Speaker 1: This is the Anxiety Bites podcast, and I am your host,
Speaker 1: Jen Kirkman. I hope you enjoyed last week's Phobia a
Speaker 1: Flying episode. I know some people wrote me and said
Speaker 1: it was giving them anxiety to hear me describe my
Speaker 1: anxiety in detail. And that does happen even if we're
Speaker 1: not anxious when we start listening to something, Hearing people
Speaker 1: talk about anxiety can bring things up and be, for
Speaker 1: lack of a better word, triggering. And so I that's
Speaker 1: why I really appreciate the conversation I had with this
Speaker 1: week's guest, Claire Bidwell Smith, and I'll get into her
Speaker 1: in a moment. But something I really love about how
Speaker 1: we started this episode is we took into account you know,
Speaker 1: if someone is listening um, maybe they need to kind
Speaker 1: of ground themselves before they get into the episode. And
Speaker 1: that had nothing to do with last week's Fear of
Speaker 1: Flying episode. I've recorded a bunch of these interviews, you know,
Speaker 1: months and months in advance as I tried to get
Speaker 1: ahead of this podcast, and it just sort of shook
Speaker 1: out that way that these two episodes are back to back.
Speaker 1: But in um Claire's new book Anxiety, the Missing Stage
Speaker 1: of grief. Her book starts with asking the reader to,
Speaker 1: you know, make sure they're in kind of a safe
Speaker 1: space mentally physically. Maybe they need to take a minute
Speaker 1: and do some breathing before they dive into a book
Speaker 1: about grief and loss and death and anxiety. And so
Speaker 1: we sort of talked about that at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the episode. You know, what can people do when they're
Speaker 1: about to listen to something that may just stir up
Speaker 1: some even if it's not emotions, but just physical sensations
Speaker 1: that are uncomfortable that you don't want to have while
Speaker 1: you're driving to work or sitting at your desk listening
Speaker 1: with headphones on. So I guess if you need to
Speaker 1: hit pause and take a few breaths and get get
Speaker 1: centered and tell yourself you're safe, it's okay. But we
Speaker 1: are going to be talking about death and anxiety in
Speaker 1: this episode, and it's actually one of my favorite episodes
Speaker 1: because I love talking about death because I don't know
Speaker 1: if you're anything like me, but I'm going to die
Speaker 1: someday and I don't know when, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: that's sort of how we all come into this world, right.
Speaker 1: We don't get a return ticket, We don't know when
Speaker 1: that is going to happen, and in my opinion, I
Speaker 1: think that's probably what's created a lot of my anxiety. Now,
Speaker 1: if I was given the choice, what would you rather
Speaker 1: not know at all? Would you rather be more like
Speaker 1: an animal who just has no sense of the fact
Speaker 1: that they're mortal? I guess not. I mean, I have
Speaker 1: a feeling that it probably works out better too to
Speaker 1: know though this is a special ex variants and this
Speaker 1: is a limited time offer. I mean, who knows. I
Speaker 1: can be pretty unmotivated as it is knowing you know,
Speaker 1: um that we're all not here forever. So I imagine
Speaker 1: if I really had no concept of that. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know how much I would get done in
Speaker 1: a day. I don't know how much I would really
Speaker 1: think about enjoying myself. Who knows. But one thing that
Speaker 1: I do know is that in my entire life, I've
Speaker 1: had a fear of death. I I pushed those feelings away.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to think about it because I thought
Speaker 1: to think about it would make it worse. In my
Speaker 1: experience has been completely the opposite. Not thinking about the
Speaker 1: fact that people die or I might die has just
Speaker 1: festered in my soul, in my psyche, even in my body,
Speaker 1: and it came out as intense panic attacks. And and honestly,
Speaker 1: I'd rather be uncomfortable for a few minutes a day,
Speaker 1: intellectually thinking about death, maybe feeling some sensations of anxiety,
Speaker 1: than having quote out of the blue panic attacks six
Speaker 1: to ten times a day for decades like I used to.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until I read Claire's book that something
Speaker 1: just made sense to me that hadn't made sense for decades.
Speaker 1: And I that's why I love continuing to investigate anxiety,
Speaker 1: because I keep learning things, or I keep changing my
Speaker 1: own story and saying, oh wait, that's why I was
Speaker 1: so anxious about then, because I remember my panic attacks
Speaker 1: really heating up when I was about twelve years old,
Speaker 1: and until then they've been pretty relegated to airplanes, things
Speaker 1: like that, places where it makes sense. But I started
Speaker 1: having panic attacks just around just in life when I
Speaker 1: was about twelve. And for you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: the story is, oh, well, you know, it's the eighties,
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of talk about nuclear war
Speaker 1: on TV, and you know, all of us kids in
Speaker 1: the eighties were just thought, any minute now, we were
Speaker 1: going to get newked because that's that's kind of what
Speaker 1: we were told. And I guess, I guess that could
Speaker 1: have awesome panic. I mean, for sure wasn't my favorite thing.
Speaker 1: But I wonder how much I really internalized that, I
Speaker 1: really understood that that was an actual risk. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but it wasn't until I read Claire's
Speaker 1: book that I realized. I think when my grandfather died
Speaker 1: is when my panic attacks really started visiting me a
Speaker 1: lot more. And so the way that my mind worked
Speaker 1: through this in the years, you know, my whole life
Speaker 1: actually was well, I wasn't that close with my grandfather
Speaker 1: and even know if I ever had a one on
Speaker 1: one deep conversation with him. He died when I was twelve.
Speaker 1: He had dozens of grandchildren. We saw him twice a
Speaker 1: year at holidays. I mean, really, what would I be
Speaker 1: panicking about the fact that he died. I mean, grandparents died.
Speaker 1: We almost say it in a sort of flip way, like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, how does it has anyone you know died
Speaker 1: on just just my grandparents, you know, like it's like
Speaker 1: all those people are supposed to die. And that's just
Speaker 1: sort of how I looked at it. You know, just
Speaker 1: just my grandfather died when I was twelve, no big deal,
Speaker 1: but it's like it was a big It was the
Speaker 1: first death I've ever experienced. I remember I did see
Speaker 1: his body um at the funeral home and and I
Speaker 1: didn't love that. I didn't. I didn't mean to. I
Speaker 1: I turned a corner and open casket, and you know,
Speaker 1: and going to the graveyard and just seeing a hole
Speaker 1: in the ground and what you know, putting a coffin
Speaker 1: in there, and he's in there and he's not alive,
Speaker 1: and we all threw a flower on it. It's all
Speaker 1: very beautiful. But I mean, that's weird. I'm not judging it.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that we should come up with a
Speaker 1: new tradition. I'm just saying that's just interesting, different experience
Speaker 1: that is death in front of you. And I don't
Speaker 1: think I loved it. And I think in my brain
Speaker 1: the last few decades, I thought, well, I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're not that close with someone, how could it affect you.
Speaker 1: It's like, because it's death and you're twelve, and this
Speaker 1: is the first time you're seeing this thing, you sort
Speaker 1: of knew in the back of your head happens to grandparents.
Speaker 1: But it's gonna happen to you, you know, And uh,
Speaker 1: he wasn't sick a long time. It was pretty sudden,
Speaker 1: and of course that affected me, but I really think
Speaker 1: gave me anxiety and panic attacks. I just didn't understand
Speaker 1: how those two were connected. And what I like about
Speaker 1: her book Anxiety the Missing Stage of Grief. I think
Speaker 1: it came out at the perfect time because I remember
Speaker 1: during the lockdown of feeling something that was not anxiety
Speaker 1: and it was not depression, but it was grief. I
Speaker 1: was grieving the fact that the world was in the
Speaker 1: state that it was, that so many people were dying
Speaker 1: of COVID, that so many people were sick, out of work,
Speaker 1: scared that I didn't, you know, I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: be able to see people. I lived alone, and I
Speaker 1: have depression and anxiety, and I and I knew this
Speaker 1: isn't depression, because depression is almost like a lack of
Speaker 1: feeling anything right, that this was more. Um, it just
Speaker 1: gets you in the gut where it just feels like
Speaker 1: this is so much sorrow. And I realized, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: in some grief around the pandemic, and I think grief
Speaker 1: isn't something we talk about that much because I mean,
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do with grief? Right? You know,
Speaker 1: anxiety at least know what you should do about it,
Speaker 1: whether you do it or not. Oh, I think there's
Speaker 1: some breathing involved. Everyone says maybe some yoga, maybe some therapy.
