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Becoming Anchored S3E11: The Grief of Waiting · Becoming Anchored

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Hi, everyone.
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Welcome back to the Becoming Anchored podcast.
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So glad you're with us today.
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We've got a great episode and content that we're super excited and
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passionate about before we jump in.
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I'm Lauren Jackson, one of your hosts of this podcast.
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This is Laura Dineen.
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Our other host, we work in a group private practice in Brentwood, Tennessee, just
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south of Nashville where we specialize in eating disorder treatment, body image
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concerns, a lot of other presenting concerns and ages through the lifespan.
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We adore what we do and we've really loved getting to share in this space,
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this podcast space with you all.
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So, Very excited about this episode today.
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Quick disclaimer, before we do jump in and before Laura really kind of
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introduces what we're all about here this podcast, this episode is meant
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for informational purposes only.
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So this isn't your therapy.
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It's not meant to be your therapy.
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If you're finding that as you're listening and engaging with the content
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that you might benefit from therapy.
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We would highly encourage you to either reach out to us if you're local, and
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we'll see if maybe you're a good fit with one of our clinicians or find
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somebody local to you who's fully.
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Who's licensed, she's a professional therapist.
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Thank you, Lauren.
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Yes, this has just been
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a joy.
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We had some technical difficulties this morning, but we made it through.
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Lauren's husband is a producer, so we called him and he of
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course fixed it in 10 seconds.
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So we all have our gifts.
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Um, but yeah, if you're new to the show, this is the Becoming Anchored
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podcast, and this has just been a true joy for us to not only share
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some of our lived experiences, But some of the things that we've learned
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over the years sitting with clients.
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And then recently we've had quite a few guests on the show, and it's just been
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a joy to get to know other providers in different areas of the country and
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different people that we look up to.
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So, yeah, we're all about really just talking about the hard things
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in our own lives, some of the hard things that we see with clients.
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And then we also are here to talk about the joy that we experience as well.
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And some of the points of celebration that we get to witness in our
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clients and also in ourselves.
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So thank you for being here.
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Without further ado, we are going to talk to you all or share some of our thoughts
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on this idea of the grief of waiting.
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This is something that you know, Lauren and I talk quite
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frequently about in the practice.
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And, you know, the longer that I practice, the more I think grief
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is a part of really every session.
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Lauren and I were just talking about this yesterday.
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One of my dear friends and colleagues just talks about all
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counseling being grief counseling.
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And that really resonates with me because a We are really kind of always grieving
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and I hesitate to use the word always, but there is whether it's like an unmet
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expectation and we'll talk more about the stages of grief here in a few minutes.
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But you know, I think that a lot of therapy is grief
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work and it is grief therapy.
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And so we really wanted to talk about grief specifically in the context of
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something that you might be waiting for.
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So we're super excited to dive in today.
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Laura, I know you just said you hesitate to use the word always.
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I don't know.
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I think that I know we try and not be like extreme in our thinking or
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black and white or all or nothing.
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And there is a part of me that's I think we are kind of in some
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ways always grieving, even if it's just this simple idea of grieving
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the time that has passed, right?
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This morning, I had such sweet little cuddles with my son when he woke
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up and there's a small, like maybe sadness of, Oh, those moments are over.
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And so I think when we can get good at even acknowledging the
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those moments, Maybe what feel like small or insignificant moments.
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I think we can just be better aware and attuned to our own emotional
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experience and like even maybe greater or bigger grief moments or just
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emotional kind of awareness in general, because emotional awareness is such
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a huge part of the grief process,
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Absolutely.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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And the reason, you know, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts on that, you
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know, as we, you know, practice and as we have both done our own therapy, one of
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the kind of reasons that I'm hesitant to use that word for those of you listening,
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Lauren knows this about me, but we try to get away from always and never.
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So that dichotomous thinking, but I agree with you in the sense that, yeah,
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there is always something that We are grieving when we're paying attention.
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And I resonate with that so deeply, even my little girl.
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So she just turned two and she's at this really sweet stage.
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And part of me does miss the newborn stage, right?
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She's very active and she runs around and she's definitely a climber.
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And part of me does really long for the time when she would sleep on my chest.
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And so that's grief, right?
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And it might be different than other types of grief.
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But there is a sadness there of Oh wow, I really loved that time
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and I won't ever get that back.
