2.3 Psychological support for the family and identification

The emotional journey of acceptance and improvement to leave the critical state

There is no body to mourn… nor to say goodbye… nor to care for… nor to touch… obviously all this new reality is too difficult to process alone.

It is urgent at times like this to have an immediate space of containment where you can sit down and ask all these questions and evacuate your fears and helplessness.

Even if there are no answers… it is necessary to release the uncertainty that eats away inside. The mere act of doing so will calm the person. It will not provide a practical solution to the disappearance, but it will provide emotional relief to the person suffering from it. And that would be the beginning of a necessary grieving process to go through. Nothing will be like before

There must be a site formally recognized at an institutional level that the population knows is a specialist in the issue of DISAPPEARANCES, a place where with just one call the family member receives immediate support for their state in crisis. It must be taken into account that THE POWER TO PROCESS A DISAPPEARANCE is not a usual topic in the area of psychology. Only professionals who are experts on the subject should be considered the most appropriate to provide containment and emotional support while the person grieves and accepts the new situation. It is not the usual grief that one goes through emotionally in the face of any loss (for which all psychology graduates are prepared).

It is not a certain death.

It is not about accepting a new specific situation with emotional clarity… because NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THE NEW SITUATION IS. The only thing known is that someone and everything related to them disappeared… that’s the only thing that’s certain. And that is the new situation to process, to assimilate. In short, for the professional: you only know that there is a missing loved one and it is based on that only safe and precise truth that you must work with the patient.

Let’s start with the only concrete and real thing that exists: disappearance, and everything that it can emotionally imply to the person who is facing it.

Psychology must adapt to this new instance that imposes THE UNCERTAIN of a disappearance… and accompany the family member to assimilate what it is to learn to live with questions.

A life that no one prepares you for:

At least currently, there are no specific subjects specialized or focused on this topic in schools or universities to train or enable people to face a possible disappearance in their lives.

The family member can be a child, a young person, an adult, an elderly person… and none of the ages has been warned of the emotional consequences that a disappearance can bring to their life.

That is why it is so important to know that there are work spaces specialized in the issue of the family and personal crisis generated by having a missing loved one in our lives.

It is a great relief to know that there is a specific place where you can call and be attended to immediately for the emotional crisis and emotional impact (individual and family) generated by the same disappearance.

Immediate purposes of appropriate psychological support:

At first the psyche refuses to accept that it needs emotional help; the family member is so concerned with finding practical solutions to the disappearance that he or she is unable to focus on all the internal damage that the same disappearance is causing. In reality, you will end up admitting that precisely because you are living this new situation, you will need the support of a professional specialized in the subject, who will help you lower those resistances, and accompany you through a duel of acceptance and pain, all of this supported by hands. trained and understood in the matter of disappearances.

The person must understand that they will be accompanied in the process of assimilating the new reality.

The most important thing is to provide unconditional and immediate emotional support.

Every family member of a missing person should know that there is a specific place to which they can turn in an emergency of this nature, a place where they can call, write and access without complications serious professional support committed to their problem, and as already said previously: with personnel trained on the subject.

That is a determining factor for the appropriate improvement of each case: knowing that you are working on your emotional drama with a professional who understands your problem, and who knows how to treat it.

The family member must experience it as a place where they can vent all their fears without being misunderstood, feel that their emotional codes are heard and understood by mental health professionals, that there are logical explanations for what they are feeling (the family member of a missing person usually feels that he has entered a “new dimension” in which no one understands or accompanies him… loneliness slowly collapses him…).

Support therapy for relatives of missing persons should be a place where, apart from feeling directed by personnel specialized in what he suffers, he also feels that he will be provided not only support and guidance, but also an emotional preparation (or training) to face the new situation.

You must understand and learn to handle new life tools, even if at first you resist and cannot believe what is happening, you will be accompanied and guided in the process of accepting the new situation.

The person must assimilate (without falling into despair) that THEY STILL KNOW NOTHING ABOUT

YOUR LOVED ONE MISSING , and that as long as reality is like this, you must accept it with the main purpose of not immobilizing other aspects of your life in general that you should not neglect.

He must learn to return to life… with disappearance included as a new element of his reality.

The truth of what you will have to go through will be explained to you in a simple, understandable way and at the same time with firm emotional support, all of this until it is known what happened to your missing loved one, or until different answers to your questions appear. It is a new reality, which requires a new mentality.

The person is motivated to assimilate a different position towards their own life.

And as we already know, many people are used to not breaking basic schemes, on which they rely to live: routines, norms, schedules, customs, environments, relationships, all these aspects enter into a style to which their psyche adapted and resists change, they do not know how to face a new situation where someone they love simply disappeared.

Your existential rhythm changes.

There will be times when everything will be too slow… because it will be difficult to assimilate everything new and frightening… and at others life will seem to be the same… there will be instances of denial and acceptance intertwined, emotions will need to organize themselves in new paths , while the person will try to process them.

Learning to live with the question is a key element in overcoming the crisis.

It is important that the person understands that they should not become fixed or paralyzed by the fear and uncertainty of their loved one’s unknown fate.

It is a good strategy and objective of the therapeutic task to make disappearance a reason of struggle instead of experiencing it as a weapon of personal annihilation.

It needs to build on disappearance rather than destroy. Although your mind and feelings only experience pain, you will learn to continue your personal growth, instead of being trapped in the strong crisis that the disappearance imposed on you.

Any new situation, even an unimportant one, can generate an imbalance or emotional imbalance that will lead to a serious crisis, deep depression, which will urgently demand psychological attention to be able to not only contain the person in crisis but also to help them position themselves again. the reality that lies ahead.

Preventing her from becoming detached from reality is one of the first objectives, and helping her adapt to the new situation is the next thing.

