Change Your Brain Every Day - What a Psychiatrist & a Nurse Want You to Know About Processing & Healing from Grief

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

Grief is a natural part of the human experience, and it's our approach to grief that plays a crucial role in processing our emotions and continuing with our life's journey. In this episode, the Amens discuss their recent personal experience with grief, and how their strategies helped them to process their emotions in a healthy way, even at their lowest. Daniel and Tana then give you their top strategies for how to process grief in your own life, helping you to keep your brain operating in a healthy capacity to honor the memory of those we love and continue your upward trajectory towards peace.   00:00 Intro 1:27 Tana’s Mom 09:05 Feel It to Heal It 11:23 The Anti-Funeral 13:02 Clean Grief 14:45 Fix Sleep First 17:15 Sponsor 18:41 Develop a Relationship with Grief 23:07 Havening 26:35 Displaced Grief 27:30 Share Your Sadness 28:00 Make Brain Health a Priority 28:38 Never Let Grief Be Your Excuse to Hurt Yourself 31:44 I Know I’m Happy When… 33:48 Physical Activity 36:45 Kill the ANTs 37:29 Honor with Action 39:50 Wrap Up

Sometimes grief can be a little bit displaced. I remember there was a family member I was getting really frustrated with and you actually said to me, you're like, wow, you seem really mad at that person. You're being very diplomatic. It made me stop for a second and I'm like, yeah, maybe I just need someone to be mad at right now. But I realized it was displaced grief.

It'll sneak out in these other ways and you'll sort of bleed all over people who really had nothing to do with it. You bleed on the people who didn't cut you. If you don't heal from with it. You bleed on the people who didn't cut you. Yeah. If you don't heal from what hurt you, you bleed on people who didn't cut you. Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day. Hannah and I are so excited that you have joined us for the second episode,

Change Your Brain, everyday podcast where we give you practical tips and tools to have a better brain, a better body, better relationships, and a better life. So great to see you, my love. You too. And I'm so excited. This is our second episode. And if you stick with us, we are just going to give you so many practical tips and tools and just, it's a journey. This is not a destination. So stay with us and just day by day, even if it's just 1%, you're going to learn so much. And at the end of a year, imagine how much your life will change. So today we're going to learn so much. And at the end of a year, imagine how much your life will change. So today we're going to talk about grief and we're going to give you practical

tools to deal with it because to be human is to suffer with loss. And this has really impacted you, us this year. Yeah, it really has. My mother, who was a very young 77, we were in Egypt and we got the call that she was very sick and in the hospital. And first they thought she had pneumonia. And then it turned out she had stage four lung cancer. So really went from not being sick at all to stage four lung cancer. And we had to fly home that day. I got COVID on the plane. It was terrible. And got home, moved her in with us. And she was so sick and just so miserable. And, um, but I was so grateful for the time I had to be able to take care of her in our house. And she, she passed away seven weeks later and it was just so hard. We were so close and you guys talked every day, multiple times a day, usually. And, um, she lived close to, you know, close to where we are and yeah,

it was, it was hard. It was really hard. And it's, it's interesting. I, grief is so interesting because you think, okay, when I'm like, am I going to feel it right away? Am I not, you know, I've always wondered, do you feel it right away? Is it going to take a while for it to set in? Like, what's it going to feel like? Um, I always wondered cause I hadn't lost anybody really close to me at that point. I'd lost a grandmother, but she was very old and sick. And so I sort of knew it was coming. Um, and that was a little bit different and this was very different. You lost your dad. Yes, but I wasn't that close to him. I got to heal my relationship with him. We weren't close at all. Um, in fact, we really weren't close because I didn't talk to him for most of my life. So this was very-

I know. Do you remember when we were first dating and your sisters called you up and you said- This is not my monkey, not my circus. Your dad had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. And I'm like, oh, well, I should see him. And I'm like, you're out of your mind. Because, yeah, he wasn't there for me as a kid. I'm not going to, no, I'm not doing this. Right.

