The Psychology of your 20s - 36. The Psychology of Grief

Episode Date: July 3, 2022

What do we do when we’ve lost someone we’ve loved? In this weeks episode we talk about the confusion and anger, the safeness, following the loss of a loved one. How do we move on and continue to hold the memory of them close?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist and host Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to, listen to learn.

the hard way on the IHard radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. I'm on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier,

more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO% on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. We're glad to have you. Well, I'm glad to have you. It is just me. But thanks for tuning in, especially with this week.

week's topic, which is pretty heavy. I feel like I've been saying that about a lot of our episodes recently, but this is one that I really wanted to record this weekend on this day in particular. We're talking about grief. And before we get into it, just some disclaimers, I guess, as we often do at the start of these episodes. Firstly, if you are experiencing grief, if you're having a hard time with the loss of someone, I'm just sending you love. And at the end of this episode, there are some numbers and some websites that you can visit

that will hopefully help you out during this time. Secondly, more lighthearted note, if you hear the rain outside, it's because it's currently flooding in Sydney. So I wanted to get this episode out regardless, but it might mean that we have a few AMR interruptions of the rain, but it kind of contributes to the theme of this episode, which is grief, the psychology of grief. And yeah, I feel like it's a pretty personal episode. It's a pretty

hard episode to record. I think with a lot of the, yeah, with a lot of the episodes I put out, the main reason why I want to talk about them, you know, like my heartbreak episode, like my my loneliness episode is because that's something I'm going through and something that's really impacting me as a person in my 20s and grief is one of those things and a pretty big thing in my life at the moment. So I'm sure that there are others who might also be experiencing this, have experienced in the past, will experience it in the future as hard as that is. But grief, I'm mainly talking about grief around the death of a loved one, which if you have experienced, I'm so sorry. And if you haven't, I guess it's one of those things.

Death is inevitable in life and grief is one of those emotions, part of the human experience that comes with living and loving. So it's something I really wanted to touch on for a while, especially since, yeah, it's my birthday of someone I. I lost last year. It's the first birthday we've had since out since they've passed. So yeah, a pretty emotional weekend. I didn't get to be with my family this weekend. So grief has been a big part of the last 48 hours, but all part of the human experience, I think, and something that is worthwhile discussing. So just under a year ago, I lost someone who I really loved in my life, someone who was really, really important to me. And the circumstances around that experience and around their passing

meant that it was really hard to grieve them. And it has been a bit of a heavy burden since their passing. At the time, I was dating someone, seeing someone who wasn't particularly supportive or very nice to me. So it was really hard to get support from them. It was during a lockdown. So I was away from my family. I was away from, I wasn't able to attend the funeral, which was really, really hard attending a

funeral over Zoom. And I think only in the past three months after having moved away from where I previously lived, have I really come to terms with the fact that I lost this person and have been able to process it. So if you have lost someone recently, I know it's really, really hard and I know that grief is one of those extremely complicated feelings that is just, it's not linear, it's not easy, it's very complicated and personal, but hopefully this episode gives some structure or kind of psychoeducation around why we feel the way we do when we lose someone. I think it's one of those things where, of course we feel sad, of course we feel heartbroken, but beyond that, it's just so unclear.

why everything just feels so disturbed and confusing. That's the one thing I've noticed about my great fitlet losing this loved one in the past year is that it's really, really nuanced. Some days it's totally fine. I feel blessed. I feel grateful to have known them. I don't feel sad. I know they lived a beautiful life.

But the next day I, you know, find myself like in tears. The other day I was watching Little Women, the movie with like, Sersha Ronan and Emma Watson, no connection to the person who's passed at all, but I was just like sobbing and I felt so embarrassed, you know, it'd been a year since I, almost a year since I'd lost them, but that's the important thing about grief that I think a lot of us who have experience understand. It's not linear. Some days you're fine, some days you're not. I think the experience of grief is best described as following almost like a wave-like pattern, which does, provide a pretty useful framework, I think, to understand grief and to understand this experience.

