experiential activities, financial security, and a sense of belonging. I am an unable to visit interstate and international relatives and am physically distanced from friends and family in Tasmania, by self-isolation. Am I down at that bottom layer?

Not quite …

I still retain control over my thoughts and choices. My own need of self-empowerment is therefore not lost. As the restrictions and economic fall-out in place causing my own sense of pain and loss is necessary for the preservation of life, my own need of striving for the greater good is not lost. I am doing my part. Moreover, as I begin to fathom out how to climb my own hierarchy and regain lost needs, I will remember those in more grief than me and try to reach out in some way.

Over the coming months, on this blog, I will write about how I intend do that.

‘ Life is mainly froth and bubble, two things stand like stone;
kindness in another’s trouble, courage in your own.” Adam Lindsay Gordon

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* “Keep calm and carry on” was a motivational poster produced by the British government in 1939 aimed to boost the morale of the people in preparation for World War 2.

The next step is the first step

Two years ago marked the financial settlement of my divorce, ending three years of trudging through rain and mud. I felt I had finally reached a sunny place. Spring was upon me. Free of my divorce, I saw myself in a new transition, tidying up my old world, letting go of all that did not serve me well, trying new things, planting seeds ready for bloom in the summer to come, and readying myself for the vision I had of living true to my beliefs.

I did the sorting, packing and letting go. I tried new things and had new experiences. I devised my own HEALTH.Plan and became healthy and fit. I packed up and moved. Now – at the age of 63 – I begin my new life as a single person branching out in a new world, a world which I craved for during the process of my divorce settlement.

However, in all honesty, I have been drifting the past twelve months without much direction.

To be truthful, moving on has not been easy. The move was not without hiccoughs. I am struggling financially trying to make it work. Making new friends and finding new social circles is not easy. Nobody knows me here and at times I feel quite lost and alone.

The little bit that feels lost is that of my identity. I had been a wife, mother and business manager. Then I became a sufferer of the unexpected collapse of my marriage. Then I became a strong woman recovering from that with grace and dignity. Now that I feel lost, I wonder if that became my identity and whether I am lost without it. I do not want to be remembered as the ‘one who recovered from divorce‘. I want to make a difference in the world. At one stage I felt writing in more depth about my experiences may help others. However, I was scared that may also send me emotionally back to that dark place that I had crawled out of. I wanted to be free of that. I had moved on.

Or had I?

I am outwardly strong and contented and the pain at the pit of my stomach has long gone. However, the person who recovered from a difficult divorce; the person previously at risk of ill-health who became fit and healthy; and the person brave enough to move alone to a new area after 40 years – those three parts are still fragile inside. So my writing stopped.
I felt that because I was still going through some fragility and further tough times I had not reached my destination. I wanted to get to the part about the rainbow and the sunshine. I felt I hadn’t quite got there. I felt no one would want to hear about black skies in springtime.

While I was trying to fathom out what to do, people were somehow still finding my blog and sending me encouragement that what I had written had helped them. This made me conflicted. Would writing about my difficult experiences take me back to a dark place? Or instead could it shine a light for others? If so, which experiences should I write about? Divorce – Nutrition – Relocation. Which voice was mine? Which truth should I share?

As so many times I had realized before, when I get stuck and can’t move and I want to get somewhere else, the best place to start is at the beginning.

The first step for me is to become proficient at what I do. I have therefore enrolled in a University course, and am now buried in books and research. I am doing a Masters in Nutrition and I am also planning two units in writing and publishing.

And so I start a new beginning.

I have come to realise it is all new beginnings. Every step I have ever taken has always been the first step towards the rest of my life. While some steps did not seem to lead me anywhere except getting me out of a hole, every step led me to the next step.

And all those next steps all took me to here – at my new beginnings.

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Image courtesy[africa]/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

Does grief really have stages and if you work through them are you over it?

When my marriage collapsed and dark emotions ran rampant, it was a comfort to me to learn that I was in a state of shock and grieving, similar to what one goes through after someone has died. The intense feelings I had were a normal part of grief with its supposed stages of shock, anger, bargaining, sadness, and acceptance. It helped me to know that I would pass through those stages. In fact, I made an aim to accelerate through quickly. I felt that if I got to the last stage – that of ‘acceptance’ – then the pain would go away.

How wrong I was.