Speaker 1: But grief, it just seems like, Oh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's too much, you know, and I have to work.
Speaker 1: What am I gonna do. I can't take a month
Speaker 1: off and go grieve somewhere, you know, and and uh,
Speaker 1: and that might involve crying, and I just forget it.
Speaker 1: I can't. And I've always heard about the five stages
Speaker 1: of grief, and I'd always heard that they weren't linear,
Speaker 1: so that if somebody dies, it's not like right away
Speaker 1: you're bawling your eyes out, and you might or you
Speaker 1: might not, or you might feel numb. And and I
Speaker 1: talked to to clear in this episode about myself. A
Speaker 1: few times I did mention the death of my grandfather.
Speaker 1: I mentioned the death of someone I know, um in
Speaker 1: this episode. I really didn't want to. In a weird way,
Speaker 1: it just sort of came out. And the reason it
Speaker 1: did is, as I'm hosting this podcast, I'm not really
Speaker 1: trying to get advice for myself. Necessarily sometimes I am,
Speaker 1: but I just figure, well, if I feel this way,
Speaker 1: I'm not unique because I'm a human on the earth.
Speaker 1: Maybe someone listening can get something out of the example
Speaker 1: I'm making of myself in this moment. And so I
Speaker 1: didn't love bringing up this person. I knew that that
Speaker 1: passed away, but I just decided to do it anyway
Speaker 1: because I felt like I didn't have a normal grief. Um,
Speaker 1: I was in such shocked. I didn't feel anything for
Speaker 1: a while, and people would call me. You know, I
Speaker 1: got dozens and dozens of phone calls within the first
Speaker 1: day of everybody finding out, and it was like, how
Speaker 1: are you doing? People would tell me what I was
Speaker 1: feeling instead of just asking, Oh, you must be on
Speaker 1: the ground sobbing, you must be this, you must be that.
Speaker 1: And because I wasn't any of those things, I thought
Speaker 1: I must be evil and the sociopaths and things wrong
Speaker 1: with me, and you know, and then when I would
Speaker 1: tell people I'm kind of in shocked, oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Well once you're out of shock, you will be wailing
Speaker 1: and screaming and crying and it's and then just that
Speaker 1: never happened, and so we talked a lot about how
Speaker 1: to let others grieve, you know, and not grief shame,
Speaker 1: which is something that came up during the pandemic, or
Speaker 1: what are you grieving about? You know, you have a
Speaker 1: job and you're fine, or you know you're not allowed
Speaker 1: to grieve because you know you're not the worst case
Speaker 1: scenario in this scenario, or or there's no right way
Speaker 1: to grief. But anxiety is a huge part of grief. Suddenly,
Speaker 1: you know, we talked about how people going through grief
Speaker 1: might develop panic attacks or hypochondria or social anxiety. And
Speaker 1: what I found mind blowing was that what Clear wrote
Speaker 1: about in her book is that the five stages of
Speaker 1: grief were initially written about people who were dying, not
Speaker 1: for the grieving, and so there needs to be this
Speaker 1: sixth stage, which is anxiety, because I never knew the
Speaker 1: five stages of grief were initially just for the dying.
Speaker 1: So that kind of blew my mind and really and
Speaker 1: made me realize that we need to look at grief
Speaker 1: in a whole new way. So I hope you get
Speaker 1: a lot out of this episode. Um, you know, I
Speaker 1: feel like it's a little bit of a heavy topic
Speaker 1: for this holiday season, but I almost feel like it's
Speaker 1: perfect because I'm sure we've all lost people in our
Speaker 1: lives in the holiday season brings that up, or we
Speaker 1: have our own grief about I don't even know. Maybe
Speaker 1: you dread the new year coming up because you're supposed
Speaker 1: to have achieved all of these things last year and
Speaker 1: look ahead to the next. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: that kind of thing brings up grief for me, even
Speaker 1: though it's not just the you know, grief doesn't just
Speaker 1: mean somebody died. And we have a really fun conversation
Speaker 1: at the end where we talk about how we wish
Speaker 1: we could talk about death at dinner parties at grocery stores.
Speaker 1: So I think you will enjoy this episode. As heavy
Speaker 1: as it sounds like it's going to be, I actually
Speaker 1: found it really light and really affirming and really lovely.
Speaker 1: So I'll tell you a little bit about my guest today,
Speaker 1: Claire Bidwell Smith. She's an American therapist and an author
Speaker 1: who specializes in grief. She has written a memoir called
Speaker 1: the Rules of Inheritance, and she has another book called
Speaker 1: After This When Life Is Over, Where Do We Go?
Speaker 1: And her latest book that is The focus of this
Speaker 1: interview anxiety, the Missing Stage of Grief. She also has
Speaker 1: a podcast called The New Day Podcast, and every week
Speaker 1: she tries to find a way to make life a
Speaker 1: little better so that you do not have to suffer
Speaker 1: in silence. Maybe you're successful but miserable at work. Maybe
Speaker 1: you have the perfect family on Instagram, but you're at
Speaker 1: each other's throats in real life. Or maybe you can't
Speaker 1: even put your finger on what feels weird, but you
Speaker 1: know you deserve more. Whatever it is, You're not alone.
Speaker 1: Hosted by renowned grief expert and therapist Clear Bidwell Smith,
Speaker 1: New Day offers easy actions you can try to keep
Speaker 1: moving forward. And Claire is a grief expert as I
Speaker 1: talked about, and she does lead programs for grief in
Speaker 1: addition to working with people one on one, led by
Speaker 1: her work in hospice and private practice. So let's talk
Speaker 1: to Claire Bidwell Smith. My guest today is Claire build
Speaker 1: Will Smith, author of Aniety, the Missing Stage of Grief and,
Speaker 1: as the description says, taking a step beyond Elizabeth Coogler
Speaker 1: Ross is widely accepted five stages of grief. Anxiety, the
Speaker 1: Missing Stage of Grief explains the intimate connection between death
Speaker 1: and grief and how they specifically cause anxiety. Unpacking everything
Speaker 1: from our age old fears about mortality to the bear
Speaker 1: vulnerability a loss can make us feel welcome. Claire, thank
Speaker 1: you for being on Anxiety Bites with me. Thanks Jan
Speaker 1: thanks for having me in your book. You mentioned that
Speaker 1: people should do anxiety level checkens as they're reading it,
Speaker 1: and so I wanted to have you explained first what
Speaker 1: that is and if you could take our listeners through
Speaker 1: one in case listening to this very episode might spike
Speaker 1: some anxiety for them. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that's the funny thing about anxiety, or the slippery thing
Speaker 1: about it, is that we can have anxiety about our anxiety,
Speaker 1: and talking about anxiety can make us anxious. However, the
Speaker 1: way to work on anxiety is to talk about it,
Speaker 1: is to look at it and to lean into it.
Speaker 1: But it kind of just gets scary in the beginning, right,
Speaker 1: And then the more familiar you become with talking about it,
Speaker 1: with looking at it, the easier it gets. But in
Speaker 1: the beginning we just kind of want to slam the
Speaker 1: door on it when we when we think about it
Speaker 1: or talk about it. But knowing how to just start
Speaker 1: getting familiar with it is the way to get a
Speaker 1: grip on it. I don't think it's possible to fully
Speaker 1: get rid of anxiety, and I would love to think
Speaker 1: it is. I would love for that to be true.
Speaker 1: But in all the research I've done personally my own
Speaker 1: anxiety and with people I've talked to and clients I've
Speaker 1: worked with, you know, we don't get rid of it completely,
Speaker 1: but we can learn how to manage it, and we
Speaker 1: can learn how to how to be with it, you know,
Speaker 1: but that requires talking about it. So if somebody's listening
Speaker 1: right now and they're thinking, oh my gosh, I make
Speaker 1: it really anxious during this episode. I've lost someone recently,
Speaker 1: would you is there anything you advise them to do
Speaker 1: while they're listening or before they sit down to listen,
Speaker 1: Just take some breaths, Maybe maybe listen during a time
Speaker 1: when you know when you're finished. You can do some
Speaker 1: thing that to support yourself, whether you're going to be
Speaker 1: with a family member or a friend, or be able
Speaker 1: to call somebody, um, or just kind of go into it.
Speaker 1: Prepping yourself like this may stir up some anxiety for me,
Speaker 1: that's okay. UM. One of the ways we start to
Speaker 1: work out anxiety is to kind of externalize it, you know,
Speaker 1: so to think of it as this separate thing. It's not.
