June 12, 2024 • 13 mins
Kate Delaney is joined by Valerie Umschied, a licensed psychologist and has twenty years of experience working with clients to relieve their suffering and facilitate healing. Discovering solace in times of sorrow can be a transformative journey, and "The Toolbox for Grief and Loss" serves as a compassionate companion for those navigating the depths of […] The post Valerie Umschied and The Toolbox for Grief and Loss appeared first on WebTalkRadio.net.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, book lovers, and welcome to Author's Corner. Get ready
for a whirlwind tour of the latest and greatest reads
and the fascinating stories behind them. Join us as we
chat with authors and newsmakers from all over the world,
diving into their journeys and creative processes. And now here's
the host of Author's Corner, the Emmy Award winning Kate Delady.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I am so thrilled to have this conversation with Valerie Umshin.
I think it's so so important because all of us,
at some point in our life go through grief. I mean,
we can't avoid it, right, and it's really like a
brick sometimes the way it hits you. Her book is wonderful.
(00:43):
You can see her and behind her you can see
a copy of her book. I have a copy of
this wonderful book that in fact I'm sending to a
couple of friends who just have gone through some things.
It's called The Tool for Grief and Loss Effective Healing Strategies.
And why is Valerie qualified Because she's human like us,
and she's experienced loss, and also she is a licensed
(01:05):
psychologist and has dealt with this with so many people. Valerie,
thanks so much. For having this conversation with us.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Well, thanks for inviting me, Kate, it's great to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
So in your personal life, you lost both of your
parents to cancer, you had a brother in law who
committed suicide. That's tough and that's a different kind of loss.
And then sadly your husband died from complications of COVID
And these were all different times and scenarios, but you've
gone through it, and even with your training, it is
(01:37):
an incredibly difficult thing to deal with, isn't.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
It It is? And there are so many different aspects
to us right and often for me, when my parents died,
it was actually a gift in a way, because up
until that time I didn't really understand the graving process,
and so I learned a lot of things through dealing
with their deaths, and then that helped me as a therapist.
(02:03):
I started really looking at what are helpful strategies that
help people heal, And so that's one of the reasons
I wanted to write the book. I just wanted to
have people have practical strategies that would help them to heal.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
And the book the way you laid it out, I
love the cover because it is a tool box. So
when you set out to write the book, is that
what you had in mind, Like, Okay, I have these tools.
I can give you these tools, but you also have
to be part of this because you lay out in
the chapters the things that we should think about and
do and write about.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Right, Yes, Well, it's interesting. When I started writing, I
actually just had a lot of clinical files, so different
clients I'd worked with, and they all had different experiences
with loss, and so I just was trying to capture
how do people heal? And then of course all these
you know, I was able to share all these different
(03:03):
strategies that go with the different stories.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah, right at the beginning. So again, here's the book.
It's easy to find on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever
great books are sold. But there's so many different things
that I picked out that I think are wonderful. Wonderful,
and right from the start you talk about a grief
processing letter, and then you talk about what you do
with this letter. When I think of these memories, I
(03:28):
feel my happiest memory of being together is the biggest
challenge for me has been I hadn't expected that. I
think it's so powerful and tell us more about this
exercise really, Okay?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
The exercise is to help people address the normal sequence
of grief emotions, and so it depends on where a
person is at. Sometimes, if they've had a loved one
who's died from a chronic illness, they might not know
cillly have shock, for example, like with a sudden death
(04:04):
of suicide or an unexpected death. People often are in
a state of shock initially, right, and then after that
they might go through other emotions like guilt you know
I should have told them how I felt, or regret
about not doing something, and then we move into anger, sadness,
(04:28):
and then hopefully people get to a you know, often
people called acceptance. I call it reconciling yourself to the death,
where you get to this place of where you don't
hurt as much and you're able to focus on more
happy memories.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
But the process letter helps people to actually go through
the different emotions and acknowledge them, and that's part of
the healing process. But we also need to feel to heal, right,
we need to feel the depths of those emotions and
that helps us in that healing journey.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
And you know this as a psychologist, isn't it really
what a lot of us do is just try to forget,
try to get away from it, try to bury it,
try to not deal with it. I just I'll eat
ice cream, I'll go out, I'll do all these different things.
