December 6, 2021 • 25 mins
Setting the stage. Why do we need to talk about pain and grief and horrible things anyway? Who wants to talk about that? With everyone grieving something over the past few years, and healthcare workers pushed beyond their limits, we’ve got to talk about this stuff amongst ourselves - because the helpers? They need help too.
In this episode we cover:
- the mental health crisis inside the healthcare industry
- the one thing the pandemic has made everyone aware of (aside from indoor air quality)
- Some moderately deep grief-related history involving “keep calm and carry on”
- How the ways you talk about everyday annoyances can actually help change the world
- and why Mr Rogers has it all wrong about looking for the helpers
All of that, plus instructions for how to submit YOUR questions to be answered on a future show. Tune in, listen, review, subscribe, and share with everyone you know.
For more information, visit us at www.Megandevine.co
To submit your questions please use our toll-free number to leave a voicemail: (323) 643-3768
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is here After, and I'm your host, Megan Divine.
Each week we tackle big questions from nurses, therapists, and
other professional helpers that let us explore how to show
up after life goes horribly wrong. This is episode one,
so we have to start with the obvious. Why do
we need to talk about this stuff anyway? Who wants
to talk about pain? A grief show sounds like an
incredibly depressing thing to listen to you to be honest,
(00:21):
and I do this for a living to find out
why it's so important and why you should care. Stay tuned.
We'll be right back after this first break. Before we
get started, one quick note. While I hope you find
a lot of useful information in our time together, this
show is not a substitute for skilled support with a
(00:43):
licensed mental health provider or for professional supervision related to
your work. Hey friends, you know how whenever some terrible
thing that affects a whole lot of people shows up
in the news or on social media and somebody posts
that quote from Mr Rogers about looking for the helpers
in hard times, and everybody post that thing, I know
you've seen it. Well, what do you do when the
(01:05):
helpers need help? Even outside of a single terrible event
that sets off that Roger's meme, We're living in really
hard times, which is an understatement. Everyone is going through something.
Losses everywhere. More than seven thousand people have died of
COVID in the U. S alone. People have lost jobs, livelihoods, relationships,
their sense of self in the world, and of course
(01:27):
non COVID doesths have kept happening to Grief is everywhere,
with everybody struggling. Not only do we see that look
for the Helpers not so terribly helpful meme all the time,
but we also see post after post telling us how
important mental health is, how we're supposed to focus on
our mental health, Go, get help, reach out, talk to somebody.
The thing is that the people you're supposed to talk
to you are also going through all of everything. Therapists
(01:49):
and other healthcare workers everywhere are overwhelmed, overworked, and under resourced.
Even the people accustomed to seeing a lot of human
suffering have seen way more than they can handle. Side
note here as we get going, in case you're hearing
all of this talk about how stressed out health care
workers are and you're thinking, I am not going to
bother anybody with my issues any more, since they're already
so stressed out. Don't tell yourself that. None of what
(02:11):
we're talking about is to say that you shouldn't seek
help with whatever you've got going on. I am pro therapy.
Everybody should have good support from someone outside their family
at all times, good times, bad times, everything in between.
And everyone should have someone in their corner at work
to help them deal with on the job grief too.
It's just that we can't keep running articles and headlines
about unfolding mental health crises and how much support everybody
(02:35):
needs without also addressing the fact that the people who
are supposed to address those needs can't do at all,
not like this, not under this kind of stress, and
not with the skills they've been taught either. If you're
a helper, it's your job to hold the pain of
the world, at least your little part of the world,
and now you have to do that under conditions you
never signed up for and have no idea how to handle.
(02:55):
You're seeing more pain and loss than ever before while
juggling your own losses and us It's a lot. It
was a lot before. The pandemic. Ship isn't new, It's
just more we're not equipped to deal with grief and sustainable,
truly helpful ways. The things we've been taught don't work
when the people you love die, They don't work when
you're handed a life changing illness or injury. They don't
(03:17):
even work when you're just trying to get through life
with its small little annoyances. And they definitely don't work
when underlying systems and structural limits create additional suffering the
way they do in the health care industry. And even
if the professional helpers did have the bandwidth to help,
there's a shortage of therapists out there, long waiting lists,
insurance problems, therapists who bolt like a spook deer when
(03:37):
you bring up your long list of losses or worse,
they try to tell you you're grieving wrong. If you
go looking for help, the odds are it's going to
be tough to find what you're looking for. Sorry, I
always feel like I need to apologize for my profession
right because it's it's really tough out there. But that's
that's a subject for a different day. Look, I know
this stuff is weird. We're talking about things that we
don't really talk about out loud. How hard it is
(03:59):
to be human, the reality that life goes sideways sometimes
and things do go horribly wrong. The pros don't know
how to handle this stuff, and if they don't know
how to do it, none of us do. The reason
why I hinted a little bit earlier that it really
is important for you to listen to this stuff is
that it matters in your life. Whether you're a pro
or not a pro. Things are gonna go wrong in
(04:21):
your life. They're gonna go wrong for the people you
care about. My wrong, don't panic. I don't mean that
the sky is going to fall in on you. I
just mean that everyday life showing up and being human
is not always easy. We need to talk about the
things that hurt so that in real emergencies, these kinds
of conversations aren't new to us. There's a quote that
(04:43):
was in my mind as I was coming into the
studio today. It's E. Cummings wrote, healing is to be
sought in the blood of the wound itself. That's that's
a little bit gory, but I like that idea here
that we have to dive into this stuff. We have
to dive into the painful things. If we have any
hope of the livering the kind of support and care
for each other that we really want to give. Again,
(05:04):
that's true for the prose, and it's true for your
everyday life. We're gonna head back into the heavy stuff
for a little bit, but I wanted to just acknowledge
that for you right now, this is heavy, weird stuff
we're talking about, and it's important that we stick with it.