Speaker 1: We are not the anxiety, and it is a thing
Speaker 1: that happens and that comes into our room, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: So thinking about it that way, like, Okay, anxiety is
Speaker 1: going to come in the room with me as I
Speaker 1: listened to this, and that's okay, I'm okay. Um, So
Speaker 1: kind of recognizing it, Yeah, that's so smart. I think
Speaker 1: we do so many things unconsciously. You know, throw on
Speaker 1: a podcast, drive to work, you know, and now you're
Speaker 1: stuck in traffic on the freeway and and that might
Speaker 1: cause some anxiety, and now you're listening to this podcast
Speaker 1: of an anxiety and then you just get to work
Speaker 1: and begin your day. And there was no calm down
Speaker 1: in a way, you know, there was no book ending
Speaker 1: about it. I think that's smart to think about when
Speaker 1: we take in information. Yeah, I mean I think about
Speaker 1: this a lot. People ask me a lot about about
Speaker 1: anxiety and whether or not it's increasing in our culture,
Speaker 1: and the answer is yes. Um. But I think one
Speaker 1: of the reasons for that is because we wake up
Speaker 1: in the morning and the first thing we do pretty
Speaker 1: much all of us is look at our phone right
Speaker 1: before we're even out of bed. We haven't gotten out
Speaker 1: of bed, we haven't talked to the person laying next
Speaker 1: to us, if there is one. Now we're looking at
Speaker 1: our phone, and in the sixty seconds that we're looking
Speaker 1: at our phone, we're downloading so much information, a lot
Speaker 1: of anxiety provoking, right like what the president said last night,
Speaker 1: what happened overseas somewhere, what our best friend made for breakfast,
Speaker 1: that we're never going to achieve in our perfect goals.
Speaker 1: So like we're just creating anxiety before we've even gotten
Speaker 1: out of bed in the morning. So I think being
Speaker 1: more intentional about information that we take in is important. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and getting right into your book. I it blew my
Speaker 1: mind when I read this, because I think we're all
Speaker 1: familiar with the five stages of grief, and can you
Speaker 1: tell me what those are? The traditional ones denial, anger, bargaining, depression,
Speaker 1: and acceptance. Okay, And so now we're adding anxiety to it.
Speaker 1: And what you said in your book is those five
Speaker 1: stages of grief, they are for people who are dying.
Speaker 1: It was not meant to be a model of grieving
Speaker 1: for the people who are alive and grieving the death
Speaker 1: of someone, And that blew my mind. I don't know
Speaker 1: if anybody has ever said that before, if you're the
Speaker 1: first to note it, or if I just never heard it,
Speaker 1: but that really helps. It is something that most people
Speaker 1: don't realize. Elizabeth Coogler Ross I love her. If you
Speaker 1: look into who she was at all, she was like
Speaker 1: such a bucking rebel, a pioneer. She was doing stuff
Speaker 1: and talking about things that nobody else was in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties as a female physician UM, and she was
Speaker 1: really interested in dying patients in this hospital in Chicago
Speaker 1: where she was working, and all the other doctors and
Speaker 1: staff were very dismissive of people who were dying and
Speaker 1: of their experience. They were just treating them physically, and
Speaker 1: she was very curious about, like what was happening for
Speaker 1: them UM on an emotional level, and so she started
Speaker 1: to speak with them and she came up with this
Speaker 1: um these five stages that they were going through nial, anger, bargaining, depression,
Speaker 1: and then acceptance, which make a lot of sense if
Speaker 1: you're facing death, right, they actually do often happen in
Speaker 1: that linear order. The five stages were so swept away
Speaker 1: by our culture that she then began to apply them
Speaker 1: to the grief process. There is a book, you know,
Speaker 1: on grief and grieving. It has the five stages in it.
Speaker 1: So these five stages were then applied by her to
Speaker 1: to the grief process. But even she admitted that they
Speaker 1: aren't meant to be this perfect formula, and they often
Speaker 1: don't work in a linear fashion in the kind of
Speaker 1: same way that they did for the dying process. But
Speaker 1: our culture loves them. We love the five stages. We
Speaker 1: can't get away from them. And I think it's partly
Speaker 1: because it would be great if there were a formula. Right,
Speaker 1: You're in some of the biggest pain you've ever been
Speaker 1: in in your life. You're grieving the loss of someone
Speaker 1: you love, and you are looking for any way to
Speaker 1: not feel this way, and you're like, great, five stages.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go through these five and then I'm gonna
Speaker 1: feel better. Right. That's why I think we've gotten stuck
Speaker 1: with these five stages. I've heard you anytime i've been
Speaker 1: grieving something. Oh, it's not linear, So don't worry if
Speaker 1: one day you feel like you're an acceptance and then
Speaker 1: you're angry again, and and and that is helpful. But
Speaker 1: for me, I it's reading your book made me realize
Speaker 1: I had this notion during the pandemic that I mean,
Speaker 1: I know we're still in it, but I mean the
Speaker 1: very very early stages of lockdown that I was, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I had heard about your work and I
Speaker 1: was thinking about, Yeah, that makes so much sense that
Speaker 1: anxiety is such a part of grief, because I think,
Speaker 1: even if it's not the death of someone, the grief
Speaker 1: of life changing, you lose a job, you have a breakup,
Speaker 1: anything I think can cause anxiety. And I think the
Speaker 1: way we see people acting these days, you know, whether
Speaker 1: it's someone freaking out on an airplane, is they have
Speaker 1: to wear a mask or we just see a lot
Speaker 1: of pain, I think people are having anxiety about grieving.
Speaker 1: The notion that oh, wow, you know, we've never been
Speaker 1: through anything like this before. There's suddenly this disease spreading
Speaker 1: around the world, and and most of our lives were
Speaker 1: pretty comfortable and and and not just to say the
Speaker 1: pandemic everything can cause us to grief. But I really
Speaker 1: feel like I saw a lot of anxiety and then
Speaker 1: that must be grief deep down in a way, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a big mix of both. I mean, loss is
Speaker 1: about transition, and transition creates anxiety. We have a lot
Speaker 1: of anxiety about change. Um. We are a very adaptable species,
Speaker 1: but we also resist change and we get afraid. Um.
Speaker 1: But we like to get comfortable, you know, get routines
Speaker 1: and feel like we know what's going to happen tomorrow
Speaker 1: or next year or ten years from now. The pandemic
Speaker 1: blew all of that out of the water, right, Like,
Speaker 1: none of us had any idea of what was going
Speaker 1: to happen tomorrow, let alone next year, and in some
Speaker 1: ways we still don't. So we've been sitting with this
Speaker 1: unknown and this uncertainty which was always there. We never
Speaker 1: really had any control, but it seems like it. We
Speaker 1: have the illusion of it most of the time. And
Speaker 1: the pandemic really took that illusion away, which I think
Speaker 1: you're right, started up so much anxiety. And on top
Speaker 1: of that, we were grief so much. We were grieving
Speaker 1: the loss of our usual way of life. Some people
Speaker 1: were grieving at people they've lost to covid um. People
Speaker 1: are grieving their kids being home from school, losing jobs
Speaker 1: and small businesses, and our health um, and so there
Speaker 1: was so much there to grieve, so much to be
Speaker 1: anxious about, and it does. It creates this perfect storm
Speaker 1: where people are totally freaking out on airplanes. It takes
Speaker 1: so much sense. Anxiety bites will be right back after
Speaker 1: a quick little message from one of our sponsors. When
Speaker 1: we talk about grief, though, when I think of grieving,
Speaker 1: like if you said to someone, hey, you know you're
Speaker 1: experiencing is brief? It seems like I don't have time
Speaker 1: for grief. Grief is a vacation, you know, you take
Speaker 1: time off, you wear black, and you mope around for
Speaker 1: two months. Who can do that? You know? I feel
Speaker 1: like in our culture you have to grieve while you
Speaker 1: do other things right, and so I feel like people
Speaker 1: just go I don't. I don't even have time to grief.
Speaker 1: That's like, you know, you have to be Bill Pionnaire
Speaker 1: with your own private island and a million people doing
Speaker 1: work for you. How do you? I don't know what
Speaker 1: the word is, but how do people grieve who are busy?