Whatever it is, I don't want to deal with it.
And I think that's common and it's not healthy though.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Right, And so I think it's a natural kind of
human reaction. We try and avoid pain, and yet often
when we use we're working too much, eating too much,
drinking too much, smoking too much. I mean, there's so
many different ways we deal with grief that aren't really effective,
(05:47):
and so we need to actually be able to move
past that to a place of feeling it. The other
thing I want to point out does people often believe
this myth, you know that time heals all wounds, and
for many people it doesn't right. They get can get
stuck in grief for different reasons, and so it's really
(06:09):
important for people to actively grieve, to actually acknowledge the
loss so that they can move forward on their healing journey.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
That's wonderful to tell everybody that there's something that you
talk about and I mentioned at the top with your
brother in law, and it's chapter five, and it's the
two deaths traumatic loss due to suicide. What do you
mean by that? And how difficult is it to deal
with that?
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Okay, well, when people usually suicide is unexpected, so we're
not pardon me, we're not expecting it. So if you know,
we we come onto the scene, for example, and we
see the person who has died, we go into a
(06:57):
state of shock, and because we're in a state of shock,
we don't our brain, the way it operates, is we
don't Actually it's hard to discribe. Sorry, I was trying
to think of how to describe its. Yeah, what happens
is that we don't fully process the memory. So the memory, uh,
(07:20):
sort of becomes active, and so people often will get
flashbacks or they might get nightmares. They're constantly thinking about
the person that's died, and so because of that, that
interferes with the processing. So people often need to do
a type of trauma therapy, and there's different kinds of therapy.
(07:42):
I use something called e M d R, which is
eye movement desensitization processing, which is recognized. It's used a
lot by the military for people that have been in battle.
But there's other kinds of battle and so a lot
of times people that have witnessed their loved one after
(08:04):
a suicide, they go into the same kind of shock response,
and they need to have a different kind of method
of processing your loss. So once they can get past that,
that often they can use the other grieving strategies to
help them heal.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yeah. Another thing I love about your book is that
so you address all different types of grief, and that's
an example of it. The other thing you talk about
is helping your child cope with grief. This is one
of the things I talk about all the time that
it's so sad, but when you're a child, you don't
really learn that, you don't learn how to process that.
(08:44):
And I know from personal experience. My father died when
I was eight years old, and it was just a
shock and it was like be strong and we move
on and Bollie, then you're not processing. And so tell
the people watching this a little bit more about that.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Okay, Well, I think that a lot of times adults
aren't aware of how children grieve, and for children, they
go through the grief symbolically. So that's why a lot
of times, as a therapist, we use different kinds of
therapy for children like our therapy, play therapy, sand tray.
(09:26):
There's different ways of helping them process laws. And a
lot of times adults just don't, you know, They maybe
don't see the child grieving outwardly, and so they think
the child isn't grieving, and yet they are, and we
might see it in their play, and we can help
them in different ways. One of the ways I talk
about is actually getting them to do like a memory box,
(09:49):
which is really really helpful. It's something that the adult
can actually do with their child, and also just helping
them through play. And a lot of times we don't
actually you know, it's like if we're hurting too, then
we're trying to actively avoid bringing it up. It's like
we're thinking, oh, I don't want to talk about it
(10:10):
because I don't want them to have pain, and yet
they have pain. So what we need to do is
acknowledge it and talk about it. So often I'll tell parents,
you know, when you're at the kitchen table, you can say, oh,
you know, are you really you know, missing your friend
or their pet. We know a lot of times people
have experienced terrible loss because of losing a pat. They
(10:34):
have such a strong attachment to the animal and so
both you know, children and adults can go through a
grief process when they lose a pet.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, the book is wonderful. Again the toolbox for grief
and loss, and you've got these incredible like you say
on the subtitle Effective Healing Strategies, Valerie, what else would
you tell people about the book? I mean, I think
it's very user friendly, Like I think you can pick
it up at any point depending on what's happened in
your life. That's what I like about it is you're
not preaching, You're using the information, you know, sharing that.