But I did. My little hero complex, which gets me in trouble all the time. Yes, yes. It's like, well, I should see him. Because I had this idea in my head that if you do something nice for someone you love, they're going to love you more. Well, that sort of bit me in the backside. But then no, because I did, you know, it's interesting, you know, I was arguing with God and I was very frustrated and I didn't want to do this.

And they say, if you win an argument with God, you And they say if you win an argument with God, you lose. And if you lose an argument with God, you win. And so I really realized through that process that, you know, the help was for my dad, but the healing was for me. God had a reason for that happening in my life. And I got to heal a whole bunch of ugly stuff from the past in that process. And from a brain perspective, it turned out when we scanned him, he didn't have Alzheimer's disease. He didn't die from that. He died from something entirely different.

He had pseudo dementia, which is depression that masquerades as dementia and as he got better you guys were able to heal your relationship and five years later he died of cancer right in your arms right but the situation with my mother was different because i was very bonded so different and um like i'm very bonded to to daughter, Chloe. And so really different. And so when my mother passed, I felt like I was in a war for seven weeks, you know, trying to fight this cancer and take care. I'm a nurse. So I didn't let them take care of her. I took care of her. Well, and one of the things I think our listeners should know is with lung cancer, for her, not for everybody, obviously. Yeah her not for everybody obviously not for everybody she produced a half a liter to a whole liter of fluid every day on her lungs so she constantly felt like she was

up to a liter it was really bad so then she had a drain in that i had to drain every day right and so um it was a lot and she had, was breaking out in wicked, crazy rashes. And I mean, it was just really awful. The pain was excruciating. Um, so, but you know, one thing I'm grateful for, I've always said that God gave me this ability. People used to ask me all the time why I worked in the unit I worked in. I worked in a level a trauma unit and saw the craziest stuff and had to deal with the craziest stuff. And pretty sure I have some PTSD from some of that stuff, but because I could, because God, that's the gift that I was given. I was able to do it. Um, and so I know, even though it was my mom, I was able to be like, okay, this is what I'm doing. Cause I want to be

the one to do it. And so, um, I did it, but when she passed, it's like, you're a little bit in shock. I didn't like, I didn't quite, I didn't stop crying for two weeks, but I'm not even sure that that was like the fullness of the grief because I was so in shock. And so I didn't quite believe she wasn't there yet. It just, it just didn't feel like she wasn't there yet. And I knew that conscious, I'm like, it's going to be when it's going to hit me is when I can't pick up that phone and call her at the times I'm supposed to call her when I know I'm normally call her. It's going to be those, those routine things. And so, and sure enough, that's when it started to hit me. And she left me this very busy estate that it was complicated. And so I've been so busy that even then it was hard to like find clean time to grieve. And then all of a sudden I had these moments of quiet and it just

overwhelmed me. And I realized you asked me a question and you said, you said, I forget what you said exactly, but you said something about the process of grief. And I, I stopped for a second and I said, you know, cause every, every day I get up and I pray and I meditate, I talk to my mom and no, I'm not crazy. I just talked to my mom, but I, I basically, um, That's actually my decision as a psychiatrist to go, you're crazy or not. And no, you're not crazy. So what I really realized is it's a relationship and you sort of looked at me funny at first and then you're like, no, that's really good. Grief for me is a relationship. It's either going to be a good relationship or it's going to be a

bad relationship because I'm stuck in this relationship with grief. Like I'm stuck in it. You're not getting out of it. And so I might as well figure out how to make it a good relationship and fortunately my faith really helps me do that but I know that I'm going to see her again it's like I feel like she went on this vacation ahead of me and she's setting everything up but I'm going to see her again and that's how I choose to see it every day so that it doesn't really overwhelm me and it just takes the sting out of it a little bit I miss her horribly but but that's how I have a good relationship with grief and then i just i allow myself to cry and i allow myself to miss her and i walk by her picture every day and i you know i kiss her

and so um i just i decided i'm not i'm just i'm not gonna let this sort of like take me down. So one practical step is feel it. Feel it. It's don't block it because when you block it, it'll come out in other ways. Right. Right. And I remember the night before her funeral. So that day, I guess it's two days before her funeral, I'm on a Zoom call. This group wants me

to do a documentary on my work. And I'm like, well, what else have you guys produced? And they produced a documentary called After Death. And I watched the first 10 minutes of it. It's about people who have near-death experiences based on Ray Moody's book, Life After Life, which I read when I was a medical student and loved and completely- By the way, that was one of my mom's favorite books. And I lost my fear of death after I read that book. And so here it is, two days before your mother's funeral. And I'm like, I watched the first 10 minutes.