Speaker 1: I guess if that makes sense? Can you grieve and
Speaker 1: can keep moving through your life if you need to? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes a lot of sense. No, most of us
Speaker 1: cannot afford to just take two months off and sit
Speaker 1: in our feelings and like go to some grief or
Speaker 1: treat and costa rica or something. You know, it's it's
Speaker 1: not it's not an option for most of us. I
Speaker 1: will say that, um, many of us feel like we
Speaker 1: can't take time to grief, but that isn't really um
Speaker 1: a choice. Grief has its way with us no matter what.
Speaker 1: And so when we don't create space for it, I
Speaker 1: feel like it's more about creating space than finding time.
Speaker 1: Oh that makes sense, yeah, And I think when we
Speaker 1: don't make space for it, it it shows up in these
Speaker 1: other ways, like anxiety, anger, depression, irritability, substance abuse, toxic relationships,
Speaker 1: Like it spills out in all these other ways when
Speaker 1: we don't make space to just really sit with actual
Speaker 1: grief and sadness and honoring something that has changed or
Speaker 1: that we've lost. You know, Um, we covered up with
Speaker 1: all kinds of other stuff and we say, oh, we're
Speaker 1: not grieving. We don't have time to grieve, but you
Speaker 1: have time to be really angry and like drink too
Speaker 1: much and you know, freak out on an airplane. So
Speaker 1: like there's that, and then I think making space and
Speaker 1: time for grief looks like, um, you know, even just
Speaker 1: little bits of it, you know, listening to a podcast
Speaker 1: and just to have a minute to reflect on your
Speaker 1: grief for your anxiety. UM. Journaling is a great way,
Speaker 1: which I know everybody rolls their eyes up, but it's
Speaker 1: really helpful. Take five minutes in the morning and journal
Speaker 1: a little bit. Um, let yourself cry. You know. I
Speaker 1: have a lot of clients who will schedule time for
Speaker 1: themselves to cry. And so they'll pick one day a
Speaker 1: week when maybe they've got a couple hours on a
Speaker 1: Saturday afternoon, and they will listen to some sad music
Speaker 1: and look at some photos of their person or listen
Speaker 1: to some old voicemails and they'll cry. And then they
Speaker 1: button it back up and have to go back into
Speaker 1: their busy lives. And that's okay. You know, that's making
Speaker 1: some space and some time for it. I love that idea,
Speaker 1: because you're you're buttoning back up after you've released an emotion.
Speaker 1: I think people just button up before they've even done that,
Speaker 1: you know. And and uh yeah, I know people roll
Speaker 1: their eyes at all those things. Journal and cry, but
Speaker 1: that's how we release. I think it's hard to because
Speaker 1: you know, I lost someone that I during the pandemic,
Speaker 1: not due to the pandemic, and um, it was actually
Speaker 1: my ex husband I passed away and we weren't in touch.
Speaker 1: We hadn't been in touch for a decade. And I know, um,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, but I assume he died
Speaker 1: with some resentment at me. And UM. It was interesting
Speaker 1: because I didn't feel anything. I was in that shock
Speaker 1: that you talked about in your book. And what I
Speaker 1: found very unhelpful was everyone suddenly was a grief expert,
Speaker 1: you know, and and everyone has had someone in their
Speaker 1: life who's died, but no one had been in my
Speaker 1: exact situation. And I felt attacked by the people trying
Speaker 1: to help me, UM, calling and saying, you must be
Speaker 1: freaking out right now, you must be bawling, And when
Speaker 1: I'd say, no, actually been shock and it feels bad.
Speaker 1: I feel bad. I'm a bad person. Oh any minute now,
Speaker 1: you're gonna just break down. And I never did. But
Speaker 1: what did happen was I mysteriously started having a rapid
Speaker 1: heart rate UM the month after, and I went to
Speaker 1: you know, I knew, deep down this has got to
Speaker 1: be something. I went to the doctor and of course
Speaker 1: I'm normal. And then I suddenly had um tooth pain
Speaker 1: and I had the need for a root canal. My
Speaker 1: dentist said, you must have been, you know, gripping your
Speaker 1: teeth in your sleep. And so there was, you know,
Speaker 1: there was the grief. It was rapid heartbeat. I need
Speaker 1: a root canal. And I cried a little bit once.
Speaker 1: But this notion that I never had this nervous breakdown
Speaker 1: where I'm like, oh Lord, and like crying and screaming.
Speaker 1: I still feel like I did it wrong, you know.
Speaker 1: And and there's guilt in that, because again you have
Speaker 1: these people coming in with their expertise, and it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, my first response to most things is anxiety.
Speaker 1: So I don't know why it didn't surprise me that
Speaker 1: that was a response to this. He know, it's funny.
Speaker 1: I think that's the most common thing that people say
Speaker 1: to me, is they feel like they're not doing it right.
Speaker 1: Um and and there's no right way to grief, and
Speaker 1: and every loss is so different. And this is a complicated,
Speaker 1: tricky one, right, you haven't been in touch in a decade.
Speaker 1: There were complicated feelings. He's an X who knows how
Speaker 1: he felt about you. You know, how are you supposed
Speaker 1: to grieve that? There's not really a blueprint for it.
Speaker 1: It's not the obvious, like someone that you were in
Speaker 1: a relationship with currently and loved and had good feelings
Speaker 1: about um, And so it's confusing, and I think it's
Speaker 1: hard to kind of even find your way into those feelings.
Speaker 1: But also, this is the thing about grief that's interesting,
Speaker 1: is that a loss like that brings up so much
Speaker 1: like it brings up your history and your past and
Speaker 1: choices you've made an age you know, he's a peer,
Speaker 1: he's someone your age sense, and so it's just suddenly,
Speaker 1: you know, you you're looking at your life in this
Speaker 1: new lens. And that causes a lot of anxiety, right, Um,
Speaker 1: there's a lot there. But yeah, people love to be
Speaker 1: grief experts. They like to appropriate other people's grief too.
Speaker 1: I think people get excited sometimes some people get excited
Speaker 1: about other people's free and they like to kind of
Speaker 1: jump in with it, um, And then some people don't
Speaker 1: want anything to do with it. I like the idea
Speaker 1: of being grief curious rather than being an expert, you know,
Speaker 1: just being like, what's what's your grief? Like? You know,
Speaker 1: I know what minds like, but what's yours like. That's
Speaker 1: a great thing to think about because if if someone
Speaker 1: you know listening to this has an experience the death
Speaker 1: of a loved one or anyone, it's you know, they're
Speaker 1: they're going to have people in their life that have
Speaker 1: or even if you have whatever, whoever you are. Grief
Speaker 1: curious is a great way to put it, because I
Speaker 1: don't know, you you really see that person in front
Speaker 1: of you. Yeah, totally. We saw a lot of grief
Speaker 1: shaming during the pandemic, which I just found so what's
Speaker 1: grief shaming? Just really telling people that they shouldn't be
Speaker 1: grieving something that they were grieving, you know, like um,
Speaker 1: you know, especially privileged people who were maybe grieving changes
Speaker 1: in their lives and like they weren't allowed to be
Speaker 1: grieving because they were privileged, or you know, someone grieving
Speaker 1: the loss of a pet and that not being accept
Speaker 1: a bole because it wasn't the loss of a person,
Speaker 1: you know, just really putting a lot of judgment and
Speaker 1: shame around people's grief process. And it was like why
Speaker 1: why why just just live your own life and have
Speaker 1: your own grief, And there's there's there's not a competition here,
Speaker 1: or you're not allowed to feel grief because you have
Speaker 1: so much other stuff, you know, like so many other resources.
Speaker 1: That's not really fair. We all get to grief, we
Speaker 1: all get to struggle, and I think that's where, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of the anxiety can come in, right, is
Speaker 1: that like self judgment, all these ruminating thoughts in the
Speaker 1: back of our head because you know, like you mentioned,
Speaker 1: when someone dies, we start thinking about ourselves and how
Speaker 1: can we not because we know we're going to die,
Speaker 1: And so I think, I, you know, I became very
Speaker 1: self focused anytime someone I know dies, even someone I
Speaker 1: don't know. I just read about it. Someone my age
Speaker 1: it dies and I'm like, oh my God, tell me everything,
Speaker 1: cause I'm I want to know, you know, is this
Speaker 1: something that could happen to me? And I think maybe
Speaker 1: we have shame or guilt about that, But isn't that
Speaker 1: a natural reaction to hearing about death at all, is
Speaker 1: to think about ourselves completely. It's okay, and I think
Speaker 1: it's normal, and I think it's healthy and interesting, and
Speaker 1: it's one of the ways we grow and transform and change,
Speaker 1: and we do grief. Celebrities and public figures, you know,
Speaker 1: people always feel weird sometimes about that I didn't know them,
Speaker 1: but you know, you can still think about them and
Speaker 1: you can still feel like you know them on some sense.
