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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast George and oor

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Speaker 2: with you. Doctor Tom Nimi with US award winning clinical

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Speaker 2: psychologist with more than twenty years experience in an incredible

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Speaker 2: passion for healing grief with induced after death communication therapy.

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Speaker 2: Having had his own spontaneous after death communications, Tom is

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Speaker 2: now a visiting research fellow at the University of Adelaide,

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Speaker 2: where he has conducted a control evaluation of IADC therapy. Tom,

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Speaker 2: welcome to the program, looking forward to this.

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Speaker 3: Thanks George. It's great to be with you.

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Speaker 2: And our things in Australia.

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Speaker 3: Things are great. We're coming into the cool of months now.

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Speaker 3: I've got the fire going and I'm just hearing the

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Speaker 3: Adelaide Hills of South Australia and yeah, it's a lovely

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Speaker 3: day so far.

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Speaker 2: Our friend Russell Crow lives down your way. He's a

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Speaker 2: good guy.

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Speaker 3: He is a good guy. I haven't met him personally,

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Speaker 3: but yeah, he's I think he's originally from New Zealand,

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Speaker 3: but he's adopted Australia, as I understand.

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Speaker 2: He Let's talk a little bit about grief for a

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Speaker 2: moment and then your work is a grief therapist. But

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Speaker 2: in your opinion, what is a good definition of grief?

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Speaker 2: What is that?

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Speaker 3: Well, grief is a really natural phenomenon. It's not something

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Speaker 3: that we should assume is in any way abnormal, but

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Speaker 3: it's this natural emotional reaction to a loss. And so

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Speaker 3: in the grief work that I do, it's usually bereavement.

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Speaker 3: And of course there can be all sorts of losses

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Speaker 3: that can be loss of a relationship or a job

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Speaker 3: or a life change. But in terms of bereavement, it's

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Speaker 3: the emotional reaction to bereavement and that sense of losing

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Speaker 3: someone that you really love. And this can manifest in

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Speaker 3: a whole number of ways, but of course often it's

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Speaker 3: about sadness. That's really at the core of grief. Sadness,

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Speaker 3: this sense of longing, and for some people it turns

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Speaker 3: into what we call prolonged grief, which is where people

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Speaker 3: get kind of stuck in that state and it really

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Speaker 3: affects the quality of their lives.

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Speaker 2: It becomes very depressing to them, that doesn't.

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Speaker 3: It Absolutely it's associated with depression. It can look like

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Speaker 3: depression in fact, and for some people, you know, it

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Speaker 3: becomes a thing that is a burden that they carry

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Speaker 3: around day to day and they just can struggle to

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Speaker 3: really move forward from that. You know, I see grief

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Speaker 3: in so many different forms in my work now, and

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Speaker 3: it's just something that can be like a People describe

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Speaker 3: it as a weight. They often say, you know, I

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Speaker 3: have this heaviness, and that's probably a good metaphor for

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Speaker 3: what grief is like.

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Speaker 2: If you lose a loved one, what is the average

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Speaker 2: length of time one should normally grieve?

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Speaker 3: You know, George, I don't think we put arbitrary time

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Speaker 3: frames on it. I know that sometimes people like to

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Speaker 3: think of grief in terms of stages, or that there's

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Speaker 3: an order or a particular set of time, But I

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Speaker 3: don't think it's that simple. In fact, I often say

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Speaker 3: to my clients there's really no rules when it comes

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Speaker 3: to grief. It can be different for everyone. Now, of course,

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Speaker 3: clinically we put some things on this, so there are

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Speaker 3: arbitrary diagnostic criteria. So they might say, well, if it's

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Speaker 3: been a year and somebody is still experiencing X, Y

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Speaker 3: or Z, then we might say that they're still in grief.

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Speaker 3: But for many people it's not that black or white.

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Speaker 3: It's something that can take a long time for many people,

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Speaker 3: and we want to help them get to that place

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Speaker 3: where it's not that they're kind of in denial of

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Speaker 3: the lives. It's not that they're you know, completely back

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Speaker 3: to one hundred percent, but we want them to have

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Speaker 3: their quality of life. We want them to be able

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Speaker 3: to function and not to be stuck. So it's really

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Speaker 3: different for everyone.

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Speaker 2: What got you to become a grief therapist?

