Episode #38: How To Deal With Grief
Deaths, breakups, loss of any kind: sooner or later we all have to deal with grief!
While this isn’t exactly a fun emotion, it’s also important to understand it and process it. You don’t have to live in fear of it!
Inspired by a recent loss in my life, today’s episode is all about sharing the tools and processes that are helping me right now.
Listen in even if you’re not grieving right now, so you’ll know what to do in the future!
In This Episode:
- Find out more about a recent loss in my life
- Learn the beliefs & tools that are helping me through my grieving process
- Learn how to feel less afraid and more empowered around grief
- Much more!
Mentioned In This Episode:
Listen Here:
How To Deal With Grief | Episode #38 Transcript
Hi friends, it’s Jenn, we’re back and today we are going to talk about grief.
So I have taken a couple of weeks off from the podcast and that was not quite as I had
planned.
So this last week I had friends in town and I did plan to not be working so much this
week.
I did originally plan to have another podcast ready for you guys, but as it turns out,
the week before, the last week, my beautiful cat passed away and it wasn’t exactly a big
surprise like she was really old.
She was 19 years old, but it really rocked my world.
Even though I knew that this was coming for quite a while, like of course when your cat is
19, you know that that’s like well beyond the average age of a cat.
So some part of you is always kind of like, okay, you know, we’re on borrowed time in
a way.
So I have to not only enjoy this while she’s here, but I also have to start emotionally
prepping myself for the inevitable.
And the inevitable came last week.
I’m not really sure that I’m ready to talk to you specifically about that, although I
will say that I had some very magical things happen during that time.
I’m still processing it and I really like to come to these episodes after I finished processing
it and I don’t think I’ve done that yet.
And again, part of that is because I had this visit scheduled with my friends like that
was on the books for a long time.
So it just happened that they were coming to town a couple days after this happened, which
was a great thing for me because I got to go think about something else, but also I have
not had as much time to process my grief as I normally would have.
But of course, I have been in at this week.
I have been in my feelings.
This is a major milestone for me.
And I wanted to do an episode today touching on grief.
If you are one of my healed members, you know that there’s already a whole section on
grief inside of your membership.
So you can go in there and go through that anytime you like.
But grief is one of those things that we tend to not think about unless it is happening
to us, but it is one of the core experiences of human life.
If you have anything that you love, if you spend any amount of time with somebody, if you
have let things into your heart and to your soul at some point in time, you are going to experience
grief one way or another.
I was listening to another podcast the other day and it was about a divorce lawyer and the
divorce lawyer said that the only way that marriages end are through divorce or through
death.
So I know that’s a dark thing to bring up perhaps, but this is just a reminder that this stuff
is not as far away as you think it is.
And of course we can all wish and hope that all of our people, our loved ones, will be
in our lives forever and that everything will be just the way it is right now.
But you know, that’s a futile wish at the end of the day.
So today I wanted to talk a little bit about grief, give you some tools for how to deal
with it and just to be a voice to remind you that if you are going through this experience,
you are definitely not alone.
And again, this is something we all experience at one point in time.
So just listening to this, even if you are having a crazy happy week this week, I want you
to hopefully remember these tools.
So whenever you have something that comes up in your future, you can come back in, tap
back in and you will know what to do.
So first off, I want to talk about the different kinds of grief because sometimes I think
we don’t allow ourselves to grief things.
So of course we can have grief when we lose a loved one, when we lose a pet, but you might
also have grief from the loss of a relationship, so a breakup or even a friendship breakup.
That can cause you to grieve.
You might be going through a transition in your life, perhaps you are moving, starting school
across the country, you got a new job somewhere else and you are transiting from one stage of
your life to another.
Part of you might also be grieving that old life that you used to have.
Even if you are going into something that you’ve wanted and cultivated and chased for a
long time, the fact that you are moving from one place to another, it signifies an end.
It signifies that we are no longer in this place.
And even if we’re going into something new and exciting, you might still feel, and I know
I felt like this before, you might still feel that need to grieve who you were and
the chapter that is ending.
So really I think grief can be felt in so many situations in life, which is why I think
we need to talk about it more often, but it is the signifier of a chapter ending.
And so I want to talk about that for a moment because it is one of the most intense emotions
you can feel and it feels really dark and it feels really heavy.