I got, oh, Tana's got to watch this. And so. And at first I was like, I really, no, no bad timing. And then you're like, no, no, no, you have to watch it. And I'm like, all right. So I sat and watched it with you and it really helped me. And because it came right on the heels of me feeling like okay my mom is in this she went to this great place ahead of me and she's like

waiting for us and um and it was so interesting that it was really helpful that that so i recommend that documentary it's called after death yeah and. And it was really interesting because almost everyone that had these near-death experiences, they definitely felt this light. But most of them said the presence of God. And what was really crazy was 23% of them said they actually felt hell. And that's what was mind-blowing to me. I'm like, oh, it's not just one or the other. And so it actually, when they came back, they changed.

When they came back, they changed. Yeah. And so they, they weren't good people. So when they came back, they changed and it was mind blowing. And so, um, it just really, there was something about, I'm not going to go into the show and just watch it, but it was really helpful. Yeah. So we should put a link to that documentary. And then I remember going to the funeral and then I got this crazy idea of afterwards. Because in a funeral you talk about, and you did an amazing job. I was so proud of you. But you only say things you can actually say in public. In church. And church. And so I got this idea, and I suggest you try it. It's called the anti-funeral, where afterwards you set a time to just go tell the truth about the person. Yeah, because my mom, her life was colorful. She was a little crazy.

I write about her in my book, The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child. Her life is huge. It was colorful. She was a little crazy. I write about her in my book, the relentless courage of a scared child. Her, um, her, her life is huge. Like it was, it was colorful. She shot guns in my house. She was like, I mean, she was, she was crazy. So, but she was great. And so, but you tell those stories, you know, about what she was really like, you know? So. Yeah. And that's so important with grief is not to when my grandfather died so i'm named after my grandfather and he was my best friend growing up but my grandmother was a witch and she like harassed him and was negative to him and i didn't like her and when he died all of a sudden her grief got prolonged because all she did was talk about how wonderful he was. And I'm like, where were you when he was alive?

Like, where was that kindness when he was alive? And so I always think it's important to remember people in a balanced way. Well, I will say this. This is one thing I did for myself. And you've often said, when do you get help? And you say, well, if you break your arm, would you wait months to get it fixed? Well, no, I went and did EMDR right away because my grief wasn't clean initially. I was like, the relentless courage of a scared child is the title of my book. So I have an ACE score of eight. I grew up in crazy. ACE, for people who don't know, is Adverse Childhood Experiences on a scale of zero to

10. How many bad things happened to you when you were a child? Physical, emotional, sexual abuse, neglect, seeing your mother being beaten by somebody, having a parent that's an alcoholic, a criminal, or having a mental illness. But this is important because so many people, their grief isn't clean initially because they're conflicted. They're like, they miss this person, but they've got anger issues, or they miss this person, but they're like, but my life was a mess. It's messy, right? It's messy. And they feel guilt over that. And so I knew my grief

wasn't fully clean and I didn't like it. And cause we were close, but there was some conflict from my childhood and I had already done a lot of therapy, but I went and I did some EMDR and it was so interesting because it just went away. It just went away. And now I feel like that grief is super clean and I'm able to just like really. That's the away. And now I feel like that grief is super clean and I'm able to just like really- That's the first time I've ever heard that term, clean grief. That's how it feels. It feels clean. No, I think that's beautiful.

And so I can just appreciate her. I can appreciate her for everything that she was and I can just love her and I can just embrace all of it And instead of being conflicted, so it feels clean. So if your grief feels complicated, get help early rather than late. And one of the tricks, tricks, wrong word, but one of the strategies I do, because when you go through grief, your nervous system feels like it's under threat. Yes. And then you can't sleep. It feels like a war. And I always say, fix sleep first.

