Are you suffering from ECS after losing your mum or dad?

 ECS stands for Eldest Child Syndrome.  This is the condition when, after one of your parents have passed away, you as the eldest child feel responsible for everything and everybody.  Yes I made the name up.  But it is still very real.

Symptoms of ECS include:

• Being the eldest or the only child.   Now this isn’t always the eldest child.  I have seen this in clients who are second or third eldest.  Even once in a client who was the youngest of five.  But more often that not it is the eldest.
• Feeling like you need to ‘be strong’ for your remaining parent
  and your other siblings.
• People are telling you to ‘be strong’ for your remaining parent and your other siblings.
• Taking responsibility for the funeral planning and sorting out all the bills, financial details, etc, etc
• Feeling like you can’t express your feelings because you are trying to help everyone else
• Not crying for the above reason
• Feeling insanely guilty when you have to go back to work or back to the city/country where you live

Basically ECS is where you feel like you almost need to be the parent that you’ve lost – you need to be the head of the family, be the strong one (at the expense of your own emotions), and help everybody else out.

What’s wrong with that? You wan’t to look after everyone and frankly who else is going to do it if you don’t?!

I won’t teach my grandmother to suck eggs here.  If you are suffering from ECS then you know it’s stressful, it’s hard, it can be very isolating, and there is a truckload of unnecessary guilt that comes with the job.  I know you might feel that you have a certain job to do and it has to be done a certain way…but consider some of the following……

The problems to you of ECS include:

• Bottling up your own emotions because of the misguided belief that a) you should be strong for everyone and b) that being strong means hiding your tears and acting all stoic and ‘together’.  This leads to emotional constipation – your body does not want to hold all those emotions and the only thing stopping it from letting some of that stress out is you.  I was a physical mess after all the death in my family due to holding it all in. Even ending up in emergency at the hospital with unexplainable (to the doctors) pain.  It was the worst physical pain I’ve ever experienced in my life.  There is nothing strong about being scared to experience or share your own emotions.  There is nothing strong about hiding how you really feel.

• Robbing your family and friends of the opportunity to support you.  Now not all of them can do this for you – but some will be able to and will really want to.  And this can be a time of real bonding within families and with your friends and partners – don’t underestimate this – but not if you won’t share or let anyone in.

• Acting ‘strong’ can inadvertently sending your family the message that they can’t share their real feelings with you.  They will  either think you’re not feeling how they do OR they’ll think you don’t want to talk about how you’re really feeling.  Either way, especially if you are playing head of the family right now, you are telling them that it isn’t ok to get upset or share your confusion, your questions, your pain. Think about what example you are setting.

• You end up thinking you are the best person to do everything and actually end up in getting in other people’s ways.  In my experience the person who takes on this role is often the more dominant, bossy child.  I spent days going through all the financial records, organising the funeral etc, teaching my mum how to use internet banking, where to pay the bills, and how to text. (though she never did figure out punctuation.  Her texts are just one run together sentence. It kills me. Doesn’t bother her in the slightest).  Now it would have been reeeally easy to feel guilty about leaving and going back to Melbourne but the reality was Mum couldn’t start to gain her independence and start to find her new place in the world until I got the heck out of there.  I was so busy thinking she needed me to do everything for her that I wouldn’t have given her the chance to show all of us (and herself) how very strong she really was.  Also my brother was now officially the man of the family.  It can’t have been hugely empowering to watch his teensy little sister (he’s twice my size) taking over and thinking she would be wearing the pants in the family now.  Again this wasn’t the easiest role for him to step in to, it didn’t come naturally.  But I wouldn’t have given him the opportunity to grow into it like he has.

So, whether or not you are chronologically the eldest or not, if you are suffering from ECS….STOP for a second and try something new because you might not be helping everyone else as much as you think.  And you certainly aren’t helping yourself.

You can play your part but you don’t need to be doing everything for everyone.  And remember, you aren’t the only person who will have a new role to fill. Your family are shifting and changing.  Give them a chance to.  And be strong enough to cry. Be brave enough to be vulnerable – it will make it easier for everyone else to support you, understand you, and feel safe to share their own feelings with you too.  And it will take a heck of a lot of stress off of you and your body.

If you have something to add, ask, etc, etc, feel free to comment below!

Kristie

xx

Tagged as: death of mum or dad, staying strong after a death