Desert Island Survival 101, Tuesday Fourth Period

[wasthecuteone]

"Welcome back to our island home!" Petra said cheerfully. "Our other island home, that is. I've taken the liberty of giving you guys some huts, since we've been here for several weeks now." She gestured toward them, lined up on the beach. "Don't worry about them right now. This week we have two topics: getting rescued, and not getting eaten by the wildlife.

( Hairspray makes an excellent weapon )

Around the World in Seven Weeks [Tuesday, August 6th]

[sith_happened]

"Today we are going to Cambodia, a country in Southeast Asia," Ben said, pointing it out on the map. "It's near Vietnam and is known for its insane dictatorship, so please, please don't get too lost."

"As always, you will have two tasks to complete before finding us," Anakin said. "Travel safely."

Coping with Loss, Tuesday, Third Period

[not_a_whiner]

"You've all probably heard about the seven stages of grief at one point or another," Kaidan said. "That's probably the most famous grief model, especially in this particular time. Now, you've got to know up front - these aren't exactly set in stone, and you don't skip from one to the next in any kind of organized way. You might feel some of these things all at the same time, you might loop back to an earlier stage without warning, you might jump forward and back... anyway."

He picked up a marker and walked towards the smartboard. "It's useful to know, though," he said. "Gives you some grip on what's going on with you, you know?" He reached out and wrote on the board, DENIAL.

"Stage one is denial," he said. "Which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. When you're in denial, you don't really accept that whoever you lost is gone. You might know it intellectually - or not - but it doesn't connect emotionally at all. That's usually just the first couple of hours, days... something like that."

He'd been stuck in it a little bit longer, but he wasn't going to share that with the class - not because he didn't want to but because he didn't want to drop his own baggage all over them. "Stage two is Guilt. That's where it starts to really hurt. The loss hits you square across the jaw and you start looking for someone to blame. That's usually yourself, unless you've already gone on to the next stage. What if you'd been faster? What if you'd been stronger? What if you'd been smarter--" He wavered for a moment, but caught himself before it turned into anything besides a slightly overlong pause. "That kind of thing."

He reached for the board again. "Anger is stage three. That's when you start blaming everybody else. People around you, the person themselves for dying, the universe in general for letting them die-- this is when you lash out." He hadn't dealt with a lot of that. He knew too well how dangerous anger could be. "You've got Bargaining in there too. That's when you try to reach out to the powers that be, trying to get back what you lost. Then follows Depression. This actually tends to take place a long while after the loss has taken place. Suddenly all the other emotions kind of disperse and the emptiness hits you square in the face. You might isolate yourself mentally or physically from the people around you. You might start obsessing about the past."

Kaidan rubbed at his arm. "Things'll start getting better eventually. You won't be there yet, but you'll start the reconstruction. Stuff you left laying by the wayside is going to get picked back up. You're gonna start trying to introduce things to your life that you lost along the way, or that you've been missing. Eventually, at the end of the road, you'll make your way to Acceptance. You'll be able to move on, realize the extent of your situation and put it behind you."

With that, the marker got discarded.

"There's a lot of ways to deal with stuff while you're going through all of this," he said. "Exercise helps. Creativity helps. Reaching out to your friends, if they can understand what you're going through. And sometimes you just have to take a day off. Just don't start drinking yourself to death."