Speaker 1: They can evoke a lot of things for you about
Speaker 1: your life. There's a lot there, and I think we
Speaker 1: just need to let ourselves have more feelings. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like an excuse to take ourselves through the story
Speaker 1: of our life, you know, um that we don't normally
Speaker 1: said are undoing. So one of the interesting things is,
Speaker 1: you know, we own our anxiety. And there's been many
Speaker 1: episodes of this podcast that come out where it's like
Speaker 1: anxiety these tangling, nervous feelings, maybe a panic attack. But
Speaker 1: how does anxiety manifest in the grief process, like you know, regret, guilt, sadness,
Speaker 1: replaying things, conversations we had or ruminating about once we
Speaker 1: should have had. Is what are all of the kind
Speaker 1: of symptoms of grief anxiety? Yeah, there's a lot um.
Speaker 1: You know, grief anxiety is interesting. You can you can
Speaker 1: have been anxious to your whole life and and our
Speaker 1: you've been familiar with anxiety, and then you go through
Speaker 1: a loss and either either it gives you this big
Speaker 1: uptick and anxiety or you're having new symptoms of anxiety.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're having panic attacks and you've never had them before,
Speaker 1: you're having social phobias or hypochondria um. And then you
Speaker 1: can be someone also who's never had anxiety, who has
Speaker 1: been just totally you know, pretty stable and study all along,
Speaker 1: and suddenly you go through a loss and and everything
Speaker 1: is anxious. Um. And so so that's that's interesting to
Speaker 1: look at. I think the correlation between your anxiety and
Speaker 1: the loss is the first thing to really look at. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, were you anxious before? If not, you know,
Speaker 1: clearly it has to do with this. If you already
Speaker 1: were anxious before, has it changed since the loss? But
Speaker 1: the thing that I first do with clients when they
Speaker 1: come in, usually they comeing because they've had a panic
Speaker 1: attack and they've gone to the er and they're like
Speaker 1: that and they've had all the tests done and and
Speaker 1: the doctor has said to them, you're normal, you're fine,
Speaker 1: you're racing heart is normal, you're you're you're perfectly normal.
Speaker 1: Go see a therapist, right, um. And usually they've said, well,
Speaker 1: my dad died last you know, like last August or something.
Speaker 1: Could it be that? And they're like, yes, go see
Speaker 1: a therapist. So um, So then they come to me,
Speaker 1: and so the first thing I really do is say, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: what's your grief been like? And this would be you know,
Speaker 1: looking back at your example of losing your ex husband,
Speaker 1: it's like, what's your grief been like? Have you let
Speaker 1: yourself grief? Have you? Are there complicated feelings in the grief?
Speaker 1: You know, we have all kinds of feelings about people
Speaker 1: when they died. They aren't always positive. Sometimes we're angry,
Speaker 1: sometimes we're hurt. Sometimes there's unresolved conversations. Sometimes we fucked
Speaker 1: up and didn't do something that we should have done
Speaker 1: or said, or showed up in some way. And how
Speaker 1: do we sit with that and sort through it after
Speaker 1: the person is gone? There are lots of ways, but
Speaker 1: initially it seems impossible. Um. And so we're we have
Speaker 1: all these complicated feelings that we don't know what to
Speaker 1: do with, so we don't make space for them, and
Speaker 1: then they spill out in this anxiety and these racing
Speaker 1: hearts and the panic attacks and hypochondrias. When I see
Speaker 1: so much, you start to worry about your own health
Speaker 1: and your own body and what's gonna happen now. That
Speaker 1: makes sense. Um, is it hard to convince them that
Speaker 1: they can get they can work through the last thing
Speaker 1: they said or didn't say, even without the other person here,
Speaker 1: Like it it's possible. It's kind of it's really all
Speaker 1: about them. Yeah, it is. Um, I think it's really possible.
Speaker 1: It's hard. It takes time. Um, there's steps that you
Speaker 1: need to take. Um, it's kind of like I'm making
Speaker 1: amends process. There's a lot of self forgiveness required. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of forgiveness of maybe the other person required. Um,
Speaker 1: there's self compassion required. You know, all these things that
Speaker 1: were like oh god, okay, yeah, I don't want to
Speaker 1: do those, but those are the ways that that we
Speaker 1: have to kind of the only way to move through
Speaker 1: those those things that are still sitting, those unresolved, those
Speaker 1: unresolved things. You know, a lot of people, I'll see
Speaker 1: a lot of people who may be lost a parent,
Speaker 1: but maybe they had a kind of shitty relationship with
Speaker 1: that parent and now they're gone, and they're like, wait,
Speaker 1: it's definitely clear that I will never be able to
Speaker 1: have a good relationship with them. It's over and wait,
Speaker 1: we didn't get to talk about this and that, or
Speaker 1: maybe I did something. It's so hard to kind of
Speaker 1: sort through that initially. But I think sitting down with
Speaker 1: a therapist or reading about these kinds of things, or
Speaker 1: even talking with I guess spiritual or religious counselor can help.
Speaker 1: You know, how do we how do we get clear
Speaker 1: about this stuff? How do we forgive them? How do
Speaker 1: we forgive ourselves? You know, I like that you said
Speaker 1: in your book closure is made up, and I think
Speaker 1: that is such a um kind of controlled, freaky thing
Speaker 1: that everyone thinks. I just need closure, you know, especially
Speaker 1: if someone's going through a breakup, let's meet for coffee, enclosure.
Speaker 1: You're never having closure. There's never closure. There's never closure.
Speaker 1: So what what do you mean by that it's made up?
Speaker 1: And what do we do instead of search for closure?
Speaker 1: I think some of it is like sitting with uncertainty
Speaker 1: and unknown, sitting with painful feelings. We can't tidy everything up.
Speaker 1: You know, some stuff is going to be messy, some
Speaker 1: stuff is going to be painful. Um, some stuff won't
Speaker 1: get resolved. You know, you're never going to um, maybe
Speaker 1: get an apology from someone you really want an apology from.
Speaker 1: So it's really more about learning how to sit with that,
Speaker 1: learning how to feel okay about it for yourself. They're
Speaker 1: never going to maybe turn into the nice person you
Speaker 1: wish they were or understand you in some way. But
Speaker 1: how can you understand yourself and feel okay about whatever
Speaker 1: it is that you want the apology for? You know?
Speaker 1: And I think that constantly seeking this idea of closure
Speaker 1: is only going to harm us and get in our way.
Speaker 1: And I think too, you know, there are like layers
Speaker 1: when we talk about the word acceptance, like that's a
Speaker 1: tricky word, especially for grief. It's never going to be
Speaker 1: okay that this person died. You're never gonna be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's fine, it's fine that my dad died, but like
Speaker 1: it's not. It's never gonna be okay, um. And so
Speaker 1: that kind of acceptance doesn't exist. We can accept that
Speaker 1: they're not going to be in our life anymore. We
Speaker 1: can accept that we're going to live with some pain
Speaker 1: around this. We can accept that things will be different.
Speaker 1: We can accept that we didn't get to have that
Speaker 1: final conversation or goodbye um, and learn how to sit
Speaker 1: with that and hold it. You know. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that the notion of there is no closure, it will
Speaker 1: always sit with us is like that can be a
Speaker 1: relief that can actually bring the closure feeling. Stop seeking
Speaker 1: that thing, stop changing, I can bring that closure feeling
Speaker 1: people want, which is uh. Again, it's it's hard to quantify,
Speaker 1: like the even the notion of okay, if they were
Speaker 1: if I whatever, if I said this on their death
Speaker 1: bet or that, you don't know how that would have
Speaker 1: made you feel. It may not have felt the way
Speaker 1: you wanted it to feel, and then there'd be grief
Speaker 1: over the closure I didn't feel like I thought it
Speaker 1: was going to feel, you know, right, And it changes
Speaker 1: all the time too, because we change, you know. So
Speaker 1: you know, Um, five years ago you probably had a
Speaker 1: certain amount of feelings about your ex husband, and five
Speaker 1: years from now you'll have a set of different feelings,
Speaker 1: you know, because it changes. And then so our internal
Speaker 1: relationship with these people changes to our understanding of them
Speaker 1: too as weak or older, wiser, or have certain life experiences.
