Loss & Grief

[00:00:02] Speaker A: It's the youe Life Lived well podcast with Dr. Kevin Payne, a better way of seeing the life that you want to live. [00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome and welcome back. I'm so glad you've decided to join me for this episode on grief. I know that's not a cheery topic, but grief is an unavoidable human experience. The more we can talk about it openly, the more we can normalize its reality, the better we can face it when it inevitably visits us, and the better we can understand and support those around us. And I'm not saying this because our goal should be to minimize grief and get over it quickly. That attitude is so wrong and harmful. I'm saying it because our goal is to unflinchingly recognize and accept its presence, to honor what it represents in our lives, and to learn not to fixate and ruminate on grief, but allow it to come and go, wax and wane as is natural. Ultimately, we want to recognize grief. We want to celebrate the valuable people, experiences and opportunities that shaped us, yet are no longer with us. And we want to become more comfortable carrying those treasured memories forward with us as we continue to live. I'm old enough that I grew up in a world where the general attitude toward grief and pain and loss and any other negative emotion was suck it up and walk it off. Ultimately, that reaction stems from all too common ways we mishandle stress and fear. Part of that attitude stemmed from the fact that we didn't have a very good understanding of what was happening to us and why. Emotions, while common to all of us, were mysterious, overwhelming, and scary. So we largely tried to ignore the most powerful and negative emotional experiences since we were so uncomfortable owning up to them for ourselves. How could we be any better supporting one another? So we often botched our attempts to be supportive and inadvertently honest harmed the people we most loved and desired to comfort. We learned that grief was an icky experience we wanted to get away from. And even worse, we learned that grief was an awkward experience all of us are going to make worse. So we learned we had every reason to avoid grief. The problem is, grief's not going away. If we choose to live with love and hope and care for the world, then we will eventually live with grief. Many of us are not comfortable with grief, and we're still doing more harm in our clumsy, misguided attempts to do good. We may even compound the problems by becoming defensive when others fail to see our true intentions behind the noise of our mistaken attempts to comfort one another and to comfort one another ineptly grief makes us uncomfortable. Too often we're made to feel like we've failed when we grieve. Too often others are only too happy when they're given the opportunity to ignore someone's loss. Grief too often becomes a minefield for everyone. We never let ourselves have the opportunity to heal correctly from those injuries. It's no wonder that so many of us are limping around from a lifetime of blows we've never allowed ourselves to acknowledge, let alone treat with kindness, compassion, and respect. I'm excited to dig into this episode because a lot of people I know seem to be living with grief lately. Maybe we're more open about it now. Maybe I'm paying more attention. Or maybe I've just gotten to the age where more of us are losing things in people we care about. Whatever it is, grief is all around us. Grief is something we need to learn and carry with us, but not to dwell in. That's a really important distinction. I have vivid memories of large day long funerals. As a kid, they would begin as quiet, somber affairs, but as the day wore on, pockets of smiles, laughter and flowers, fond shared remembrances, would erupt. There's no one way to do grief. There are many valuable expressions. After the break, we'll begin by diving into some of our harmful, though often well meaning, misconceptions about grief. And of course, we'll be talking about ways that we can do grief better. [00:05:00] Speaker C: I'm Dr. Kevin Payne. Just jump with me into your life lived well. Half of us now live with Christ. Chronic illness. Mine is multiple sclerosis. It's your life, live it well. A chronic diagnosis doesn't mean goodbye to the good life you wanted. You don't have to feel overwhelmed or hopeless. I'll show you how to save yourself. Take your first step at justjump life. [00:05:32] Speaker A: It's the youe Life Lived well podcast. Don't forget to like share and subscribe. [00:05:43] Speaker C: If your life is touched by chronic illness, grief is an almost inevitable experience. The grief mourning bereavement process is the process of how we respond to loss or an impending loss that is personally important. So we tend to think of grief as a response we have to death and dying. So someone around you that you care about dies and you grieve. You get a really bad diagnosis and you understand that there's now a ticking clock on your life and you grieve that impending loss. What triggers that grief process is just loss, loss of any kind. And in this episode we're going to unpack some