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So yeah, I agree with you.
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I think the always is absolutely an appropriate word in this context.
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So yeah, Lauren, can you talk us through for those of you who maybe
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aren't familiar with the stages of grief, what the stages of grief are?
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Yes.
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So these stages of grief, maybe if you're listening, you've heard of this idea or
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you've heard of them or you've talked through them maybe in your own therapy.
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They've been around for a while.
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Laura, do you remember who coined them?
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Who is the person?
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Why can't I remember the name
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I cannot, is it Linda Kubler Raw?
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I know that she's done a lot of
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Good boy, Ross.
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Yes.
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Okay.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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I was like, I know her name, but I couldn't remember anyways.
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Okay.
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So there are five stages of grief.
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And sometimes when we think of stages, we think of okay, so this is like stage one.
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I've got to go through stage one.
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And then there's stage two and stage three.
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And so the word stage can, you know, there's all kinds
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of different thoughts on that.
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But there's an idea that there are different like emotional
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experiences that we go through that kind of encompass this like fuller
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picture of the grief experience.
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So stage one is denial.
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Stage two is anger.
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Stage three is bargaining.
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Stage four is depression.
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And stage five is acceptance.
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So there's this idea that when a grief experience really starts we first,
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Maybe typically again, not always, not for everybody, but there's a
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general idea that we first are maybe in denial of the thing that is happening.
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Maybe that we've lost or that hasn't come to fruition.
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We want to be there.
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And then as we move through this denial process.
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place of wanting to not believe that it's true or that it's happened.
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We then start experiencing anger about the thing that has happened.
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Anger that this thing or person or whatever has been taken from
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us or that this thing hasn't happened the way we expected.
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And then from there we can find ourselves So, trying to figure out a way to,
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I don't know, make it not be true.
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I don't
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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One of the pieces that I look for with bargaining both in myself and
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in clients is the if then statement.
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So that can be a key indicator that we are in the bargaining stage, right?
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So if I had done this, I wouldn't be going through this X, Y, Z pain.
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If I had been more aware or whatever, right?
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Like whatever we tell ourselves to try to mitigate the pain.
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I think that's
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really indicative of like the bargaining stage
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Yeah.
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And so in this stage or in this place of the grief kind of process, we can also
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find ourselves maybe even trying to take on a lot of the blame of what's happened
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in that, if then kind of, you know, those things that you were talking about.
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And then through, through the bargaining stage, then we find
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ourselves maybe in a depressive.
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I mean, that's the word I think that the stage uses, but deep sadness.
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you know, just that deep kind of, emotional overwhelm of just the
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reality of what is being experienced.
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And then through that, we can maybe enter into the space of acceptance of
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feeling feeling, accepting Of the thing that was lost or the person or the
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season or the whatever it is, right?
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And then So traditionally there are those five stages of grief.
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I At a point in my kind of training and whatnot with one
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of my clinical supervisors.
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Historically, she shared that there had been some, I don't know if I
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would call it research or somebody had coined this idea that what if there's
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like this sixth stage, if you will.
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And I can't remember the name.
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I will need to go back and research it.
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But so there's this idea that even after acceptance, what if
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there's more that can be done or experienced in this grief process.
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And so, so someone, whoever it is thought more about this idea of
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making meaning of our grief or making meaning of the acceptance that we
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have kind of landed on with, again whatever it is that we're grieving.
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And so I think that making meaning piece feels really important because
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it feels like not that it like ties a bow on it or not that it like provides
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this like perfect closure, but I think that when we do find meaning in
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what we're feeling it can help us to experience more purpose and more hope.
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And we talk about hope.
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That's, we talk about, that's what this podcast is about really.
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Hope.
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And so I think the making meaning gives hope.
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And so that I remember when my supervisor was kind of talking through, I was like,
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Oh yeah, of course there's a sixth stage.
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That makes so much sense.
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There has to be meaning to it.
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So, so yeah,
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Yeah,
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the stages.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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And yeah, we wanted to start there.
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If you aren't familiar with the stages of grief, definitely look them up.
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So Linda Kubler Ross, I think, is her name.
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I think she's since passed.
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But I know that David Kessler is a wonderful expert on grief as well.
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And I know that they Collaborated closely together.
