Many things cause us to struggle or stumble in our grief recovery. Things like well meaning but misguided friends, and our attempts to hurry up our grief recovery. And our grief recovery struggles can be worsened by our own behavior errors, like using short-term energy-relieving behavior, or STERBs.
Knowing, understanding and recognizing STERBs can help us short circuit them, or avoid lapsing into them in the first place.
But just what is a STERB?
STERB: a short-term energy relieving behavior—
When we’re grieving, we often look for outlets for our pain. Many of these outlets we learned when we were children, when our mother gave us a cookie or treat to help us “feel better.”
When we get older, our well-meaning friends might take us out on the town to drink our sorrows away.
We might sit in front of the television, mindlessly binge-watching programs we’ve already seen countless times. Or read fantasy or romance books that whisk our imaginations away to places we wish we were living.
Away from our pain-ridden reality.
We may have been taught to try to substitute something for the loss, like going shopping.
These are all examples of short-term energy relieving behaviors.
Why do we use STERBs in grief?
Grief brings with it sad, painful or negative feelings. And those sad emotions produce tangible energy. Energy we want, and need, to relieve.
So we find ourselves searching for ways to distract ourselves.
Enter the handy STERB.
The dangers of STERBs—
If we substitute, try to take the easy way out, and don’t complete our grieving process well, we can carry around negative attachments to life events for years.
Have you ever met someone who relays a sad, personal life event to you in such a way that makes you feel as though the event happened yesterday, when in reality it’s been decades since the event happened? And they vividly relay the story over and over and over.
It takes a lot of energy to hang onto a painful story, to re-tell it as though you’re reliving it.
The energy it takes to hang onto that pain doesn’t just go underground and stay buried. It manifests itself in other ways, like physical ailments, diseases, and emotional and mental health issues.
There are physical consequences to holding onto the sadness or anger surrounding grief. Or trying to substitute a distraction for concrete, effective healing.
Some permanent habits and problems that might have started out as a STERB:
- Smoking
- Overeating
- Drinking/Alcoholism
- Over the Counter (OTC) drug overuse and abuse
- Illegal drug abuse
- Addictive exercise
- Eating disorders—bulimia, anorexia nervosa, binge eating
- Workaholism
- Anger issues/Tantrums/Acting out
- Fantasy (video games, computers, books, television, movies)
- Isolation and Avoidance
- Sex
- Shopping (sometimes jokingly called “retail therapy”)
More often than not we use a STERB to self-medicate—numb our way out of the pain and sadness.
The Grief Recovery Institute points out that:
“Depending on age and other circumstances, the vast majority of young people begin their involvement with drugs and alcohol soon after a major loss experience.” (James, Friedman, and Matthews, When Children Grieve, 86)
Aside from this depressing and alarming statistic, there are— according to The Grief Recovery Institute—three major problems with STERBs.
- They appear to work.
Notice the word “appear.” What might be mistaken for an effective, positive result is actually a created illusion. And that illusion causes you to bypass or bury the emotion.
But emotions don’t automatically die when you try to bury them alive. They find some other way to fight their way out, and often that means negatively affecting other body systems.
- Short-term energy relievers are just that—short term.
STERBs don’t last, and they don’t address the emotional issue. And, like any drug, they often require higher and higher doses over time to be effective. Pretty soon you’ve got a habit or addiction you can’t stop.
- In the long run, STERBs do nothing to relieve the pressure building up from the pent-up or ignored grief emotion.
In short, STERBs can cause more problems than they solve.
And they can add to the problem of unresolved grief.
If not STERBs for grief relief, then what?
We don’t want to just mow down the weeds in our lawn, we want to root them out so healthy grass can grow and we can enjoy all the benefits of a beautiful lawn.
We don’t want to just stuff the emotions, we want to address them, deal with them, so our lives can get fully back on track. And we can once again prosper and be happy.
In order to make a full recovery from grief, we need to achieve what is known as grief completion.
And that’s what we’ll explore more of next week.
Invitation:
- Can you identify any STERBs in your life you can trace back to a specific loss or grief?
- Can you identify any STERBs that seemed to work for you during a time of loss or grief but you now recognize as a problem?
- How have STERBs worsened your grief or made it more difficult to recover from it?
NEXT WEEK we’ll delve into what grief completion is and embark on our journey to achieve it.
Until then, explore what STERBs you started in your life that have become pesky, nervous or avoidant habits.
Get ready to be set free!
And I’ll see you back here next week!
Blessings,
Andrea
“Beloved, I pray that you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John).
Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, award-winning inspirational writer and senior-ordained chaplain (IFOC). She helps people recover from grief, loss and trauma, and to thrive in life — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.