of what's happening when we grieve. You've probably learned that grief comes in stages. It's one of those things that even if you've never heard much psychology, most people have heard about the Kubler Ross stages of grief. This comes from Elisabeth Kubler Ross's research in the 60s. She was a psychiatrist who originally studied terminally ill patients coming to terms with their own mortality at the University of Chicago's medical school. And she was a psychiatrist. And in 1969 she published a book called On Death and Dying. The famous thing about that book was that grief is a staged process. Many of you can probably tell me what these are. It's denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. And so sometimes it's called the Dabda model. And that's the way that we have in our culture come to popularly process grief. The only problem is it's wrong. She died in, I think it was like 2004 or so. Toward the end of her life, she regretted some of the ways that her research had been interpreted. People had taken this stage process as prescriptive. So this is how you should experience grief. So a lot of people, when they don't experience in that way, which is most of us feel guilty that they're not grieving in the right process. As an aside, too, there. There are many other models. This one has just become the most popular one. And while grieving is a process, it doesn't come in stages. So let's look at her stages for a second here just to kind of understand what. What she saw going on. So let's look at that first stage, denial. That first response, according to this Kubler Ross model, is that we are going to be so shocked that we refuse to accept this loss or this impending loss. That's certainly sometimes the case. And we'll talk about how denial is one specific possibility at this particular stage. But there's no doubt that, that when we've got a big change in our life that we're presented with or that we know is inevitably coming down the pike at us, there is an adjustment. We don't necessarily want to accept it. That's one of the challenges that we're facing when we're grieving. The second stage in her model is anger. And that's when people are asking questions like, oh, why me? Or they're saying things like, oh, this isn't fair. And they're trying to blame some. Something, maybe that they're blaming their past behaviors or somebody who did something or God, it doesn't matter. They're trying to Cast blame. And at this point, it's just a lot of that's trying to get out because we're really frustrated and we're angry. A lot of plans that we had have now been thrown out the window. And we don't like having to adjust, especially if it's to something that's big and negative. The third stage in our model is bargaining. And that's the, oh, I'll be good, right? It's when in your mind you're going through these what if trades we're trying to find. Even though cognitively we know that this is futile, we're trying to find some way to avoid having to deal with this great big loss. Stage four, then, in her model, is depression. And that's when we are completely overwhelmed with the emotional enormity of it. And we're numb and we're feeling disconnected and disengaged. And our attitude is often, why bother? This is something that it's so awful that what's the point of going on? And then the fifth stage in her model is acceptance. And this is where finally we've wrapped our brains around this new reality. It's not necessarily that we're approving of it or we like it, but we are at this point willing to acknowledge that this is reality and that this is something that we're going to have to account for. This tells a nice, neat story. This appeals to our narrative sense of how things should work. From my experience, and I'll bet from your experience, it's not that neat. It's not that orderly. It doesn't follow that kind of narrative path in that same way. While this process often begins with some form of shock because it is a radical change in our reality. And it often moves to some form of acknowledgement, acceptance, accommodation, something like that, it doesn't necessarily, and it certainly doesn't follow a neat pattern. It also nearly as frequently begins with an acknowledgement or an acceptance of the loss. And for a lot of us, it's that cognitive shift that is happening first. And then it's like, oh, my goodness, how am I going to deal with this? One of the challenges that we're facing here is that there are cognitive, emotional, behavioral, practical and biophysical dimensions to this. It's affecting our bodies, our minds, our relationships, our environment, how we spend our time. And this path can be winding and erratic and surprising, and it can fold back in on itself. And you seem to replay and ruminate on the same emotions and what ifs multiple times. And you think you've gotten beyond that, but you haven't. And it is not necessarily ever resolved. Grief often leaves an indelible imprint on our lives and ourselves. We're simply just not the same person. Afterward, I want you to notice that grief, trauma, pain, fright, stress, all appearance really similar to one another. And there's