I want to read you a couple of things. So
earlier this morning, I did a super informal poll, which
just means that I posted a tweet asking some questions,
(05:26):
asking anybody in the helping professions what they're wrestling with
right now. This is what I heard. I've lost so
many patients over the last two years. I've lost family
members too. I literally have nothing left in me to
give anyone nothing. That mental health crisis you've been talking about,
it isn't looming for most of us. It's already here
(05:47):
and there's no end in sight. Someone else wrote, I
am trying to be there for my clients, but I'm
in this pandemic too. How do I deal with They're
grateful I'm trying to get through my own. It's not
like I can lean on them the way they need
to lean on me. The answer is I have to
find ways to shut myself off. And then my particular favorite,
because it's a little snarky, how can I tell people
(06:09):
everything is going to be okay? After what I see
on the job every day? The advice I'm supposed to
give people isn't going to do a damn thing for them,
and it's not helping me deal with sh it either.
I've never felt so helpless, and I've been at this
a really long time. Can you hear it? The helpers
are struggling? I mean, can you hear it in me?
(06:30):
It's hard out there. Even though they're supposed to help
people in times of need. Most therapists and medical pros
aren't trained in acknowledging and supporting big, unfixable human things
like grief. They're really good at setting bones and differential diagnoses,
but grief. Grief is sort of this amorphous cloud that
(06:52):
all of us experience, but nobody really knows how to
deal with everything that we've inherited. Everything that we've been
taught is you can't be sad for very long. If
something bad happens in your life. From a stub toe
to the death of your best friend. You're just supposed
to buck up and get over it and move on
as quickly as possible stages of grief, right, go through
those five, reach acceptance, and everything will be fine, Except
(07:15):
that humans don't work that way. Grief isn't a pass
fail for the human heart. It's part of existence, it's
part of being alive, and it's part of love. Grief
no more needs a solution than love needs a solution.
It doesn't need to be fixed. But like the rest
of us, healthcare providers are encouraged to tell people who
(07:35):
are grieving or who just received a tough diagnosis or
got an outcome that they really didn't want. They're training
to tell people to focus on the positive, to be resilient,
to practice gratitude, and to deliver that line that they
all seem to say, if you experience symptoms of sadness
or depression that lasts more than a few weeks, talk
to your health care provider, Like, dude, you're my health
(07:56):
care provider, and I'm talking to you right now. I
guess no time like right now for a lot of
people to realize that the things we usually do and
say in the face of great pain just don't actually work.
You can hear it in that last comment right from
that er doc. The things I'm supposed to say aren't
going to help my patients, and they're not doing anything
for me either. Sorry. I know I promised you this
(08:19):
show wasn't going to be super depressing to listen to,
and so far I'm not exactly delivering on that promise.
Give me a minute, though. On top of all the
terrible stuff I just mentioned, I have just a tiny
bit more bleique reality to get through, and then I
promise I'm going to make this better for you again.
You stay with me, be right back. Hey, glad you
(08:46):
made it. One of the things that I get asked
in interviews a lot these days is has the pandemic
made us better at grief? And you would think that
as a grief educator and an advocate, I would say, yes,
of course, with all of these shared experiences of losses,
we got better at grief. But that's not actually true.
I think that what the pandemic experience has done has
(09:06):
made a lot more people realize that the platitudes and
cheering people up and resilience and looking on the bright
side and shaming people into feeling better with things like
other people have it worse than you. I think we've
realized that all of those things we've sort of traditionally
said to people a lot more people understand now that
that stuff doesn't work. Cheering people up and trying to
get them to feel better about the crappy things that
(09:29):
happen in their lives. It doesn't work, you know. During
the pandemic, people have lost so many things. Of course,
we've got death. Some families have experienced more than one
death in a family. We've got the crisis for health
care workers that we've been talking about. We've also got
things like the loss of normalcy, the loss of jobs,
the loss of your sense of self in the world
and your relationships. Everybody has lost something, and that means
(09:53):
that everybody has kind of experienced what it feels like
to be talked out of your pain or told not
that bad, or told that other people have it worse
than you. And how dare you do this when X,
Y and Z is happening on there? Man? The things
that we say to each other when we think we're
being helpful are really not helpful at all. But remember
(10:15):
how I told you that all of this really isn't
anything new. Historically speaking, We're actually pretty crap at dealing
with grief. I'm a total grief history nerd, So you've
got to follow me down this little rabbit hole for
a second. I study this stuff so I know things
like this. Humans have been avoiding and suppressing pain for eons.
(10:37):
And if you look at the history of falloup from
large scale loss like the flu epidemic in the US
or the Blitz of London, two big losses that touched
a huge percentage of the population, the official government or
public health response back then was to sweep it under
the rug, don't talk about it, look towards the future,
the great and glorious future, and get back to work
and keep calm and carry on and pretend as if
(11:00):
none of this ever happened. That approach basically created generations
of people who keep all of their pain bottled up
in order to go about the business of life and
present this facade that everything is just fine. That pain
doesn't stay down, though, does it. It comes outsideways. So
many things we identify as public health issues are a
direct result of trying to pretend that what hurts doesn't hurt, suicidality, depression, anxiety,
(11:26):
suicidal ideation, drug addiction, loneliness, interpersonal violence, domestic violence. All
of those things have grief at their core. Now you
can see this in Colonize people as well. Right, high
rates of addiction and native communities can easily be traced
back to generations of loss and suffering. Pain will always
find a way to speak. We're not that good at
(11:46):
talking about pain. From the pros right down to your
cousin Martha, who's trying ever so hard to be helpful.