Fix sleep first. I didn't sleep for months. Because you were so worried about her. And I got sick. Right. And one of the things I did that I thought was really helpful when I saw you're going to be up all night, it's like, no, we're going to get 24 hours. I don't even know what I would have done. Like, I don't know what I would have.

We're medical people. Right. And I don't know what I would have done. Yeah. So I think that was really important. And once you're in grief, if sleep is a problem, find a way to fix it without alcohol. Alcohol is not the answer. And so I like melatonin, 5-HTP. BrainMD makes something called put me to sleep. I like a lot. Or you like restful sleep from BrainMD. Even I use a lot of trazodone. It's an antidepressant.

It's not a great antidepressant, but it's really good sleeping aid. And I've found it to be particularly helpful, like 50 milligrams for grief. Okay. So my cocktail for sleep is magnesium so um i love our two of all magnesium um from brain md i do the restful sleep and um occasionally i'll do gaba so when my system is over revved like that when i'm just like on fire um one gaba and one lth any not four like you like told me to do in the past and then i felt stoned so yeah i was completely stoned one and one so you just said how many can i take because you like me stoned yeah anyways so don't yeah start with one see how it affects you because that combo knocks me out and settles my system down completely so um like just completely out um i can't take 5-HTP. I think for some reason it makes me feel stoned.

But the combo of the L-theanine and the GABA, the magnesium and the restful sleep, just like. Are you excited to optimize your brain and help the brains of those you love? Do you want to prevent or treat memory problems, anxiety, or depression? Do you want to be happier? That's why I created Amen University, to take what I've learned over the last 45 years and help you have a better brain, a better mind, and a better body. You can take courses like our 30-Day Happiness Challenge, which was shown in research to increase happiness by 32% in just 30 days, or memory rescue, or overcoming anxiety, depression, trauma, and grief, or healing ADD at home in 30 days and much more. We also have professional courses and courses for kids, including Brain Thrive by 25,

which was found in independent research to decrease depression and improve self-esteem. And as a special offer just for our listeners, you can save 20% on your next course. Visit amynuniversity.com and use the code All right, so let's get really practical. The first step is feel it to heal it. Set aside time daily to feel your emotions. Let yourself cry, scream, write down everything you're experiencing. Expressing your grief rather than suppressing it allows you to process and eventually heal it. And I want you just to talk a little bit more about develop a relationship with grief. Well, I quickly realized it was up and down and all over the place. Wake me up in the middle of the night, you know, we'd be out to dinner and I, I'd be so busy during the day that I wouldn't think about it at all. And then all of a sudden it would just pop in and just surprise you out of nowhere.

Right. And then you're at, I'm at dinner at a time where it's not really that convenient and I'm start crying and I can't stop it. Right. So I realized I don't really have a lot of choice in this. This is like one of those things where, you know, I, it's like being in a marriage. It's like, you're either going to be in a good one or a bad one. Only this one, you can't just divorce. So it's like, I don't really have a choice. Like I, I have to deal with this. So I'm going to choose to either find a way to have a good relationship with this or, or it's going to keep, it's going to keep torturing me. And so for me, like my faith is probably the number one thing for me because I do believe in something bigger.

I do believe that she's somewhere else. But then also, like you said, allowing myself to feel it. I went and got EMDR so that I didn't have those conflicting feelings. So I wanted to put the past behind me and then just really appreciating and embracing who she is. And then just, just going through it and just accepting it, but then allowing it to come in whatever form it comes.

