Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant that makes the
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know the podcast Good Grief. Yes, Good Grief.
Speaker 1: I looked that up. Would you come up with? Well,
Speaker 1: it just struck me at you know, because Charlie Brown
Speaker 1: says it. You know, that's where I know it from.
Speaker 1: Then I thought, why would where did that come from?
Speaker 1: Because of from one of those things, And it's just
Speaker 1: apparently they think it's just what's called the minst oath,
Speaker 1: like when you substitute God for good gravy or good
Speaker 1: googly easier, I got you googly movie googly movily. But
Speaker 1: then I thought grief was weird because that's such a
Speaker 1: specific thing. But then good gracious gracious is very specific too,
Speaker 1: and like ill fitting. So I guess it's just a
Speaker 1: minstath good grief. Well, maybe good gracious came from good
Speaker 1: grace and somebody's like just feeling a little buzzed on
Speaker 1: knops and they added gracious instead. Maybe so minced toad's
Speaker 1: good gravy. That's good. It's probably the funniest thing will
Speaker 1: happen in this show. Hopefully that wasn't even that funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this one's not supposed to be funny. It's about grief,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, And um, I think we should point
Speaker 1: out from the get go that this is about grief,
Speaker 1: human grief, Western human grief. Yeah, but that's not to
Speaker 1: say that there aren't different types of grief and that
Speaker 1: humans are the only ones who do grieve. In fact,
Speaker 1: I have a story for you antal Action too, So
Speaker 1: what you do? That was the funniest thing in this episode. Uh.
Speaker 1: This story took place back in the spring of in
Speaker 1: um Uttar Pradesh State, India, specifically in the town of
Speaker 1: luck Now and even more specifically at the Prince of
Speaker 1: wales Zoo. There was a seventy two year old elephant
Speaker 1: email elephant named Dominie, and Dominie was hanging out in
Speaker 1: her little house at the Prince of wale Zoo when
Speaker 1: all of a sudden she got a younger pregnant friend
Speaker 1: delivered to her um named chump Paccali. And Chumpaccali was,
Speaker 1: as I said, pregnant. She was actually on maternity leave
Speaker 1: from her regular gig where she would just let tourists
Speaker 1: ride on her back. Okay, right, um, and so she was.
Speaker 1: She was taking the Prince of Wales zoo to to
Speaker 1: basically just have a nice, comfortable term and then give birth.
Speaker 1: And Domini just fell in love with chompa collie. This
Speaker 1: is so sad, so um. She basically became a maternal
Speaker 1: figure chump Ofcali. They were best friends. Um. Chumpacali would
Speaker 1: lay around and um Domini would stroke her pregnant belly
Speaker 1: with her trunk. They just got really really tight, which
Speaker 1: is very normal in in um the elephant world. Um.
Speaker 1: So you can almost imagine that Domini was growing excited
Speaker 1: as Champacali got closer and closer to her due date
Speaker 1: and when finally she did um go into labor. Champacali
Speaker 1: died during childbirth and gave birth to a stillborn calf,
Speaker 1: and Dominie, I guess they let her come in and like,
Speaker 1: you know, hang around the body because elephants are known
Speaker 1: to grieve well, even as far as elephants go, Domini's
Speaker 1: stories a little. That's pretty bad. She um. She cried
Speaker 1: over the body for a while and then went over
Speaker 1: to her enclosure and just stood still for a week.
Speaker 1: Right after the week um. She during this week, she
Speaker 1: she stopped eating um. She got to the point where
Speaker 1: her legs swelled from basically starvation and dehydration until she
Speaker 1: fell over. And then she just laid there for what
Speaker 1: turned out to be the rest of her life, where
Speaker 1: she wept and refused to eat and refused to drink
Speaker 1: and grieved over the death of her friend, and finally
Speaker 1: died herself a few days later. Uh and the vets
Speaker 1: tried to keep her alive. They um, they did what
Speaker 1: they could, but they said in the end um, in
Speaker 1: the face of Domini's intense grief, all our treatment failed. No,
Speaker 1: they're buried next to one another. I had a dog
Speaker 1: situation like that similar when I was a kid. One
Speaker 1: of my dogs died and they were best buds, and
Speaker 1: the other one just like it was never the same
Speaker 1: and died about three months later and seemed healthy at
Speaker 1: the time. And I went out and laid down the
Speaker 1: doghouse and cried when I was like seven, devastating. That's
Speaker 1: a wonderful thing to do. That's working out your grief,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, But as far as the animals go,
Speaker 1: it really is pretty evenly divided among scientists who say, yes,
Speaker 1: they show all the signs of grieving and that's what
Speaker 1: they're doing. And then others that say, no, they are
Speaker 1: not grieving. We're putting that on them as humans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I totally disagree with that. Yeah, it's just you know,
Speaker 1: it's really too camps um. So we've talked about this before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've run up against this before, and I don't think
Speaker 1: either one of us have changed our positions at all.