We think the right thing to do is to get
someone out of their grief or their pain as soon
as possible. We think good mental health means horror. All
things don't affect you, or if they do, it's just
for a second and then you move right along. If
you're visibly affected by the loss you see around you,
(12:08):
if you're pro, your professionalism is called into question. You're
not supposed to be affected by losses on the job.
Little side note here from inside the industry, it is
still cause for professional concern if your doctors or your
nurses show any emotion at the bedside. Now that is
not true in every single hospital. Don't at me but
(12:29):
that is still something deeply embedded in the medical industry
culture that you should be better at this. This is
your job and you see it all the time, and
if you start to crack, if your human nous shows through,
then we're worried about your capacity to do your job. Friends,
If that's how we treat grief in the workplace in
the medical fields, no wonder. The medical professions have some
(12:52):
of the highest rates of suicidality and drug addiction. There
is a big problem with how we talk about grief
and what is allowed in the workplace. So anyway, if
you are visibly affected by the lass you see around you,
as a pro, your professionalism is often called into question.
And if you're not a pro and you're not getting
better really fast, maybe you should talk to someone. Not us, obviously,
(13:15):
I mean, we don't have time for this, but you
gotta talk to someone. Everybody's carrying unspoken grief, mostly because
there's nowhere to talk about it. I promised you better news,
and here it is. When we let the stuff in,
when we face up to the realities of emotional pain,
when we're accepting and honest and practical and informed, we
(13:36):
can change the conversations we have around loss. We can
improve the kinds of advice we give each other, change
the actions we take. We can create systems and protocols
that help keep us afloat in hard times without sending
more problems downstream for other family members to deal with.
Doing this stuff together, we can make the world a
kinder place for all of us to survive in. I mean,
(13:58):
that's what we all want, right. We want to feel
loved and supported when ship goes sideways in our own lives,
and we want to know that the support we're giving,
whether that's to friends or family members or clients or patients,
we want to know that that support is truly supportive
and that the work we do makes an actual difference.
The way to make the world a kinder, better place
(14:18):
for grieving people, and that's everybody, is to help the
helpers learn better skills on the job, off the job,
and in our lives. And it means educating people on
better ways to show up for themselves and for others.
And I know we're in the cheer you up part
of the show, but sorry, getting to that world means
we have to talk about pain. Talking about pain is
(14:40):
just another way of talking about being human. It's not depressing,
it's real. What's depressing is facing the weight of the
world and feeling like there's not a damn thing you
can do to make things better. That presses me. What's
depressing is showing up to work knowing that nothing you
do is going to stop that flood of pain and suffering,
showing up at your doorstop up, and there's no time
(15:01):
to even register the last loss before the next one
comes in. What's depressing is looking at the loss that
just showed up in your friend's life and feeling utterly
helpless and out of your depth. What is not depressing
his agency. What is not depressing is finding a place
where you can tell the truth about how hard it
is to be here sometimes, where you feel safe enough
(15:21):
to ask the questions you most need answered, where you
learn how to deal with grief, loss, stress, and all
the ways that life goes horribly wrong. Because it does,
life goes wrong all the time. To completely twist Mr.
Rogers in hard times, you can't keep looking for the helpers.
Sometimes you are the help and if you're going to
(15:43):
take that on, we need to come up alongside you
and help you learn what you need to know. We
only get that world we all want by showing up
and talking it out. I mentioned before that this stuff
feels really scary and awkward and terrifying for a lot
of people, So why should you listen to me? If
we're going to go someplace that you really don't want
to go, you should probably know who you're traveling with.
(16:05):
So I've been a therapist for a little bit over
twenty years. Before I was a therapist, I worked in
social justice. I did domestic violence work and hospice work.
So I have been in the trenches of being human
for quite a while. In my professional life, I worked
with a lot of trauma. I actually worked with a
lot of physicians who came into my practice to have
a place to talk about the things that they saw
(16:27):
on the job that they didn't feel like they could
talk about anywhere else. In a lot of ways, I
was the therapist therapist. I've been doing it for such
a long time that I got kind of tired of
sitting there and listening to pain. Like I am with
you in this everybody pain is a lot to listen
to day after day after day after day. So I
wanted to take a break and as I spoke with
my partner about it. He decided that he was gonna
(16:48):
take over financial support of our family so that I
could close my practice and take a break and just
wonder about what was coming next. I never got a
chance to do that, though, because two days after that conversation,
Matt died in an accident. I closed my practice. I
never wanted to talk about this ship again, even with
everything that I knew as a darn good therapist, everything
(17:10):
that I thought I knew completely evaporated. The day that
he died. I wanted to go back to all of
my clients and apologize for being so bad at this
little side note on this one. I did actually go
back and talk to my clients to check out how
bad or not bad I was, and they all gave
me really great validation and reflection that I was very
(17:31):
good at my job even then. But the thing that
really stuck with me is the ways that I was
trained to show up for people in pain. Sometimes those
tools were great. There are some things in life that
do really well with enforced optimism, right or gratitude or
changing your thoughts. The tools that we learn as clinicians
(17:54):
and as providers have really really good applications, but they
do not work for every part of human life. They don't.
And the things that people said to me in the
days and weeks and months after Matt died mostly well intentioned.
