Stress from Loss - Part 1 | Mike Mazzalongo | BibleTalk.tv

• Okay, here we are, Stress Busters. Our series entitled Stress Busters. We’re doing lesson number six in this series. And the title of the lesson is stress from loss. Stress from loss. And part one, ‘cause I’ve got a lot to say about this particular topic. I think a lot of us may have attended seminars that deal with grief and loss. And so some of tonight’s material may be a familiar to many of you.

00:36 - Hopefully it will be comforting to those who are dealing with loss at this time. And it will also serve as a reminder for those people who have dealt with these types of issues in the past. And of course, we’re going to be looking tonight, not necessarily at the grief, but the stress that comes from the grieving process. So before we start with that, I think we should begin with definition of loss. The title of the lesson tonight is a stress from loss.

01:15 - What is loss? Well, when discussing loss, we usually think of the loss of a loved one, father, mother, a sibling some our spouse. Because of all loss, this type of loss generates the most stress and the most pain. But there are other types of losses that we experience that also produce pain and grief and stress in the same way perhaps to a lesser degree, of course, than the loss of a loved one. For example, you lose your job. Well, that’s a significant loss. You’re laid off, especially during these days, COVID the pandemic and all this business. And all of a sudden your company shuts down or your restaurant is forced to close down and you lose your job.

02:19 - Well, it’s not the same as obviously the loss of a spouse, or a child, but it’s still a loss. And it’s still causes a certain amount of grief and stress. The loss of a friend. I don’t mean if your friend dies, but I mean, you lose a friend for some reason, they move away or you have a disagreement that can’t be settled. And somehow a friend who was very close is no longer a friend. That’s a loss. The loss of a marriage. The loss of a business. The loss of freedom. As you grow older, you are not able to travel around as you used to.

03:10 - It’s a big thing for example, when the kids have to take the car keys away from grandpa, because he’s not as good a driver as he used to be. As a matter of fact, he’s becoming a dangerous driver to himself and to other people. People feel the loss of their ability to drive. They feel that acutely and it causes them pain and stress. The loss of a home, the loss of security. People investing in saving and then all of a sudden the market crashes and you lose not just the money but the security that, that money represented.

03:51 - And then there are other things that are a little more harder like intangibles, the loss of self-esteem, your pride your reputation, the loss of idealism for example. You started becoming a little more cynical about things. It’s harder for you to become excited about an idea or a project. That loss of enthusiasm. All of these things and more are losses and each one of these losses costs us something emotionally. And they each in their own way create a certain amount of stress. And so when we lose any one of these or a combination of these, there is of course pain and grief. And the stress that comes with these usually experienced through the feelings of despair and loneliness, bewilderment, anger, anxiety sadness, fear, guilt, worry, depression, hopelessness. All these feelings, accompany, various levels of loss and produce various levels of stress. So in dealing with the stress generated by loss, we need to understand first the grieving cycle. And then have a strategy to help us find some answers to comfort us in our losses. So let’s start with grief and loss.

05:34 - We need to understand kind of a basic relationship here. Loss of any kind produces grief and grief produces stress. There’s the basic equation. Any kind of loss produces a certain level, a certain intensity of grief and grief produces stress. When we understand not only this relationship but also the grieving process itself, then we’ll be able to reduce our stress because one factor that causes stress in loss situations is ignorance of what’s actually happening to us in the grieving process. We don’t understand what’s going on in the grieving process.

06:23 - And so that misunderstanding or lack of understanding also creates a certain amount of stress. I mentioned a familiar name, Dr. Kubler-Ross, a pioneer in the study of the effect of grief on people. And she said that there are five stages people go through when they grieve because of a loss of some kind. Not just the loss of a person, but the loss of any kind, there’s a grief. And grieving is a process and that process has she wrote in her book five element, five stages, if you wish. The first she described was denial. The feeling of being overwhelmed.

07:16 - The idea, oh, dear, this can’t be happening or that can’t be happening to me. Or we refuse to believe that whatever has happened has taken place. The next that she describes his anger. People are angry at God or angry at themselves or others for the thing that has taken place, for the loss of this taken place. I can relate to this. I remember when my own dad passed away suddenly when I was a young boy, 15 years old. And I remember, walking the streets after his death late at night.

07:53 - And I remember kind of shaking my fist at God. I mean, literally looking up at the heavens and saying “Why did you do this? Why did you take my father away from me?” You know, anger at God. Another stage, bargaining. Bargaining is the if only stage. if only kind of, if only I would have been there sooner, if only I would’ve gone to the doctor to look after him. This type of bargaining. If I would have done this, we could have avoided that. Dwelling on the past or making promises. People who are terminally ill for example, they’re bargaining with God.