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Speaker 3: Well, you know, if somebody said to me fifteen years ago, Tom,

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Speaker 3: you're going to end up as a grief therapist, I

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Speaker 3: would have told them to jump in the lake. It

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Speaker 3: was the furthest thing from my mind because you know,

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Speaker 3: whenever I faced grieving clients, I actually have to say

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Speaker 3: I felt quite helpless. I don't know if many of

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Speaker 3: my colleagues would be able to relate to this. Some

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Speaker 3: of them have confided in me that they can. But

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Speaker 3: you know, if someone came to me with anxiety or depression,

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Speaker 3: all of the really common psychological problems that people might

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Speaker 3: seek therapy for, I always felt like I had tools,

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Speaker 3: you know, I could do my cognitive behavior therapy, I

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Speaker 3: could do this or that, and I felt empowered to

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Speaker 3: really help them. But when somebody came to me in

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Speaker 3: deep grief, of course I was willing to sit with them,

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Speaker 3: I was willing to help them as best I could,

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Speaker 3: but I didn't really feel like there was a lot

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Speaker 3: I could do that would make a big difference. And

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Speaker 3: so for a long time, you know, I was a

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Speaker 3: bit of a coward when it came to grief. I

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Speaker 3: wouldn't seek out that type of therapy, and for many

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Speaker 3: of my clients, I have to say this is a

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Speaker 3: real confession here, but I really felt that some of

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Speaker 3: my clients just didn't come back because I wasn't helping

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Speaker 3: them to get unstuck. And so for a long time,

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Speaker 3: I was very, very avoidant of grief therapy. What changed

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Speaker 3: for me and what led me to become a grief therapist,

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Speaker 3: is that I found something that works. And it's called

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Speaker 3: induced aff to death communication therapy, which in a way

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Speaker 3: is a little bit of a misnomer, which I can

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Speaker 3: explain later. But I came across this in the most

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Speaker 3: mundane of ways. I was walking my dog. In fact,

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Speaker 3: I was listening to a podcast from your own Sandra Champagne,

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Speaker 3: and she was interviewing doctor Alan Bodkin. So Alan Bodkin's

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Speaker 3: a clinical psychologist, and he was talking about his therapy,

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Speaker 3: induced after death communication therapy, or what they abbreviate to IADC.

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Speaker 3: So I'm walking my dog hearing him talk about this

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Speaker 3: adapted form of EMDR. And for people who haven't heard

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Speaker 3: of EMDR, it means eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing, and

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Speaker 3: it's a therapy that is really now the gold standard

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Speaker 3: for traumatic stress. It's a movement of the eyes back

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Speaker 3: and forth horizontally. It stimulates the brain in a particular

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Speaker 3: way that puts it into a healing mode. You can imagine, George,

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Speaker 3: that when this therapy came out, and when I was

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Speaker 3: doing my clinical training twenty years ago, people kind of

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Speaker 3: laughed at EMDR. They would talk about it in these

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Speaker 3: hush tones, as if it was all a little bit silly. Well,

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Speaker 3: that silly little therapy is now the gold standard for

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Speaker 3: post traumatic stress disorder. And what I heard doctor Botkin

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Speaker 3: talking to Sandra Champlain about was that he had used

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Speaker 3: MDR with Vietnam veterans. He was working in a VA

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Speaker 3: hospital and he was in charge of the trauma program

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Speaker 3: and he started trying to improve the protocol for MDR.

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Speaker 3: What could he do that would make it more effective,

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Speaker 3: And he found that many of the things he tried

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Speaker 3: didn't work, but a couple of them did, and the

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Speaker 3: main one was, instead of focusing on the fear associated

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Speaker 3: with a lost trauma, so a trauma where somebody had died,

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Speaker 3: and of course, in this Vietnam veteran population, almost all

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Speaker 3: of them were dealing with some kind of death, either

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Speaker 3: people they had killed at war or their colleagues who

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Speaker 3: had died. And he said, if we instead focus on

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Speaker 3: the sadness, what he called the core of the loss,

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Speaker 3: that it was more direct, and that the fear and

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Speaker 3: the anger and the guilt he saw those as kind

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Speaker 3: of secondary emotions and that they would kind of just resolve.

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Speaker 3: So he started doing this adapted protocol focused to EMDR

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Speaker 3: and in one day he was working with a Vietnam

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Speaker 3: veteran he had focused on their sadness as the primary

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Speaker 3: focus for the eye movements. He noticed that it worked

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Speaker 3: very effectively. The sadness was reducing and reducing, and then

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Speaker 3: one day something extraordinary happened. One of his patients reported

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Speaker 3: that they perceived the presence of the deceased person the

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Speaker 3: person they were mourning, and he was shocked. Alan Botkin

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Speaker 3: was shocked, the client was shocked, but he felt this

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Speaker 3: immense love and peace when he had this experience, which

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Speaker 3: we now know is an after death communication. And that

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Speaker 3: patient recovered very very quickly and was discharged from hospital.

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Speaker 3: And that was the beginning of Alan Botkin refining what

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Speaker 3: eventually became IDC therapy. And I have to say, George,

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Speaker 3: when I first heard about this, it sounded too good

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Speaker 3: to be true, but it was really a turning point

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Speaker 3: for me because I thought, I really want to find

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Speaker 3: out about this from us.