Speaker 1: We understand the people around us in new ways that
Speaker 1: maybe we didn't at the time that we were, you know,
Speaker 1: seeking that closer. Yeah, we'll be right back. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: your book made me realize something. Um, here's another personal
Speaker 1: story of my life. When I was a kid, I
Speaker 1: had panic attacks. I started having them around like age
Speaker 1: eight or nine, but they were very specific to airplanes,
Speaker 1: and so, you know, we our family only flew once
Speaker 1: a year and otherwise that was it. But when my
Speaker 1: grandfather died when I was twelve, the panic attacks started.
Speaker 1: And they started literally the day he died. And I
Speaker 1: remember thinking, oh, that airplane feeling is here, which is
Speaker 1: so scary because it's not fun when it's in your home,
Speaker 1: like your safe space. And so reading your book made
Speaker 1: me realize I'm reframing my reasons I had panic disorder
Speaker 1: in the sense that I always thought, well, I gre
Speaker 1: up in the eighties and people are talking about nuclear
Speaker 1: war a lot. But my grandfather and I were not close.
Speaker 1: He had, you know, six children and dozens of grandchildren.
Speaker 1: He was lovely. I saw him once a year at Christmas.
Speaker 1: I don't even know if we spoke more than two sentences,
Speaker 1: but he was my grandfather, you know. And my dad
Speaker 1: went to visit him at the hospital as he was dying.
Speaker 1: And he lives a little further away from my grandfather's
Speaker 1: hospital than his brothers did, so he missed it. He
Speaker 1: missed the death, and my dad came home and I
Speaker 1: looked out the window as he was coming up the
Speaker 1: steps and I saw him trip and fall, and that
Speaker 1: that was something that that was a lot for me.
Speaker 1: I'd never seen grief like that where he couldn't walk.
Speaker 1: And he came inside and he was crying and he
Speaker 1: just said, my dad, he's dead. And for me, this
Speaker 1: twelve year old right to hear my dad was you know,
Speaker 1: he's a life still, but he was probably his fifties then,
Speaker 1: So my Daddy's dead. I think that literally broke my brain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's terrifying. It was so tender of a moment and
Speaker 1: and there was hugging and love, and the funeral was
Speaker 1: great and all that, but I started having massive panic
Speaker 1: attacks at his funeral and they never stopped until I
Speaker 1: went to therapy ten years later. But looking back on it,
Speaker 1: I go, oh, my god. I think even though the
Speaker 1: death wasn't the kind of death where you really knew
Speaker 1: someone blah blah blah, it was the first time death
Speaker 1: was real to me. Yeah, And to see your dad
Speaker 1: so affected by it, you know, and to think, well,
Speaker 1: I have a daddy, like what is that? How I'm
Speaker 1: going to feel if that happens to me? And that
Speaker 1: that could happen to you and that yeah, like and
Speaker 1: then I could be the dead person. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was like a neurosis that just kept growing. And like
Speaker 1: you said, I don't think I developed hypochondria, but just
Speaker 1: fear of death, like just if I do, if I
Speaker 1: stand to one place, I can't die. You know, the
Speaker 1: less I do, the more I'm like saving my own life.
Speaker 1: And it just that kind of um I don't know
Speaker 1: how to put it, but reading your book really blew
Speaker 1: my mind where I went, Oh my god, that's where
Speaker 1: it all started, that feeling of because I remember thinking
Speaker 1: where did I learn that feeling of unsafety? What have
Speaker 1: you uncovered about the flying? Did you have your pinpointed
Speaker 1: where that originated for you? Yeah, so I've done, Like
Speaker 1: I feel like now I fly all over the world
Speaker 1: by myself. I want to be if. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be a pilot, but I feel like I would
Speaker 1: love to be someone who flies with anxious people and
Speaker 1: helps them and since I can't really do that. I
Speaker 1: started this podcast as a way to talk about anxiety,
Speaker 1: but what I pinpointed eventually was that it's literally just
Speaker 1: the in general lack of control that we feel in
Speaker 1: life and We don't really get to see how much
Speaker 1: we're not in control unless we're in places like airplanes. Sure,
Speaker 1: like I let tiny a little tube up in the sky,
Speaker 1: where really we definitely don't feel any sense of control.
Speaker 1: I inherently don't think the plane's going to crash, and
Speaker 1: I actually kind of like being up there. But it's
Speaker 1: more that feeling of if I need help, but I
Speaker 1: can't get it right away, you know, unlike if I'm
Speaker 1: walking by a hospital and have a heart attack. Great. Perfect.
Speaker 1: So I think that's what it was, and that kind
Speaker 1: of seems to be for me, the everything of it all,
Speaker 1: which is lack of control. And then your grandfather's death
Speaker 1: completely reinforces that, you know, like that people die, that
Speaker 1: we don't have any control of it, that your dad
Speaker 1: didn't even get to be there, and that he was
Speaker 1: so affected by it, you know. Yeah, So I think
Speaker 1: I think my question and all of that is like
Speaker 1: people running around with panic disorder and anxiety. And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of times we focus on the world
Speaker 1: is stressful and blah blah blah, But it could be
Speaker 1: these little moments that I think, you know, when I
Speaker 1: think of death. I don't know how many times I've
Speaker 1: heard other people say it. I say it to go
Speaker 1: when people go, oh, is anyone in your life died? Oh?
Speaker 1: Even my grandparents. I was young, Like, like, their deaths
Speaker 1: don't count because they were old. I was young. Who cares?
Speaker 1: That's like nothing? And I wonder if, like so many
Speaker 1: of us, are carrying around our first deaths as a
Speaker 1: source of anxiety. Sure, you know, because even though you
Speaker 1: may not have had a really intense emotional connection to
Speaker 1: them as people are as family members, their death is
Speaker 1: still that first um, that first idea, and that first
Speaker 1: come firm ation that we don't get to choose how
Speaker 1: long we're here, you know, and that we do indeed
Speaker 1: exit and and we don't know when, and we don't
Speaker 1: know how, and and it's you know, I think that
Speaker 1: first knowledge of that is intense. It can spark anxiety
Speaker 1: to begin with. And as I'm sure you know, anxiety
Speaker 1: is kind of insidious. You know, once it gets a
Speaker 1: hold and you don't do anything about it, it just
Speaker 1: grows and grows until you start to figure out what
Speaker 1: to do with it. Yeah, it's like your new best
Speaker 1: friend that you didn't ask for your like, this person
Speaker 1: keeps showing up. Well, you know, what I thought was
Speaker 1: so cool in your book is you talk in the
Speaker 1: later chapters about Okay, well, let's figure it out, like
Speaker 1: what do we think about death? Like do we believe
Speaker 1: in an afterlife? Like let's let's almost get our affairs
Speaker 1: in order mentally, Like what do we think you know,
Speaker 1: and that can really help people? And how do you
Speaker 1: take people through that? Like when's the right time to
Speaker 1: start thinking about that stuff? I think there's always the
Speaker 1: right time. I mean, right now is a great time
Speaker 1: to think about it. We are such a death avoiding
Speaker 1: culture and we don't talk about it. We don't want
Speaker 1: to face it, we don't put our affairs in order
Speaker 1: or um. You know, we don't even train our medical
Speaker 1: professionals on how to deal with death and dying. So
Speaker 1: here we were going through a pandemic and do you
Speaker 1: know they don't teach death and dying in med school.
Speaker 1: Like there's not a point at any point where doctors
Speaker 1: or nurses or anybody have to take a class on
Speaker 1: death and dying. Right, So that alone is absurd, But
Speaker 1: then factor that into this last year and all these
Speaker 1: medical professionals on the front lines sitting there with like
Speaker 1: helping patients, say goodbye to their families over iPhones and
Speaker 1: being completely ill equipped to deal with that even for themselves,
Speaker 1: you know, because we don't talk about death and dying.
