Paul Winkler: Welcome to “The Investor Coaching Show.” I am Paul Winkler talking money and investing.
Issues Driving Money Decisions
Typically, there are all kinds of aspects of money investing that intrigue me. It’s not only the investing part, but it’s also how we handle finances, how we handle things that come up in life that can create issues and will drive money decisions.
Sometimes you’ll have situations where you have a marriage break up, and a lot of times it’s because of financial reasons — we know that.
Sometimes you have losses in your life, deaths, and now you’ve got to deal with all kinds of financial issues that come with that.
Transitions take place in life. One of the things that those of you that follow this show know is that I decided to get a master’s in marriage and family therapy several years ago.
I went through that process, and I’m privileged to be able to work over at the Babb Center in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and work with some really phenomenal people over there. It’s just something I do on the side a couple of days a week, and I get to know a lot of the people over there.
One of the people I got to know, Lindsey Casabella, is a therapist over there at the Babb Center. I want to introduce you to her.
She’s been on the show before, but I want to introduce you to her in an area where she just happens to be a big expert. She knows an awful lot about and has a lot of really great stuff to talk about regarding grief. And the reality of it is that we will all go through a period in time when we lose something in life, whether it’s a loved one, whether well, there are a number of things.
I mean, you can talk about all kinds of things you can grieve, job and health and things like that. And I’m going to have her talk more about those things that people typically grieve over as we go through this. But Lindsey, welcome.
Lindsey Casabella: Thank you, Paul. It’s good to be back. Thank you for having me again.
PW: Well, I am really looking forward to this because I think this is going to help a lot of people because it’s an area that every last one of us deals with.
LC: That’s right.
Sources of Grief and the Stages of Grief
PW: So just give us a few things, throw out a few things. You ran a group, a grief group. And what were some of the things that you saw people dealing with loss-wise that they were grieving over? What were some of those things you could come up with?
LC: So when I ran that grief group specifically, most everyone in there was dealing with the death of a loved one.
But since I’ve started my practice at the Babb Center, I’ve realized that there is an element of grief in so many different things.
Of course, the loss of someone that we love, but also in divorce, the death of a marriage.
PW: Oh, yeah.
LC: Life transitions.
PW: For sure. Because you have all kinds of dreams, how the marriage was going to happen, you were going to grow old together, what it was going to be like, and then all of a sudden that is just not.
LC: Right, right. Exactly. Dreams. That in and of itself, just dreams that you come to realize are not going to happen.
Life transitions hold an element of grief. For instance, I have a senior that’s graduating this year. I’m grieving that. I mean, I’m excited and I’m happy for the next stage, but there’s some grief there.
PW: There’s an aspect of grief. And there’s also, I see sometimes, for example, where health has failed somebody.
LC: Right, exactly.
PW: And then all of a sudden they’re grieving the loss of good health and maybe even a job.
LC: Job loss, financial stability. Yes.
PW: So this hits people in a lot of different areas, I think that is really the point here. Now, was it Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, I think was her first name?
LC: That’s correct. Yes.
PW: She was the one, and I’m going back to studies, I remember this, but there were five stages that have always been talked about as the five stages of grieving. You had, let me see, anger was one, then you moved to denial.
LC: Denial.
PW: And then you go to bargaining, and then you go to depression. And then acceptance. That was the typical model, those five. Now some people have added a couple on top of that, but in general it’s those five.
The Aspects of Grief
PW: Is that still a valid model? Is that still something that people use a lot? And if so, how? And do we still call them stages?
LC: Yes. It is still a very valid model that is out there, and it is used just to help people understand grief. Me personally, I use the model a lot in practice to help people understand these different elements of grief. But I like to refer to them as aspects of grief instead of stages.
Because when you say to someone, “Here are the stages of grief,” it paints this picture that I’m going to go through this stage into this stage into this stage. And when I get to acceptance, then I’ve arrived.
PW: Yeah, yeah. Great point.
LC: That’s just not so.
PW: No, so true. Because it’s like, Okay, I’ve graduated, and then if you go back at all, you’ve regressed and that makes you look bad. There’s something really wrong with you.
LC: You feel like something’s wrong with you. That’s right. That’s right.
PW: You’re not doing this right.
LC: That’s right.
PW: You went back to anger or whatever.
LC: Yes.