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Speaker 2: How does rapid eye movement work this way?

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Speaker 3: There's a few different theories about it. We know that

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Speaker 3: when we go through rem sleep at night, our eyes

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Speaker 3: naturally dart back and forth, and this is associated with

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Speaker 3: a particular stage of brain activity. So when people are

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Speaker 3: feeling upset about something and they go to sleep, we

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Speaker 3: often notice that we feel better in the morning. And

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Speaker 3: I don't think that's just because we feel rested. I

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Speaker 3: think it's actually this healing mode of our brain during

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Speaker 3: that sleep, and so our brain processes emotions, it puts

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Speaker 3: memories in order, and it's kind of like a clearing house.

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Speaker 3: It's a healing mode and we feel better. Well, there's

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Speaker 3: something about that that we can do when people are awake,

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Speaker 3: where we get them to move their eyes horizontally back

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Speaker 3: and forth. Their brain goes into this healing mode and

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Speaker 3: it does seem to very rapidly process the intensity of emotions,

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Speaker 3: and so we use that therapeutically. That's how it was discovered.

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Speaker 3: In fact, the discover of EMDR was just taking a

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Speaker 3: walk while she was upset, but she noticed that as

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Speaker 3: she moved her eyes left to right in the environment,

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Speaker 3: she started to feel better. So there's still some conjecture

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Speaker 3: over the exact mechanisms, but we do know through very

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Speaker 3: good quality research that it really helps process emotions for people.

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Speaker 2: Can we all practice that in case we need it?

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Speaker 3: I am not aware of, you know, kind of a

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Speaker 3: universal self administered protocol. I think there's more research to

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Speaker 3: be done for that. But there are therapists all over

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Speaker 3: now who would use EMDR as kind of a mainstream

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Speaker 3: therapy for trauma, And of course there's also people who

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Speaker 3: now use that in IADC therapy, And although that has

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Speaker 3: been relatively obscure, I think we're now seeing a bit

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Speaker 3: more of a push out into the mainstream and certainly

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Speaker 3: that's part of my mission is that we need to

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Speaker 3: get this awareness out to other people because it helps

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Speaker 3: grieving people in a way that is unlike anything I've

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Speaker 3: seen before.

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Speaker 2: Oh, exactly, Tom, what is induced after death communications? What

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Speaker 2: is that?

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Speaker 3: So it's a protocol of two ninety minute sessions where

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Speaker 3: we have the client fully access their sadness. And I

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Speaker 3: have to say it's quite an intense therapy. It's not

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Speaker 3: for everybody. We do go through a screening process before

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Speaker 3: we book somebody in for this because it requires them

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Speaker 3: to be fully feeling their sadness when we apply this

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Speaker 3: bilateral stimulation, this stimulation of each hemisphere of the brain

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Speaker 3: through eyes moving back and forth, or even through tapping.

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Speaker 3: You can tap somebody's knees or they can tap their

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Speaker 3: shoulders alternately. And as people access this sadness and fully

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Speaker 3: feel it, we apply these sets of bilateral stimulation and

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Speaker 3: we notice people will report that they start feeling less sad.

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Speaker 3: So we have this principle of worst first, we want

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Speaker 3: to target the most sad aspect of their experience. We

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Speaker 3: repeatedly apply this bilateral stimulation, this eigeh movement, and people report,

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Speaker 3: I'm feeling less sad I'm feeling less sad. I'm feeling

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Speaker 3: less sad, and we move to another aspect of their

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Speaker 3: experience that is sad, and we keep doing this until

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Speaker 3: they feel very calm and peaceful. And we also know

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Speaker 3: now that for about seventy five percent of people in

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Speaker 3: that calm, peaceful state, they will report that they've perceived

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Speaker 3: the presence of the deceased person in some way.

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Speaker 2: Hence the communication.

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Speaker 3: That's the communication part of it. And the reason I,

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Speaker 3: you know, I always talk to people about this when

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Speaker 3: I'm doing the screening calls with them is we don't

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Speaker 3: want to make it only about the communication. Of course,

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Speaker 3: that's a very interesting part of it. It's something that

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Speaker 3: of course grieving people naturally want, but we can't control

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Speaker 3: that part of it. We can't make it happen. I

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Speaker 3: can't force somebody to feel the presence of their loved one.

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Speaker 3: So it's mostly about reducing sadness, that's number one. And

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Speaker 3: we can reliably reduce sadness, you know, I would say

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Speaker 3: for ninety percent of people, they will say I definitely

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Speaker 3: feel less sad about this loss afterwards. And it's a

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Speaker 3: subset of those people who have that after death communication.