Speaker 1: We don't talk about it. So anything you can do
Speaker 1: to talk about it, you know. One of the books
Speaker 1: I've written was all about the afterlife and just kind
Speaker 1: of exploring it. And my favorite part about that book was,
Speaker 1: for a period of years, I asked everyone I met with, like,
Speaker 1: what do you think happens when we die? And I
Speaker 1: had the most awesome conversations because it's not something you
Speaker 1: ever really talked about it. I had these conversations at
Speaker 1: dinner parties and like in you know, just like on
Speaker 1: the bus or like wherever, and I would ask everybody,
Speaker 1: and everybody had a different idea and everybody was kind
Speaker 1: of excited to talk about it, and you can start
Speaker 1: they're just like letting yourself be curious, um, letting yourself wonder,
Speaker 1: letting yourself explore different ideas. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: you're going to find the answer. I didn't find like
Speaker 1: some short answer, but I found different frameworks to understand life,
Speaker 1: different ways to kind of hold all this grief and loss.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's important. And the other flip
Speaker 1: side is like actually thinking about your own death, you know,
Speaker 1: like you are going to die. We're all gonna die.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna die, You're gonna die. That's sometimes terrifying sometimes
Speaker 1: like Okay, I'm okay with you saying it to be now,
Speaker 1: but two am tonight I'll wake up and you're gonna die.
Speaker 1: But you know, if you kind of dig into that fear,
Speaker 1: like what's your biggest fear around it? Is it that
Speaker 1: you don't know what happens next? Is it that you're
Speaker 1: afraid of physical suffering at the end. Is it that
Speaker 1: you don't have your ship in order? Like I have
Speaker 1: three kids, and when I think about dying, my biggest
Speaker 1: fears around them. And I'm like, oh my god, do
Speaker 1: they know that I want them to have my mom's
Speaker 1: you know, raying about this thing, or they know my
Speaker 1: thoughts on you know, the rolling stones, or like whatever
Speaker 1: it is I want them to like know, right, So
Speaker 1: I've actually worked on that. I've written like a letter
Speaker 1: that in the event of my death, if it were today,
Speaker 1: like there's a letter about all kinds of like here's
Speaker 1: this thing I want you to know about, Here's where
Speaker 1: you go find this. I want you to travel to
Speaker 1: Mexico and go stand on this one cliff and think
Speaker 1: about when I was there at twenty two, you know,
Speaker 1: putting this kind of stuff in place. Um, it's scary,
Speaker 1: but it's also actually anxiety relieving, which is weird. It
Speaker 1: sounds kind of fun too, Yeah, I mean I love
Speaker 1: talking about death. You and I would have fun at
Speaker 1: a dinner party. I'm always like, I hate small talk
Speaker 1: at a coffee shop. How's your day going. I'd rather
Speaker 1: someone say to me, here's your change. Hey, what do
Speaker 1: you think happens when we die? You know, I just
Speaker 1: think it's fun. You know. My specific fear is just
Speaker 1: suffering at the moment of and and feeling that fear. Um,
Speaker 1: I wish I believed in something, And when other people
Speaker 1: believe in the afterlife, I believe in it for them,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, technically, all I can imagine is that
Speaker 1: it's what it's like before I was born, which is
Speaker 1: just kind of nothing, and that actually weirdly comforts me
Speaker 1: some people that doesn't comfort Um. I can't comprehend forever
Speaker 1: and ever heaven. And it sounds like, well, what if
Speaker 1: I get bored and I want to leave, Like that
Speaker 1: makes me anxious. So I just picture you know nothing
Speaker 1: and that's it. But it is something that I think,
Speaker 1: you know, just knowing right that we are going to
Speaker 1: die someday. How does everyone on planet Earth not just
Speaker 1: have a baseline of anxiety as there as their number
Speaker 1: one emotion? Right, we are so much denial, it's amazing. See,
Speaker 1: this is like, this is why it's the first stage.
Speaker 1: We are in total denial at all times that that's
Speaker 1: going to happen, because it can be paralyzing, right, it
Speaker 1: makes you not want to move, um, like not want
Speaker 1: to physically move out of one spot because it's so scary.
Speaker 1: It's like, I'm glad that I'm aware so that I
Speaker 1: don't go skuideiving because I'm not into that. But like
Speaker 1: there's there's denial in terms of like Okay, I don't
Speaker 1: have to think about it every second. I'm allowed to
Speaker 1: like go on road trip. But then there's yeah, if
Speaker 1: we were in acceptance, I think we think we're in acceptance,
Speaker 1: don't we, because we don't think about it, like we
Speaker 1: think we think that's acceptance. Yeah, But I really, I
Speaker 1: really adhere to the belief that leaning into this stuff
Speaker 1: helps alleviate a lot of this and makes us feel
Speaker 1: more prepared. Even the idea of suffering, if like, that's
Speaker 1: what you're afraid of, is physically suffering at the end,
Speaker 1: do some research on it, Like, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: actually really interesting research. I worked in hospice for a
Speaker 1: long time, and I'm also very curious about physical suffering.
Speaker 1: And a lot of the clients I work with have
Speaker 1: watched a loved one physically suffer, and they have a
Speaker 1: lot of feelings about that after that person is gone,
Speaker 1: like so upset that that that they had to go
Speaker 1: through that. And so I've done all kinds of research
Speaker 1: and what doesn't mean to physically suffer? And if you
Speaker 1: dive into it a little bit, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: different ideas and theories out there that we don't suffer
Speaker 1: and and feel it in the ways we think we
Speaker 1: do and the ways that we think we perceive it.
Speaker 1: Um So even digging into that might make you feel like, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's not going to be that bad. Well, even there
Speaker 1: are something you said in your book that the death
Speaker 1: rattle doesn't feel like it sounds. That was my favorite
Speaker 1: thing I've ever read in my life. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: my god, that's because that's that sounds terrifying. It's terrifying, right,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's more like snoring, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's just the relaxation of our of our our
Speaker 1: throat muscles. I feel like there should be a commercial
Speaker 1: on TV like every ten minutes telling people that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just feel like we need to know this because
Speaker 1: people sit around and think about that, you know, and
Speaker 1: and get can scare themselves. Yeah, but that's because we
Speaker 1: slammed the door on it. So again, like just we
Speaker 1: we gotta just like we talked about the very beginning,
Speaker 1: you know, entering into this knowing it's going to be
Speaker 1: a little anxiety provoking to talk about, but then it
Speaker 1: gets easier and better and we get more of a
Speaker 1: handle on it. We'll continue the interview on the flip
Speaker 1: side of a quick message from our sponsors. Well, my
Speaker 1: last question for you then is I love how through
Speaker 1: your book, um, you talk about storytelling and how that
Speaker 1: is so important and I agree. I mean, whether we're
Speaker 1: talking about death or not, or anything any reason why
Speaker 1: someone's anxious. I'm a big fan of storytelling, and it's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I wanted to do this podcast
Speaker 1: is is just let's just talk about anxiety. Even if
Speaker 1: someone listening never goes to therapy, never does any meditation,
Speaker 1: there's got to be something said for talking and just normalizing.
Speaker 1: So how does storytelling clear role in dealing with anxiety
Speaker 1: or grief? And how do you do you teach it
Speaker 1: in some of your workshops? Is that right? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: mean I'm always talking with clients about I mean, one
Speaker 1: of the things they do when they come to see
Speaker 1: me is they tell their own stories. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of storytelling that happens. Um. And then I'm always
Speaker 1: asking them to write, which they hate, but they do
Speaker 1: it anyway. Um. And to write either the writing letters
Speaker 1: to the people they've lost, or they're writing about their loss,
Speaker 1: or they're writing the story of the person's life who
Speaker 1: they lost. Um. And I think it's about intention. I
Speaker 1: think this is a way of career getting space again
Speaker 1: for grief. You know, we can't just slam the door
Speaker 1: on these things. Um. Like we keep reiterating, it asks
Speaker 1: us to look at our whole lives, right, what is
Speaker 1: the story about our lives? And then there's this interesting
Speaker 1: part about how sometimes we tell ourselves stories that aren't true, right,
Speaker 1: And this kind of goes back to the idea of
Speaker 1: what we were talking about with guilt or making amends.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we hold ourselves to these things that that weren't
Speaker 1: actually true, Like maybe your dad there's no way that
Speaker 1: he could have been there for his father's death. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: we we make things up in our head to fit
Speaker 1: a certain belief that we have about ourselves or about
Speaker 1: that person. And sometimes when we take a step back
Speaker 1: and look at the story we're telling, um, what's happening there?
Speaker 1: Can you change that story? You know? Um, maybe you
Speaker 1: should change the story. Maybe there's a different way to
Speaker 1: look at it. And it can go both positive and
Speaker 1: negative ways. You know. Yeah, that makes sense, And so
Speaker 1: you're not even necessarily seeing like people should get up
Speaker 1: at an open mic and tell a story, but it's
Speaker 1: really just either they're writing it down, they're telling your
Speaker 1: therapists there, maybe sharing it a support group, telling their friends.