Primary therapeutic objective:

In a space like this, the person is helped to return to life, and not to be trapped in questions without knowing how to live again.

Teach him the appropriate weapons to defend himself against pain, uncertainty and fear.

Rescue him from despair, teach him that this reaction in emotions is normal, make him see the tragedy of the moment as a situation that can only be overcome if he sets his mind to it.

Give yourself permission to recognize that EVERY DISAPPEARANCE IMPLIES DESPERATION FOR THE

FAMILIAR. It is a crisis that breaks all its known affective structures and is lived as such.

And that desperation is what we have to work on in private sessions.

Many relatives force themselves to be strong… until they can find out something about their missing person. It is a defensive survival mechanism to get through the moment without collapsing.

But the mental, physical, and emotional structure reaches a breaking point… you have to be prepared for that moment. Make him see that it is understandable and logical to fall apart, but also show him that even from pits like this he can get out, only if he fights for his own life… while trying to know what happened to the life of his missing person.

The family member’s life must continue. And that is what you must work on: prioritize your health, before the emotional shock collapses and annihilates you. To him and his surroundings.

Late emotional reaction

It must be taken into account that one of the most frequent psychological effects of disappearances is the “delayed emotional reaction.”

What does this mean?

Many people in the first moments of a disappearance navigate the crisis situation with admirable lucidity, with practicality, doing what they must do, prioritizing doing what is correct, self-establishing effective and correct responses at all times before the authorities, trying to act with effectiveness, covering as best as possible all the options possible to collaborate forcefully in the search for the missing person.

They commit to the maximum, both with the body and with their intelligence, ideas, contributions, etc. giving one hundred percent support in the search.

Once the first time has passed where the person lives it without much awareness of how serious what is happening… the person finally becomes truly aware of the facts, and their entire first attitude of collaboration is transformed and results in a state of physical exhaustion. , also emotional and mental, which breaks him. In those moments, any emotional trigger serves to unleash a deep crisis that can be seen in an exaggerated way by others who do not understand what is really happening.

In reality, the only thing that is happening is that the person did not give themselves permission to cry before, and that is why they cry now. The trigger for his emotional explosion was only the straw that broke the camel’s back. His patience and pain reached the point of zero tolerance. He held on until his psyche said: “I can’t give it any more.” The cause may be something circumstantial and of little importance. Many will not understand why there is so much sensitivity to an insignificant fact. It is important that the family member of the missing person knows what is happening to them; in therapy they can work extensively on this so that they do not feel like they are “going crazy.” In reality, there are logical explanations for what happens. The emotional reaction was contained at first, but sooner or later the doors of the dam open and the waters of the real damaged feelings invade and emotionally flood the person. They drown her.

At first, the mind usually (defensively) denies the seriousness of the disappearance in its proper measure, the person does not conceive that their loved one is really missing, that they will never see them again… there is a psychological resistance to seeing the made with the real crudeness and gravity that they imply.

But with the passage of time, with the fears that grow, with the uncertainties and impotence, with the authorities without answers, the person gradually assimilates the serious aspect of the problem, his mind is finally accepting that something serious and serious is happening.

The family member finally sees that in truth all the elements indicate that the new situation reveals a serious potential risk, even with a possible tragic final result for everyone.

Every disappearance implies a state of personal and family crisis

Support therapy for relatives of missing persons must consider that while there is an individual space where everything can be worked on, personal work must also be complemented with a group (family) space. Emotional imbalances will be the order of the day, they invade in an invasive and progressive way.

The members of the family of the missing person usually enter into a dynamic of great differences, each one processes the fear in their own time and with their own defensive weapons, some deny what is happening more than others, there are confrontations and discussions with strong clashes that even In many cases they end in a definitive family division.

As happens in many bereavements, people feel alone in the same family unit, each one separates themselves living their own internal battle to try to understand what that disappearance brought to them all.

Trying to get closer between members results in more differences and arguments. Confrontations, Helplessness and negative feelings flow between everyone.

If there is no way to channel all these destructive emotions, the family can suffer harsh impacts, estrangements and splits. Family therapy for the missing is a space where everyone can sit and understand the different ways that

Each one is developing to accept what happened and accept those differences between each other. Family members should understand that THERE ARE DIFFERENT WAYS TO REACT TO A DISAPPEARANCE , and that his own does not necessarily have to be the best.

Each one will experience everything from their own unique place.

Understand that the crisis affects everyone differently. According to the capabilities that each one has to defend themselves from the emotional “attack” that a DISAPPEARANCE means.

In reality, the family is a human group united by intense emotional ties (mostly constructive) that have been threatened by an invisible ghost that has stolen a family member from them: disappearance.

The different ways that each member has to assimilate the disappearance.

Many people get upset because they don’t see in others the same reaction that they have to the disappearance. And that small difference is sometimes unforgivable. And the frictions and doubts resurface

more and more frequently among all. The dynamic is becoming aggressive and reaches unsustainable levels of coexistence.

In a neutral space like therapy, all family members will be able to talk, express what they feel, get angry, explain their fears, disappointments and helplessness, in front of everyone else. Being helped by a mediator (the therapist) will allow them to learn to respect the different ways that each person has to cope with a disappearance that actually “attacked” everyone, not just one or a few.

Each one will have a personal time where they can once again feel part of a group that listens to them and tries to understand them, even if the existential differences are different, and each one experiences the disappearance from a different place, with different abilities… they must understand and accept who continue to be a family trying to overcome a deep crisis and facing the same invisible enemy: disappearance.

Therapy will try to unite what is being fragmented due to the expected psychological alterations that any disappearance imposes and generates.

Finally, a key factor to work on in all private sessions with relatives of missing persons is the topic of PSYCHOLOGICAL DUELS.