One of the thoughts I had when this experience happened to me last week with my cat, I was
in the shower and I was crying and I was thinking this is so unfair.
And of course part of me snapped right back out of that thought and I’m like, it actually
isn’t unfair at all.
This is one of the most fair of things that happens in the world.
We are all only here for a short period of time.
And in fact, our life can be cut up to even shorter pieces of time that we can measure
through relationships, jobs, living in certain areas, etc.
And in that way, because life is always changing and because we are always growing, we are always
expanding out of the old and expanding into the new.
And as such, grief is something that might become a constant companion, maybe not as intensely
as losing a loved one, losing a relationship, losing a pet, but grief comes in many different
forms.
So I just want you to get a little bit more comfortable with the idea of grief and understand
that this is not a sign that anything has gone wrong.
It is again a normal part of life.
And in fact, the more that you’ve loved something or let something or somebody into your life,
the bigger of a hole there might be one day.
And that is not me telling you to not love things, to not adopt pets, to not get into relationships.
But this is just part of the experience.
When we give that gift of love, when we send out that much love, then we will feel the
impact of that.
And it’s actually a beautiful thing.
It is not a tragic thing.
I don’t know.
If you are really in it right now, I know, like I said, a week ago, I probably would not
have wanted to hear this, but it’s the truth.
But in some ways grief can help us see just how magical these temporary experiences are
in our life.
And when I refer him that way, I feel a bit better about it.
Of course, the pain does not go away entirely, but I feel a lot more comfortable with the
fact that this is happening.
Okay, the second thing I wanted to talk about today is the fact that everybody feels this.
And again, when we have these big, dark, heavy, intense emotions, our brain immediately goes
to thinking something is wrong.
It immediately goes to thinking, I need to fix this.
And in terms of breakups, that’s many times why people try so hard to get back with their
ex because their primitive brain is thinking that the only answer to this painful experience
of a breakup is to get that person back.
If I get that person back, then I no longer have to feel this pain.
And if you’ve ever gone back to an ex, you probably know how this situation actually works
out, which is to say, usually not too well.
Not always, but usually not too well.
Grief is just a fact of life.
And it might not be an emotion you cultivate or that you’re trying to create more of in
your life.
But if you recognize the fact that this does not mean anything has gone wrong, this is part
and parcel of being a human.
This is something that we are all here to experience.
That can give you a lot more perspective.
Again, it’s not like we’re trying to create more grief in our life, but the fact that it
is happening, the fact that you feel it, it does not mean anything has gone wrong.
It does not mean anything is wrong with you.
And it is not a punishment that you uniquely are experiencing.
It is just a normal human emotion.
There is something incredibly equalizing about that because no matter who you are, no matter
how much wealth you accumulate, no matter how much fame you accumulate or all the other
exterior markers of success, all of those people, they experience grief as well at one
point in time or another.
Again, so this is just a normal part of being a human and it does not mean anything has
gone wrong.
Number three, I just wanted to talk about the fact that it is so important to let yourself
feel it.
And oh boy, I have been letting myself feel it.
The first 24 hours or so of course, that was a complete mess.
I was crying all the time.
We’re not doing that anymore, but I definitely have my moments throughout the day.
And I’m even leaning into that a little bit, which I guess sometimes even though I’m a
Scorpio, even though I’m in my feelings, I tend to intellectualize things, cut part
mentalized things and try to lead away from that.
So I’m really just letting myself feel that feeling, feel that experience and letting
myself have that cry.
So at least once a day, we’ve got it, I think I’ve got it down to about once a day, but once
a day or so, I will lean into that whether that is in the morning or at night that tends
to be the times when I’m thinking about it the most.
I will just let myself feel those feelings, let them come up to the service, let myself
have that experience.
I’ve spoken about this many times before, but when I was a child, I was told that I was
too emotional and that I should not cry so much and basically make my parents feel uncomfortable
with my big emotions.
So I learned at a very young age how to bottle things up and pretend everything was okay.
So now part of my healing journey as an adult is letting myself sit with that sadness, sit
with those tears and let myself express them without judging myself and also if someone
else happens to me around without judging myself for doing that in front of somebody else,
right?
Because I learned that messaging, that doing that being emotional in front of somebody was
not comfortable for them.
That was actually burden on them.
So even though I’m not trying to cry on anybody’s shoulder at the moment most of the time, if
that happens to happen in the process of healing this, I am just going to let it happen.