Speaker 1: I think they grieve. But then you hear like this
Speaker 1: one great ape you know, was famous recently for carrying
Speaker 1: her little dead uh baby around for like three days,
Speaker 1: and other scientists came out and said, like, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a long gestation period they have Singleton's having
Speaker 1: a kid is a big deal, and so she's carrying
Speaker 1: this baby around and hopes that it will come back
Speaker 1: to life and it's like in a comatose state, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's a practical, adaptive, evolutionary thing that's happening.
Speaker 1: It's not grief. And then I think you're heartless, Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're grieving because they they took the baby chimp and
Speaker 1: made a purse out of it. After that, Well, but
Speaker 1: then for animals, I don't want to get two sidetrack.
Speaker 1: But you have to think, like when some clearly showed
Speaker 1: signs of what looks like grief and some don't at all,
Speaker 1: Like the chimpanzee and the same you know arena like
Speaker 1: they eat other chimpanzees while they're still alive and screaming. Well,
Speaker 1: those are the ones that back talk, or they go
Speaker 1: off to die by themselves and there's no grieving, or
Speaker 1: they will make like if one of them is dying,
Speaker 1: that will like kill them. Right, But imagine, imagine you're
Speaker 1: an outside observer of the human species. We we lose
Speaker 1: chemical weapons on one another, and yet we still have
Speaker 1: funeral practices. I mean, it's it's interesting. I wonder why
Speaker 1: certain animals do and certain don't, though you know, it's
Speaker 1: very interesting. Well, getting back to um humans the human
Speaker 1: realm of grief, there was a man who recently um
Speaker 1: was married to his wife for sixty two years and
Speaker 1: she died and on the way to her funeral, he
Speaker 1: died in the back of the limousine and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: which I thought was incredibly sweet. And then his his
Speaker 1: daughters they died at the funeral. Then know they they
Speaker 1: put a sign up. They decided to just have a
Speaker 1: double funeral, and they put a sign up at the
Speaker 1: wake that said surprised it's a double header and then
Speaker 1: buried him next to her like that that day. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess the fai. But the point is is, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is that that's a that's they used a sense
Speaker 1: of humor to grief, or else they weren't going through grief.
Speaker 1: And the point of that whole thing is is that
Speaker 1: there's no set way that grief works, which is great
Speaker 1: because we can say just about anything here and still
Speaker 1: being the right because psychology is still grappling to define
Speaker 1: the process of grief, and some very recent studies that
Speaker 1: you found show that grief is not present and everyone,
Speaker 1: and that everyone deals with it very differently, and there's
Speaker 1: not really any specific way to handle it. There's just
Speaker 1: some great general guidelines and that we should say grief
Speaker 1: is a very personal thing. Yeah, and I might self
Speaker 1: have experienced the spectrum of grief in my life, like
Speaker 1: including you know, like family members passing away. Not to
Speaker 1: be too cold, but some are you know, you super
Speaker 1: grief for and some it's like, well, you know, they
Speaker 1: were very old and they had a great life and
Speaker 1: we saw this coming. And that's one of the things
Speaker 1: that you know. It's one of the types of grief.
Speaker 1: Anticipatory grief, they say, is probably easier because you're working
Speaker 1: that stuff out over time and it's nothing like an
Speaker 1: accident or a child dying. Unanticipated grief well, completely different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. So you say you mentioned anticipatory grief. That's
Speaker 1: like if somebody's got a prolonged illness or something like that,
Speaker 1: you have the chance to say goodbye ahead of time,
Speaker 1: maybe deal with these emotions exactly, and then once death
Speaker 1: actually comes, you've been prepared for this for days, weeks, months, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a lot of times something maybe there isn't any
Speaker 1: quote unquote traditional grief going on at all because you're
Speaker 1: just so prepared and it's just a matter of executing
Speaker 1: all the things that you need to do. If you're
Speaker 1: the person that's in charge of that kind of like
Speaker 1: you're so prepared you blow off the funeral to go
Speaker 1: the grocery store. Um. It's like a serial. Psychologists call
Speaker 1: that kind of grief anticipatory grief basically the money grief,
Speaker 1: because it's it's about is um as light as you
Speaker 1: can get post grief post death, I should say, right, yes, um,
Speaker 1: And then Again, I want to say, like there's there's
Speaker 1: probably a listener out there who like helped their their
Speaker 1: husband or their mother through a long bout of cancer
Speaker 1: that the person finally succumbed to. That's like, that's absolutely untrue.
Speaker 1: I agree with you wholeheartedly. Like there again, there's no
Speaker 1: specific um, Like, no one could tell you what your
Speaker 1: grief was. Again, it's personal. This is just these are
Speaker 1: very broad strokes. So okay, then, like you mentioned unanticipated grief, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I meant that's from my experien arian's I had a
Speaker 1: friend that fell off a building and died. That's like
Speaker 1: definitely the hardest someone young an accident and uh but still,
Speaker 1: if you want to talk about five stages, I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm not a big believer that that's the case because
Speaker 1: I didn't experience all the stages at all. Um. But
Speaker 1: again it varies. Someone might experience tense stages. It does.