a reason they're related through something called the acute stress response. And that is a complex of somatic or biophysical and behavioral and emotional and cognitive responses we have to being challenged. We actually, as humans, have a really limited tool set for dealing with changes or challenges. Grief is different for everyone. The same person can grieve each loss differently. And there's absolutely no reason why life could or should have prepared us for a particular loss. This is a new thing, and I want to give you a few ideas to help you understand what's really happening here. Okay, so the first one is that grief is often a big negative in your life, but not always. It is, however, always a change. And it's that change that's the important factor here. When we have a change in our life, even if we're gaining something, we're losing something else because we only have so much life to go around, and we can't fit everything in. So. So grief is happening because there is a loss. And that loss is a hole in our lives. It's a hole. And we don't like holes. Holes are terrifying. Holes are terrifying to humans because holes have nothing in them, and they're empty. And there's this unknown that's associated with a hole. And it disrupts the patterns that we like seeing in our lives. We all have patterns. Humans are active, adaptive meaning makers. We see patterns. We are so good at seeing patterns. We see them where none exist. We just are. When we lose something, we've got a ginormous hole in our life. The second thing that I want you to understand about the challenges of grief is that you've lost something that was a part of your identity and your story. One of the things that makes us human, unique among all other animals that we know of so far, and maybe the only thing that's unique, is that humans are storytellers. We impose story on our lives. That's how we make sense of it. That's how we see cause and effect. And the most important story that we tell is our identity. Your identity is the story you tell yourself about yourself. And now suddenly, something that was important in your story, a person, maybe your own health, maybe losing a job, you know, whatever it is something that was important to your identity. Story is now gone. So we're over here trying to make meaning and find patterns and tell stories, and suddenly an important part of that is just ripped out of our hands. And we have no agency in that. We have no control. Somebody else came in and rewrote part of your story. That really sucks. We hate that you've had all the anticipation and all the possibility that whatever it was, whoever it was that you lost contributed to your story. All of that was just ripped away. You are likely then to feel lost, disconnected, disoriented. And humans really don't like to feel lost and disconnected and disoriented. The reason why you feel that way when you are socially or conceptually or culturally lost and disconnected is the same reason why you feel that way when you are physically lost and disconnected. We actually use the same part of our brain to process that. And lost meant death to our ancestors. You got suddenly lost out in the middle of nowhere. And we're naked apes, and we don't necessarily do well on our own. Even when we have positive life changes, it can still elicit a grief. So you can be a kid who's now leaving home, going off to the college that you want to do, and you're taking that next step in your life, and you can still grieve what you're losing. You can be embarking on a new marriage and all of the wonderful possibility that this budding family represents, and you can still grieve what you've lost, because it's a trade off. You gain something, you lose something else. Grief is always a change. Grief is always a loss. Grief is a trauma, because what is a trauma? You ever really think about it? Let's go back to a physical trauma for a second. When you are suddenly injured, your body is met with a force that it cannot counteract and that does tissue damage. You are bruised, you are broken, were ripped. That's a trauma. It is a physical force that demands more than you have the capacity to deliver to stop it. Right? So you are injured in that process. That's grief. That's all kinds of trauma. You are met with an emotional or cognitive or social force that you can't counter. You are overwhelmed in that moment. And again, we use the same parts of our brain to process those other kinds of trauma as we do processing physical trauma. Nature likes to readapt systems that are already there. So our grief is trauma. Grief isn't rational. Grief is pre rational. We're dealing with older systems in our brain that were there long before we became rational. So grief doesn't necessarily make sense. And you can't force grief to make sense. You've got these, sometimes they're referred to as the ancient lizard brain and the limbic system. And you know, these first couple of levels of the brain, if you want to look at it that way, which is conceptually useful but wrong in the science of it, that fundamentally doesn't see the world in reason and evidence. It is just not rational. Don't