And I’m going to hope that the people around me will be able to hold space for that will
not be made too uncomfortable by that and that they might actually even be able to make
me feel better.
Just being seen and received for who I am and what I am feeling in the moment that is
an immense gift.
That is what I look for the most in my relationships these days, right?
Being seen and being allowed to be exactly who you are with what you’re experiencing in
the moment without somebody running to cheer you up to tell you it’s all going to be okay,
to just smile, right?
Like, I don’t need any more of that emotional gas lighting.
I think collectively we are all over that experience.
And part of that for me is letting myself be that person, not just being the strong one,
not being the person who is able to put on a smile no matter what.
But to actually let myself be that real person with somebody that is something I definitely
was not able to do as a child.
And that is something that I find incredibly healing right now.
And if you’ve had a similar emotional experience as I have, are you learn that your emotions
are wrong?
I hope that you can find this in one relationship at least in your life.
Find those people that allow you to show up and be who you are and feel what you feel
without immediately rushing to try to make it better or to make it go away or to try to
fix the problems, like just letting yourself feel it and being seen by somebody.
That act alone is one of the most healing things in the world.
Finally, I have been doing some EMDR stuff on myself.
As you know, if you again, if you’re in my healed program, I do some EMDR informed tools
to help with emotional processing.
And since this is such a deep, dark, intense emotion, I have been leaning into those tools
as I have been going through this.
So just to do this really quickly, without going to the science of it, if you are experiencing
those big emotions yourself in your life right now, I suggest tapping, tap one side of
your body than the other, just bilateral tapping, bilateral stimulation.
You can also do this just from walking around because your feet are automatically bilateral
stimulation, but I really like doing tapping either on my legs or on my chest or even on
my arms just to help me process that emotion.
So to do this, you just need to feel that emotion and just tap on either side of your body
and that’s it.
And if you are feeling that emotional intensity, if it’s feeling very overwhelming, you can
pick up the speed or the intensity of the taps, but if you just sit there with it and just
tap on either side of your body, you are going to find yourself automatically releasing
a lot of that intensity.
And that is one way that we can process our emotions and come back to feeling centered
and calm in our body without suppressing things without just white neckling our way through
it and pretending we’re okay, right?
If you let yourself experience that emotion and you tap on it, you are letting yourself
process it and release it.
So it is no longer stuck inside of your body, you are no longer holding on to that anxiety,
that anger, that tension, all of these emotions, sometimes it work together with grief, we
can feel anxiety about things, we can feel anger about things, but it is just really important
to learn how to process that.
And as a side note, I’ve not really been doing this so much this week, but if you are
new to this work, I really recommend looking into polyvagal healing, polyvagal tools, figuring
out what your dominant trauma response is and learning some ways to manage that.
Really the emotional stuff is a lot of it is body based, a lot of it is letting ourselves
feel things, but also letting our body process things and come back to a normal state of
rest and digest.
So if you don’t know how to do that for yourself, I have many other tools and resources that
can help you with that.
I’ll leave a link to some in the show notes, but for today, I just want to really reinforce
that.
If you are having any kind of intense emotional experience at all, do EMDR, do breathing,
do something that is going to help you feel calm and centered again.
That is just so, so important.
That is actually, if you have to ignore everything else, I said on this episode, at least do
that one thing for yourself, it is going to make a massive difference.
Finally, this just happened to be the way the universe had planned things for me, but I
got a lot of one-on-one time with some very dear friends from Canada who were visiting this
week and it was so healing.
My general feeling is when I’m feeling down or intense or whatever is like, I want to
run away and hide.
I don’t want to necessarily be out with people, but this week, I was sort of forced into
it and honestly, it was really healing.
It’s not like we were sitting there talking about my feelings, I wasn’t crying all the time,
but just knowing that I had people around me who cared about me, just being in that kind
of container for multiple days, I just found that to be such a gift for me.
If you are also like me and if you tend to hide yourself away when you’re not feeling great,
just really consider that.
Again, being in community, leaning on somebody at least a little bit, just being around somebody
else in your life, that will help you to feel reconnected and that will help you to also regulate
because you learn how to regulate by looking at other people.
So being around a calm, centered person is ultimately going to help you feel more calm
and regulated.
Again, grief is a universal experience and I have had this happen so many times.