08:38 - If you just let me live till Christmas, I promise I’ll do this. The bargaining stage. Another stage of course, is depression. Sadness, the loss of energy, the feeling of hopelessness caused by the pain that is produced because of the loss that we have suffered. And then of course, the fifth stage which is acceptance. And acceptance is a submission to the new reality that you’re able to deal with the change. You accept the new situation without the loved one or the loss of a job. Acceptance is well, that was a great job. And I love that job.

09:29 - And I don’t think I’ll ever find a better job but now I have this new job and I’m going to make the best of it. This acceptance stage. Now, I think many of us have heard of these five stages or experienced them in our own lives. And when we experience loss and the grief that comes with it, of course there will be stress. And now we can reduce that stress when we realize the following things connected with what is going on and what we are going through. For example, we are never quite ready for the pain and the stress caused by grieving over the loss of someone or something. We’re never quite ready for that. We think we’re going to be ready.

10:22 - We think we’re going to be able to handle it. But we’re never quite ready for how much it hurts or how quickly it has happened. Or the confusion that it causes. Or the the debilitating factor that it causes in our life. We’re never quite ready for it. It helps lower our stress level. If we see grief as a process and not just as a singular event. For example, it’s not just for the grave site. Some people say, well, we’ll grieve at the grave site. They think they crying at the grave site or being quiet at the grave site or saying, well, he’s gone and we’re just going to have to accept it. They think that’s grieving. You know, there’s a period. And then once the funeral director says, well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for being with us. And our prayers go out to the family and that’s the end of it. They think, oh, the grieving is over. But they don’t realize that the grieving process it goes on for months, even years.

11:31 - As some estimates say that the grieving process on average lasts about 18 months. 18 months, a year and a half. The idea being you’re able to go around the circle of life one time. one Christmas, one Thanksgiving, one birthday, one anniversary. You know what I’m saying? And then around almost the second time before we finally started getting out of the grieving process. Also, we need to realize that it’s a cycle as we travel through one emotion after another.

12:12 - Sometimes coming back to one stage over and over again. A lot of people in the grieving process have repeated feelings of anger at the spouse who left, in a marriage, for example. Or the parent who died. And they died before we could resolve certain conflicts that we had. They died before we could tell them certain things that we wanted to tell them. So when it comes to grief, it’s better to think long-term rather than short term.

12:51 - The hurry to get feeling better causes stress. And people don’t realize this, but when people say, oh, come on, you can get over it. Get over it. It’s fine. Just pick yourself up and just get going. You got to live, you got to move on with your life. When people say things like that, I’m sure they have the best of intentions. What they’re actually trying to do is they’re trying to rush people.

13:17 - They’re tryna help them to kind of move on through the grieving process. It’s been two months since your husband died, you’ve got to move on. You can’t rush grief. It takes the time that it takes. And it’s different for different people. So when it comes to grief, as I say, it’s better to think long-term rather than short term. And the worst thing that we can do is to hurry people along. You can’t hurry them along. Another stress reduction idea when you’re going through grief is to realize that grief resolution is necessary for healing, for recovery. In other words, we need to grieve.

14:12 - There’s no way to feel better without going through the grieving process. So many people try to avoid the grieving process. They try to suppress it. They try to avoid it, but if you don’t grieve now, you’re going to grieve later. But sooner or later, you’re going to have to go through the process of grieving your loss. Remember also that the grieving is not a disease. It’s not a sickness. It is the body’s natural way of dealing with loss. God in his mercy and in his wisdom realized that in our lives, we as weak human beings would experience loss of many kinds. And He has wired us in such a way that we can deal with loss without it destroying us. So for example, denial is like a psychological shock absorber that helps us to withstand the pain that comes with terrible loss. Denying it and pushing it back. We’re not in that stage for very long, but at the beginning, it’s necessary because the reality of the loss may be so overwhelming that it would destroy us.

15:51 - And so denial is like a shock absorber that helps us kind of absorb the loss in stages. So it doesn’t completely flatten it. And anger is a natural vent for hurt feelings and confusion at the changes that are caused by loss. We have to learn, of course, how do we express that anger. It’s like a vent that allows us to release strong feelings without creating damage and hurt. Anger all by itself is not wrong. Anger is simply strong emotion. And the occasion of loss in our life, loss of jobs, loss of a loved one, creates strong emotions.

16:46 - And we have to be free to be able to vent those strong emotions. We have to be able to be allowed to be angry so that we can process the very strong and confusing emotions caused by loss. And again, always the idea that processing these things in a correct way, in a positive way, also lowers the stress caused by these things. Bargaining. Bargaining is our way of reaching out to find a solution to the problems that are caused by the loss. And sometimes in the bargaining we’re not being very realistic, but at least it gives us a chance to begin to deal realistically with what is taking place.