expect good portions of your grief to be rational. They're pre rational. I don't even like to say irrational. They're non rational. They just have their own different logic. That is not the logic of rationality. Like everything else, we must learn to grieve. And a lot of people find that really frustrating. They think, you know what, I'm human, I should have just come with this innate knowledge of how to be human. But no, you've got to learn how to do this. And life may not have prepared you. And you may have grown up around people who, bless their hearts, do a really sucky job at grieving or handling trauma or these sorts of things. And we know this is the case. Cut yourself some slack. Allow yourself to learn. And part of that means when we're going through these really icky internal processes, these really negative processes like grief, sometimes we don't want to look too closely. We're afraid of what we're going to see. So right here, right now, I'm going to give you permission to look closely and to be okay with what it is you see. Because a lot of what's in there is going to be ugly and is not going to meet our own personal expectations. Get over it. We're human. Part of that means that when our inner cave child is completely distraught, we need to just wrap it in a hug. And we need to be able to do that for ourselves. You're willing to do that for other people that you love. Love yourself enough to do that for yourself. There are all the kinds of things that we can grieve. We can grieve the loss of life. We can grieve the loss of our roles, as when we separate from a job or from a partnership or something like that. We can grieve the loss of our social connections, not just our roles, but our connections to other people. We can grieve the loss of our anticipated future. We can grieve the loss of our sense of safety. This is actually a big one. You lose a job and you don't just lose that role and those social connections and that thing you do with your time, but you lose financial stability. And in many of these cases, we're also grieving our loss of autonomy or control. Because really, your grief is about you. And I don't mean that in a negative sense. It is selfish. And we don't like this word selfish, but I mean it in the sense of it is selfish because it is of the self. You have no choice but to approach the world from yourself, from your identity. That is the filter of all of your experience. And it's okay now. We make space for other people within ourselves, within our identities, within what we do with our lives. But it still comes down to you. For you, your life is about you. Other people's lives are about them. And sometimes I do stuff with you because I like that, or you provide a benefit, or I think what you're doing is meaningful, and all those things for lots of other reasons. But fundamentally, it's about the rewards you provide. To me, that's not bad. Your grief falls in that same bucket. You are grieving because your identity has been ripped traumatically. There's a big hole, and you didn't have any control in that. It's a different way to think about grief. Fundamentally, that is the injury that you have to come to grips with. So you are readjusting cognitively, emotionally, behaviorally, physically, all of these things. And it's not going to happen in stages. It's not going to be a neat process. These emotions will happen together. They will happen in waves. They will happen at surprising and unwelcome times. They will happen in cycles. They will happen out of the blue, and sometimes you will forget. And the flow of the rest of your life will kind of carry you along. And then suddenly you will obsessively remember again. And this is all part of it. And grief isn't going to be this separate little period where you get to step out of the flow of your life into your little grief space and then get it all worked out and resolved and then step back into life. Grief is not going to happen in a vacuum. The rest of your life is still moving on. Other people's lives are still moving on despite that loss. And don't think this is me being cold or callous or anything like that. There have been times in my life where I've just had to stop and grieve. And maybe other people thought that I was grieving too long even. Who cares? Screw them. It's not their grief, your grief. But you still have to acknowledge that other people can't hold up Their life for your grief. And eventually you need to get to the point where your grief is light enough that you can carry it along with you. Notice I didn't say over it. I said your grief is light enough that you can carry it along with you. We only have three mental tricks that we use to try to make these grief, anxiety, depression, fear, pain, etc. All these things. We only have three techniques that we use to make these palatable. The first thing is distance. Cognitively, emotionally, physically. We get closer or further, and we navigate that distance in our minds, in our experience. And we also use vertical distance as well. Sometimes bringing yourself up higher to a broader, more lofty perspective, or down deep in the weeds where you