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And so if you're wanting more resources, I know that we follow him on Instagram.
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I've actually been to one of his trainings before and it was phenomenal.
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So that's just like a little side note giving her credit for that
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phenomenal work around really teasing apart the stages of grief.
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And like Lauren said, when we think of a stage, we can almost think of okay,
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I'm through this stage and I'm done, and I'm not going to ever feel the anger
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or the denial again, and I move on.
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So the interesting part about grief, just for some psychoeducation for you all, is
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that it can feel messy, and I don't say that as a criticism or a point of shame,
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but we can go through the stages and then find ourselves back in a place of anger.
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So the tricky part about grief is That it ebbs and flows and it can be messy.
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And, you know, it's not that we move through the one stage and
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then we never feel we're never in that stage again in the specific
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context of whatever we're grieving.
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And so.
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It's almost if you imagine kind of drawing just, you know, a free for
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all kind of piece on a piece of paper and you have your crayon and you're
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just like drawing swiggly lines.
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I feel like that's a good representation of grief.
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I'm such a visual.
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learner in person that helps me kind of understand grief.
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And so I will certainly have my clients do that intervention at
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different points in their treatment.
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But grief is it can be hard because as humans, we want the comfort of, you
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know, Okay, well, I finished that stage of grief and so I'm going to move on to
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the next stage and our own expectations of ourselves and others can be tricky.
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Another piece about grief that's just coming to mind, Lauren, as you're talking
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is how our society as a whole responds to not only their emotions about grief,
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but other people's emotions about grief.
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We as a culture, I think that we're trying to get better,
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but historically we have not.
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responded to grief well, in my opinion, or, you know, when I hear other stories
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about different cultures, about the time that they spend laying someone that they
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love to rest and all of the different ceremonies that honor that person.
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So I think as a whole, it is quite difficult for us to allow ourselves
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to grieve, to acknowledge the grief.
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There's almost like a timeline If we are grieving or if someone else in our lives
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is grieving something, it's okay, well, you should be done grieving by this point.
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So there's a lot of I think, rules that accompany grief.
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And that can be one thing that, you know, specifically in the context
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of waiting can be quite difficult if someone is waiting for something.
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Is this almost like adherence to this imposed rules that
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our society has developed?
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And so just a side note, right?
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Like doing our own emotional work of both for ourselves internally and externally in
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our environments, the people that we love.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Well, I mean, grief and sadness because I think sadness is what grief is.
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I mean, right there are lots of other little things that go along with, like
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people's individual grief experience.
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But sadness tends to be the thing, right?
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It is so painful and pain, like we don't want to hurt, right?
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Like we don't want to be in pain.
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And so I think that's.
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That's our tendency in avoiding and then the tendency to try and work
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through something and a timeline while I've gone through that stage
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now I need to be onto the next one.
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And then I also think that they're not that this is wrong or bad
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or whatnot, but you know, there certainly are like different cultural,
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like rituals and whatnot around grief and like communal grief.
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Yeah.
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of you take this many days off of work and you, I don't know, you know,
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that, that feel kind of ritualistic.
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Yes.
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And I know that there can be a lot of value in ritual, but also I think that
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it can as well instill this sense of, okay, well then If I've done this for
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this many days, and then I've cried for this many hours, and then I've
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taken this many days off of work, then I shouldn't be sad anymore.
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And I think that's where things can get sticky because
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that isn't fair, really, right?
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Doesn't, it's not super, a super great service.
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And, Again I so appreciate like the cultural piece of people's like
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rituals around how to grieve and how to grieve in that communal way.
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Because again, like you said, Laura, I don't know if we do that super well here.
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Like American culture is like that communal kind of like
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shared experience of grief.
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And we see that even in this idea of, You know, when someone's having
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a funeral and we're calling it a celebration of life, not that's wrong,
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we absolutely can call it that and we can absolutely celebrate someone's life.
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And I think we're afraid of calling it a funeral because of how painful that
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Oh my gosh.
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And it's painful.
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It's supposed to be sad.
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And so anyways, that's a little bit of a side tangent because I know we're really
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talking about this waiting piece, but just wanted to speak to that a little bit more.
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Yeah.
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No, I mean, I completely agree.
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And, you know, I think too, as we're talking through this,
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like this is certainly, we are a part of the American culture.