Speaker 1: But but the point is with unanticipated grief, like you
Speaker 1: couldn't have you or your friend didn't wake up that
Speaker 1: morning like he was gonna die, you know, but he
Speaker 1: still died and you have to deal with it all
Speaker 1: of a sudden um. And then there's ambiguous grief, which
Speaker 1: for my money, is probably the worst kind of grief.
Speaker 1: This is the kind of grief that comes where, say,
Speaker 1: if you have a loved one who is kidnapped and
Speaker 1: you never hear from them again, or ever felt that
Speaker 1: one your parents abandoned you as a child, um, or
Speaker 1: just something happens is somebody and there's no real resolution
Speaker 1: or closure or you know, it doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: even death. It can be like your girlfriend you come
Speaker 1: home to a note on your bed, you never hear
Speaker 1: from her again, or a wife. I guess, yeah, because
Speaker 1: I guess we should also say, like, grief doesn't just
Speaker 1: have to come from death. Grief is basically the deep
Speaker 1: and poignant distress caused by bereavement, and bereavement is the
Speaker 1: state of being deprived of something or someone, so that
Speaker 1: could be through death whatever. Yeah exactly. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: so those are the three types of normal grief just
Speaker 1: off the top of our heads. We made those up right, um.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned the different kinds of um they're the
Speaker 1: different stages of grief and you, I mean, that's just
Speaker 1: such like a pop trope these days, but it was
Speaker 1: actually new just as recently as the nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 1: when Dr Elizabeth Coogler Ross came up with the five
Speaker 1: stages of grief that you always hear about today, that
Speaker 1: any ten year old could probably recite to you. But
Speaker 1: I have since been kind of deconstructed and change in
Speaker 1: question and challenge. But these are the kind of the
Speaker 1: road map to go through grief, right, Um, denial, anger, bargaining, depression,
Speaker 1: and acceptance, and denial is just basically saying this is
Speaker 1: you're you're not true that there's still alive. Like what
Speaker 1: you say is a lie and I don't want to
Speaker 1: be anywhere near you because you're lying to me right
Speaker 1: now about something very horrible. Yeah, I've never experienced that,
Speaker 1: even with my friend who fell off a building. Like
Speaker 1: that's as sudden a news as you can get over
Speaker 1: the phone. And I'm just not the kind of person
Speaker 1: who's like, no, that didn't happen. I was like, man,
Speaker 1: it immediately hit me that that had happened, you know,
Speaker 1: And I started from there, I guess. But I didn't
Speaker 1: experience anger either. But you know, if it might have
Speaker 1: been my brother, I might have experienced anger. And you
Speaker 1: you raise a very good point. There's different, there's different, Um,
Speaker 1: I guess risk factors. There's different elements to grief, and
Speaker 1: some of it is personal. Some of it has to
Speaker 1: do with how close you are to the person, sure, Um,
Speaker 1: some of it has to do the type of person
Speaker 1: you are. You're a pretty resilient person. If you were
Speaker 1: a very sensitive, bookish type, you might have taken it
Speaker 1: a little harder, you know what I mean. Um, you
Speaker 1: have a very very very strong, tight support group, you do, so, Um,
Speaker 1: I would say that that that probably helped quite a bit.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you had a group of friends that like
Speaker 1: helped you through that, that were probably friends with the
Speaker 1: kid too, so you went through it as a group. Yeah,
Speaker 1: going through something alone is always hard. Even if you
Speaker 1: think you're a loner and don't want to be around anyone,
Speaker 1: you're probably not doing yourself any favor, right. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then lastly, you had prior experience with grief. You're throwing
Speaker 1: yourself down in the doghouse when you were seven, so
Speaker 1: you had that experience to draw upon and to know
Speaker 1: you can make it through it. It does get better,
Speaker 1: it does go away. So you're gonna have the hardest
Speaker 1: normal kind of grief if you are, like you said,
Speaker 1: a loner with no support group. If this is the
Speaker 1: first time you've ever experienced grief, if you're the sensitive,
Speaker 1: bookish type, and um, if you were extraordinarily close to somebody, right, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: In fact, I used to do acting exercises in college.
Speaker 1: What it took, this acting class, and believe it or not,
Speaker 1: I took one acting class and I was not very
Speaker 1: good at it, and that he used to tell us
Speaker 1: to try and do like crying exercises and stuff. So
Speaker 1: what do you think of my brother? Was always to
Speaker 1: go to like imagine my brother had gotten killed or something.
Speaker 1: I would just like boom, yeah cry if I thought
Speaker 1: of your brother dying. I know, I'm just kidding about
Speaker 1: the other family members. Alright, So anger that's the second one. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is pretty self explainatory. Um. Bargaining. It fascinates me,
Speaker 1: like the idea that that you I feel like you're
Speaker 1: suddenly in a position to make a deal with God
Speaker 1: to reverse the circumstances or bring the person back or
Speaker 1: take away the pain. Yeah, it's just so crazy, and
Speaker 1: it's it's you know, like you think of somebody bargaining
Speaker 1: with God or some higher power and they're like looking
Speaker 1: up talking to the ceiling or the sky and that
Speaker 1: that is one of the normal stages of grief. That's
Speaker 1: I just find that fast. I did that when I
Speaker 1: was young with girls. Oh yeah, well I was heavy
Speaker 1: into church, very emotional kid, and girls like you know.