Some people are just jerks. We're not going to talk
about them. But the well intentioned things that people said
to me felt so cruel. The night of Matt's funeral,
(18:17):
somebody came up to me and said, you're so young
and so pretty. My biggest hope is that you'll get
married again really soon and get back out there into life.
He'd been dead for two days. He was thirty nine.
We say, the weirdest ship to each other. Back then,
nobody really talked about pain. It's weird to think about.
(18:38):
But even back then, so we're talking two thousand nine,
sort of Internet dark ages here, but even blogs weren't
quite a thing yet. They were starting, but they weren't
really a thing. So going out there and looking for
grief support, most of what I found assumed that I
was in my nineties because nobody's partners die in their thirties,
or it assumed that I had a very specific religios foundation,
(19:00):
which didn't work for me. There were very very few
places where people were telling the actual truth about their lives.
I came back into this work because I didn't want
more people to enter into the world of grief or
hardship or struggle and find the things that I found.
I want you all, when life goes sideways, to have
skilled care around you, in the whole range, from the
(19:24):
first responders to the doctors, to the specialists, to the nurses,
to the hospice workers, to the person at the gas
station when you stop to get gas on the way
to the funeral. I want everybody knowing that there's nothing
wrong with you for being in pain. When life goes sideways,
I want you to have skilled hands to hold you up.
(19:46):
We can't stop life from going horribly wrong. It's gonna
do what it's gonna do. We got to talk about that.
We can't keep ignoring the reality of being alive. If
what we want is a world where there is kindness
and support for us in our times of need, then
we need to start practicing these tools that feel really
scary and having conversations that feel awkward and weird. But
(20:08):
we can do this. Talking about this stuff is actually
the way forward. I mean, look at it like this, like,
not talking about this stuff is really awkward. It's the
elephant in the room, right. What are you supposed to
say to your sister who just lost their baby. What
are you supposed to say to that relative that you
see in the holiday season and you know something bad
happened but you're not sure if you should bring it up.
Not talking about it is awkward. Talking about it is
(20:31):
also awkward. If awkward is non negotiable, then let's choose
the path of awkward that has the best chance of
leading to something awesome, relationships and care for each other
that actually feels good in a really terrible time. We
can't take somebody's pain away from them, but we can
make their suffering much much reduced if we show up
(20:52):
with some skills and some awkwardness. And that's what we're
gonna do here together. We're gonna take your questions about
how you show up, whether that's on the job as
a healthcare provider or a therapist, or it's as somebody
who's trying to be a good friend going through something terrible.
We're going to talk about all that stuff together because
the more you talk about it, the easier it gets.
(21:14):
I know, it feels weird. I will never ask you
to do anything that I have not done myself. It's
gonna be fun and weird. Stay tuned after the break
for things you can do to start practicing this whole
showing up for pain thing, and learn how you can
submit your questions for me to answer next week. Don't
miss that part. Friends, Each week I'm gonna leave you
(21:40):
with some questions to carry with you until we meet again.
It's part of that whole. This stuff gets easier with practice.
Things I want you to practice this week. We're going
to start out simple, just some questions for reflection. If
you're in the helping professions, what have you noticed about
your capacity to keep going? What things feel the most daunting?
Where would you like somehow? Okay, that's three questions, but
(22:02):
you can handle it. If you're not in the helping professions,
I think the same things apply. We're all going through
such hard times right now and trying to show up
for the people we care about with very little capacity.
So if you're trying to be a good friend, what
have you noticed about your capacity to keep going? What
things feel the most daunting? And where would you like
(22:23):
some help? There's no one right answer. To these things,
but sometimes asking yourself the questions can ease the pressure
on you just a little bit. It seems weird, but
try it out. I want to submit your question for
me to possibly address on air. This show is nothing
without your questions. It's it's literally a Q and a show.
You can ask me anything you'd like. Bring me your
(22:45):
clinical questions, your frustrations about work, the things that scare you.
Ask me how to handle that one thing that always
leaves you feeling like a deer in the headlights and
you really need a script for it. Let's talk it out.
Call us at three to three six four or three
seven six eight and leave a voicemail. If you miss
that number, don't worry. You can find the number in
(23:05):
the show notes, or you can visit Megan Divine dot
c O. If you'd rather send an email, you can
do that too, right on the website Megan Divine dot CEO.
We want to hear from you. This show and this
world needs your questions. Together, we can make things better
even when we can't make them right. You know how
most people are going to scan through the show description
(23:27):
here and think I don't want to talk about that stuff.
Here's where you come in your reviews, let people know
it really isn't all that bad. In here. We talk
about heavy stuff, but it's in the service of making
things better for everyone. So everyone needs to listen. Spread
the word in your workplace, in your social world on
social media and click through to leave a review. Subscribe
to the show, download episodes, and send in your questions.
(23:51):
I want more Here After. Grief education doesn't just belong
to end of life issues. Life is full of losses,
from everyday disappointments to events that clearly divide life into
before and after. Learning how to talk about that without
cliches or platitudes or simplistic think positive workplace posters. That's
an important skill for everyone. Find trainings, workshops, books and
(24:14):
resources for every human trying to make their way in
the world after something goes horribly wrong at Megan Divine
Dolt Co. Hereafter is written and produced by me Megan Divine.