Most people and, you know, family members and other people around me who've lost people at the same time or have lost people in their lives. You know, they also report that, you know, the intensity and frequency of these waves of grief, lessons over time, even though trigger waves, I guess, which, you know, are usually accompanied by things like milestones or birthdays or anniversaries can occur really at any time, even years later, they say that grief never really goes away. You just learn to live with it. And I think that's absolutely true. Triggers as well are such a huge part of the grief process.

If someone was an important part of your life, there are going to be things every day, every moment that remind you of them, you know, a song, seeing someone who resembles them, just certain seasons, certain days, certain months. And some trigger waves can come out of the blue, but others are anticipated, like I've kind of alluded to, like a significant date. That's why I'm talking about this topic today, a significant date passed in the life of this person, and in the posthumous life, I guess, of this person. And it really brought up a lot of mixed emotions and fears and sadness.

But I think it's important to emphasize that this wave-like pattern triggers. They're completely normal and not a sign that you're getting worse. In normal grief, the intense symptoms, they normally subside slowly, but can sometimes cause, you know, some of those blues that we're going to talk about. So I guess this is the main crux of the episode. What is grief? How does grief impact us? Why is it important to get our head around how it works?

Everyone is going to experience loss in some form or another. So having a good understanding of its timeline of the feelings associated with it, how to best get through it. And just a sense of acceptance, I think, is something I really wanted to talk about. So beginning with some of the basic theories of grief. So there is this idea that following the death or the loss of someone that we really love, grief, that feeling of an intense emotional and, physical reaction that an individual might experience. It follows kind of a U-shaped curve,

moving from, you know, feeling okay, having high energy to the next day feeling pretty hopeless and having low morale. I guess those low points are where we really understand and appreciate our grief. It's that feeling of despair and depression. But the good thing to know is that those moments don't really last forever. We do end up getting back to who we were before, getting back to a point where life is happy and we have energy and the loss is accepted. So that's the real kind of emphasis I want to make throughout this, is that grief is nuanced. It really does impact people in different ways. And not only is grief characterized by deep sadness, but also a really deep and intense yearning to be with someone again, to be with that person that

you've lost. It's pretty well known that the death of a loved one is one of the most powerful, important, impactful stresses in everyday life, often causing significant distress to all of those closely connected to the deceased, especially when you don't get the chance to have closure or say goodbye. There's this scale that measures how likely someone is going to experience an episode of mental ill health or stress or depression. And it's like a rating system. And if, you know, a certain event or certain experience has happened to you in the past year, you're more likely to experience, you know, depression or sadness or anxiety. And the highest rated item on that scale is the death of someone close to you. Bereaved individuals, they are the most at risk of

serious mental health problems like depression, substance abuse, sometimes even an increased risk of suicide. And whilst bereavement, it is a normal human experience. And I would say the majority of us will adapt over time to loss and grief. It does remain an extremely painful period where adjustments can take months, if not years, especially if you don't have the support around you. I know that when my loved one passed away, I couldn't run to family. I couldn't, you know, go and get that closure. And at the time, I didn't have an amazing support network. And that made it a lot harder, but no two people will experience the death of a loved one in the same way. how we express pain depends on a number of factors, including, you know, your personality,

the circumstances surrounding the death, someone who dies unexpectedly versus someone who dies following prolonged illness. That's really going to impact how much time you had to adjust. And it has, you know, how you experience grief also has something with, something to do with religion, spirituality, the way you see the world, and one of the hardest things of people who are grieving is not really knowing what to expect, especially in the first few months, and whether your experience is crazy. So I thought we'd go through some of the symptoms around grief, some of the common experiences. So the major symptoms or feelings of grief that we feel, they often fall across a few categories, you know, around physical symptoms, cognitive symptoms, emotional, that kind of thing. So I thought it would be important to kind of go through

them about what to expect if you've lost someone recently. So in terms of physical symptoms, there is a physical psychological effect of grief on your body and on how you feel physically. They often resemble the physical symptoms of depression and include things like appetite, loss, difficulty sleeping, I felt really tired, a loss of energy, physical pains, which can often be psychosomatic so you feel pain where there isn't actually an external kind of pressure or external injury, a suppressed immune system, those kind of things. And there's also the things of, you know, like crying and wailing and intense physical agitation. Those experiences, those responses are completely normal. Cognitive symptoms of grief. These often cover how we think and