17:41 - It’s usually the shortest stage that we stay in. Depression is the natural reaction to the difficult new reality that loss has brought about. It’s the point where we’re allowing ourselves to feel the pain. How else will you feel if you’re experiencing the pain of losing your husband, your wife, your child? How else are you going to express pain? But to feel depressed, to feel sad, to feel the loss of joy, to feel slow, to feel you just want to sleep all the time and so on and so forth, of course you’re depressed. It would be unnatural for you to just be happy, pick up where you left off, not a problem, go back to work the next day. That would be unnatural.

18:48 - Depression is the natural reaction to the pain caused by loss. Obviously we can’t stay there forever, but the fact that we experienced depression is normal in a grief situation. And then of course, acceptance. Acceptance is the final balance that we try to find between the old and the new realities in our lives that are caused by loss. The man who loses his arm in an accident I mean completely, it severed from his body. Acceptance for him is, I’m still me, but I am now me, but I only have one arm. I’m me with one arm.

19:48 - I used to have two arms, but I’ve only got one arm now, but I’m still me and I still have a life. There are things I no longer can do that I used to do. And there are things that I’m going to learn how to do now that I only have one arm that I’m going to have to learn how to do with just one arm. But acceptance is accepting the fact that the situation has changed. And that you need to accept the reality of the new situation. It’s not a better situation. It’s a different situation.

20:29 - And unfortunately it might not be as good as the old situation, but you can adjust to it. And that’s the whole idea of acceptance. You’re adjusting to a new situation. The object of grieving is to recover. A lessening of the intensity and the frequency of the pain and of the sorrow that we naturally feel from loss. At the beginning the intensity is great. And the frequency is nonstop. I hurt badly and I hurt badly all the time. And through the grieving process, what happens is while I start to hurt less and less and less, and I don’t hurt as often. I’m not sad and hurting from eight in the morning till midnight.

21:36 - Now I may be hurting from eight in the morning till 9:30 in the morning and then I forget about it. And then I have an episode of sadness at three in the afternoon, and maybe before I go to bed. And you know what, with time a whole day goes by, and I don’t even think about the loss that I had. And as time goes on, the intensity and frequency get less and less and less and less, that’s called recovery. Now this doesn’t mean total elimination, but it is a gradual decline of the discomfort level.

22:15 - And as the discomfort level goes down, so does the stress level. I’m not going to take off my shirt and my sweater here, but when I was a boy, I had an accident and I cut my arm. It was sliced open like a fish. You know, it was sliced open lots of bloods, so on and so forth and they had to fix it. And there was a terrible scar that was on my arm and it hurt. I remember, I still remember touching, you couldn’t touch it.

22:49 - as time went on the scar healed, still a little sensitive and red. And then after a year or two only a scar remained and the memory of the accident. And today, of course, some 65 almost 70 years later, the scar is still there you can still see the scar on the arm, but I can touch it. I can tap it. I can talk about it. I can bend my arm. There’s no pain involved at all. Only the memory remains. But there’s no pain and there’s no stress. I can see the scar, but the scar no longer causes pain. No longer causes stress.

23:34 - And that’s how it works with grief and processing loss. Eventually the scar is still there. You remember it and you see it, but it no longer causes pain. Talking about it no longer creates stress or hurt. And that’s what we’re striving for. It takes time. You need to work at it. You need other people to help you, but eventually the sun shines again and the scar doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s still there, but it doesn’t cause any pain or stress.

24:13 - With the decrease in pain, as I say, there is also a decrease in stress. Then the third point I want to make about grief and stress reduction, and that is, there’s not always an answer. There’s not always an answer. People’s main question when loss occurs is to ask why? They want to make sense of what has taken place. A happy young wife and mother is suddenly left a widow. Why? Hopes for a bright career are dashed because of someone’s carelessness steak.

25:00 - Why? Someone who is doing so much good for others is rendered helpless through a crippling disease. Why? Why would God do that? Why would that happen? This questioning is painful and it is also stressful when there’s no clear answer that is found. Many people think that the reason for the grieving process is to find the answer to the question why, but this is not so, this is incorrect. One important insight that the process does give us is that God doesn’t always provide the answer to the question, why? but he always provides what we need in times of crisis. He doesn’t always provide the answer to the question why, but he always provides what we need.