(11:08):
And then what we've talked about is the things the strategies,
like you say, that you can use to get over
that humps, so to speak.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
In a way, well, the way the book is design
these are true stories. I've changed the names and identities
to protect people, but they are true stories. And so
you can just open a chapter and read it and
it could be about you know, like there's so many
people who experience divorce, for example, so you could look at, well,
(11:40):
what are some steps that I can do to help
me process that loss of that relationship?
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Right?
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Or you know, we talked about if you've lost a
lot one to suicide or traumatic loss. Other types of
loss are for example, as we age, we end up
with disability. Right, we're not able to do the same
things we used to. You know, we have to get
through the loss of a career when many of us
(12:09):
that's part of our self identity, and it's really difficult
to do that. And so each chapter covers a different
kind of loss. Right in the book, I also talk
about ambivalent loss, and that occurs when people go through
a chronic illness with someone. So for me, like with
my husband, for example, he had something called Louis bodied
(12:30):
dementia and he you know, he was a brilliant man.
In over four years, he became someone else, so he
didn't know, he didn't know me or our children, and
so there was a lot of loss there, and so
I wanted people to understand that, and in many ways
I hope it helps others to be supportive of people
(12:53):
that have experienced to loss and understand what they're going through, right,
and be realistic to quote how long it can take
to heal.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Absolutely so in summation, and you've really weaved it in
throughout this conversation so brilliantly. But what do you hope
people take away from reading your book.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
I guess the number one message would be you can heal,
and you know that's my mission in life is to
help people heal, and I want people to know that
they can choose that and they can move forward in
their lives.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Valerie, wonderful stuff. Great gift to give somebody who's going
through something, great gift to give to yourself. Thank you
so much, Thank you.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
I appreciate your time. Kate, have a great day you too,
Hello, book lovers, and welcome to Author's Corner. Get ready
for a whirlwind tour of the latest and greatest reads
and the fascinating stories behind them. Join us as we
chat with authors and newsmakers from all over the world,
diving into their journeys and creative processes. And now here's
the host of Author's Corner, the Emmy Award winning Kate Delady.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I am so thrilled to have this conversation with Valerie Umshin.
I think it's so so important because all of us,
at some point in our life go through grief. I mean,
we can't avoid it, right, and it's really like a
brick sometimes the way it hits you. Her book is wonderful.
(00:43):
You can see her and behind her you can see
a copy of her book. I have a copy of
this wonderful book that in fact I'm sending to a
couple of friends who just have gone through some things.
It's called The Tool for Grief and Loss Effective Healing Strategies.
And why is Valerie qualified Because she's human like us,
and she's experienced loss, and also she is a licensed
(01:05):
psychologist and has dealt with this with so many people. Valerie,
thanks so much. For having this conversation with us.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Well, thanks for inviting me, Kate, it's great to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
So in your personal life, you lost both of your
parents to cancer, you had a brother in law who
committed suicide. That's tough and that's a different kind of loss.
And then sadly your husband died from complications of COVID
And these were all different times and scenarios, but you've
gone through it, and even with your training, it is
(01:37):
an incredibly difficult thing to deal with, isn't.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
It It is? And there are so many different aspects
to us right and often for me, when my parents died,
it was actually a gift in a way, because up
until that time I didn't really understand the graving process,
and so I learned a lot of things through dealing
with their deaths, and then that helped me as a therapist.
(02:03):
I started really looking at what are helpful strategies that
help people heal, And so that's one of the reasons
I wanted to write the book. I just wanted to
have people have practical strategies that would help them to heal.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
And the book the way you laid it out, I
love the cover because it is a tool box. So
when you set out to write the book, is that
what you had in mind, Like, Okay, I have these tools.