Executive producer is Amy Brown, co producers Kimberly Cowen, Tanya Uchas,
and Elizabeth Fazio, Edited by Houston Tilly, with music provided
(24:35):
by Wave Crush. I imagine some like goofy Little goofy
is a wrong word but like my kind of goofy,
like some sort of outtake or like the best comment
from do you know what I mean? Like I'm not
really describing it, but like something. It's not a scripted
tagline clothes, it's more of it's going to end with
(24:55):
something silly, Right. I can say something like seriously, friends,
this is my daily life, and I start crying and
then I start hysterically laughing. I am totally fine with that.
So that's fun. Um. I don't know how completely unclear
that is. For Houston. UH, find something weird and make
(25:20):
it the closing clip
This is here After, and I'm your host, Megan Divine.
Each week we tackle big questions from nurses, therapists, and
other professional helpers that let us explore how to show
up after life goes horribly wrong. This is episode one,
so we have to start with the obvious. Why do
we need to talk about this stuff anyway? Who wants
to talk about pain? A grief show sounds like an
incredibly depressing thing to listen to you to be honest,
(00:21):
and I do this for a living to find out
why it's so important and why you should care. Stay tuned.
We'll be right back after this first break. Before we
get started, one quick note. While I hope you find
a lot of useful information in our time together, this
show is not a substitute for skilled support with a
(00:43):
licensed mental health provider or for professional supervision related to
your work. Hey friends, you know how whenever some terrible
thing that affects a whole lot of people shows up
in the news or on social media and somebody posts
that quote from Mr Rogers about looking for the helpers
in hard times, and everybody post that thing, I know
you've seen it. Well, what do you do when the
(01:05):
helpers need help? Even outside of a single terrible event
that sets off that Roger's meme, We're living in really
hard times, which is an understatement. Everyone is going through something.
Losses everywhere. More than seven thousand people have died of
COVID in the U. S alone. People have lost jobs, livelihoods, relationships,
their sense of self in the world, and of course
(01:27):
non COVID doesths have kept happening to Grief is everywhere,
with everybody struggling. Not only do we see that look
for the Helpers not so terribly helpful meme all the time,
but we also see post after post telling us how
important mental health is, how we're supposed to focus on
our mental health, Go, get help, reach out, talk to somebody.
The thing is that the people you're supposed to talk
to you are also going through all of everything. Therapists
(01:49):
and other healthcare workers everywhere are overwhelmed, overworked, and under resourced.
Even the people accustomed to seeing a lot of human
suffering have seen way more than they can handle. Side
note here as we get going, in case you're hearing
all of this talk about how stressed out health care
workers are and you're thinking, I am not going to
bother anybody with my issues any more, since they're already
so stressed out. Don't tell yourself that. None of what
(02:11):
we're talking about is to say that you shouldn't seek
help with whatever you've got going on. I am pro therapy.
Everybody should have good support from someone outside their family
at all times, good times, bad times, everything in between.
And everyone should have someone in their corner at work
to help them deal with on the job grief too.
It's just that we can't keep running articles and headlines
about unfolding mental health crises and how much support everybody
(02:35):
needs without also addressing the fact that the people who
are supposed to address those needs can't do at all,
not like this, not under this kind of stress, and
not with the skills they've been taught either. If you're
a helper, it's your job to hold the pain of
the world, at least your little part of the world,
and now you have to do that under conditions you
never signed up for and have no idea how to handle.
(02:55):
You're seeing more pain and loss than ever before while
juggling your own losses and us It's a lot. It
was a lot before. The pandemic. Ship isn't new, It's
just more we're not equipped to deal with grief and sustainable,
truly helpful ways. The things we've been taught don't work
when the people you love die, They don't work when
you're handed a life changing illness or injury. They don't
(03:17):
even work when you're just trying to get through life
with its small little annoyances. And they definitely don't work
when underlying systems and structural limits create additional suffering the
way they do in the health care industry. And even
if the professional helpers did have the bandwidth to help,
there's a shortage of therapists out there, long waiting lists,
insurance problems, therapists who bolt like a spook deer when
(03:37):
you bring up your long list of losses or worse,
they try to tell you you're grieving wrong. If you
go looking for help, the odds are it's going to
be tough to find what you're looking for. Sorry, I
always feel like I need to apologize for my profession
right because it's it's really tough out there. But that's
that's a subject for a different day. Look, I know
this stuff is weird. We're talking about things that we
don't really talk about out loud. How hard it is
(03:59):
to be human, the reality that life goes sideways sometimes
and things do go horribly wrong. The pros don't know
how to handle this stuff, and if they don't know
how to do it, none of us do. The reason
why I hinted a little bit earlier that it really
is important for you to listen to this stuff is
that it matters in your life. Whether you're a pro
or not a pro. Things are gonna go wrong in
(04:21):
your life. They're gonna go wrong for the people you
care about. My wrong, don't panic. I don't mean that
the sky is going to fall in on you. I
just mean that everyday life showing up and being human
is not always easy. We need to talk about the
things that hurt so that in real emergencies, these kinds
of conversations aren't new to us. There's a quote that
(04:43):
was in my mind as I was coming into the
studio today. It's E. Cummings wrote, healing is to be
sought in the blood of the wound itself. That's that's
a little bit gory, but I like that idea here
that we have to dive into this stuff. We have
to dive into the painful things. If we have any
hope of the livering the kind of support and care
for each other that we really want to give. Again,
(05:04):
that's true for the prose, and it's true for your
everyday life. We're gonna head back into the heavy stuff
for a little bit, but I wanted to just acknowledge
that for you right now, this is heavy, weird stuff
we're talking about, and it's important that we stick with it.