perceive the world following the loss of a loved one. For example, you might feel a sense of dissociation and distance from reality. This is linked to feelings of disbelief concerning the loss. It's really hard to process that someone's there one day and gone the next. So confusion, poor memory, lack of focus, it's totally okay if you're feeling that right now. And if you've felt that before, you're not going crazy, there's nothing wrong with you. Death is misunderstanding. understood, it's confusing, we don't know what happens. So all of those responses to the loss and the death of a loved one is completely normal and really similar to some of those emotional symptoms we might feel as well, like guilt and anger. Anger, that's something I really want to

talk about later. Hostility, anxiety, feelings of isolation. I know for me, I didn't want to talk to anyone about it. I didn't want someone to support me. I just wanted to be alone. And these emotions, they rarely occur simultaneously. And they may appear in kind of in phases, the stages of grief, which we'll talk about later. There also are these interpersonal symptoms. The effects of grief can often spill over into the grieving person into someone's relationships with others. Grief is often accompanied by social withdrawal, feelings of distance or resentment towards people around you.

The resentment is a huge thing. There's no shame in that. But a sense of, you know, you don't understand my loss. You don't know what I'm going through. You haven't had to be through this. I resent you for not understanding what this is like. And that links to lifestyle symptoms. If you're interpersonal and personal relationships are under strain,

the rest of your life is probably going to be impacted as well. it's really hard when you are grieving, when you are sad, to perform your daily routines, to do your self-care and to, you know, get involved in activities that you previously found really enjoyable. Everything has kind of changed. Death is one of those things that really jolts us back to the reality and puts us in our place in terms of our role in this world. It's existential and getting up and pushing on with.

life following that experience, it's going to take a while. It's not going to be something you can achieve overnight. Someone that I know who also experience the passing of a loved one at a similar time to me said something to me the other day and I thought it was really amazing. She just said to me, I've just focused on doing the things I love because I guess you know that that's what's going to make, make you happy and make that other person. That would make them happy. Just focus on doing the things that aren't really an effort to do, that you can push yourself to do, things that you enjoy. There's no point kind of wasting time. But I want to jump back into one of those things that I mentioned before, and that's the role of anger whilst you're grieving. It might be a surprise

to you to see that I'm talking about anger, but anger is essentially, our brain protesting against something we're experiencing, that is perceived to be unjust or frustrating. And that's definitely going to be your mindset if you've lost someone or something. When you're grieving, you're kind of beset by a number of really confusing and stressful experiences. And very often it's perceived as unfair and really out of your control. And when things are out of our control, we want to put systems or understandings around that experience that allow us to place blame, allow us to direct anger. And in this sense, anger and grief go hand in hand. Anger provides a way of expressing that hopelessness and powerlessness and despair that you might be experiencing if you've lost one.

And I've lost someone. And I guess the consequence of this is that it. may seem as though, you know, if you have someone in your life who's lost someone recently, it might seem that they're hostile or bitter towards you or other people around you, but it's important to look past this and recognise that anger might be an expression of a deeper psychological state of one in which that person doesn't feel like they have control, they feel frustrated, they feel like the world is unjust. And the only, you know, rational feeling that their brain can kind of correspond with that is to feel angry and to kind of lash out. And I guess that's a really

good segue into the stages of grief. So there are widely believed to be five stages of grief. And they don't just apply to loss or death. I think they're often extrapolated to also cover things like heartbreak. I talked about this in my breakup episode. Listen to it if you want to. But the stages of grief. They are denial, anger, which we've talked about, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The cherry on top. They're often misunderstood. They aren't always linear. You know, once you pass one, it's not like you're done with that, you know, door closed on denial, chapter closed on anger. They're not consecutive. Sometimes you can jump from, you know, back a few steps, forward a few steps, but each stage has its rightful place in accepting the loss of someone

