On Grey's Anatomy and Reliving Traumatic Experiences

One of my general rules of life has been: Face it.  In life, there are shitty things that happen.  Avoidance does not make them go away.  Facing gives them less power.  But I think my theory has its holes.

When I was younger, and I was sure the Winter Warlock or Bigfoot was outside my window waiting to snatch me up (second story window in the city...talk about irrational), my way of "facing" that was to close my eyes tight until I fell asleep.  If my eyes were closed, whatever was out there could not touch me.  Or at least that was my logic.  And it worked.  Morning came.  I was safe.

However, there are bigger things in life that happen, and deeper wounds that I really think, rather than "facing" them to become calloused to the pain, I might need to start avoiding.

I think I should have turned this week's Grey's Anatomy off when I saw what was coming, but I figured "facing it" would be healthier.  For the last few seasons, Grey's has been fairly jolting and heavily sad.  There was an episode where a newly pregnant Meredith watched a gunman shoot her husband and then had a subsequent miscarriage.  This gunman had gone on a frightening rampage through the hospital.  I was pretty shaken by that episode.  Being in a profession that has "intruder plans," the idea of people going on shooting rampages is, alas, part of what could be any teacher's reality.  So, that episode was brutal on my emotions.

In this week's episode, a family was in an accident.  All of the adults in the car passed away.  One after the other.  First the grandmother, then the mother, then the dad, leaving the three children orphaned.  The oldest child was celebrating her 18th birthday.  She watched each of these persons in her life die.  Her father was on life support and his organs were slowly shutting down.  She had to decide to take him off life support.  It was at that point that I COMPLETELY lost it.  From the decision to her watching her father take his last breaths without a respirator, I was a mess.  It was not a "therapeutic" feeling.  It reopened a wound, and it felt awful.  So, my theory of facing things that are difficult really did not work out too well in this situation.

I know in life I cannot avoid stories that involve the ends of people's lives, and not every "death" scenario makes me have this type of reaction.  However, I am not sure intentionally exposing myself to storylines that take me down an emotional road that caused me decades to deal with is entirely necessary.  Live and learn.