I want to read you a couple of things. So
earlier this morning, I did a super informal poll, which
just means that I posted a tweet asking some questions,
(05:26):
asking anybody in the helping professions what they're wrestling with
right now. This is what I heard. I've lost so
many patients over the last two years. I've lost family
members too. I literally have nothing left in me to
give anyone nothing. That mental health crisis you've been talking about,
it isn't looming for most of us. It's already here
(05:47):
and there's no end in sight. Someone else wrote, I
am trying to be there for my clients, but I'm
in this pandemic too. How do I deal with They're
grateful I'm trying to get through my own. It's not
like I can lean on them the way they need
to lean on me. The answer is I have to
find ways to shut myself off. And then my particular favorite,
because it's a little snarky, how can I tell people
(06:09):
everything is going to be okay? After what I see
on the job every day? The advice I'm supposed to
give people isn't going to do a damn thing for them,
and it's not helping me deal with sh it either.
I've never felt so helpless, and I've been at this
a really long time. Can you hear it? The helpers
are struggling? I mean, can you hear it in me?
(06:30):
It's hard out there. Even though they're supposed to help
people in times of need. Most therapists and medical pros
aren't trained in acknowledging and supporting big, unfixable human things
like grief. They're really good at setting bones and differential diagnoses,
but grief. Grief is sort of this amorphous cloud that
(06:52):
all of us experience, but nobody really knows how to
deal with everything that we've inherited. Everything that we've been
taught is you can't be sad for very long. If
something bad happens in your life. From a stub toe
to the death of your best friend. You're just supposed
to buck up and get over it and move on
as quickly as possible stages of grief, right, go through
those five, reach acceptance, and everything will be fine, Except
(07:15):
that humans don't work that way. Grief isn't a pass
fail for the human heart. It's part of existence, it's
part of being alive, and it's part of love. Grief
no more needs a solution than love needs a solution.
It doesn't need to be fixed. But like the rest
of us, healthcare providers are encouraged to tell people who
(07:35):
are grieving or who just received a tough diagnosis or
got an outcome that they really didn't want. They're training
to tell people to focus on the positive, to be resilient,
to practice gratitude, and to deliver that line that they
all seem to say, if you experience symptoms of sadness
or depression that lasts more than a few weeks, talk
to your health care provider, Like, dude, you're my health
(07:56):
care provider, and I'm talking to you right now. I
guess no time like right now for a lot of
people to realize that the things we usually do and
say in the face of great pain just don't actually work.
You can hear it in that last comment right from
that er doc. The things I'm supposed to say aren't
going to help my patients, and they're not doing anything
for me either. Sorry. I know I promised you this
(08:19):
show wasn't going to be super depressing to listen to,
and so far I'm not exactly delivering on that promise.
Give me a minute, though. On top of all the
terrible stuff I just mentioned, I have just a tiny
bit more bleique reality to get through, and then I
promise I'm going to make this better for you again.
You stay with me, be right back. Hey, glad you
(08:46):
made it. One of the things that I get asked
in interviews a lot these days is has the pandemic
made us better at grief? And you would think that
as a grief educator and an advocate, I would say, yes,
of course, with all of these shared experiences of losses,
we got better at grief. But that's not actually true.
I think that what the pandemic experience has done has
(09:06):
made a lot more people realize that the platitudes and
cheering people up and resilience and looking on the bright
side and shaming people into feeling better with things like
other people have it worse than you. I think we've
realized that all of those things we've sort of traditionally
said to people a lot more people understand now that
that stuff doesn't work. Cheering people up and trying to
get them to feel better about the crappy things that
(09:29):
happen in their lives. It doesn't work, you know. During
the pandemic, people have lost so many things. Of course,
we've got death. Some families have experienced more than one
death in a family. We've got the crisis for health
care workers that we've been talking about. We've also got
things like the loss of normalcy, the loss of jobs,
the loss of your sense of self in the world
and your relationships. Everybody has lost something, and that means
(09:53):
that everybody has kind of experienced what it feels like
to be talked out of your pain or told not
that bad, or told that other people have it worse
than you. And how dare you do this when X,
Y and Z is happening on there? Man? The things
that we say to each other when we think we're
being helpful are really not helpful at all. But remember
(10:15):
how I told you that all of this really isn't
anything new. Historically speaking, We're actually pretty crap at dealing
with grief. I'm a total grief history nerd, So you've
got to follow me down this little rabbit hole for
a second. I study this stuff so I know things
like this. Humans have been avoiding and suppressing pain for eons.
(10:37):
And if you look at the history of falloup from
large scale loss like the flu epidemic in the US
or the Blitz of London, two big losses that touched
a huge percentage of the population, the official government or
public health response back then was to sweep it under
the rug, don't talk about it, look towards the future,
the great and glorious future, and get back to work
and keep calm and carry on and pretend as if
(11:00):
none of this ever happened. That approach basically created generations
of people who keep all of their pain bottled up
in order to go about the business of life and
present this facade that everything is just fine. That pain
doesn't stay down, though, does it. It comes outsideways. So
many things we identify as public health issues are a
direct result of trying to pretend that what hurts doesn't hurt, suicidality, depression, anxiety,
(11:26):
suicidal ideation, drug addiction, loneliness, interpersonal violence, domestic violence. All
of those things have grief at their core. Now you
can see this in Colonize people as well. Right, high
rates of addiction and native communities can easily be traced
back to generations of loss and suffering. Pain will always
find a way to speak. We're not that good at
(11:46):
talking about pain. From the pros right down to your
cousin Martha, who's trying ever so hard to be helpful.