26:05 - He provides comfort through the Holy spirit, through the church, through his word. He provides assurance that there are some things that we will probably lose. Health, wealth, loved one’s, life. But, he also assures us that there are some things that we will never lose. Talks about this in Romans 8:35-37. Paul says, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation or distress or persecution, famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written ‘For your sake, We are being put to death all day long. We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.

26:55 - But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.‘” So yes, we may lose many things, but the one thing that God guarantees that we will never lose, is his love, which is found in Christ Jesus, our savior, and our Lord. There was a young woman who was in our congregation many, many years ago. Her name was Lisa Koffi. She was 33 years old and she had two children and a wonderful husband. And she passed away from cancer. Couldn’t fight it. And it took her life.

28:05 - And her father Don told me at his daughter’s funeral that he didn’t understand how people without faith could go through this horrible ordeal and survive. How many times if we said it ourselves or heard that? How do people without faith, how do they survive such terrible things, especially the loss of an adult child? Parents we believe that it’s supposed to be a rule. We’re supposed to go first, not our children. And when our children go on to be with God before us, it’s a terrible shock. It’s a terrible burden, a terrible loss that creates a lot of pain and certainly a lot of stress to go with that pain.

29:00 - Well, as we spoke Don and I, we concluded that unbelievers do face terrible tragedies. And they do come out of it, but they come out of it resigned or perhaps they’re bruised in their spirit or they’re bitter. Many of them are frightened or some of them are in permanent denial. But one thing that they do not have, is that they don’t ever come through these terrible events hopeful. Hopeful is not thing that they aspire to. The pain and the suffering are the same for Christians but what awaits them on the other side of grief is hope.

29:55 - Don was thankful that Lisa’s suffering was over and he was hopeful that he would see her again in heaven. And of course, several years later, he himself passed away and his hope is now realized, of course. So that hope is what keeps the spirit up. That hope is what helps us to let go for a while. That hope is what gives us courage to go on with a loving heart and a cheerful attitude, and a thankful spirit, and an enthusiastic approach to the rest of life. And a greatly reduced stress level because we have hope.

30:43 - Paul, the apostle says that while those who have no hope when they grieve, Christians can look forward to a very specific event in the future that will re reunite them with both their God and their loved ones after death. In 1 Thessalonians, chapter four, he says, “But we do not want you, Christians he’s talking about, to be uninformed brethren about those who are asleep” so that… And here asleep meanings Christians who have died. And then he goes on to say, “So that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.

31:34 - For this we say to you by the word of the Lord that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words. Notice what he says that we will be caught up together with them in the cloud.

32:21 - So we will be with the ones that we love and with the Lord, and we will always be with them. That’s the hope. That’s the promise. So we’ve learned that stress is caused by the grieving process that necessarily follows the loss of any kind. Over stress, the bad kind of stress is created when first of all, we are ignorant of the process and we have no way of understanding and dealing with these natural feelings that come about as a result of loss. Or we remain too long in this process refusing to move on from anger or from depression in order to accept the situation that we’re in. Now, the world’s answer is to understand the grieving process and to get help to go through it in a normal time period.

33:26 - Get some counseling, get some medication, join a support group. This is the best answer that the world has to offer. Accept what you cannot change. That’s the best answer that acceptance through the grieving process will give you. However, Christ’s answer doesn’t circumvent the natural grieving process. It goes beyond the stage of acceptance to the stage of hope. Through Jesus Christ we have the hope of eternal life after death. And so for us, death is only a temporary separation that will be abolished forever when Jesus returns. This is what we look beyond death to in order to lift our spirits and to keep the link with the one before us alive. This is our hope and the promise that helps us end our grieving with a whole heart rather than with a hole in our heart. See the difference? That people without Christ, they go through the grieving process but there is always a hole in their heart, where the one that they lost used to be.

34:50 - For Christians, we have a whole heart because Christ gives us hope and hope gives us a wholeness of heart. So the resurrection of Christ is central to our faith. And the promise of our own resurrection in Christ is central to our hope. It’s what makes the death that surrounds us bearable in this life. Because we look around us and there’s nothing but death. People die all the time. There’s no other end to a life. We however, we have hope beyond death. And this is what gives us joy.

35:37 - And in a very practical way it’s what reduces the stress caused by the grief we feel when we lose. Now, I said that this lesson was a part one in stress because of loss. There’s a second part to this. And in the second part, let’s see. In the second part, we’re going to talk about advice for those who want to help those who are grieving to help them reduce their stress level. So today we talked about when these things happen to us. The next time we get together, we’re going to talk about how to help others grieve.

36:22 - And how to help others reduce the stress level because of their loss. I hope that you’ll be with us for that next lesson in this series on Stress Busters. All right. Thank you very much for your attention and we’ll see you next time. .