I wrote a lot about those stages. I felt that I did progress through them but I never did reach a state of ‘acceptance’, where I felt that what happened had to happen. I did eventually ‘acknowledge’ that it had happened which was a turning point of sorts, understanding that my marriage belonged to a past world. In reaching that point however, of acknowledging my past life was gone, the pain did not simply go away. In many ways I had simply reached a beginning point, of learning to make my way in my changed world, with a new today, and a different future. The intense grief I had experienced was just the beginning of more pain for me.

Apart from my marriage there were other losses I mourned in the grief process such as the loss of my intact family and the loss of my financial security. Even now – over four years later and well over that grieving process – it is the here and now that is difficult, being a single mother and grandmother, and trying to make it financially with a bruised asset base. It is the practicalities of keeping on going another day, in another way.

In my case the stage theory seemed to work because I kept pushing myself to get through the stages. However, I can see now that it could have been a draw-back if I had thought any ‘stage’ (sadness for example) would magically pass and I would simply move onto the next stage. It didn’t happen like that for me. In fact I was so scared that I could become ‘stuck’ in a stage if I did not work to get through it, that I continually took steps to deal with the feelings I experienced, and learned to acknowledge my changed world of today. I do not know whether it really helped me doing that … or whether I would have simply passed through those stages regardless … or even whether I could have got through less painfully if I had simply let them happen, rather than trying to wish them away.

Another draw-back of the stage theory is that the stages can return again and again (although often with less intensity each time). By that I mean that I would seemingly get over an intense feeling such as anger or sadness and then that feeling would return. This is quite normal and yet when it first happened to me I thought there was something wrong with me. Once that happened it led me into a downward spiral of low moods and a new intense pain – the pain of feeling bad about myself, that I was not doing very well. It was only the voice of a dear friend who one day said to me ‘this is normal’ (what I was feeling) and ‘you are normal’ (how I was behaving) that brought me out of that deep dark chasm.

So here I am enjoying my new world of today (and I truly am) and looking forward to my exciting future (honestly I am) … but sometimes there is still that lump in my throat, that pain in my chest, that catch in my breath, and that intense feeling of loss.

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When home no longer feels like home

 

Since my marriage collapse, my home has been my sanctuary, a bedrock of certainty; providing me with strength, stability and comfort. I have written about my need for stability and the comfort my home provides here, here, here, here, here and here.

Some time ago I wrote that I was now ready to move and make a new life somewhere else. It is interesting that since I made that decision, my home no longer feels like home to me. In part, this growing negative feeling has been been due to the sorting of the business documents which was a mammoth task and quite distressing at times – with painful memories and negative feelings surfacing as I reviewed records and documents. Then Christmas came and went. It was wonderful to have all the family home. I was back in my element with my home and family my comfort. But now, with everyone else back in their own life, my mood has changed again and the desire to move is very strong.

Over the past three weeks I have been away, spending two weeks with my siblings sorting through my mother’s things and a week with my grand-children. As I drove home, I started to become anxious and, once inside, instead of the usual comforting ‘home at last’ feeling that I would normally get, I felt suddenly and dramatically quite down. There are a few factors at play here.

Firstly, having had three weeks with other family members, the aloneness hit me hard.

Secondly, while sorting through things of my mother (who was a hoarder) I had thoughts that I should have a proper sort through of all my own things before I move. With that thought in mind, when I returned home and looked around at what that would entail, I became overwhelmed at yet another mammoth ‘sorting’ project ahead of me. I knew that if I sorted to my own ‘must do everything meticulously’ standards, I would be here forever.

Thirdly, I have been craving quiet time. I wondered whether I would ever get to that place of peace and contentment.

Enough of all this negativity!

I am actually slowly moving forward and doing well at the moment. I am taking baby steps, baby steps across this bridge that I must traverse in order to get to my new life.

• I have organized a storage space for the business archives that need keeping for five years. I will be moving them out next week. That will be a load off my mind.
• I have put my house ‘unofficially’ on the market and will formalize this once the estate agent gets photos done etc.
• A friend of mine offered to help with some of the packing-my-house-up headache.
• In a few months, one of my sons and I are going on a bit of a road trip to Sydney.
• Mid-year, I will be spending more time with my siblings for the final sort of my mothers things.
• Later in the year, I am going to spend some time in Canada.
• I am getting excited about my new life around the corner and have been looking at houses and places I want to move to.
• I am feeling really fit and healthy and that is great!

Here I go!