in accepting death. So denial, this can look like avoidance, procrastination, forgetting, maybe you're easily distracted and it can feel like shock, numbness, confusion, shutting down. This is often associated with those first few months after the passing of a loved one. It's really hard to believe. You know, you've spent your whole life or a big part of a of your life with the knowledge and the comfort that they're around and that they exist. And then suddenly reality is different. So it's really, you know, really common for people to not have really processed it to feel like they're fine, to be keeping busy and doing mindless behaviours because they don't

really want to face the reality of their circumstances. The next stage is anger. We've talked about this, that frustration, that resentment, rage, feeling. out of control, you might be getting into arguments or increasing, you know, increasing aggressive behaviour or use of alcohol. Things like death are really hard to, they're impossible to control, impossible to control. And once someone's gone, you can't get them back. And that is so fucking frustrating because everything else, most things in life, you have some control and say over. So, That's when we start to feel angry, angry at our circumstances.

Then comes bargaining. And this can look like, you know, trying to predict the future and assuming the worst, thinking or saying things like I should have or if only I'd done this, sense of guilt and shame, fear, anxiety. It's pretty terrible. Bargaining is that sense of like, well, if I'd just done this, if I do this, then this won't happen again. And it's delusional, essentially.

It's your brain once again trying to find. comfort in a really uncomfortable situation and it's often followed by depression anger and bargaining are followed by depression because when you realize there's nothing you can do god of course you're going to feel absolutely terrible of course you're going to feel sad and hopeless and disappointed overwhelmed this is when i think a lot of the symptoms that people usually associate with grief really start to take hold the crying the appetite changes changes to sleep, you know, the increased use of alcohol or drugs, you know, the depression. It's depression. That's what we often associate grief with, even though it is a lot more nuanced

and texture than that. But let's light at the end of the tunnel, as always. After moving through these phases, we do often get to a point of acceptance, of accepting reality for what it is, of accepting the state of life for what it is. People leave, people go, and it doesn't mean that the love that they had and the love that they had for you and for others disappears. It's still all around us, that energy never goes away that existed at some point and you can still feel the warmth of that if you're calling it. And I think that's where I'm at right now. And, you know, of course things change, but acceptance feels like self-referenced. Acceptance feels like self-referral compassion. It feels like wisdom. You feel that you're in the moment and you're able to be

vulnerable like I'm being right now, I guess, and tolerate your emotions. It shows that you've adapted, you're able to cope and respond skillfully to the situation that you've been put into. It all comes down, I think, when we talk about these stages of grief, a big question people often ask you know how often or how long does grief tend to last is it a six-month thing it's interesting when we think about this in terms of the loss of like a partner like when you go through a breakup there's this like anecdote that the amount of time it takes for you to get over them is half the amount of time that you dated you know if you dated for a year it'll take six months that kind of thing it's just ridiculous because grief is something that stays with you it might be

go away. It might go away for some time. Life might feel really great and I don't think it's something to be scared of that grief doesn't leave. Grief is a reminder that you loved really deeply. If you didn't, you wouldn't be feeling this way and I think that's why it's important. And grief lasts, you know, might last, might last a lifetime. Might not be that long. But it is an important kind of feeling or sensation and a reminder. that you wouldn't be able to feel this way if you didn't care as deeply. And although it might feel really tricky and hard right now, it does get better. I know that sounds so annoying, but that is the cruelest and the best thing about time

is that it always passes. And you always reach a better state. But in order to get there, I guess there are some things that you can do, some practices, some skills that are really good to take on. For me, one of my personal practices, something that I do is every time I think about the people, the person that I've lost, I just hold that thought consciously in my mind for a little while.