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And so we're certainly not here to like, just knock on other people.
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I think that we as a whole can do.
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Better and can always be grown growing and learning But if you take anything
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away from this podcast, right and we're like, okay Because if i'm listening
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to this podcast i'm like, okay, well tell me what the solution is All right.
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That's my enneagram three that's showing up and I think a lot of this work is What
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are our expectations of both ourselves and other people in the grief process?
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Number one and then number two, how do I respond to pain?
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Definitely.
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In both myself and other people am I dismissive am I avoidant?
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Do I criticize myself when I'm in pain and doing that work internally
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can be a, I think a small part of changing the bigger culture at large.
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Yeah.
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So when we're talking about waiting, I mean, we were talking a little bit before
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we started recording today, but when we're thinking about the concept of waiting, I
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mean, gosh, there are so many things that I know in my life that I have waited for.
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And I know that clients are waiting for, and.
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There's a deep grief, I think, that accompanies the process of waiting
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and a deep longing of whatever said thing is that we're waiting for.
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I mean, a couple of things that come to mind for me waiting for a partner.
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I have a couple of people in my life that really want to find their
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person and have wanted to for a while and that's painful for them.
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And that's a grief filled process.
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Waiting for a baby, right?
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I know that infertility is a really common struggle, waiting
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for a job promotion, right?
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Waiting to be seen in your work environment and to be acknowledged.
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Any other like common waiting kind of pieces that you see
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in your clinical work, Lauren?
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One of the things that came to mind is waiting for healing like maybe even
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physical healing, whether that's, I don't know, you know, you have a child
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who's sick, or there's like a chronic illness or something like that, that
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I feel like that shows up a lot.
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You know, and then this, I guess it's just like kind of general idea of just
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waiting for the next season or like waiting for the next good thing to come.
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You know, I think sometimes we can find ourselves in periods of time where it
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feels like when it rains, it pours.
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It's like just one hard, bad, difficult thing after the other.
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And so just waiting for a break.
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And I feel like I can resonate with that at different points in my life.
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And so, I know that is something that will show up in my office.
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Quite a bit.
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Yeah, those are two, two big things that come to mind.
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And I think especially in the context of mental health, right?
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As clinicians, I hear that quite frequently, right?
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And a client might not use this language, but they are essentially
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grieving the waiting process, right?
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But I really don't want to have anxiety anymore, or I don't want to struggle
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with my body, or my relationship to food, or my OCD, or whatever it might be.
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And what they're saying is yeah I do want the healing and the freedom that provides.
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And now we're not saying that healing means that you'll never struggle again,
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but essentially they're saying like, yeah, I want to move from surviving
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to living, to thriving, right?
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Those kind of three stages on a ladder, if you will, if you picture a ladder and that
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can be so painful, especially in the realm of mental health, because our clients.
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show up and they're doing the work.
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And I think just the pain associated with like, why is this not getting better?
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Or maybe they even have trouble seeing the better in air quotations, right?
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If you're listening of the different victories and areas of
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growth that they have experienced, but that's super painful.
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Especially in the context of mental health.
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So I love that you brought up like the waiting for healing or waiting for some
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market improvement and their mental health symptoms, whatever they are.
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Yeah.
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Waiting is painful.
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I think, you know, the reason we wanted to kind of tie those two
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together is because, you know, waiting is a grief filled process, right?
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a lot of anger that shows up.
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There's a lot of discomfort that shows up.
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We were talking just before the just about the uncertainty that accompanies waiting.
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All of those things are essentially another way to think about it
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is through the lens of grief.
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yeah, totally.
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Yeah.
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Any other thoughts on just kind of how to maybe some quick practical
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steps when people are waiting and moving through that grief process
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that you can think of today, Lauren?
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Yeah, I would say that
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maybe first and foremost, if possible, when possible.
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And one of the things that we here at Anchored, are training our clinicians on
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and assessing for and our clients in the first few sessions is support system.
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Are there people around you to help you do this?
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Because we can't, the clinician can't be the only person, right?
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That it doesn't, it's not going to be successful.
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It's not going to be maybe as, you know, productive of a therapeutic or recovery
22:24
process, whatever that is for you.
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And so I would say that if you're, whatever you're grieving right now
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that you feel like you can identify, do you have people around you that
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can, that you can lean on that can be with you in your grief, that you feel
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safe to, Be unfiltered in your grief.