You can move in and out of these aspects of grief. There’s no right or wrong way to be doing grief.
PW: Yeah, I like that a lot. And the thing that I think of is, well, let’s walk through the various aspects and what they are and how they show up.
When we’re talking about anger, for example — you’re angry at who? Or what? I mean, what would we say?
LC: Yeah, I think you may go through being angry at God. “Why did you allow this to happen?”
PW: Oh, yeah.
LC: I think sometimes you go through maybe being angry at yourself. “If only I would’ve done this differently.”
PW: “If I hadn’t told him to go to the grocery store at this particular time, that accident wouldn’t have happened.”
LC: Right. And sometimes you even find yourself angry at the person who died or what happened. And that’s okay because that’s just how we process the anger.
PW: So why anger? Does it give us a sense of control, that we could have had more control? I think that to me is where the rubber meets the road: We all desire control in our lives.
So we give ourselves the false impression that we really do have control. That’s kind of where my brain goes on that.
LC: Right.
PW: That makes some sense?
LC: It does.
PW: Okay. So to me, that’s anger. And you can keep coming back to it. It’s something that doesn’t just happen once and it’s over. You can keep coming back to it from time to time.
LC: That’s right. And sometimes I think maybe you go back and forth between bargaining, which is another aspect of grief and anger.
PW: And bargaining, you talk about that. So bargaining, what is that?
What are you talking about when you’re bargaining? You’re bargaining with God and saying, “God, if you’ll just bring this person back.”
LC: Right. Or, and then sometimes it’s the “if only” questions that I kind of had previously mentioned. If only I would have done this. If only I could go back.
PW: Oh, so that’s part of bargaining?
LC: Right. So you may experience bargaining and then the anger, because we can’t do that.
PW: Interesting.
LC: So a lot of times people will kind of oscillate back and forth between those two elements.
How We Approach People Grieving
PW: It’s interesting when you mentioned this, what hits my mind, Lindsey, is that the idea of getting angry sometimes is because of how people approach us. When you’re going through a loss, I’ve heard stuff like this, people go, “Well, Paul, everything happens for a reason.” “Lindsey, you’re going to get over this and you’re going to be even better when you come back from it.”
Or, “Something good is going to come out of this.” That’s something else that you hear from people. Or, “You’re so strong, you’re so resourceful.”
You hear that kind of thing and you think, “Stop. You think you’re helping me, but you’re not.”
LC: Right.
PW: So talk about that. What happens with people when they’re hearing that from somebody else? Why is it that people do that, number one? And why is it not helpful?
LC: Yeah. I think grief is just an uncomfortable subject. And I think that most people, they mean well. I think that most people, their intentions are good.
So I think people want to try to make someone feel better. And so they’ll try to bring the positive to it.
PW: And we live in a culture in which we have to solve problems. When you’re in pain, I want to solve the problem.
LC: That’s right.
PW: Yeah. That makes sense to me.
LC: That’s right.
PW: That would be the case. And we look at that, we go, okay, so anger. And then you have bargaining.
We kind of skipped over the second one, so let’s talk a little bit about that, the second aspect of it. When we look at anger, it may lead to just denial.
Denial — walk us through it. You’ve seen this so many times. What does that look like?
LC: I think denial, I would somewhat put denial as the first stage. That one I can kind of understand because a lot of times right after a loss —
PW: And I may even have them backward. It’s been a while since I studied. That may be on me.
But yeah, that would make sense to me. “Yeah, it didn’t happen.”
From a psychological standpoint, sometimes when something bad happens, we just go, “No, I can’t handle that.” And we repress it.
LC: Yep, exactly. Exactly.
Which I think is just part of the way that God wired us. Because after a loss, there are so many emotions. And to be able to process and hold all of those at one time, it’s just too much.
PW: Yeah. It’s like in the movie, “A Few Good Men.” “You can’t handle the truth.”
LC: It’s just too much. And also, I think in the beginning, after a loss, there’s a lot of preparation for arrangements and busyness that’s taken place.
PW: Right. Oh, yeah. It allows for the denial. That makes a ton of sense, for sure.
LC: That’s right. That’s right.
The Depression Stage
PW: And then you’ve got depression, which is just hopelessness.
LC: Yeah. And I would say that that aspect, depression, probably from what I see, is somewhat of the longest aspect if we’re looking at it from stages.