Speaker 1: That was one of those deals, like God, just please,
Speaker 1: if you would just come back to me a promise,
Speaker 1: I'll like do this and I'll do that, but I'll
Speaker 1: clean behind my ears. I grew out of that pretty
Speaker 1: quick because I realized different that girls either coming back
Speaker 1: or she was hitting the road exactly, and God probably
Speaker 1: had little if anything to do with that. That's right,
Speaker 1: he was dealing with bigger problems. Um. After that's depression.
Speaker 1: And this one is kind of tricky. Um, if you
Speaker 1: if you go through the stage of depression, if you do,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily requisite. Um, they're starting to wonder if
Speaker 1: possibly you're already depressed, and uh, if you were already depressed,
Speaker 1: that probably means you're going to maybe get stuck in
Speaker 1: the stage for a while, or you might go through
Speaker 1: a depressed stage and then come out of it. It's
Speaker 1: not necessarily But the problem with the stage is that
Speaker 1: depression is a recognized mental disorder and grief is not
Speaker 1: considered a mental disorder, and yet in one of these
Speaker 1: five widely accepted stages, you go through a period where
Speaker 1: you're you're you have a mental disorder, but it's part
Speaker 1: of a normal process. And you know, that's basically like
Speaker 1: taking psychologists and throwing them into the thunder dome, you know,
Speaker 1: greasing them up with chicken fat and handing them battle
Speaker 1: axes and saying, like, explain that. You know, that's the
Speaker 1: funniest thing said. Uh. The last one is acceptance, of course, um,
Speaker 1: when you are finally able to move on and UM.
Speaker 1: I found that one fairly interesting article where they they
Speaker 1: charted this and they said it would look like a W.
Speaker 1: Is that right, like the high points and the low points. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I guess um denials the high point, and then
Speaker 1: it goes down to um anger. Yeah, up to bargaining.
Speaker 1: I guess if you feel like that's getting you somewhere,
Speaker 1: maybe it's an up. Maybe maybe UM, at the very
Speaker 1: least it's manic. I would think, back down to depression,
Speaker 1: and then finishing the W with a nice bit of acceptance. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And they've as you said that, we've sort of been
Speaker 1: studying this for like thirty or forty years, and there
Speaker 1: was always that five stages thing, but recently they're looking
Speaker 1: more into it, and they've done some studies with widowers
Speaker 1: and widows, and they found that they really oscillate wildly
Speaker 1: from day to day and it's not necessarily going to
Speaker 1: be a w it's I felt great today and really
Speaker 1: my spirits were up and I was even laughing. Then
Speaker 1: the next day they were really sad. And it just
Speaker 1: really is all over the map, right, But I think overall,
Speaker 1: what they're finding is that on a long enough arc,
Speaker 1: people emerge from it, and it seems to be somewhere
Speaker 1: in the order of six months to three years seems
Speaker 1: to be, and I think that's the outliers are maybe
Speaker 1: six months to three years. That's such a ridiculous time frame,
Speaker 1: but the bolt. But I mean, like if you study
Speaker 1: enough people, you can probably create like like three months
Speaker 1: to five years, right, you know, no totally and then
Speaker 1: say anyone else as an outlier. Right, But that's the thing,
Speaker 1: like you can't. That's why everybody is very wisely, um
Speaker 1: they avoid saying things like that, like this is this
Speaker 1: is like it's almost respect for the process, Like no
Speaker 1: one wants to come out and say no, this is
Speaker 1: how it is. Yeah, because you can't, and that's a
Speaker 1: mean thing to do. And actually there's there's um the
Speaker 1: grief is is in danger of being medicalized in the
Speaker 1: DSM five one of the proposals, there's a there's always
Speaker 1: been an exemption to bereavement with depression like a depression
Speaker 1: um diagnosis if the person has recently gone through the
Speaker 1: press of grief or is in the pressive degree. Um,
Speaker 1: you can't diagnose them with depression. You can, but you're
Speaker 1: not gonna get reimbursed for any meds you prescribed them. Well,
Speaker 1: under the d s M five they're taking away this
Speaker 1: bereavement exclusion so that doctors can get reimbursed. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it medicalizes grief, it says, no, now it's a mental disorder,
Speaker 1: well when it's not supposed to be, and it's a
Speaker 1: slip slope. Yeah, you know, a temporary disorder though you
Speaker 1: would hope. So all right, very keen insight, nice work,
Speaker 1: Thank you psychology today. Is that where you got it? Yeah? Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: so should we talk a little bit about dealing with it?