I can give you these tools, but you also have
to be part of this because you lay out in
the chapters the things that we should think about and
do and write about.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Right, Yes, Well, it's interesting. When I started writing, I
actually just had a lot of clinical files, so different
clients I'd worked with, and they all had different experiences
with loss, and so I just was trying to capture
how do people heal? And then of course all these
you know, I was able to share all these different
(03:03):
strategies that go with the different stories.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah, right at the beginning. So again, here's the book.
It's easy to find on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever
great books are sold. But there's so many different things
that I picked out that I think are wonderful. Wonderful,
and right from the start you talk about a grief
processing letter, and then you talk about what you do
with this letter. When I think of these memories, I
(03:28):
feel my happiest memory of being together is the biggest
challenge for me has been I hadn't expected that. I
think it's so powerful and tell us more about this
exercise really, Okay?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
The exercise is to help people address the normal sequence
of grief emotions, and so it depends on where a
person is at. Sometimes, if they've had a loved one
who's died from a chronic illness, they might not know
cillly have shock, for example, like with a sudden death
(04:04):
of suicide or an unexpected death. People often are in
a state of shock initially, right, and then after that
they might go through other emotions like guilt you know
I should have told them how I felt, or regret
about not doing something, and then we move into anger, sadness,
(04:28):
and then hopefully people get to a you know, often
people called acceptance. I call it reconciling yourself to the death,
where you get to this place of where you don't
hurt as much and you're able to focus on more
happy memories.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
But the process letter helps people to actually go through
the different emotions and acknowledge them, and that's part of
the healing process. But we also need to feel to heal, right,
we need to feel the depths of those emotions and
that helps us in that healing journey.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
And you know this as a psychologist, isn't it really
what a lot of us do is just try to forget,
try to get away from it, try to bury it,
try to not deal with it. I just I'll eat
ice cream, I'll go out, I'll do all these different things.
Whatever it is, I don't want to deal with it.
And I think that's common and it's not healthy though.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Right, And so I think it's a natural kind of
human reaction. We try and avoid pain, and yet often
when we use we're working too much, eating too much,
drinking too much, smoking too much. I mean, there's so
many different ways we deal with grief that aren't really effective,
(05:47):
and so we need to actually be able to move
past that to a place of feeling it. The other
thing I want to point out does people often believe
this myth, you know that time heals all wounds, and
for many people it doesn't right. They get can get
stuck in grief for different reasons, and so it's really
(06:09):
important for people to actively grieve, to actually acknowledge the
loss so that they can move forward on their healing journey.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
That's wonderful to tell everybody that there's something that you
talk about and I mentioned at the top with your
brother in law, and it's chapter five, and it's the
two deaths traumatic loss due to suicide. What do you
mean by that? And how difficult is it to deal
with that?
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Okay, well, when people usually suicide is unexpected, so we're
not pardon me, we're not expecting it. So if you know,
we we come onto the scene, for example, and we
see the person who has died, we go into a
(06:57):
state of shock, and because we're in a state of shock,
we don't our brain, the way it operates, is we
don't Actually it's hard to discribe. Sorry, I was trying
to think of how to describe its. Yeah, what happens
is that we don't fully process the memory. So the memory, uh,
(07:20):
sort of becomes active, and so people often will get
flashbacks or they might get nightmares. They're constantly thinking about
the person that's died, and so because of that, that
interferes with the processing. So people often need to do
a type of trauma therapy, and there's different kinds of therapy.
(07:42):
I use something called e M d R, which is
eye movement desensitization processing, which is recognized. It's used a
lot by the military for people that have been in battle.