I would say that typically people spend the majority of time in depression.
And I think it’s important to note that when we’re talking about depression here, it’s a little bit different than what we clinically call depression. There is a difference, and we can get into that just a little bit later.
PW: Well, that makes some sense. So when we look at that, we go, “Okay, so it’s a fear of the future. What’s it going to look like?”
I had my future all planned out. I knew what was going to happen. Now it’s a big blank space. And I put something really scary in that blank space that whatever’s going to happen, it’s going to be bad and I won’t be able to handle it.
There’s a hopelessness to it. You said that we land there longer than others. And I think that it’s because of the fact that we keep coming back to it.
It’s not in order. We don’t do this in order, but we land back there every once in a while because we have a bad day. And you can just be there for a longer period of time.
LC: Right. Because it’s the aspect of the sadness and just the longing, the missing, the longing, just the sadness.
PW: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So let’s do this. Let’s take a quick break and come back and talk a little bit more about this, because what I want to do is I want to make sure before we get to the end of the hour, we discuss some of the things that you have used with people that they have found helpful for going through this.
I also want to talk about how long it lasts. Is this something that goes on forever? Are we ever going to get out of it?
Or is it something that goes away? Is it something we can just paint over? And eventually, you will come back bigger and stronger and faster. We’ll talk a little bit about that.
Mistakes We Make in Response to People Grieving
PW: All right, we’re back here on “The Investor Coaching Show.” I’m Paul Winkler, along with my friend, Lindsey Casabella from over at the BAP Center, talking about the grieving process.
Everybody in the listening audience, every last one of us goes through something or has, and/or I should say, has people — friends of ours, loved ones — that lose something and then they go through this grieving process. It’s just a normal part of life. How do you deal with it and the mistakes that we make, we just talked about a few of them already.
Sometimes people go, “Everything happens for a reason,” and they mean well. But there is more than that.
There’s more than that, isn’t there, Lindsey? What are some of the other mistakes that people make in regards to dealing with people who are grieving that you’ve seen?
LC: Yeah, a couple of more statements that you hear are, “Well, be grateful for the time that you had with them” or “You’re blessed to still have this.”
PW: Yeah. It’s our fix-it culture like I was talking about earlier.
LC: Right. That’s right.
PW: But we just want to fix it. We just want it to go away. Yeah, so why is that so hard?
LC: Yeah. Well, and before I get to that, I was going to say another one that we commonly use and that we hear is we say to people, “Let me know if there’s anything that I can do.”
PW: Oh, okay. So why is that? That’s interesting because you hear that all the time.
LC:
You hear that all the time. “Let me know if there’s something that I can do. Let me know what you need.”
PW: All the time. “Let me know what you need.” I could see saying that to somebody, for sure.
LC: That’s right. That’s right.
PW: Yeah. Because it’s like the thoughtful thing to do. “Let me know what I can do for you.”
Sure. Why is that an issue?
LC: Because of the chances that someone’s actually going to say what they need because they probably don’t even know.
PW: Somewhere between slim and no. Oh, yeah.
LC: That’s right. They probably don’t even know because when you are in grief, sometimes you don’t know. And so that actually is putting the burden on the person that’s grieving.
PW: So it’s pressure.
LC: Right.
PW: This sort of makes sense to me a lot because if you’re asking me, then I’m trying to come up with something and I’m having to think about it and I feel bad if I don’t give you something because I’m robbing you of blessing. So that makes some sense and I don’t want to be that person that robs you of the ability to bless somebody else because I know that you feel that you need to. Oh, that makes a ton of sense.
LC: Yeah, yeah.
PW: I hadn’t really thought about that that way.
Unsolicited Advice
PW: What are other things?
LC: Sharing our own experiences, because I know we all have a story.
We all understand our story with grief and if we don’t, we will at some point because grief is part of life.
PW: Right. “I can top your story.”
LC: That’s right. That’s right.
PW: And I don’t mean that that’s necessarily what’s going on, but in a way, it sort of can be.
LC: And there again … right. It comes across that way. And there again.
PW: I guess it could come across as, “Why aren’t you getting over this?”
LC: That’s right.
PW: “I got over it. Here’s what I went through and I got over it.”
LC: That’s right. Or, “Here’s what I did. This is what I did.”