I just sit there and I think, you know, I've thought about them. I've had this sensation. I'm just going to hold on to that for a little while and send them love. Send their memory love. I don't know why it just makes me. feel a lot better. When I think about this person that I lost, I just make sure that I take a few

seconds just to say hi and just to send them a positive message. There are other things that aren't as spiritual or as weird as that. I know that sounds a bit strange, but whatever it takes, especially in those early months, establishing a good routine, scheduling pleasant events and promoting self-care activities. That is so. important. Things like limiting alcohol intake, daily exercise, making sure you're seeing a psychologist if you need to, which you know, everyone can kind of benefit from. Although those practices might not feel like they're helping day to day, in the long run you'll find that you're not as stuck in that period of grief, you know, using alcohol or trying to avoid

feelings of sadness never really works, they just come back stronger. And I think that also comes to the next point, which is prepare yourself to face new and difficult situations and challenge unhelpful thinking. I think it's really important and what I found important when I was grieving was to be able to see those reactions like guilt and anger and identify them for what they were, which was a reaction to a situation that I didn't understand. That was hard. That was uncomfortable and that was unpleasant.

And ask yourself these questions, you know, what would your loved one tell you to do if they were still here? What would they like you to do? Would they want to see you like this? What are the alternatives to what you've thought? Where is the evidence of what you've thought? What are your favorite memories of them? Turn that script and make it one that's positive.

And decide to really focus on, on not so much the positives, because I know that sounds so, you know, fucked. Like someone's passed away, how you're meant to focus on the positives. But I guess really prod those emotions, prod those negative thinking, those negative thoughts of, you know, this is going to last forever. This is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. I'm never going to feel happy again. and ask yourself, is that really the truth? Is that really how it's going to be? Because I think that the answer deep down and that you know is that it's not going to be like that. Some other just things that I've learned, don't make any major irreversible decisions in the proceeding of, sorry,

in the following months after someone's passed away. I got a tattoo. I love it. And I don't regret it. probably not the best decision. You know, there's, I guess when you feel like things are out of your control, sometimes you want to just reinsert control by doing crazy, spontaneous things. Maybe just wait. Just have a think about it first. And maybe identify some other possible solutions to why you're feeling the need to do that. Determine what's actually going to positively influence you right now,

surround yourself with beautiful people, beautiful friends. That was the thing that really got me through. I had some amazing friends. My friend Kate, she, yeah, she just, I just remember her saying the right things and I'm glad that she was there. And a lot of my friends, they really stood up for me in that time. It was really hard. You know, there were other things going on. Like I said, was in a pretty bad relationship that probably wasn't right for me, dealing with stuff in my sharehouse and border closures wasn't able to be around my family. So the things that really meant a lot to me was establishing those routines,

remembering the love I had for that person and surrounding myself with the good people that I did have. I think we're going to end things there, but thank you so much for listening. This was a really personal episode. I've been saying that on a lot of episodes recently. Maybe I need to take a bit of a chill pill. Become too vulnerable.

It's been a year of the problem. podcast. I feel like I'm talking to friends now. But in all seriousness, this was something I did really want to talk about. And I hope that if you are going through something similar right now, I'm sending you so much love, it is really, really hard. But I kind of ask you to sit with those feelings and I don't know I guess question question some of your emotional responses remind yourself that if you didn't love them as much if it wasn't that unconditional love you wouldn't be feeling this way and that love doesn't just disappear because their physical body does I know that's getting a little bit spiritual but I guess the thing with grief is that it is part of the human

experience it is like any other emotion it's complicated it's nuanced it's confusing but it serves a really important purpose, and I think that purpose is to remind us that we do love deeply. We can have deep connections with others, and when they're gone, it hurts, but that doesn't mean that they didn't live a beautiful life and that they didn't leave an impact on you. So, yeah, if you're really struggling, I'm really sorry to hear that, but I hope this episode provided you some guidance, made you feel better about things. And I'm sending you love for those who haven't lost someone and who are just listening in. Well, thank you so much, and I hope that you enjoyed this as well.

As always, if you feel the need, if you feel the calling to, if you feel called to, please leave the podcast a review on either Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It helps the podcast grow. It is just me here sharing personal things about my life. So I love to always see new reviews and see that there is a community growing around this and receiving your messages. So thank you so much. and thank you for listening. Have a beautiful week, beautiful people. Hey, what's good, y'all?

You're listening to Learn the Hard Way with your favorite therapist and host Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you're not to be played with.

And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to, Listen to learn the hard way on the IHard radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. I'm on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world.

Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO% on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast, guaranteed human.