Cause some days it's very different than other days. Some days I just miss her so much and it just takes my breath away and I just cry you know and then other days I remember her and just crack up and I just laugh at some of the things she did you know and and she was crazy so you know it's just I just sort of like let it come and I just realize and I think being a nurse and being in the medical field we do have a tendency to be more pragmatic like we know I know none of us are getting out of here alive that doesn't change the fact that you're going to totally miss people and you're going to be devastated when you lose the people that you love but that's why the brain is hard

wired for connection right and your mother like my grandfather which is different than when my dad died. Right. Me too. Because my grandfather was my best friend. Even now, and it's like 40 years later, I'll start crying when I think of my relationship and how much I miss him. And I loved my dad, but it was very different. Very different. Very different because he was gone all the time. And he's the one that, when I told him I wanted to be a psychiatrist, asked me why I didn't want

to be a real doctor. Right. He was hard on you. I wanted to be a nut doctor and hang out with nuts all day long. So where my grandfather was proud of me, my dad would diminish me. so yes but people come to live in the emotional centers of your brain so your mother hung out in all the fun places in your head and so if you hear a song yeah if you're at a restaurant if the weather is a certain way or when we travel she used to always go with us or like so many things right when we're in the airport and she'd always get lost right so you're just like whenever you see lost and found it triggers you for your mother. It's just so important. And so just like you said, it can surprise you. Like all of a sudden you get overwhelmed with emotion and just let it be okay. And when people tell you to stop feeling that, stop spending a lot of time with that person,

right? Because that's not helpful. The next thing I want to talk about is something called havening. It's actually very practical. And I remember when my dad died and I was very sad. Probably if you ask me the worst day of my adult life it'd be the day he died i remember i was in my bathroom um getting ready to go to his house to take him to the pulmonologist it was during covid he was having trouble breathing he was so tired and in retrospect it was covid that triggered epstein-barr that you that just took him from us. And I remember the call from my mother, daddy's not breathing, terrible. And you were so helpful to me that day, which is what loving couples do, right? But a couple of days later, I'm at my mom's house and I'm going through a random stack of

papers and someone put a picture of my dead dad in the mortuary in that random stack of papers. And I'm sad and now furious, like what idiot would do that? And I found myself spinning on the thing I was upset about, right? The picture of my dead dad in a random stack of papers. So Havening was actually developed by Ron Rudin, who's a doctor out of New York. And it's based on this concept of bilateral hemisphere stimulation. There are a number of treatments like this, including the MDR, but it's where you rub your hands together or grab your shoulders and stroke down or even take your palms and rub them down your face, which you don't want to do during a pandemic, very bad. But so you think about the thing you're really upset about

and then do this bilateral hemisphere stimulation. And I remember it's like seeing the picture was like 10 o'clock in the morning. This is 4 o'clock in the afternoon. I'm still spinning on it. And what my brain does is you treat people that have this problem. What would you tell them to do? And so in my office, in the chair you hate, I sat down and I'm like, you would tell them to haven. And so I thought about that picture. And I like doing this one because I like hugs. And for the first five, you just go into the feeling. And then you distract yourself, take yourself to the beach or

to the mountains or Disneyland or wherever you want to go. And a couple of minutes later, when I then think about the picture, it was neutral. And then I kept doing it. And a couple of minutes later, I fell in love with the picture because it was the last picture of my dad on earth. And so havening can be just so helpful. You never want to avoid the grief. You want to go into it. And havening can really be helpful. I like that. I know one thing I think that I also realized was that sometimes grief can be a little bit displaced. And that is, I remember there was a family member I was getting really frustrated with. And you actually said to me, you're like, wow, you seem really mad at that person. You were being very diplomatic. And it made me stop for a second. And I'm like, yeah, maybe I just need someone to be mad at right now.

But I realized it was displaced grief. And so I think it's really important to know and be aware that sometimes that grief will sneak up when you're not. If you don't let it really come out and you don't really feel it, it'll sneak out in these other ways. And you'll sort of bleed all over people who really had nothing to do with it. You bleed on the people who didn't cut you. If you don't heal from what hurt you, bleed on the people who didn't cut you. If you don't heal from what hurt you, you bleed on people who didn't cut you. Yeah.

You also want to share your sadness. Don't be a sadness ninja. Open up to someone you trust about what you're going through. Make it a point to have at least one meaningful conversation about your grief a week, whether with a friend, a family member, a support group. Verbalizing your sadness helps lighten the emotional burden. So I think making brain health a priority is just so important.