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Speaker 3: So the name's a bit of a misnomer because it

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Speaker 3: emphasizes the ADC. But yeah, even if you don't have

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Speaker 3: an ADC, most people feel significantly better. And you've got

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Speaker 3: to remember two ninety minute sessions. This is a very focused,

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Speaker 3: very brief, intense therapy, and that's remarkable when you compare

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Speaker 3: it to other psychotherapy. He's like cognitive behavior therapy for

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Speaker 3: anxiety or depression, which might be ten, twelve, twenty sessions

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Speaker 3: in order to make those kind of gains.

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Speaker 2: Tom, can any of this be in the imagination or

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Speaker 2: is it actually happening?

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Speaker 3: It's a great question. That's a question that clients will

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Speaker 3: often ask of themselves. But in my experience, mostly people

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Speaker 3: would say that they feel it was genuinely the presence

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Speaker 3: of their loved one. People can sometimes say, well, you know,

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Speaker 3: I saw something in my mind's eye, or I felt

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Speaker 3: a touch, or even I smelt something, I heard their voice,

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Speaker 3: and these are things that you know, they're not conjuring

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Speaker 3: because it's usually not what they expect. You know, it's

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Speaker 3: often not what they would expect, and yet they're reporting

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Speaker 3: these things that happen to them and afterwards they say, no,

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Speaker 3: that was really special. That's made a significant difference to

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Speaker 3: how I feel and emotionally, there is a significant change

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Speaker 3: associated with that. So for most clients, if you ask them,

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Speaker 3: I think they'd say that was a genuine spiritual experience.

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Speaker 3: But we don't impose an interpretation on anybody.

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Speaker 2: Can you give us an example of an IADC event

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Speaker 2: and how that happened?

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Speaker 3: Absolutely well. One that stands out in my mind was

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Speaker 3: one that was a little bit unusual. A client, a

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Speaker 3: lady in her fifties, had her husband pass away quite suddenly.

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Speaker 3: He was in a car accident, and she was very distressed.

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Speaker 3: She came to me, I think it was a couple

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Speaker 3: of years after this had happened, and she described her

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Speaker 3: grief as overwhelming her. She said, I can't shake it.

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Speaker 3: I just can't seem to get past this. And it

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Speaker 3: was every day, she said, I feel like I'm on

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Speaker 3: the verge of tears continuously. So naturally, I was really

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Speaker 3: motivated to help her, and she did a very good

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Speaker 3: job of stepping into her sadness, letting the emotions come up.

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Speaker 3: And you know, people are in grief are used to

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Speaker 3: managing their emotions. They're used to going to the shops

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Speaker 3: or going to work and kind of pushing it down.

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Speaker 3: And yet with IDC therapy, we're saying, don't push it down,

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Speaker 3: let it come up, let the emotions come up, and

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Speaker 3: we want to just let your thinking brain sit to

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Speaker 3: the side. So she was very good at doing that.

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Speaker 3: We did many sets of eye movement and she was

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Speaker 3: very open. So that's another thing that's quite important. We

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Speaker 3: need people to be open to whatever they might experience.

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Speaker 3: And I say to people, you don't have to believe

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Speaker 3: that this is going to work, but you do have

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Speaker 3: to believe that it might work, because if people are

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Speaker 3: sitting there thinking, oh, nothing's going to change, you know,

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Speaker 3: I'm going to be like this forever, it just puts

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Speaker 3: the brakes on it. But when we got to the

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Speaker 3: second session, she reported seeing something quite unusual. A photo

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Speaker 3: of her husband in the photo frame started changing. And

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Speaker 3: this this was a physical object right next to her computer.

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Speaker 3: I was doing this therapy with her over zoom and

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Speaker 3: she said, it looks like there's different images appearing in

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Speaker 3: the picture frame. Now, this is I've learned, not completely

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Speaker 3: uncommon when people have after death communications. But I wanted

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Speaker 3: her to have an internal experience, so I said, well,

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Speaker 3: that's great, let's keep note of that, but I want

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Speaker 3: you to carry on. I just want you to focus

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Speaker 3: on how you feel when you close your eyes, be

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Speaker 3: open to anything. And she reported this intense lava like color,

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Speaker 3: this orange, this bright orange that she said she was

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Speaker 3: seeing under her closed eyelids. And the biggest telltale sign

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Speaker 3: that something was going on was the emotion. She said,

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Speaker 3: I just feel surrounded by love. I feel incredible joy.

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Speaker 3: And she I asked her, where's this coming from, and

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Speaker 3: she said, it's from my husband, it's him. So she

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Speaker 3: went in two ninety minute sessions from on the verge

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Speaker 3: of tears from intense sadness to tears of joy and

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Speaker 3: love and peace. And that's one that stands out for

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Speaker 3: me because it highlights just how dramatically this therapy can work.

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