Speaker 1: I guess yes, Um, you know these are it's it's
Speaker 1: good advice, but it's also any time I read something
Speaker 1: where they're like, take care of yourself and eat right
Speaker 1: next or so avoid drugs and alcohol. Yeah, but it
Speaker 1: is very much true. You know that it only is
Speaker 1: going to make things worse if you wallow in this
Speaker 1: and abuse yourself with drugs and alcohol in don't eat
Speaker 1: and you don't think there's a there's not a therapy
Speaker 1: to pouring like half of a forty out on the
Speaker 1: curb for someone who's gone and then drinking the other half. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean sure, but don't do that every day for
Speaker 1: like weeks and weeks starting in nine and you yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think me and my friends got together
Speaker 1: and got really good and plowed after we got the
Speaker 1: news about my buddy. But but alcohol, my advice is
Speaker 1: to avoid it after Yes, but okay, so in addition
Speaker 1: to avoiding folks and alcohol, eating right and getting regular exercise,
Speaker 1: just the standard stuff. What was that? Also in jet lag?
Speaker 1: Every time it's anything, um the the there are like
Speaker 1: some really good suggestions to dealing with grief. If you
Speaker 1: find yourself overwhelmed by a profound sense of sadness, there
Speaker 1: are things out there that you can do to make
Speaker 1: yourself feel better. You can um write a letter to
Speaker 1: the deceased that's said to help. Um, okay, yet why
Speaker 1: not uh throwing yourself into stay, making a memorial like
Speaker 1: those roadside memorials, or a video clip show who knows you? Actually?
Speaker 1: You know what, when my friend added did a video
Speaker 1: see because his family put together a website like a
Speaker 1: memorial website, and on the I had video footage back
Speaker 1: then of m and I did a little video for
Speaker 1: the family. But it ended up really being like a
Speaker 1: great thing for me. It made you feel better, absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So basically putting yourself into a project there where you're
Speaker 1: thinking about this person, I imagine this isn't an article,
Speaker 1: this is just me doing some armchurir psychology. But um,
Speaker 1: I imagine it forces you to remember good things about
Speaker 1: the person. And so during this time when you're possibly
Speaker 1: a little more emotionally fragile than usual, you are being
Speaker 1: reminded of positive memories, positive things as well. You know,
Speaker 1: so you're maybe that's why that would help, but it
Speaker 1: definitely doesn't help, you know for sure, because when you're
Speaker 1: going through and do in like a scrapbook, it's these
Speaker 1: great memories in these pictures and it's not you know,
Speaker 1: you are remembering the good stuff and that like the life,
Speaker 1: which is I think how everyone wants to be remembered.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like these great lives we have exactly
Speaker 1: you know, you want to be remembered as alive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm one of those people that always wants
Speaker 1: my funeral to be you know, a little bit more
Speaker 1: of an upbeat affair, as much as it can be.
Speaker 1: You know, where some people like, no, man, I want
Speaker 1: people really sad, right, yeah, I want to be mourned
Speaker 1: for days. It's not me. So you want the upbeat affair? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I have have a party and you know, make fun
Speaker 1: of me, but not like G. G Allen's funeral. I
Speaker 1: have to research that one. I can only imagine what
Speaker 1: it was like. Yeah, pretty hardcore pretty much. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: Did they inject his corpse with heroin or he's bury
Speaker 1: naked though and they it was Yeah, you can do
Speaker 1: some research if you feel like, Okay, man, he died
Speaker 1: like in a horrible way. Didn't they find him, like
Speaker 1: murder in an alley, naked and like never found the murderer.
Speaker 1: Now I think he killed himself. I thought he was murdered.
Speaker 1: I thought he was like stabbed a death. I don't
Speaker 1: think so. He used to use to threaten to kill
Speaker 1: himself on stage. That was a big thing, was that
Speaker 1: he's like, one day it's gonna happen. I thought his
Speaker 1: big thing was like pooping on stage. He did that
Speaker 1: a lot too. He kept that promise um Man was
Speaker 1: going to show up in the grief episode. Another thing
Speaker 1: you can do to UM, I guess kind of helped
Speaker 1: through the grief process is to throw yourself into a
Speaker 1: project that you think the deceased might appreciate. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: some organization they might have been affiliated with, Right, That's
Speaker 1: what I meant. Yeah, Yeah, like if you lose someone
Speaker 1: to cancer, or maybe get involved with the Common Foundation
Speaker 1: or one of the other groups or apparently Mad Mothers
Speaker 1: Against Drunk Driving was founded in memory of a deceased
Speaker 1: person absolutely killed by a drunk driver. One would imagine, UM,
Speaker 1: there's just a lot of stuff out there that you
Speaker 1: can do yourself. A lot of people pretty much immediately
Speaker 1: go to therapy, at least initially to get a little help,
Speaker 1: to get some insights and advice whatever. Um that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily the case for everybody, and they've definitely found that
Speaker 1: therapy is not even necessarily helpful for everybody. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of people out there who probably wonder if they're
Speaker 1: dead inside because they don't grieve like supposedly everyone else does.