PW: Advice.
LC: Unsolicited advice sometimes. Yes.
PW: Advice giving. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The ultimate look at grieving that I think about is Job in the Book of Job. There are things that his friends just didn’t do quite right.
LC: That’s right. That’s right. And we can always go to that book and learn so many lessons on grieving.
PW: And for those of you that don’t even know, he lost his kids, he lost his family, he lost his reputation, he lost his position, he lost his property, he lost everything. And the thing is that all his friends came around and at first, they started well, for those of you that don’t know the story.
They started well. They came around and they just shut up and they sat with them and then all of a sudden, they started to say, “What did you do wrong?” And that is ouch, ouch.
LC: Right.
PW: Yeah. “You did something wrong,” which you can get really angry at, but then, yeah.
LC: Yeah, yeah.
PW: When that’s happening, for sure.
LC: Yeah.
PW: So other things. You were about to come up with another one. What else?
Check In With People
LC: Yeah, this one’s really common too. So if you tell someone, “I’m going to be there for you,” be there. Because so often, people will check in for a week or two and then I get it.
PW: Get busy, yeah.
LC: Life gets busy and we just fail to check in.
PW: Especially the first couple of weeks. You have so much going on and so many people because you’ve got the visitation, you’ve got the funeral, and if it’s the loss of a loved one.
Then there’s also … let’s say if it’s a loss of a job. All of a sudden, you check out and you stop checking in on the person.
LC: Right.
PW: And they kind of feel awful because they’re out and maybe they’re trying to find another place to work and it’s not getting better or their health isn’t getting better. You almost feel like there’s another reason people aren’t checking with you and it can add to the sense of loss because now, you’re losing your friends too.
LC: That’s right. And that’s a whole aspect that is so difficult for so many people. And that’s what we call secondary losses because a lot of times after someone passes away, you have secondary losses.
PW: Sure.
LC: Maybe you lose, if you were a couple, you lose a couple of friends.
PW: Oh yeah.
LC: You lose financial stability.
So there are all these other secondary losses that sometimes come from one single loss, and people need support.
PW: Yeah, for sure. And as you mentioned this, I’m thinking about the aspect that you talked about a little bit earlier: depression.
LC: Right, right.
PW: And when we’re going through depression, what we tend to do anyway is isolate because we don’t think anybody wants to be around us because we’re miserable. “Why would anybody want to be around me?”
LC: Absolutely.
Healing at Your Own Pace
PW: One of the best things to help somebody overcome that is being around people, getting connected with people.
LC: Right.
PW: But it’s the last thing sometimes we want to do. Now, forcing somebody who’s going through this process into being around people when they don’t necessarily want to be, I’m sure you probably have some things to say about that as well.
LC: Right. Yeah.
I tell people all the time, you have to do what you’re ready to do because when you’re grieving, there’s more than just the emotional aspect.
I mean, there’s a physical aspect to grieving as well. So grief affects the endocrine system, the nervous system, your immune system.
There’s a lot of just exhaustion. And it also sometimes maybe there’s trauma surrounding the loss and sometimes people deal with some PTSD symptoms after a loss and so, you’re not always able.
PW: Right. So telling somebody, “Get out there and you just need to get active again.”
LC: Right.
PW: And there may be physical reasons that they can’t do it.
LC: That’s right. And that may very well be true because I do believe that that’s part of healing.
PW: Sure. Sure. Yeah.
LC: But someone has to do that at their own pace.
PW: At their own pace is your point. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
LC: It’s always told —
PW: This is really, really good stuff.
LC: Right. I always tell someone in the beginning, when you’re beginning to go to a party or especially at holidays, take your own car. If you feel overwhelmed, it’s okay to leave.
PW: That’s really good. Yeah, that’s really good.
LC: Right.
PW: So you can do things on your own timeline.
LC: Right.
PW: For sure. You listen.
LC: You know what you need.
EPISODE 2
Paul Winkler: All right. We’re back here on “The Investor Coaching Show.” I’m Paul Winkler, here with my friend Lindsey Casabella from the Babb Center in Hendersonville, Tennessee.
Helpful Responses to Someone Grieving
So we’ve been talking about something that every last one of us goes through at some point in our lives and our friends as well: The grieving process. You’ve lost something.
