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Stuck at the bargaining stage
Written by Sean on Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Another session with my therapist today. As usual, kinda hesitant, thinking "What’s the point?". But I keep going, because each time it turns out that there are a few insights that come out of it. Today, I put into words the fact that my plate is over-filled with three major issues: transabled stuff, depression stuff, and relationship trouble. It’s nothing new, but putting it that way really seems to clarify the issue for me, in some way. And the other thing was something my therapist mentionned just before the session was ending. She asked me if I was perhaps stuck at the bargaining stage of the "stages of grief".
So, a lot has been said about those "5 stages of grief". Many people say it’s over-rated. Other says it’s been so misused there’s no point to it anymore. Me, I tend to think it’s one way to look at traumatic issues, one tool to analyse and help interpret one’s life.
I was telling my therapist about how I was told a few months back by a quad that "I should just accept that I’m not a para and move on, just like he accepted that he was a quad and moved on". Which on the surface is not a stupid thing to say or think. Except that there is one major difference. As a quad, he doesn’t have a choice but to be a quad. There is no cure for SCI’s. As a transabled individual, I know there is a solution, even though it’s not "commercially available". And because I know there’s a solution out there, I can’t quite just accept it and move on.
So my therapist suggested that perhaps because there’s that dangling "carrot" out there, I’m stuck in the bargaining stage, because there *is* something to bargain with, isn’t there? And being stuck in that bargaining stage, it means it’s very difficult to move on and accept, to resolve the grief involved.
Of course, this is somewhat simplistic. I also don’t know how useful it’ll be to me. Will I be able to get past the fact that there might be a way for me to become a para? And if I do, will that allow me to come to terms with the fact that I’m not a para? Will it appease the transabled pain?
More questions than answers on this one. But an interesting thought that I had never vocalisted in so many words
[tags]Bargaining, Kubler-Ross, Grief, Transabled, Paraplegic, Therapist[/tags]This entry appears in Sean's Thoughts, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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4 Comments
2 On 13 March, 2007, Marie said:
I don’t buy it.
If no one was allowed to make bad decisions then nothing would ever get done. How many inventions that benefit humanity are the result of someone screwing up or making an error. The argument is complete rubbish!
Why don’t these doctors stop parents from mutilating intersex children or from lopping the end of infant boys’ penises off? What if the parents regret it? It isn’t even like the choice they make to mutilate ANOTHER PERSON only affects them like a auditoryvestibular nerve section would or an amputation or a small snip in one’s back.
The claim “you may regret it” is such a weak argument. I can’t believe educated people are putting it forth.
Isn’t that the same argument put forth to justify the time, expense, and irreversible damage that a transsexual must endure before being permitted to have that condition surgically corrected? It seems to boil down to ‘We know better than you do what you REALLY want/need, and what is best for you.’ How dare the medical, or mental health, or, even worse, the religious, community make such a claim?
4 On 13 March, 2007, Marie said:
Oh indeed.
It’s the same argument that the medical community uses to force transsexuals to wait til they’re 18 before any treatment! Come out at 10 and wait 8 years (being irreversibly damaged by puberty). It’s no wonder we transfolk are good at killing ourselves.
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1 On 13 March, 2007, Kyla said:
I agree. It is much harder to just accept something and move on when there is something that can be done to fix it. Regarding the matter of TA conditions, one consequence of this is to weaken one of the arguments against performing corrective surgeries on the transabled individual, to give us the condition that we perceive as the proper state for us.
Specifically, the ‘What if you regret it later?’ argument. Because most of the conditions that we feel the need to achieve are generally irreversible, even if we were to decide at some later point in time that it was a mistake (unlikely, but possible), it would be a lot easier to accept it and move forward, than it is to spend our lives unable to move forward because of the possibility of having this need fulfilled.
I’ve long considered this question in abstract terms, in response to being directly asked: “What if you have it done and realise that it had been a mistake?” My answer has always been that because it would be by my own choice, that I would be responsible to accept the consequences for it; further, because it is irreversible, I would have no choice but to live with my decision. For these reasons, among others, it would be much easier to move forward.