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So that feels significant.
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And so, and maybe one of those first steps for you is seeking
22:50
out therapeutic support.
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And then through that kind of therapeutic support learning skills and ways to
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develop a healthy, you know, support system outside of that therapeutic room.
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So that felt, that's like the first thing that comes to mind as we're thinking
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about like practical ways to be with our
23:09
Yeah.
23:09
Yeah.
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it's Like you said, Laura, it's like we can talk about grief all day long
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and the emotions of it and even the history of stages and all of that.
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But then it's okay, great.
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What do I do
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What do I do with this?
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
23:25
And so, you know, when it does come down to our emotional experiences, I
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tell my clients, it's we gotta feel it like that is the productivity.
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Like that work, right?
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And that can feel so big and kind of ambiguous.
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And so having some more certain, if you will, steps or goals or, you
23:45
know, strategies Makes this idea of sitting with our emotions, being with
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our emotions, feeling our emotions, letting them move, expressing them
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make a little bit more sense, I guess.
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And so, so maybe step one is, do I have people around me that I can do
24:04
this with who I feel safe to do this
24:06
Yeah.
24:06
And I mean, I think I didn't really understand this.
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Maybe when I first started as a therapist the full gravity of this
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statement, but we talk a lot about having a witness to our pain.
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And that is what Lauren's talking about, right?
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That's the purpose of increasing our support, whether you get a therapist
24:28
or go to a grief support group, right?
24:32
We all benefit from having a witness to our pain and a witness that
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responds appropriately, right?
24:38
So there can be people that are like, Hey, just get over it.
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Or like, why aren't you better by now or whatever.
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And so that felt sense of like in my body.
24:48
Okay.
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This person is with me and this is how I know that they're with me.
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This is what it feels like when they're with me.
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And that's that witness piece.
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And that's circling full circle, right?
24:58
That's the benefit of the communal grief that I think a lot of
25:01
other cultures engage in so well that we can learn from them.
25:05
So yeah, I mean, that witness piece just feels really important.
25:09
I think to just acknowledging and taking a second to pause after
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you've listened to this podcast okay.
25:15
Am I waiting for something?
25:17
And does that cause me an emotion?
25:21
Might this be some, maybe grief in my life that I haven't yet
25:26
acknowledged or attuned to?
25:28
Because you may not even acknowledge yeah, this is something I'm longing for.
25:32
And maybe it is something that you've been longing for a long time, or More
25:36
recently, but whatever it is, I think just continuing to have that non judgment
25:40
approach when you do acknowledge yeah, this has been hard for me, this might
25:44
be some grief popping up in my life.
25:47
And then that witness piece, that permission to feel, I think that
25:53
the piece of paper with the like, Coloring without expectations can
25:58
be a wonderful way to do that.
25:59
There's lots of different like ways to kind of embody the grief,
26:05
to feel the grief, whether you move your body in a way that feels
26:08
healthy for you or whether you're.
26:11
drawing out and making some art to represent your grief.
26:16
Maybe you engage in some kind of ceremony to acknowledge your grief, whatever
26:20
it is, there's no right or wrong.
26:22
It's really just identifying what you need and then doing that thing
26:26
Waiting specifically.
26:27
Yeah.
26:28
Yeah.
26:29
Yeah.
26:30
Yeah.
26:30
You can even, I mean, as we're talking about just some like exercises to
26:34
engage in, if you will letter writing as a, can be a really significant or
26:39
an helpful grief tool or whatever.
26:43
So, if it's more of a I'm waiting for this thing and that's that I'm really grieving
26:49
that maybe it's you give your sadness.
26:53
Permission to write a letter to you or you write a letter to your sadness,
26:57
or if you, maybe identifying like what stage you feel like you're in.
27:02
So maybe you're in that bargaining stage and you just give yourself like some
27:06
permission to like kind of free, right.
27:09
Just like all the different ways that like you're bargaining, just like
27:12
kind of get them out of your head.
27:13
Or so I mean, you can get, you know, you certainly can get creative with it.
27:17
There are a couple, I mean, there's this one book that's coming to mind.
27:21
It's called the, I think it's called the grief recovery handbook.
