You Are Allowed To Be Shocked By Something You Completely Saw Coming
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I’ve been thinking about psychological shock.
Not surprise.
Not stress.
Not trauma.
Shock.
Shock is that moment when everything changes.
When a second ago, life was this way.
And then, one second later, life became something completely different.
Shock like a fender bender.
Shock like finding out someone died.
Shock like getting fired.
Shock like hearing a diagnosis you never wanted to hear.
In these moments, you might find yourself thinking:
I can’t believe this is happening.
It doesn't feel real.
Because your reality changed faster than your internal world could update.
Keep up with.
Track.
Make sense of.
Understand.
Your brain and body—lifelong roommates, but sometimes truly terrible communicators—are trying to catch up.
The brain tends to bring big-boss energy: data, facts, logic, analysis, and so many great ideas.
The body tends to bring something quieter: sensation, intuition, emotion, and information that doesn't always arrive in words.
What the brain knows, the body might not know yet.
You can know—logically—that one day your parents will die and then be completely floored when they do.
You can know—with your beautiful brain—that infidelity could happen to you and then be absolutely inconsolable when it does.
You can know—cerebrally—that people get diagnosed with cancer every single day and still feel blindsided when you are.
You are allowed to be shocked by something you completely saw coming.
But somehow, we assume that anticipation should soften the blow.
If we knew something was coming, shouldn’t we be prepared for it?
Not necessarily.
There is no amount of intellectual understanding that guarantees an experience won’t hurt.
There is no prep course for this. No dry run. No training module.
Occasional shock is simply the cost of being human.
And when something happens that knocks us sideways, we often want to immediately understand it.
What am I feeling?
Why am I feeling this way?
What does this mean?
How bad is this?
How long will it last?
Am I okay?
Is this trauma?
What should I do?
We want to organize the experience while we’re still experiencing it.
We might try to force ourselves to feel better according to our preferred timeline.
Or because “so-and-so” was dating again six months after their divorce.
Or because we have decided we should be “over it” by now.
It’s like metabolization.
It’s a process.
And it takes as long as it takes.
Sometimes, I think of life as a room.
And experiences are like pieces of paper falling from the ceiling.
Every day, experiences and memories and ideas and conversations and disappointments and joys fall gently from above.
Some land neatly. Some land crooked. Some land in little piles. Some blow away. Some sit there for a while before we know what to do with them.
A human life is not a perfectly organized filing system.
And maybe it isn’t supposed to be.
We spend an enormous amount of energy trying to keep everything neatly organized—to understand every feeling, resolve every conflict, make sense of every experience, and put every piece of ourselves exactly where it belongs.
But a little clutter isn’t necessarily a problem.
Sometimes things need time.
Even when we aren’t consciously working on an experience, our brains continue processing and integrating what we’ve lived through. Sleep is part of that process. While we’re sleeping, the brain helps do some night time tidying. And we feel a little better in the morning. We don’t have to consciously organize every piece of paper for our minds to keep working on the pile.
Sometimes, given enough time and space, an experience simply settles.
This happened.
It happened then.
It was painful.
It changed me.
And now it is part of my history.
The experience has found a place.
But some things don’t settle so easily.
The memory keeps intruding.
The body continues responding as though something is happening now.
We avoid reminders of the event.
Our sense of ourselves, other people, or the world changes.
he experience doesn’t seem to be becoming part of the past.
It remains strangely present.
That’s when we may be talking about trauma.
This is where I think it's important to distinguish stress, shock, and trauma.
Not every stressful experience is shocking.
Not every shocking experience is traumatic.
And not every experience that affects us deeply announces its impact immediately.
We don’t need to immediately decide whether something “counts” as trauma in order to take our suffering seriously.
Sometimes we just need to wait and see.
That doesn’t mean doing nothing. Sometimes we need to act, set a boundary, seek help, grieve, have a difficult conversation, or take care of ourselves.
It means we don’t have to assume that we should already know exactly what this experience means or what it will do to us.
Sometimes the greatest wisdom might be:
“I don’t know yet. I need a minute. I’m going to let this land.”
We can be deeply affected by something we understood was possible.
We don’t have to make our reaction smaller just because our mind knew this day might come.
And we don’t have to call it trauma in order to take our experience seriously.
Maybe we just need to give some experiences time to land.
A healthy mind isn’t one in which every piece of paper is perfectly filed. It’s one that can tolerate a little clutter while trusting that, with time, experiences can find their place.
Life is inherently untidy. A little clutter is normal.
But sometimes you might find yourself tripping over the same damn pile so many times that you start wondering if that part of your life needs some attention.
That’s where therapy might come in.
Not because every piece of paper needs a diagnosis or pathologizing. But because sometimes something genuinely isn’t settling. And sometimes we need another person to sit down beside the pile with us and gently figure out what’s there.
Until then? Do yourself a favor:
If you’ve experienced something shocking and you don’t know what to do,
consider that there might not be anything to do.
It’s uncomfortable.
Your brain might insist that it can think its way through this.
(And if something immediately needs to be done, do it!)
But I’d encourage you to pause.
Exhale slowly three times.
Drink some water.
Ask yourself if you need something to eat.
Take a walk around the block.
Do your best to just let it land.
And trust that your system will lead the way.
If you’d appreciate some support sitting beside the pile and making sense of what’s there, give me a call.
I’d welcome the chance to be a witness and a help as you figure out what needs your attention.
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