We think the right thing to do is to get
someone out of their grief or their pain as soon
as possible. We think good mental health means horror. All
things don't affect you, or if they do, it's just
for a second and then you move right along. If
you're visibly affected by the loss you see around you,
(12:08):
if you're pro, your professionalism is called into question. You're
not supposed to be affected by losses on the job.
Little side note here from inside the industry, it is
still cause for professional concern if your doctors or your
nurses show any emotion at the bedside. Now that is
not true in every single hospital. Don't at me but
(12:29):
that is still something deeply embedded in the medical industry
culture that you should be better at this. This is
your job and you see it all the time, and
if you start to crack, if your human nous shows through,
then we're worried about your capacity to do your job. Friends,
If that's how we treat grief in the workplace in
the medical fields, no wonder. The medical professions have some
(12:52):
of the highest rates of suicidality and drug addiction. There
is a big problem with how we talk about grief
and what is allowed in the workplace. So anyway, if
you are visibly affected by the lass you see around you,
as a pro, your professionalism is often called into question.
And if you're not a pro and you're not getting
better really fast, maybe you should talk to someone. Not us, obviously,
(13:15):
I mean, we don't have time for this, but you
gotta talk to someone. Everybody's carrying unspoken grief, mostly because
there's nowhere to talk about it. I promised you better news,
and here it is. When we let the stuff in,
when we face up to the realities of emotional pain,
when we're accepting and honest and practical and informed, we
(13:36):
can change the conversations we have around loss. We can
improve the kinds of advice we give each other, change
the actions we take. We can create systems and protocols
that help keep us afloat in hard times without sending
more problems downstream for other family members to deal with.
Doing this stuff together, we can make the world a
kinder place for all of us to survive in. I mean,
(13:58):
that's what we all want, right. We want to feel
loved and supported when ship goes sideways in our own lives,
and we want to know that the support we're giving,
whether that's to friends or family members or clients or patients,
we want to know that that support is truly supportive
and that the work we do makes an actual difference.
The way to make the world a kinder, better place
(14:18):
for grieving people, and that's everybody, is to help the
helpers learn better skills on the job, off the job,
and in our lives. And it means educating people on
better ways to show up for themselves and for others.
And I know we're in the cheer you up part
of the show, but sorry, getting to that world means
we have to talk about pain. Talking about pain is
(14:40):
just another way of talking about being human. It's not depressing,
it's real. What's depressing is facing the weight of the
world and feeling like there's not a damn thing you
can do to make things better. That presses me. What's
depressing is showing up to work knowing that nothing you
do is going to stop that flood of pain and suffering,
showing up at your doorstop up, and there's no time
(15:01):
to even register the last loss before the next one
comes in. What's depressing is looking at the loss that
just showed up in your friend's life and feeling utterly
helpless and out of your depth. What is not depressing
his agency. What is not depressing is finding a place
where you can tell the truth about how hard it
is to be here sometimes, where you feel safe enough
(15:21):
to ask the questions you most need answered, where you
learn how to deal with grief, loss, stress, and all
the ways that life goes horribly wrong. Because it does,
life goes wrong all the time. To completely twist Mr.
Rogers in hard times, you can't keep looking for the helpers.
Sometimes you are the help and if you're going to
(15:43):
take that on, we need to come up alongside you
and help you learn what you need to know. We
only get that world we all want by showing up
and talking it out. I mentioned before that this stuff
feels really scary and awkward and terrifying for a lot
of people, So why should you listen to me? If
we're going to go someplace that you really don't want
to go, you should probably know who you're traveling with.
(16:05):
So I've been a therapist for a little bit over
twenty years. Before I was a therapist, I worked in
social justice. I did domestic violence work and hospice work.
So I have been in the trenches of being human
for quite a while. In my professional life, I worked
with a lot of trauma. I actually worked with a
lot of physicians who came into my practice to have
a place to talk about the things that they saw
(16:27):
on the job that they didn't feel like they could
talk about anywhere else. In a lot of ways, I
was the therapist therapist. I've been doing it for such
a long time that I got kind of tired of
sitting there and listening to pain. Like I am with
you in this everybody pain is a lot to listen
to day after day after day after day. So I
wanted to take a break and as I spoke with
my partner about it. He decided that he was gonna
(16:48):
take over financial support of our family so that I
could close my practice and take a break and just
wonder about what was coming next. I never got a
chance to do that, though, because two days after that conversation,
Matt died in an accident. I closed my practice. I
never wanted to talk about this ship again, even with
everything that I knew as a darn good therapist, everything
(17:10):
that I thought I knew completely evaporated. The day that
he died. I wanted to go back to all of
my clients and apologize for being so bad at this
little side note on this one. I did actually go
back and talk to my clients to check out how
bad or not bad I was, and they all gave
me really great validation and reflection that I was very
(17:31):
good at my job even then. But the thing that
really stuck with me is the ways that I was
trained to show up for people in pain. Sometimes those
tools were great. There are some things in life that
do really well with enforced optimism, right or gratitude or
changing your thoughts. The tools that we learn as clinicians
(17:54):
and as providers have really really good applications, but they
do not work for every part of human life. They don't.
And the things that people said to me in the
days and weeks and months after Matt died mostly well intentioned.
Some people are just jerks. We're not going to talk
about them. But the well intentioned things that people said
to me felt so cruel. The night of Matt's funeral,
(18:17):
somebody came up to me and said, you're so young
and so pretty. My biggest hope is that you'll get
married again really soon and get back out there into life.
He'd been dead for two days. He was thirty nine.
We say, the weirdest ship to each other. Back then,
nobody really talked about pain. It's weird to think about.