Grief can just negatively impact your brain health in so many ways. And to counter this, if you prioritize your brain with simple habits, like eating a brain healthy diet, things like fatty fish or taking omega-3 fatty acid supplements, limiting your alcohol and sugar, all of that's going to really help you. You can also use techniques like meditation or deep breathing, which is what I did a lot of in prayer to reduce stress and inflammation in the brain. And taking care of your brain will also give you the mental strength to process grief as it comes up. So just allow yourself to feel it. Change your brain every day, right? Grief. Too often, people give themselves the excuse to hurt themselves. And so one of my favorite stories ever is I was in Northern California and I gave a lecture. After I give a lecture, it's not uncommon for people to come up to me and then just start crying. And this woman just started crying

and I could just feel her pain. And I waited for her to stop. And then she told me this story. She said, two years ago, my 12-year-old daughter, Sammy, died of bone cancer. And part of me was glad she died because she was in so much pain. Bone cancer is so painful. And I went to bed. I didn't know how hard the grief would hit me. And I drank alcohol, ate bad food. And I was like 125 pounds and ballooned up to 200 pounds. And on the anniversary of Sammy's death, on the two-year anniversary of her death,

I had planned to kill myself. But I saw you on public television talking about your book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Body. And I said to myself, I'm going to buy that book. And if it's a bad book, I'm going to kill myself tomorrow. I'm like, oh, my God. And she said, but I love the book. It was so helpful, so simple, so practical. And I stopped drinking. I stopped eating bad food. I ate food that serves me.

You talk about you're in a relationship with food. And I put on my tennis shoes and I started walking. And then I started running. And that was 10 weeks ago. And now I'm down 24 pounds. And what I want you to tell the people you teach, never let grief be your excuse to hurt yourself. I love that. So I love that you brought up brain-helping habits. And that was a hard time for me.

I wasn't eating like I normally, I mean, think about it. I was up all night. I'm in the hospital constantly, emergency room visits constantly, ambulances coming. And so your system is just all out of whack. And I'm eating whatever is that I can actually eat at the time. And she was, you know, people were bringing her whatever she wanted because she was dying. So I was not eating my normal diet. I was not

sleeping. I wasn't doing any of the things I wasn't exercising. And so you do start to feel panic mode. Yeah. You're in panic mode. So you're surviving. You're just trying to survive. And so it is really, and then all of a sudden I woke up one day and I'm like, I don't want to do the same thing to the people that I love that just happened to me. You know, it's like, it hits you. It's like, I, I, this is selfish. I can't do this. So not taking care of yourself is selfish. Interesting concept. The next is going to be a little weird for you, but I love the book, The Gap and the Gain.

And instead of focusing on how far you feel from happiness, instead of focusing on what you don't have, focus on the small things that make you happy rather than saying to yourself, I'll be happy when. Ask yourself, I know I am happy when I do these things. And it's a it's a wonderful book and i noticed for myself you ask yourself okay i'll be successful when um i get married when i write a book when i write a new york times best selling book and then it's like well then i'll be successful when I write a number one New York Times bestselling book. I mean, it's just this hedonic treadmill that's stupid. You're always in the future with what you don't have. But I changed it to I know I'm successful when I'm connected to you. I know I'm successful when I have control over my

schedule. I know I'm successful when I'm eating healthy and taking care of my body. So rather than being in the future, change this mindset to, I am happy when I do this. And for you, I know it's I'm happy when I meditate. I'm happy when I have time with Chloe. I'm happy when I'm taking care of the estate because you have lots of things to do. So get out of the gap thinking and into the present moment game thinking. I think the next thing that really helps is physical activity because it helps release

grief that's stored in your body. So committing to move every day, even if it's just a 15 minute walk or dancing to a favorite song, anything that helps you move. I know I go to Pilates and I didn't feel like doing that. I know it's really hard sometimes when you're grieving and you just want to lay in bed or you want to just, you know, binge watch Netflix. Um, thank God we have a dog and I don't have a choice. Like I have to get up and move. And then as soon as I get moving, you know, then, then all of a sudden you're like, oh, I'm so glad I did this. So just get up and take a walk. Don't, it doesn't have to be

committing to something big, but just move. Just get you out of your head and into your body. I just think it's really important to remember to do that. So exercise is so important. Yeah, it gets those endorphins going. It helps balance all those neurotransmitters. It's just super important. Yeah, and then sleep, like we talked about.