You’ve lost a job. You’ve lost a loved one. You’ve lost health. You’ve lost whatever — your dog.
I mean, just there’s all kinds of stuff that people grieve over. So we’re talking a little bit about the things that people do that don’t work so well.
We’ve discussed that a little bit. Lindsey made the comment, “You’re just lucky you had this person as long as you did. He or she’s in a better place now.” I hear that kind of thing from time to time.
“He died doing something he loves” is another one I’ve heard before, and I’m supposed to feel really great about that.
“You can always have another child.” It’s like, “Oh my goodness. Ouch.” “Everything happens for a reason.”
You get that type of thing. So we talked about the stuff that doesn’t help a whole lot. Some of the things that maybe would be a little bit more helpful — what are some of those things, Lindsey?
Lindsey Casabella: Yeah. So one thing that we all want to say is, “How are you?”
But just simply changing “How are you” to “How are you today” is very powerful because grief is different every single day.
There again, going back to what we’ve already talked about, there are different aspects that show up. And so ask someone, “How are you today?”
PW: Yeah, and I’m always telling people to live in day-tight compartments, and even I go into getting a lamp on your feet — that’s the idea that I like to point out to people.
It’s the next step. That’s all we’re given is the next step we have to make. So that makes a lot of sense with that.
LC: Or even, “What do you need today?” And hey, maybe it looks something like this, “I’m going to go run errands today. Do you feel up to riding with me?”
PW: Oh, I like that simply because you’re giving a specific thing and they don’t have to think too hard.
LC: That’s right.
PW: Okay.
LC: Exactly.
PW: So that’s very different from the last one you said. That makes a lot of sense to me. Okay.
LC: Yeah.
Grief Needs a Witness
LC: Be a good listener. When it comes to grief, I tell people, “You have to get very comfortable sometimes with silence.”
PW: So true. It’s so uncomfortable for people to just sit there and say nothing. Like I talked about in the story of Job. They sat there and said nothing for a long time.
LC: That’s right.
PW: It is hard, but it is exactly what people need because you don’t want the pressure of having to come up with something to fill the space, and they don’t want to hear your advice, which is what you’re typically inclined to just throw out there.
LC: But sometimes silence is incredibly compassionate and empathetic. It really is.
PW: I think a lot about the boundaries. Sometimes you give somebody a boundary, “Hey, you know what? I really don’t need you to tell me what to do. I just want you to hear what I’ve got to say.”
Sometimes what happens is the best thing you can do as a person is just be a sounding board for the other person so that they can kind of think through what they’re dealing with. And we don’t think that we’re helping by doing that but we really are.
LC: Yeah. I cannot take credit for this statement, but I use it a lot. I had heard it once before on a different podcast but, “Grief needs a witness.”
When it comes to grief sometimes people just need to share their story. They need to just share their story and they need to be heard.
And so just offer a listening ear, not trying to talk them out of their feelings.
PW: Right, don’t try to fix it.
LC: Don’t try to fix it. Just be there. Check in with people. I’ve already kind of mentioned this, but we have a tendency to check in for a little while, and then as life goes on, we stop kind of checking in.
PW: Okay, check in via text message. They’re using the technology.
LC: Yeah. Just pick up the phone and give someone a call. Let them know, “Hey, I’m thinking of you. I’m praying for you.”
PW: Isn’t it funny how it’s scary to even think about doing that, and it’s almost like when you feel that fear and you do it anyway, the result is really kind of cool how people respond.
“Thanks for thinking of me.” Oh my goodness. You get this response that’s overwhelmingly great. Yeah, for sure.
LC: Yes.
PW: But we avoid it. Why do we avoid it?
LC: Yeah, exactly.
PW: It’s human behavior. We’re complicated people.
LC: Yeah.
PW: Yeah, so those are the things that are not helpful as we’ve mentioned right here. Things that are more helpful are those things where we’re checking on people and so on and so forth.
I just think about this as we go through it, we want everything to have a silver lining. We want to fix it. And so often there is no easy fix for these types of things.
The Grieving Timeline
PW: Let’s talk a little bit about time. For me one of the things that I think about is when you’re dealing with a friend who wants to fix things or wants to help, they might start to get impatient that you’re still going through this process six months into the future, a year into the future. “Get over it already.”