Speaker 1: But study after study is finding that actually, people who
Speaker 1: go through significant grief um is a fairly small portion
Speaker 1: of people who experience a loss. Yeah, didn't we have
Speaker 1: a study in here? Yeah? Right here? Um. They what
Speaker 1: they do generally is they track groups of widows and
Speaker 1: widowers for a period of time and just have them,
Speaker 1: you know, remark about how they're feeling on a day
Speaker 1: to day basis. And uh, this one was for up
Speaker 1: to five years, I think, and between twenty had no
Speaker 1: significant symptoms in the initial years after the loss, and
Speaker 1: only nine to forty one percent did. And there's a
Speaker 1: big variability there, but they said it's partially from how
Speaker 1: the symptoms were measured. And in another study they found
Speaker 1: that about experience what you could diagnosis depression after the loss,
Speaker 1: and only about eleven um had trouble with it, like
Speaker 1: couldn't shake it after six to eight months, I believe, right,
Speaker 1: And ten percent of people who lost a spouse felt relief.
Speaker 1: These were people that had reported being unhappy in their marriage,
Speaker 1: So there's that those are the ones that danced on
Speaker 1: their spouses gave. I guess so, And I don't necessarily
Speaker 1: think it's that cold, but there there could be some
Speaker 1: mild relief if you weren't genuinely weren't happy in your marriage.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't mean you're dancing on graves and partying,
Speaker 1: but it might just be like, all right, well, now
Speaker 1: I can go move to us like that always wanted
Speaker 1: to and hang out with Sammy Hagar. Yeah, and now
Speaker 1: I can do that, right, And my wife also hated
Speaker 1: Sammy Hagar, but I'm gonna go hang out with him. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They also think that men may grieve heavier, even though
Speaker 1: it's at long believe that women do. Um. But I
Speaker 1: think a study like that is sort of silly. It's
Speaker 1: so variable, like from person to person. I don't know, right,
Speaker 1: But we say all this to point out that if
Speaker 1: you don't experience what other people would recognize as grief,
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with you anymore than there is if
Speaker 1: you experience grief. Exactly. What psychiatry and psychology have started
Speaker 1: to pay a little more attention to is what's been
Speaker 1: termed complicated grief, And then is technically, if you go,
Speaker 1: say several months to where your life is really really interrupted.
Speaker 1: You can't sleep, you can't eat, You're having trouble focusing
Speaker 1: on anything but the death of this person, the loss
Speaker 1: of them, that you start to seriously doubt things very
Speaker 1: important in your life, maybe like religion, even have lost
Speaker 1: a child, like there can't be a god, that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, right, Or conversely, if you can't even mention
Speaker 1: the person's name or hear the person's name. Basically, if
Speaker 1: your life is disrupted for many months, then basically everybody
Speaker 1: from the Mayo Clinic to the a p A. Says
Speaker 1: maybe you should go see somebody about this, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: it can also manifest itself and aggression and um violence,
Speaker 1: self destructive um physical self destruction. So it can complicated,
Speaker 1: as is an understatement here for this kind of grief,
Speaker 1: I think, right, Um, so there's different kinds. If you
Speaker 1: go see a counselor with what's considered normal grief, they're
Speaker 1: probably going to help you let go of the person
Speaker 1: while still honoring their memory and recognizing them and yeah,
Speaker 1: and the impact that they had on your life. But
Speaker 1: to get out there and live your in life, they're
Speaker 1: gonna try to reach the same goal if you have
Speaker 1: complicated grief, but they're going to do it a different way,
Speaker 1: and they're probably going to encourage you to really form
Speaker 1: an even greater bond with the person now that they're deceased,
Speaker 1: that you can nurture and hold onto and carry around
Speaker 1: with you. That makes sense to me. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: kind in this case, it's not like you can't tell
Speaker 1: a parent who has lost a child, like and you
Speaker 1: know you need to work through this and get over it, right.
Speaker 1: And that's actually one of the risk factors for complicated grief.