27:24
And so that, you know, cause like you said, Laura, when we think
27:28
about our grief, it's messy it's overwhelming, it's big, it's, and
27:32
then that can be overwhelming.
27:33
cause a tendency to then avoid it.
27:35
But if we can have something like maybe a book we're reading or yeah, some, like
27:40
a workbook that we're kind of following along through, it can add a little bit
27:44
more structure and maybe a little bit more certainty or a little bit more
27:47
like something tangible to like grasp onto that's helping gently kind of guide
27:52
us through the things we're feeling.
27:53
And so that book comes to mind.
27:56
So it's a book, but then it has all kinds of exercises in it.
27:58
So something like that could you might find could also be
28:01
helpful for you in your journey.
28:03
There's this little I've used this a lot in sessions with my clients.
28:08
There's a, like a pic, it's a picture book.
28:11
It's like a, a kid's book, I guess, if you will, but it's called tear soup.
28:17
I think that's what it's called.
28:18
I think I have it in my office somewhere, but it's like this,
28:22
it's this yeah, tear soup.
28:23
It's this little, it's a picture book, but it's all about grief.
28:28
And so anyways, that, that can be a really meaningful book to read through because it
28:34
can be applied to any type of grief that
28:37
sure.
28:38
Well, that's that creative,
28:40
entry point, right?
28:41
Where it's sometimes, That more rational logic part of our brain.
28:45
It's just we gotta find more entry points, if you will, to access the grief.
28:50
And so, gosh, I'm gonna have to take a look at that book or perhaps order a copy.
28:55
Yeah.
28:56
Yeah.
28:57
I mean, this is just, I think that we could continue talking about this
29:00
and maybe we'll do just a second episode on the pain of waiting or more
29:05
episodes on the topic of grief itself.
29:08
I think that could be.
29:09
Just a good topic for us to chat about moving forward.
29:13
Thank you so much for just being here.
29:15
This is an important topic.
29:17
It is.
29:18
Yeah, there's not a, there's not a right or wrong way to grieve.
29:23
And I think that, you know, that feels uncomfortable to us because
29:29
there's not a solution to grief.
29:32
Because that's not the point of grieving is to find a solution or to fix anything.
29:37
Yeah.
29:37
point of grieving is to feel and to feel like to feel in the presence of others.
29:43
We heal in the presence of others.
29:44
We heal in relationship.
29:46
So, yeah, it's a bit it's a, it's big and complex and we're
29:51
here for the big, in the complex.
29:53
Yeah.
29:54
Yeah.
29:54
Your grief is not too much.
29:56
You know, I think a lot of our clients feel that they have to contain
29:59
their grief for part of themselves.
30:01
And I certainly have felt that way in my own life historically.
30:04
And so it's okay, permission to be Laura, my full embodied self and
30:07
same with you learn as we wrap.
30:10
Yeah.
30:10
Lauren, do you want to provide an affirmation or our homework today?
30:15
Yeah.
30:15
So, I mean, I'll just affirmation.
30:18
I'll just say what you just said.
30:21
Your grief isn't too big.
30:22
Your emotions aren't too big.
30:24
Your sadness isn't too big.
30:26
Your anger is not too big.
30:29
There, these different stages that we talked about I think we can put like some
30:34
negative and positive connotations on some of these different stages, right?
30:38
Like maybe sadness being like, okay it's more okay to be sad and it's less
30:42
okay to be angry or to deny something.
30:46
But when we're thinking about this these stages or all of these different
30:50
experiences are all very much so okay and not too much and so grief, our
30:56
bodies, sadness in our bodies can feel really big and however, that means to be
31:02
expressed can be expressed just as big
31:06
Yeah.
31:06
I love it.
31:07
Well, we mentioned this earlier in the show today, but your homework is really to
31:12
spend some intentional time acknowledging what you might be waiting for.
31:16
And if that has caused you any grief and permission to
31:22
acknowledge that and be with that.
31:24
Resource yourself around that, right?
31:26
Whether, so when I'm using that language resource, it's okay.
31:28
What am I, what would be most helpful to me?
31:31
Is it some of these interventions and tools that Lauren and
31:33
Laura have talked about today?
31:35
And really honoring whatever resource comes to mind.
31:39
Thank you all for being here on the Becoming Anchored show.
31:42
We will see you next time.
31:43
Take care.
31:44
Bye guys.