Is there a timeline on this, or what is your experience with that because you’ve dealt with this so much? How long?
LC: Yeah.
PW: The question that I have about that is are some people’s time horizons shorter than others?
LC: They can be. But when you’re talking in terms of time, there is no answer to that question because everyone’s grief journey is different.
There are a lot of aspects that play into that because it could be that you have to look at the relationship, the manner of loss, and there are so many different aspects. So you cannot put a timeline on grief.
As a matter of fact, grief is the other side of love. I explain it like this.
It’s like a two-sided coin, and if you love, you grieve. Your grief is going to be with you. You’re going to carry that with you.
So there’s no timeline for grieving, but I do hear this a lot in the counseling room. Clients will come in and they’re really struggling with family members trying to rush them through the grieving process. There’s a real struggle with them because they feel like, “I should be better by now, or I should feel this way because I’m being told this, but I don’t.”
PW: Right. I’ve heard some people say, “Well, the first year is super, super hard because you have anniversaries of everything.” Have you found that to be true?
LC: I do find that to be true, but honestly, Paul, I see a lot of people who are in their second year of grief.
PW: Is it as intense?
LC: Sometimes from what I see, the second year is harder for a lot of people.
PW: Really?
LC: Mm-hmm.
PW: Is it because people are disappearing more? Is that part of it? Because I’m trying to think in terms of what other people can do to help.
LC: Right. I think that can be a part of it for sure. I think that that can be.
Other people have kind of moved on, and yes, life has returned to normal for a lot of other people, but for that particular person, it just hasn’t.
Sometimes people will put off their grieving, because I hear this often too, “If I let myself grieve.”
PW: Oh, it’s like a black hole that I’m not going to be able to get back out of.
LC: That’s right. I feel like I’m going to get stuck.
PW: So don’t go there. Don’t go there. Don’t go there. Talk yourself out of it.
LC: But the problem with that is you can’t do that forever.
PW: Well, I’ve seen some people and they’ll just start crying, and somebody might try to stifle it because they’re not comfortable with it. I’m like, “Oh, no, let it out.” You need to do this.
LC: Yes, you do.
PW: It’s part of the healing process to go through that. For sure. That’s really good stuff.
Let’s take a quick break and come back with more on this. This is a really good topic, simply because every last person is going to go through this. You want to pass this on to a friend.
Getting Unstuck from Particular Emotions
PW: I’m here right now with Lindsey Casabella. Lindsey is a counselor over at the Babb Center in Hendersonville, Tennessee. She actually ran a group there for quite a while dealing with the grieving process.
Everyone will know, people that have gone through this themselves, so this is something financial as well, because sometimes this really affects us when we’re dealing with this process. Maybe it’s a loss of a job, there may be something there. It might be loss of a loved one, and it’s hard to get out and restart life, as we’ve talked about, and why it’s so hard, well, we talked about that as well.
So Lindsey, let’s talk a little bit about, as a counselor, what are some of the things that you do to help people through this process? As a counselor working with somebody going through grieving, who’s lost a loved one, lost a job, lost whatever, what are some of the things that you find yourself doing?
LC: First and foremost, just give someone a safe place to tell their story. Be that listening ear with compassion and empathy, and help them understand what they’re going through and help them understand just the different emotions and process the different emotions. Also, sometimes, I had mentioned earlier, there are traumatic incidences surrounding the loss.
PW: Maybe it was a car accident. For sure.
LC: That’s right. And so sometimes we have to tease out the grief versus the trauma and work with the trauma as well.
PW: And displaced blame, because maybe it was a car accident and maybe the person that lost somebody was at fault.
LC: And that’s a good point because sometimes we’re working on getting unstuck from particular emotions. An example would be guilt, just like you’re saying.
PW: Yeah, for sure.
LC: Sometimes someone just becomes stuck in a certain place, and so we’re working through that.
PW:
It’s hard because sometimes we forget that we live in a fallen world and bad stuff happens. And the reality of it is nobody is perfect.
Nobody can do anything perfectly. We aren’t. We’re imperfect humans.
Therefore what happens is that you could be at fault for something, but the reality is everybody struggles with something or struggles with having made mistakes and done things, and then sometimes there are bad consequences. We live in a fallen world, so that’s a huge one.