maybe can't see it in the details. We use distance. We manipulate that distance mentally and emotionally. We manipulate our perspective by the direction of what we're looking at, where we're putting our attention on the tightness of focus or resolution on maybe putting up a barrier between that negative bad thing and what you're trying to pay attention to. Maybe it's denial or fantasy or whatever it is. We manipulate our perspectives and we manipulate what we could call the attached affect. Affect is one of those terms that we use in the social and behavioral sciences for the value or the emotion that we attach to things. Because the world just is. The world just is. Because we're seeing the world through our perspective, our identity, we're attaching values to all sorts of things. You don't just see a person. You see the emotions that you attach to that person. You don't just see an object. You see food that you like or you want to avoid, or a movie that you want to see or you don't, or a cause that you think is worthy or not, et cetera. All these things, they have values. And so when we are playing with that attached affect to the thing that we've lost, we've got the valence and the magnitude. We've got the direction. Is it positive or negative? Negative how we feel about it? Is it a large feeling or a small feeling? And you know this over time, maybe you've gotten out of a relationship that you really liked, but for some reason it didn't work out. You may find yourself over time diminishing how much that relationship meant to you. Because this is one way that we have of dealing with grief, dealing with that loss. These are the only three mental tricks that we have. That's it. Everything else, everything you've ever heard of, about any kind of coping mechanism, any kind of Defense mechanism. Any of those things can all be represented this way. This is it. This is all we have when we first are presented with that loss. In Kubler Ross parlance, that's that denial phase. Really, what that is is potential shock and disbelief. And these are natural reactions to major forced cognitive and practical realignments. We're like, oh, dude, I can't believe this. Because you don't want to make that change. You don't want to repair that hole in your life, in your identity. But this is not necessarily a bad thing, because a little denial helps us ease into a traumatic loss. It gives us time to parse and to spread out that overwhelming onslaught of emotion. However, eventually we must face the radically changed world. But it's okay at the beginning to feel that disbelief. And that is exactly the freeze stage. You've heard of the fight or flight response, right? That's the same thing. So since grief is an expression of an injury to our identities, we've got to rebuild our stories to support our pain and our grief and all of that, and to accommodate growth and rebuilding. And that takes time. In the aftermath of loss, it takes time to rewrite our stories for the future, because for you, it is about you. And that's okay. You've got to figure out a way to rewrite your story. That's the first thing I want us to take away. You need to realize that grief is a natural response to a traumatic loss. And just as bodies take time to heal, so do hearts, minds, social networks, all that. Here's a slight digression, but it really is relevant because it's one of my pet peeves, and that is, when we think about mental illness, people will say that grief has become pathological. And so it gets kind of captured under that rubric of mental illness. Well, implicitly, when we think of mental illness, most of the time we think about the metaphor of disease. Mental illness is like bodily disease, but of the mind. And for some, that's a correct way to think about it. But for far more of the common things that we deal with, many cases of depression and anxiety and responses that are often associated with grief, disease is not the right metaphor. Injury is the right metaphor. You just need to take the time to allow your body, mind, identity, relationships to heal. Just like to heal a wound, a physical wound, there are certain things you need to do. You need to go easy on that. [00:30:27] Speaker B: Part for a while. [00:30:28] Speaker C: You need to do those same things as well when you're dealing with grief. Just as bodies take time to heal, so do our Hearts and minds and our social networks and our identities in the wake of a traumatic loss that we're grieving. Second thing that you need to take away from this is that you get to make your own path. This is your grief. There is no right way to grieve. There are more or less healthy and useful ways to grieve, and you may decide you want help with your grieving and that's totally cool, and you need to do that. But there is no right way to grieve. So don't look at this as prescribed, and don't look at it as, oh, my gosh, I'm not grieving in the right way. You're grieving in your way. Ultimately, the only way to get past grief is through it. You can't go around it. You just can't. You've got to go through it. But we don't have to take it on all at once. We can spread it out. We can