Speaker 1: It is really helpful. I think when we go through
Speaker 1: certain losses that are really big, it becomes so much
Speaker 1: of our identity and it can be painful to have
Speaker 1: small talk, you know, it can be painful to to
Speaker 1: just talk with someone about the weather, or did you
Speaker 1: watch that show and you're like, my mom died, you know,
Speaker 1: like you need to talk about it. It's it's like
Speaker 1: all you're living at that moment, and so finding ways
Speaker 1: to tell that story, you know, um, whether it's on
Speaker 1: Facebook or at an open mic or um, you know,
Speaker 1: anything talking with a friend or a therapist. I said
Speaker 1: that was the last question, but I just want to
Speaker 1: say lastly, like just the notion of you also said,
Speaker 1: you know, grieving keeps us in the present, right and
Speaker 1: as we know from every single therapist, everyone that talks
Speaker 1: about anxiety meditation, staying in the present moment keeps us
Speaker 1: out of anxiety. And so it's very interesting that this
Speaker 1: grief thing that we want, we're having trouble with, or
Speaker 1: we want to push away, is actually something that can
Speaker 1: keep us in present, which I guess keeps anxiety at bay.
Speaker 1: It is. But you know, with grief, um, it's tricky
Speaker 1: because we're often thinking a lot about the past. We're
Speaker 1: thinking about what has happened and the person who died
Speaker 1: in our relationship, and we're also thinking about the future.
Speaker 1: We're thinking about what life looks like now that they're gone,
Speaker 1: and we're thinking about how our life has changed now
Speaker 1: that they're gone, so bringing our awareness back to the
Speaker 1: present moment is super important. It alleviates anxiety, It kind
Speaker 1: of brings us into a commerce space. So it's almost
Speaker 1: like a great time to practice that. I guess if
Speaker 1: you're grieving always and you don't have to like stay
Speaker 1: in the present all the time, Like we're never going
Speaker 1: to not be thinking about the future in the past,
Speaker 1: but just like try to have more moments that are present.
Speaker 1: That's that's great. More moments that are present than less. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for talking with me today. This
Speaker 1: was just, you know, fun, I like talking about that.
Speaker 1: I thought it was really fun. See it wasn't that fun?
Speaker 1: Didn't I tell you that? That was kind of a fun,
Speaker 1: fun talk. So what are the takeaways that we learned
Speaker 1: from my interview with Clare bid Well Smith. First, whenever
Speaker 1: you're going to be listening to something about anxiety or
Speaker 1: reading something about anxiety, maybe do it during a time
Speaker 1: when you know that after you're done you can do
Speaker 1: something right away to support yourself. Or if you're going
Speaker 1: to be with a family member or friend, or you'd
Speaker 1: be able to call somebody, take some deep breaths and
Speaker 1: get yourself centered. One of the ways to work with
Speaker 1: anxiety is to externalize it, so think of it as
Speaker 1: a separate thing. We are not the anxiety. It's a
Speaker 1: thing that happens and in a way comes into our room.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons anxiety might be increasing in our
Speaker 1: culture is that the first thing we do when we
Speaker 1: wake up in the morning is look at our phone.
Speaker 1: Before we even get out of bed or talk to
Speaker 1: another human, we look at our phone. So if you
Speaker 1: can find a way to not have that be the
Speaker 1: first thing you do in the morning, that might alleviate
Speaker 1: a little bit of anxiety from the jump. The five
Speaker 1: stages of grief prior to this are anger, bargaining, depression,
Speaker 1: and acceptance. Wait what that's four? What is wrong with me? Oh? God?
Speaker 1: I love how imperfect? This is sometimes denial, denial, anger, bargaining, depression,
Speaker 1: and acceptance, or the classic five stages of grief, and
Speaker 1: now we can add anxiety to that. Elizabeth Coogler Ross
Speaker 1: was the pioneer of the original five stages of grief.
Speaker 1: She was working in the nineties sixties. She was a
Speaker 1: female physician, and she was really interested in her dying patients.
Speaker 1: And she's a total pioneer loss is about transition, and
Speaker 1: transition creates anxiety. We have a lot of anxiety about change.
Speaker 1: Even though we are an adaptable species, we do tend
Speaker 1: to resist change at first and get afraid. We prefer
Speaker 1: comfortable and routines. When we don't make space for grief,
Speaker 1: it shows up in other ways, like anxiety, anger, depression, irritability,
Speaker 1: substance abuse, and toxic relationships. Journaling, although, as Claire says,
Speaker 1: you may roll your eyes at that it takes five minutes,
Speaker 1: you can do it in the morning and let yourself cry.
Speaker 1: That's a great way to sit with your grief while
Speaker 1: then getting up and going on about your day. There
Speaker 1: is no blueprint for grief, and most people feel like
Speaker 1: they aren't doing it right. When talking to someone about grief,
Speaker 1: before you go and give advice, be curious, don't try
Speaker 1: to be an expert. Ask them what their grief was like,
Speaker 1: and tell them what your grief was like. Grief shaming
Speaker 1: is telling people that they shouldn't be grieving something because
Speaker 1: they are in a privileged position. It may feel weird,
Speaker 1: but it's totally normal to grieve. Celebrities and public figures
Speaker 1: um when they die, even if it's people that you
Speaker 1: didn't know personally because they evoke a lot of things
Speaker 1: for you about your own life. If you have had
Speaker 1: anxiety your whole life and you're already familiar with it,
Speaker 1: when you go through a loss, it can give you
Speaker 1: a bigger uptick and anxiety. Or if you've never had
Speaker 1: anxiety and you go through a loss, you can certainly
Speaker 1: develop panic attacks, social anxiety, or hypochondria. Grieving also requires
Speaker 1: a lot of self forgiveness. There is never closure. Repeat,
Speaker 1: there is never closure. And that's not just about death.
Speaker 1: That could be about a break up, anything. There is
Speaker 1: never closure. Some of grief is having to sit with
Speaker 1: the uncertainty and unknown, sitting with painful feelings. We really
Speaker 1: can't tidy everything up. It will be messy, it will
Speaker 1: be painful. Some things won't get resolved. You may never
Speaker 1: get an apology from someone you want one from, So
Speaker 1: it's really about learning how to feel okay about things
Speaker 1: for yourself. Storytelling can be a big part of healing
Speaker 1: your grief. Whether you literally get up and go to
Speaker 1: an open mic and talk to a group, or you
Speaker 1: write letters to people that you've lost, or you write
Speaker 1: a story in your journal. Storytelling is how we honor people,
Speaker 1: how we get our feelings out, and it does tend
Speaker 1: to alleviate anxiety because it creates a space for the grief.
Speaker 1: When we are in grief, a lot of times we
Speaker 1: are projecting into the future, what will life be like
Speaker 1: without this person or this situation, or we're going into
Speaker 1: the past or remember when things were like this, And
Speaker 1: just like with anything else, when we're not in the present,
Speaker 1: it's easy to be anxious. The present moment always brings
Speaker 1: us back to a more calm place, and in a
Speaker 1: weird way, staying in the present, staying in your grief
Speaker 1: for a minute can help alleviate that future tripping or
Speaker 1: past remembering anxiety. Thanks again for listening to Anxiety Bites.
Speaker 1: I All I want for Christmas is one thing I
Speaker 1: would love five hundred five star reviews on my iTunes.
Speaker 1: I mean, listen more would be great, but let's go
Speaker 1: over a five hundred. We've got about four hundred and
Speaker 1: fifteen right now. It really helps other people find the show,
Speaker 1: and all I want is everybody to find this show
Speaker 1: and to listen and feel like they're normal and okay,
Speaker 1: because they are. So. If you go to Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: I said iTunes didn't I. If you go to Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: you can leave a five star review there and I
Speaker 1: would love it again. That's all I want for Christmas.
Speaker 1: Thanks again, and there will be a new episode next week,
Speaker 1: and just remember anxiety Bites but You're in control. Thanks
Speaker 1: again for listening. And oh one thing, if you want
Speaker 1: to follow me on social media, I'm at Jen Kirkman
Speaker 1: j E N K I R K m A N
Speaker 1: on Twitter and same thing at Jen Kirkman on Instagram.
Speaker 1: There is no separate account for this podcast. It's just
Speaker 1: easier if I keep it all under my two things.
Speaker 1: So go there, tell me what you think of the show,
Speaker 1: and now I will end it Anxiety Bites, But You're
Speaker 1: in Control. From more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
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