Speaker 1: Grief is the death of a child, the death of
Speaker 1: somebody that you are possibly co dependent on very very
Speaker 1: close to, or um the death of a sudden death,
Speaker 1: usually from trauma, say like a murder or something like that. Um,
Speaker 1: those are risk factors for complicated grief. So I would
Speaker 1: imagine that if you if you had a loved one
Speaker 1: who is murdered, you probably are already getting some sort
Speaker 1: of professional attention, and if you're not, maybe you should. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's what we're basically talking about, was the difference
Speaker 1: between grief and trauma, and when you've experienced it to
Speaker 1: that degree, trauma is a whole different deal. They'd say,
Speaker 1: it feels unreal and it's can be terrifying. The terror
Speaker 1: is the most common emotion. Um. It's common if you
Speaker 1: have dreams about a deceased loved one, But if you're
Speaker 1: having traumatizing dreams about yourself being endangered, then you've you've
Speaker 1: crossed the line from grief into trauma and complicated grief
Speaker 1: heavy stuff. It is very heavy. Losing a pet is
Speaker 1: for some people a very very very big deal um,
Speaker 1: and other people, well, people that aren't into pets at
Speaker 1: all don't get it. And then some people that do
Speaker 1: have pets are just more equipped to deal with the
Speaker 1: loss of a pet and not like it's the loss
Speaker 1: of a human. But for people like me and Jerry
Speaker 1: over there, I know that losing a pet, you know,
Speaker 1: is like equivalent to losing, you know, a family member,
Speaker 1: and the grieving process is about the same. I would
Speaker 1: imagine if it's you know, that impactful. And my advice
Speaker 1: is you should talk to other people who have similar feelings,
Speaker 1: because one of the things that can be toughest about
Speaker 1: losing a bet is when you talk to people who
Speaker 1: don't have pets. And I don't think it's that big
Speaker 1: of a deal to lose a bet, and that that
Speaker 1: can make things a lot worse. Well, they say that
Speaker 1: if you, um, if you do experience the loss of
Speaker 1: a pet and you find that you're grieving over it,
Speaker 1: you should go ahead with the grief. Don't feel embarrassed
Speaker 1: or dumb for that. Go light down to the doghouse
Speaker 1: and cry like a six year old. Uh, you got
Speaker 1: anything else? I ran across one thing. Um. There's a
Speaker 1: guy in three named Paul Rosenblatt who UM carried out
Speaker 1: a study of I think like fifty six Victorian diaries
Speaker 1: of people who would experienced loss. Interesting and UM, so
Speaker 1: grief is definitely cultural and also historically bound to like
Speaker 1: UM they found. He found that the goal for these
Speaker 1: diarists was to keep the person alive around them, like
Speaker 1: all the time, like they would try to sense the
Speaker 1: person around them, or like maybe sitting their favorite chair
Speaker 1: because they could tell that they were still there in
Speaker 1: somewhere or whatever. And that under those circumstances, he found
Speaker 1: that grief never really seemed to ever go away, that
Speaker 1: it was something that they carried around for the rest
Speaker 1: of their lives. And in fact, UM one of the
Speaker 1: things that the victorians did was they would wear black
Speaker 1: for a year, I believe, and then dark colors after that,
Speaker 1: especially if you were a widow and on the anniversary
Speaker 1: you wear black too, right, I think so. And you
Speaker 1: were expected to carry around this grief for the rest
Speaker 1: of your life. UM. And one of the things they
Speaker 1: also did that actually still around today was bereavement photography,
Speaker 1: which is post mortem photography. We've done the thing on that,
Speaker 1: have we, UM, and it's we did, didn't we? And
Speaker 1: we got an email just as recently is today from
Speaker 1: a woman who lost a child UM and had a
Speaker 1: cast made of the baby's hands and feet, and she
Speaker 1: said that it was something that UM has very much
Speaker 1: helped her through. Yeah. She said it was a gift
Speaker 1: from the hospital UM to help them through their grief.
Speaker 1: And the hospital said, you know, you might not want
Speaker 1: it now, but we really encourage you to have this
Speaker 1: one and we'll pay for it, UM, because you know,
Speaker 1: years from now you may really be happy that you have.
Speaker 1: And she said, they're absolutely right. Wow, that's really great.
Speaker 1: What was that email in reference to death as Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it just happened to come in to day when
Speaker 1: we were researching grief. That's about it. I guess, huh,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's a to Z grief. We touched on
Speaker 1: every single thing possible. Yeah, I guess. If you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about grief, you can type that word
Speaker 1: into the search bar how stuff works dot com. Remember
Speaker 1: I before E except after c um, Chuck. Hold on,
Speaker 1: let's let's take a message break. Huh. It is time
Speaker 1: for a listener man. So Josh, you can, by the way,
Speaker 1: to jump back look into more grief on our website,
Speaker 1: or you could go to Google and look at Pigmy
Speaker 1: coats the helps too. That's what I would say, all right,
Speaker 1: So now not listener mail, Josh. Today we have nice Chuck,
Speaker 1: well done. All right, So we're gonna this is gonna
Speaker 1: be an ongoing thing because as usual, they stack up.
Speaker 1: Well man, we have very busy work schedule, and we
Speaker 1: like to say thanks to as many people as possible.
Speaker 1: For those of you who don't know. Administrative details is
Speaker 1: a segment that replaces listener mail, in which we read
Speaker 1: out thank you to fans who have sent us stuff, tokens, yeah, anything,
Speaker 1: yep um. For example, postcard of Rapa Nui from Ryan Confort,
Speaker 1: thank you for that. Nice. That's that's Eastern Island. Okay. Um,
Speaker 1: Jake Aboard sentence Yellowstone Park shirts, postcards, info cards, hats.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because he works there. Yeah, that was a
Speaker 1: free sweet kif and he gets a discount. Hepsy hope
Speaker 1: he is. Um. Thanks to Shanty Diva for the postcard
Speaker 1: of the monkey k nots. Casey Herring sent us cookies
Speaker 1: and they were delicious. Which cookies the delicious one? Okay,
Speaker 1: not this crappy ones. Um, we got a wedding invitation
Speaker 1: from Rachel and John Reid. Congratulations, surprising one's astus to officiate.