deal with part of the grief, then we can allow ourselves to be distracted with life for a bit, and then we can come back and deal with another part of the grief. And that's okay. There's no timeline. If you survey people and this has been done, people will tell you how long they think an appropriate time to grieve is. And they're wildly all over the place. Some people will say just a few weeks. Some people say months. Most people are somewhere in the months range. Some people will say years. And there is no consensus. And the reason why is because there shouldn't be a consensus, because that's part of your path and you get to choose that. So there is no timeline. This is going to sound really trite, but grief is an opportunity to grow through trauma. I don't recommend trauma as a way to grow. Okay? I really don't. However, sometimes we can't avoid the traumas that life put on us. And when life puts those traumas in our way and there's nothing we can do about it, then we do have the opportunity to express choice and agency and figure out the best way through it. And it is true that growth happens through challenge. I'm just not recommending so much challenge. That is traumatic. Growth is often difficult to process, but looking back, it can become something that we were grateful to have gone through. Because part of this is you don't grieve unless you loved something immensely. And grief, in maybe a twisted way, is the last gift of the love that we experienced. What you are doing when you are doing it in the grief process is only a problem if it gets in the way of the life you want to be living or the life that you have agreed to share with others. And so I encourage you if you think you are having difficulty on your own, seek the appropriate professional help with this process. The good thing when you're handling grief 1. Remember, grief is earned. You earned this grief. It was an important part of your life. It's gone now. And wow, that sucks. Beyond the telling of it, it is awful. But please be grateful for having had it and honor its memory. And trust me, I know that sounds really trite, but do that second thing. I will remind you again, there is no timeline. None. It's your schedule. Three. As you're going through this process, think about how to carry on what you valued from that person, from that experience, from that expectation or whatever it was. What is it that you can carry forward? [00:34:35] Speaker B: Or if you are in the position. [00:34:38] Speaker C: Where you are grieving your own impending loss, what do you want to help others carry on from you? These are really important connections here. Don't just let it be something that you loved or enjoyed or was a crucial part of your life at one time and now you've lost. Think about what made that so valuable and find ways to carry it forward. Fourth thing, whatever it is that you've lost, this is really crucial, important stuff in your life. Welcome them back into your memory when they come through, but don't hold on to them. Don't fixate on it. Don't ruminate on it. Your mind has weather and this was an important part of your identity, your formation, your experience. Those memories are going to come back and they will be painful, but they should also be joyful in the ways that made that such a valuable, worthwhile connection. And 5. Know when to get support. I'm going to emphasize this again one more time. When the grief gets in the way of living, it's time. And there's nothing wrong with that. You're not weak. You're nothing. Because nobody trained us for this. So I know I say this a lot, but be kinder to yourself, especially if you don't think you deserve it. There's a lot of guilt that can come with grief as well. But we have got to learn to treat ourselves as someone we truly love. So I wish you well in learning your grief and in living your new life. [00:36:24] Speaker B: And we'll be back with a conclusion after this brief break. [00:36:29] Speaker C: We all have challenges. Mine is multiple scleros. We each have this one life and we didn't choose to be saddled with chronic illness. But there's a better way, so I choose to just jump and you can too. It's your life. Live it well. Justjump life. [00:37:01] Speaker A: It's the youe Life Lived well podcast. Don't forget to like, share and subscribe. [00:37:11] Speaker B: By way of wrapping this up, let me first emphasize what is probably the most important point. Your grief is your grief. I've thought about grief a lot and the one thing I am convinced of is that the best way to think about why we experience grief the way we do is that under everything else, it is a traumatic injury to our identity. It is a loss or impending loss to the most precious story we use to guide ourselves through the world. Please don't think that diminishes who or what you've actually lost. They were not replaceable to you. Their presence filled your experience. Their possibilities filled your hopes and plans for the future. Their loss rips a massive hole in the tapestry we weave of our lives. That's why their loss is so devastating to you. That's why it takes time, effort, and often support, even