But there's other kinds of battle and so a lot
of times people that have witnessed their loved one after
(08:04):
a suicide, they go into the same kind of shock response,
and they need to have a different kind of method
of processing your loss. So once they can get past that,
that often they can use the other grieving strategies to
help them heal.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yeah. Another thing I love about your book is that
so you address all different types of grief, and that's
an example of it. The other thing you talk about
is helping your child cope with grief. This is one
of the things I talk about all the time that
it's so sad, but when you're a child, you don't
really learn that, you don't learn how to process that.
(08:44):
And I know from personal experience. My father died when
I was eight years old, and it was just a
shock and it was like be strong and we move
on and Bollie, then you're not processing. And so tell
the people watching this a little bit more about that.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Okay, Well, I think that a lot of times adults
aren't aware of how children grieve, and for children, they
go through the grief symbolically. So that's why a lot
of times, as a therapist, we use different kinds of
therapy for children like our therapy, play therapy, sand tray.
(09:26):
There's different ways of helping them process laws. And a
lot of times adults just don't, you know, They maybe
don't see the child grieving outwardly, and so they think
the child isn't grieving, and yet they are, and we
might see it in their play, and we can help
them in different ways. One of the ways I talk
about is actually getting them to do like a memory box,
(09:49):
which is really really helpful. It's something that the adult
can actually do with their child, and also just helping
them through play. And a lot of times we don't
actually you know, it's like if we're hurting too, then
we're trying to actively avoid bringing it up. It's like
we're thinking, oh, I don't want to talk about it
(10:10):
because I don't want them to have pain, and yet
they have pain. So what we need to do is
acknowledge it and talk about it. So often I'll tell parents,
you know, when you're at the kitchen table, you can say, oh,
you know, are you really you know, missing your friend
or their pet. We know a lot of times people
have experienced terrible loss because of losing a pat. They
(10:34):
have such a strong attachment to the animal and so
both you know, children and adults can go through a
grief process when they lose a pet.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, the book is wonderful. Again the toolbox for grief
and loss, and you've got these incredible like you say
on the subtitle Effective Healing Strategies, Valerie, what else would
you tell people about the book? I mean, I think
it's very user friendly, Like I think you can pick
it up at any point depending on what's happened in
your life. That's what I like about it is you're
not preaching, You're using the information, you know, sharing that.
(11:08):
And then what we've talked about is the things the strategies,
like you say, that you can use to get over
that humps, so to speak.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
In a way, well, the way the book is design
these are true stories. I've changed the names and identities
to protect people, but they are true stories. And so
you can just open a chapter and read it and
it could be about you know, like there's so many
people who experience divorce, for example, so you could look at, well,
(11:40):
what are some steps that I can do to help
me process that loss of that relationship?
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Right?
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Or you know, we talked about if you've lost a
lot one to suicide or traumatic loss. Other types of
loss are for example, as we age, we end up
with disability. Right, we're not able to do the same
things we used to. You know, we have to get
through the loss of a career when many of us
(12:09):
that's part of our self identity, and it's really difficult
to do that. And so each chapter covers a different
kind of loss. Right in the book, I also talk
about ambivalent loss, and that occurs when people go through
a chronic illness with someone. So for me, like with
my husband, for example, he had something called Louis bodied
(12:30):
dementia and he you know, he was a brilliant man.
In over four years, he became someone else, so he
didn't know, he didn't know me or our children, and
so there was a lot of loss there, and so
I wanted people to understand that, and in many ways
I hope it helps others to be supportive of people
(12:53):
that have experienced to loss and understand what they're going through, right,
and be realistic to quote how long it can take
to heal.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Absolutely so in summation, and you've really weaved it in
throughout this conversation so brilliantly. But what do you hope
people take away from reading your book.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
I guess the number one message would be you can heal,
and you know that's my mission in life is to
help people heal, and I want people to know that
they can choose that and they can move forward in
their lives.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Valerie, wonderful stuff. Great gift to give somebody who's going
through something, great gift to give to yourself. Thank you
so much, Thank you.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
I appreciate your time. Kate, have a great day you too,
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Are You A Charlotte?
In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.