Speaker 1: I do that? Oh man, you just opened the um
Speaker 1: hitch safe. Inventor Tim Freeman sent it's a hitch safe
Speaker 1: and that is a little thing that you stick in
Speaker 1: your trailer hitch if you have a truck pickup truck
Speaker 1: and it's got a little key in this hollowed out
Speaker 1: and you can like put your wallet and stuff in
Speaker 1: there if you go kayaking and lock it up. I
Speaker 1: didn't see this well because you're wanted the pickup. Okay,
Speaker 1: did you get a trailer hitch, buddy, you can will
Speaker 1: split the hitch happier. Um, let's see, we got a
Speaker 1: Christmas cards and postcards plural from Becca Evans at uc
Speaker 1: s C. Alright, justin Norman, um citisen ergo desk and
Speaker 1: iPad holder and I'm actually using the one for the
Speaker 1: laptop on my desk. It's quite lovely and it's handmade
Speaker 1: wood and you can find that debt wood bold dot com. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really a sight to behold. It's amazing. It looks
Speaker 1: like plastic, right, but it's would Yeah. Yeah. Um we
Speaker 1: got a Christmas postcard from Davini d who for some
Speaker 1: reason was dressed as Wilfred from the TV show Wilfred.
Speaker 1: So thank you Davini. Uh. Lorian Leonard sent us some
Speaker 1: Yemmy chocolates from Thickets in Marshfield, Wisconsin. Yeah, it was lovely. Um.
Speaker 1: We got a copy of the book Brushing the Teeth
Speaker 1: of Elvis's Monkey and a nice letter from Nurse Beeth,
Speaker 1: So thank you for that. Uh you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and bust into my books here. Um.
Speaker 1: We got how Colin Why How We Do Anything Means Everything?
Speaker 1: By darv Siedman. We got Swing Colin That Searched My
Speaker 1: father Louis Prima by Alan Gerstelluh Science Nearly Explained by
Speaker 1: Dick Maxwell and that is on Amazon. And kindle the
Speaker 1: Vampire Combat Manual from our buddy roger Ma who sent
Speaker 1: us the Zombie Combat Manual. And I imagine pretty soon
Speaker 1: we're gonna have a Wearwolf Combat Manual, I would hope.
Speaker 1: So it's Rogers Getting Lazy and Trunkless, which is a
Speaker 1: children's book from Sean Antoniac and Matthew Antoniac. That was sweet.
Speaker 1: It was like a graphic novel. Yeah, and they sent
Speaker 1: us some cool stickers from uh eight one one graphics
Speaker 1: dot com. So those are my books. Um, let's see
Speaker 1: what else. We got another postcard from Rapa Nui from
Speaker 1: Emily B that rhymes yeah. We got trifold wallets from
Speaker 1: Trifold try hold from Trifold wallets thanice Man. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: should get paid for this. Is a dude named Lars
Speaker 1: c who kind of went all over the place and
Speaker 1: he went to Las Cobos Las Cabos of course, Sammy
Speaker 1: Harry Garth's place, Seattle, Philadelphia, Calgary, Montreal, Nova, Scotia, and
Speaker 1: he kind of took us with him and sent us
Speaker 1: postcards along the way. So thanks a lot, large, Aaron Cooper,
Speaker 1: thank you for your cool phone Corps poster versions of
Speaker 1: some of your best stuff. You should know photoshop jobs. Yes,
Speaker 1: you love these. That's not the first time they sent
Speaker 1: those either, so thanks a lot erin it's a regular coop. Um,
Speaker 1: we got a nice postogram from Michael Storer. Caroline Larson
Speaker 1: in this magnetic skulls. Yeah, those are awesome, like a
Speaker 1: Day of the Dead skulls of her own art. I believe,
Speaker 1: I think so. Um. I've got her down too, and
Speaker 1: I have her website. It is um, I believe Caroline
Speaker 1: Larson Art dot com. If I come across it, I'll
Speaker 1: correct myself if that's wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's right. Okay,
Speaker 1: I got one more for now, and then you pick
Speaker 1: one more good one and then we'll pick this up again.
Speaker 1: Jennifer Dunaway send us admitted tree scarf. And this is
Speaker 1: just a scarf that you go and you pick a
Speaker 1: tree and you put a little scarf on it. Okay,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty darn cute and that makes the city
Speaker 1: more beautiful. Nice, So thank you Jennifer Dunaway for that. Um.
Speaker 1: And then I got a nice handmade birthday card for me,
Speaker 1: specifically nice from s y s k Army member Courtney Hoover.
Speaker 1: So thanks a lot for that question. Uh, and that's
Speaker 1: administrative details for this week part one. Uh, as far
Speaker 1: as this list goes, we've got this for the next
Speaker 1: six months. And I am right it is Caroline Larson
Speaker 1: art c A R O L I N E l
Speaker 1: A R S E n RT dot com. Yeah, get
Speaker 1: a tree scarf. Yeah, that's what I say. And a
Speaker 1: school magnet. All right. Oh okay, let's see. If you
Speaker 1: want to uh tweet to us, you can join us
Speaker 1: on Twitter at s y s K podcast. You can
Speaker 1: join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know,
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to off podcast at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com, and you can send us a good
Speaker 1: old fashioned website. Visit to Stuff you Should Know dot
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is it how Stuff Works dot com m