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Image courtesy[suwatpo]:FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

 

 

 

I feel the glow …

In addition to my practical aims for the coming year, I have thought of a word to aim for in regard to my inner self. Last year I chose light. At the time I was just emerging from a very dark place and I felt that I wanted to focus on the emerging light. Mid-year after the death of my mother, who had always been my inspiration, I wondered how I would manage without her until I realized that before her candle went out she had lit my candle and that had become the light within me – her spirit. Furthermore, as the administrative tasks surrounding the marital settlement were gradually completed, I felt less burdened, I felt light with a spring in myself. The chosen word had indeed been appropriate for 2015.

Following on from a year of light, I now feel strengthening into a glow is appropriate for this year. Rather than simply light, or the first sign of hope, my aim will be to –

1. shine brightly and steadily
2. overflow with warmth, good health and confidence
3. experience deep pleasure and pride in achievements
4. emit light and warmth
5. flourish and bloom
6. radiate contentment and well-being

I feel the glow …
The glow is me

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ImageCourtesy[M-Pics]FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The next step …

Initially when I was thrust unexpectedly into the world of divorce I could not cope. In order to survive, I put aside major decisions and strategic steps that would eventually need to be taken. I carved off one aspect to navigate at a time. I would then push through with each step until I was able to cope with that before moving onto the next. Sometimes it was not possible to deal with only one thing at a time simply because there was so much to deal with. It was still overwhelming. However, I did put aside everything that could be left. That was how I coped, putting things aside.

Gradually I worked through many steps that at first I thought I would not be able to handle – grieving for my lost marriage and intact family unit, overcoming the emotional aspects of abandonment and betrayal, finding my inner strength, selling the business, pushing through with all the legal and financial processes of the marital property settlement, and closing down all the joint legal entities until …

I was physically, emotionally, legally and financially alone. Me.

However, before I can really say that I have left behind my marriage in its entirety, there is one major hurdle left to do. Selling my home. My home has been my sanctuary over the past 35 years. It has seen me through the birth of all my children and their growing up years. It has welcomed friends, family, colleagues and community groups through its doors. It has provided me with a sanctuary as I have navigated triumphs and tragedies. As the children grew up and moved on, it remained a strength for me, saving many memories of their song and laughter within its walls…

My home looks out to the east to this vista:

It is comforting to rise and watch the sunrise each morning, coming up over my valley.

Even when the sun doesn’t rise, the valley still provides me with peace and privacy.

When my husband left me, my home and valley remained behind as my constant, the one thing in my life I could rely on. That reliability, that the sun would rise each day, that the valley would remain, was reassuring for me. In my busy frenetic navigating divorce ‘I-am-overwhelmed’ days, the valley would tug me back to make sure I paid gratitude for the day and be at peace with myself. Now my days are not so frantic, and I love having the time to sit in the warmth of the morning sun, drink in that sunshine, look out to the peaceful valley, and reflect in the peace and quiet.

In those early raw days, I could not bear the thought of ever moving. My home was all I had left of who I had been and the life I had led. I didn’t want to leave me behind. However, I have come to realize my home is also a constant reminder of my past life, our marital life, a life that I now wish to leave behind me. Over the past six months, I have spent some time moving about between my mother’s place and spending time with my friends and family, and especially more time with my grand-daughters. Or I have stayed home. Each time I come home, I am no longer getting that feeling of protection or security from my home. Instead I am feeling constrained, even imprisoned. Imprisoned in the past, blocked from the future. There are little flashes of hurtful memories here and there keeping me back in the past. There are little pieces of present commitments to my home, stopping me moving on to my future.

I thought after the trauma of the drawn-out marital settlement finally being over, with the death of my mother coming about the same time, I would take a year to just sit back in the comfort of my home before I moved on. I thought that I would need that year, that I would want that year. I don’t.

I.want.to.move.on.now.

There is, of course, a fair bit to do in order to make that happen. That is my next project. To make it happen.

 

 

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Almost there…..

 

In regard to the marital property settlement I have recently passed through some major hurdles and have almost got the whole settlement across the line. The feeling I have is that I have been lost and alone in this thick dark gloomy impenetrable forest which I have spent three years trying to hack through, seemingly getting nowhere. Then I decided to go a different route, trudging uphill through an area of dense brambles, enduring much pain and suffering to go that way, but by that route I have slowly been edging forward. At last I have come to a clearing. Even though there is still a little way to go, I can at least now see the path ahead. The way to go is easy walking for me now and, just a little bit further down at the end of the road, I can see some light.

I am almost there.

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