(18:38):
But even back then, so we're talking two thousand nine,
sort of Internet dark ages here, but even blogs weren't
quite a thing yet. They were starting, but they weren't
really a thing. So going out there and looking for
grief support, most of what I found assumed that I
was in my nineties because nobody's partners die in their thirties,
or it assumed that I had a very specific religios foundation,
(19:00):
which didn't work for me. There were very very few
places where people were telling the actual truth about their lives.
I came back into this work because I didn't want
more people to enter into the world of grief or
hardship or struggle and find the things that I found.
I want you all, when life goes sideways, to have
skilled care around you, in the whole range, from the
(19:24):
first responders to the doctors, to the specialists, to the nurses,
to the hospice workers, to the person at the gas
station when you stop to get gas on the way
to the funeral. I want everybody knowing that there's nothing
wrong with you for being in pain. When life goes sideways,
I want you to have skilled hands to hold you up.
(19:46):
We can't stop life from going horribly wrong. It's gonna
do what it's gonna do. We got to talk about that.
We can't keep ignoring the reality of being alive. If
what we want is a world where there is kindness
and support for us in our times of need, then
we need to start practicing these tools that feel really
scary and having conversations that feel awkward and weird. But
(20:08):
we can do this. Talking about this stuff is actually
the way forward. I mean, look at it like this, like,
not talking about this stuff is really awkward. It's the
elephant in the room, right. What are you supposed to
say to your sister who just lost their baby. What
are you supposed to say to that relative that you
see in the holiday season and you know something bad
happened but you're not sure if you should bring it up.
Not talking about it is awkward. Talking about it is
(20:31):
also awkward. If awkward is non negotiable, then let's choose
the path of awkward that has the best chance of
leading to something awesome, relationships and care for each other
that actually feels good in a really terrible time. We
can't take somebody's pain away from them, but we can
make their suffering much much reduced if we show up
(20:52):
with some skills and some awkwardness. And that's what we're
gonna do here together. We're gonna take your questions about
how you show up, whether that's on the job as
a healthcare provider or a therapist, or it's as somebody
who's trying to be a good friend going through something terrible.
We're going to talk about all that stuff together because
the more you talk about it, the easier it gets.
(21:14):
I know, it feels weird. I will never ask you
to do anything that I have not done myself. It's
gonna be fun and weird. Stay tuned after the break
for things you can do to start practicing this whole
showing up for pain thing, and learn how you can
submit your questions for me to answer next week. Don't
miss that part. Friends, Each week I'm gonna leave you
(21:40):
with some questions to carry with you until we meet again.
It's part of that whole. This stuff gets easier with practice.
Things I want you to practice this week. We're going
to start out simple, just some questions for reflection. If
you're in the helping professions, what have you noticed about
your capacity to keep going? What things feel the most daunting?
Where would you like somehow? Okay, that's three questions, but
(22:02):
you can handle it. If you're not in the helping professions,
I think the same things apply. We're all going through
such hard times right now and trying to show up
for the people we care about with very little capacity.
So if you're trying to be a good friend, what
have you noticed about your capacity to keep going? What
things feel the most daunting? And where would you like
(22:23):
some help? There's no one right answer. To these things,
but sometimes asking yourself the questions can ease the pressure
on you just a little bit. It seems weird, but
try it out. I want to submit your question for
me to possibly address on air. This show is nothing
without your questions. It's it's literally a Q and a show.
You can ask me anything you'd like. Bring me your
(22:45):
clinical questions, your frustrations about work, the things that scare you.
Ask me how to handle that one thing that always
leaves you feeling like a deer in the headlights and
you really need a script for it. Let's talk it out.
Call us at three to three six four or three
seven six eight and leave a voicemail. If you miss
that number, don't worry. You can find the number in
(23:05):
the show notes, or you can visit Megan Divine dot
c O. If you'd rather send an email, you can
do that too, right on the website Megan Divine dot CEO.
We want to hear from you. This show and this
world needs your questions. Together, we can make things better
even when we can't make them right. You know how
most people are going to scan through the show description
(23:27):
here and think I don't want to talk about that stuff.
Here's where you come in your reviews, let people know
it really isn't all that bad. In here. We talk
about heavy stuff, but it's in the service of making
things better for everyone. So everyone needs to listen. Spread
the word in your workplace, in your social world on
social media and click through to leave a review. Subscribe
to the show, download episodes, and send in your questions.
(23:51):
I want more Here After. Grief education doesn't just belong
to end of life issues. Life is full of losses,
from everyday disappointments to events that clearly divide life into
before and after. Learning how to talk about that without
cliches or platitudes or simplistic think positive workplace posters. That's
an important skill for everyone. Find trainings, workshops, books and
(24:14):
resources for every human trying to make their way in
the world after something goes horribly wrong at Megan Divine
Dolt Co. Hereafter is written and produced by me Megan Divine.
Executive producer is Amy Brown, co producers Kimberly Cowen, Tanya Uchas,
and Elizabeth Fazio, Edited by Houston Tilly, with music provided
(24:35):
by Wave Crush. I imagine some like goofy Little goofy
is a wrong word but like my kind of goofy,
like some sort of outtake or like the best comment
from do you know what I mean? Like I'm not
really describing it, but like something. It's not a scripted
tagline clothes, it's more of it's going to end with
(24:55):
something silly, Right. I can say something like seriously, friends,
this is my daily life, and I start crying and
then I start hysterically laughing. I am totally fine with that.
So that's fun. Um. I don't know how completely unclear
that is. For Houston. UH, find something weird and make
(25:20):
it the closing clip
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