professional support to repair yourself, plan a different future, and build and practice the emotional apparatus to carry on. I'll say it again. First, humans are natural storytellers. The narratives we impose on the world are older than rationality. That capacity arises from our most primal selves. And the most important story any of us weaves is our identity. The core of yourself has been violated. Second, grief is powerful because it is intimate violence. Think of yourself grown in layers, like an onion. The outermost layers are public, shared, and relatively thick skinned. As we move inward, those layers are more private and sensitive. When we feel grief, we're more likely to have experienced damage to to those most intimate layers. Third, grief is not just a reaction to the trauma of intimate mental, emotional and social loss. It is more violent and painful because in most cases it happened outside our control. We were unable to prevent the loss of this person or thing that we valued so highly. We could not keep them safe. And in some cases, we might also feel the guilt of responsibility in that loss, whether deserved or not. Fourth, our brains process physical pain in over half a dozen areas. That ancient pain system is largely reused to process all of our other losses and injuries to our thoughts, feelings, identity, and relationships. Grief is truly painful because our same pain centers are processing a traumatic injury to the most sensitive, vulnerable layers of our identities. Fifth, grief can happen before the loss. It's called anticipatory grief. Grief is also accompanied with a confusing swirl of other emotions. Anger, sadness, Frustration, guilt, shame, and sometimes paradoxically, even happiness and relief. Grief is dynamic, confusing and non rational. And there is one big thing grief is not. Grief is not a contest. Your grief is not better or worse, or bigger or smaller than anyone else's. Your grief is bigger than you. It's not yours to command or control, only to experience. Maybe you're just naturally more or less resilient in this time and place, in the face of the kind of loss you're currently facing. That doesn't make it any more or less profound. That doesn't make you any more or less strong or weak. There's also no universally correct way to support a loved one's grief. But there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, just ask them what they need from you. Then be willing to provide what they ask, or politely and clearly decline so there are no misunderstandings. Too often we volunteer to help those in need, then only help in the ways we choose, regardless of their needs and wishes. Then we wonder why they're so offended when we meant well. If you offer to help, you need to take their understanding of their needs into account. And yes, I fully realize that sometimes we don't accurately know what we really need. That's another tricky conversation we'll have in a later episode. Second, just acknowledge their loss and their grief. Don't judge it or compare it. I know you're uncomfortable in trying to offer your experience as a badge of identification. You're casting about for anything that seems appropriate to say. In our discomfort and confusion, many of us pull out the most salient memory we can find through our distress, our own grief, and we start talking about the grief we have experienced. We're not trying to make their loss about us. We're clumsily trying to show them that we have a shared appreciation for loss too. Don't let anything even accidentally seem like you're trying to pull focus from their needs. You understand your pain. You don't know their pain. You presume it's something similar to what you felt. They're feeling raw and injured, so it's very easy for them to see more injuries when none are intended. You can even acknowledge this up front by saying, I'm not good at this, but I love you. I mean well, I want to give you the support you need and I'll likely screw this up, so let me know when I do. We're all human and we all need to hear that repeated again and again. It's too easy for us to forget and put up that facade of invulnerability. That's not what any of us really need. It's all right to be brave enough to care. It's all right to just quietly hold space, to share in another's experience of grief. We don't have to solve anything. All we have to do is show up and show support. And of course, we need to accept our frailty and vulnerability and connect with others who are trying to help. We're going to fail at all of this because it's easy to say and it's really hard to do so. We have to practice and we have to forgive and we have to allow one another the opportunity to muddle through it together. I wish you all the best as you find ways to accommodate the grief you've earned in the lives you continue after your losses. Be patient, be kind. Until next time. Go forth, be well, do well, and do good. [00:44:13] Speaker A: If you've enjoyed today's topic and want to join the conversation with Dr. Kevin Payne, find your life lived well on all of your favorite social media sites, sites Patreon and of course, yourlifelivedwell co.