I'm a huge fan of hypnosis for sleep. If you download our app, Brain Fit Life, there are six, seven hypnosis audios. One of them is for sleep. The other one is for pain. And grief activates the same circuits in the brain that are responsible for physical pain. Isn't that crazy? It's really crazy. So little teaser for my book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain. It's not coming out till the end of next year. But Tylenol actually helps a broken heart.

It actually helps calm down those suffering circuits in your brain. Now, I'm not a huge fan of Tylenol because it's hard on your liver. Right. Ibuprofen actually works for women, but not for men. Oh, that's so interesting. With a broken heart. Isn't that so interesting? So interesting. But take care of your sleep, hypnosis, simple supplements like melatonin, GABA, theanine, magnesium. Good sleep is just critical to heal from grief.

I kept having wild dreams. Wild. That was one of the things I remember. And I don't normally have dreams in like vivid, vivid color like that. So you can sometimes expect that to happen. And some of them were really cool. I actually remember, because I'd be so sad during the day, but I would have these amazing dreams at night. I almost started to like look forward to it

because my mom would come to me in these very, very vivid dreams, wearing bright colors. Like my mom never, ever wore bright colors. Like she'll usually always wear black or Brown. And she was wearing like neon pink and bringing me these messages. So it was actually really cool. So, um, I started looking forward to being able to sleep again, you know, just because it was so hard to sleep at one point. Another very practical tip and grief has killed the ants, the automatic negative thoughts that steal your happiness. Grief triggers an infestation of ants, like I'll never be happy again, or this pain will last forever. Write down your thoughts and question them. On this podcast, we are going to make you a master ant killer.

You do not have to believe every stupid thing you think. Train your brain for positivity and honesty. That's what I want for you. Honest, hopeful thoughts. I love the next step. And that is to honor the memory of the person that you're grieving for and that you love with action. So if you turn that grief into something positive by doing something meaningful in honor of that person, I think it's so helpful. And that's why I wanted to start grieving cleanly.

And so I got EMDR so that I could really just begin to honor my mom. And so starting a project or volunteering or a support cause, anything like that, that they cared about, donation, you know, in honor of that person, whatever it is that you know that they cared about or that they would be proud of, helps to channel your grief into purposeful action and keeps their memory alive. And so even, you know, taking care of like my mom's estate, which has turned out to be really complicated. I remember at first I was like, oh, my gosh, this is just like so hard. I'm like, no, it's not hard. This is honoring my mother.

And when you start looking at it that way, you know, it's honoring her legacy. It changes how you feel about it also. And then as we said, the anti-funeral, telling the whole truth. Hold an anti-funeral after you lose someone where you allow yourself and others to express the raw, unfiltered truth about the relationship with the person you lost. Instead of just saying what's polite or acceptable in public, share the full story. But only with the people, it's not going to hurt their feelings. Because I know when I talk about my raw, honest feelings about my dad,

there's six or seven members of my family. They get upset. You can't say that. It wasn't like that, like completely deny your truth. And so don't shove it. And so often it's people that weren't actually there. Right. So don't shove it in their face, but have a group that you can just be honest with. Because when you hold in anger or frustration, it attacks you. It actually comes out in pain. So this was very practical. Thank you for being so honest, so raw. I love you so much. I am really grateful to be your partner. Me too. So we're so glad that you guys joined us today. And we just want to remind you, grief is a relationship, not a

destination. And by integrating these actionable steps, you'll not only process your grief more deeply, but also nurture your brain, body, and spirit. So the key is to shift your mindset from focusing on the pain to finding the small gains, using tools like havening and killing the ants to guide you toward a more peaceful relationship with your loss. Thank you so much for being with us today. Subscribe, review. Thank you so much. Share it with a friend. We're so grateful to have you as part of our community. Follow us on social media. It's so much fun.