The Grief Box Model
LC: That’s right. Another thing that’s important is sometimes as a counselor we’re assessing for depression and anxiety, and even maybe talking about whether medication is appropriate for this particular season.
Grief comes with aspects of depression, but usually, with grief, you have those moments of depression, but you’re also able to have moments of joy.
And if you find that that is not the case, that you’re never able to have moments of joy, then maybe we need to look at whether this is leading into a different kind of depression.
PW: It reminds me, as you’re talking about that, of a model that I heard one time where somebody had a box. They said, “You got a box,” and there’s a button in there that pushes the buttons. You know the model?
LC: Yes, I do.
PW: Why don’t you explain it to people? Go ahead.
LC: Yes. One aspect that I hear a lot is, “Is this ever going to get easier?” And the answer to that is, yes, it is going to get easier.
Can we say when? I don’t know that.
But I explain it like this. Sometimes I draw this out on a whiteboard. I’ll draw a box and put a button on the side and draw a circle that touches all parts of the box, and it’s touching that button and that button is a pain button. And when you first lose someone that’s just sitting, it’s just constant, it’s sitting on that button.
PW: It’s like a nerve. It’s like a raw nerve.
LC: That’s right. And over time, that ball begins to just decrease.
PW: It shrinks.
LC: And it shrinks.
PW: So it’s not that the pain’s ever totally gone.
LC: No, but it lays off that pain button. And sometimes the box gets shaken and that grief ball will pop up and hit that pain button.
PW: And most of the time, you just never know when it’s going to happen.
LC: Right.
How To Push Forward
PW: Okay. Lindsey, so another thing that hits me in regards to the grieving process and going through it is that sometimes you don’t have a lot of time to get back into the game again or get back to being busy in life, and you don’t have this just period of time that can go on forever where you’re in this process where you’re not getting out, you’re not doing anything. Let’s say it’s grieving of the loss of a job or something, loss of a position or something like that, what would you say to somebody in that particular instance?
How do we get going again? Because we’ve got to; we don’t have any choice.
LC: Sometimes I pull out another model with clients called the dual process of grief. And it’s really interesting because we’ll draw a circle and I will put grief on one side. On the other side, we’ll put restorative tasks.
So we’ll draw those things out and go back and forth. And I will help them understand that sometimes we have to take on the task of grieving and feel it, but then we also have to implement other tasks to move ourselves forward into that place of normalizing life again.
PW: Because that’s what I was going to ask, the thing that I’ve heard before is that you literally have a specific time of day that you spend in the grieving process, and then you basically set an appointment with yourself almost in a way.
LC: That’s right.
Because as much as you grieve and you need to, you need to feel it, you also need to take breaks from grieving.
You really do. You need some healthy distractions and you need to find tasks that you can implement, such as going to the movies, laughing, and going out to dinner, and sometimes you do have to push yourself forward.
Revisiting the Good Memories
PW: Now, another thing that I’d heard, and I’m curious what you think about this, but I’ve heard people say one of the things that’s really super helpful is that if you’re a friend of someone that’s grieving a loss, have the person tell you stories about what he or she was like or tell you stories about that person, helping them process their life and almost honoring their life to some extent.
LC: That’s right.
PW: And if that’s helpful, why does that seem to be so helpful?
LC:
Well, I think it’s always important to help someone to connect back to the good memories because in that way we’re honoring the person that we lost.
Because they may not physically be here, but they lived a life, they had a birthday, they were here on holidays, and so sometimes if we can find certain rituals to honor someone, it can help us reconnect to that person in a positive way. And that can be very healing, very, very healing.
PW: Yeah, for sure. And I’ll just tell this one real quick personal story. I had lost both my parents in one year. One of the things that I did was I actually wrote a book, and I’m sure that you tell people about writing as well.
LC: Oh, yeah.
PW: And what kind of things do you have to have them write? What are the things that you’ll typically give them as assignments, and say “Hey, go and write about this”?
LC: So I have a couple of sheets that I can give that are like journal entries for grief. And anyone can just Google that.
And you can find just journal entries and it’ll give you topics just to sit down and journal about grief. And that can be incredibly helpful. Incredibly helpful.
PW: Yeah, that’s very therapeutic, writing.
LC: It is.
PW: Because I wrote about all the lessons that my parents taught me while they were living.
LC: Yeah, that’s great. That’s great.
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