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I Thought I Was Over This
I Thought I Was Over This
Your Grief Guide: Finding Comfort and Strength Every Day [Grief Series 9]
Are you overwhelmed by your grief? Having difficulty believing you're going to be able to manage your stress levels without having a mental or physical collapse? Wait no longer - Dr. Kimber dives deep into the complexities of grief and offers incredibly valuable insights on how to navigate through those tough times.
What You’ll Learn from This Episode:
- Gravity and Support: Understand how gravity is a gift and something that can help ground you as you navigate your grief.
- Stress Reduction Techniques: Master simple yet effective techniques like relaxing the jaw, feeling your heartbeat, and transferring heat from your hand to your chest to manage stress.
- Positive Body Observation: Learn to observe your body positively rather than critically, even in tough times.
- Journaling: Discover the power of journaling or audio recording to process your grief and emotions.
- Creative Ways to Find Joy: Dr. Kimber shares how finding small moments of joy can make a big difference during grieving times.
Don’t Miss Out:
This episode isn’t just about managing grief; it’s about understanding the transformative power it can have in our lives. Dr. Kimber even reads a touching poem that captures the essence of the stages of grief and offers journal prompts to help you along your journey.
Dr. Kimber will be launching A Journey To Hope - her grief subscription service soon! Sign up on her website for the waitlist to get all the information.
Check out past episodes and more information here: https://www.drkimber.net/podcast-info
Please remember that this podcast is not a replacement for treatment by a healthcare or mental health professional. This content is created for education and entertainment purposes only.
Join 'A Moment of Pause' Newsletter: https://drkimber.activehosted.com/f/5
Music licensed from http://www.purple-planet.com
Connect with Dr. Kimber:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr_kimber/
About My Work: https://www.drkimber.net
Book: Still: Making A Whole When Parts Go Missing
This transcript was created by A.I. — please forgive translation mistakes
Dr. Kimber
Welcome to I thought I was over this. I'm your host, doctor Timber, a licensed clinical psychologist, trauma healer, and fellow life journeyer. Every episode, we dive into the science of humaning. And whether you find yourself feeling like you've just hit an iceberg and don't know where help is coming from, or you're ready to trade in your raft for something bigger, you aren't alone. Grab what you need, get comfortable, and let's do this. I am so grateful you're here today. I am gonna dive back into grief. If you have been here for a while, you know that I like to hang out with grief, because grief is an emotion.
It's an experience. It's a season, a phase that happens to us all. Because in the simplistic way, in the simplest way, I can say, is we have grief because that the day is over, or a phase of life is through. And then, sometimes, we have devastating grief and devastating losses, some that we choose, others that we don't. And so grief is an experience that we need to learn how to manage it, how to feel it, how to integrate it into our system. And I had a listener write in and say, how do I hold grief? I have so many things that I am grieving, and I don't know how to grieve and do life. And that is such a common experience because in our nervous system, grief demands attention. We, as humans, don't like pain.
We shy away from pain. So, here, grief comes knocking on our door, and we have a couple automatic experiences with it. One is that we can deny it, pretend it's not happening, be over positive, keep shoving it in the closet until we implode, have a breakdown. You know, other times, we can go numb because we're feeling it all the time. We don't know how to shut it off. We don't know how to momentarily change the channel, and that is also, something that we can do. I think, also, we love to avoid it. So we do so many things to get away from it.
And here's what I would say, this is what I teach in my workshops, is that we need to build a grief container. And as we build a grief container, what we do as we learn the skills is we have we put holes in it. So kind of like a sieve, it can fill up, get overwhelming, be flooded, but we have, like, a drainage system worked in. So it's not gonna undo us for the long haul. There may be moments. There may be breakdowns. Absolutely. Especially especially when we have been blindsided by major losses.
We can't help that. And yet, there are ways that we can navigate it that don't allow us to be destroyed. And we, sometimes, life gives us burdens to carry that we can't even imagine how we're gonna do it. And as I experienced the loss of my middle child in 2,006, what I can say is it's true. Sometimes, it's minute by minute. Sometimes, it's, it's getting in the shower. That that is that moment. And for me, I love smells.
And so even though life was so not what it was supposed to be, I could take those moments and and and say, and. And, I love the smell of my body wash. I love the smell of my shampoo and conditioner. And that could seem very superficial, but here's the thing, there's moments like that that, again, act like holes that we put into our container, so that we leave room we leave room for other things that can come up, more grief that comes up. We we can just put down the water levels, so to speak, just a little by it, by allowing ourselves to enjoy these small things that don't take any time, but do require us to get into the present moment. And in some ways, that's what grief does. Grief, to carry it, requires us to pay very close attention to what else is going on in our life besides the devastating losses. And so today, I I want to do a bit of a hybrid.
I know often in my talks, I will, you know, either do practice or load it with information. And I'm really getting ready to start, a grief subscription based off my series of my grief skills class, but I really want to offer ongoing support and to help people be able to carry grief, whatever it is. So I've decided to open up some of my one to one slots and help people navigate grief. And I'm also gonna start doing some process groups. So make sure you go and sign up on my website if you're interested for to get on my email list. It's drkimber dotnet. It's definitely in my show notes, so you can have an easy link there. And please share this information if you know someone who has struggled.
You know, for my audience who has been here for a while, you know that I wrote a memoir about the loss of our middle child called Still Making a Whole When Parts Go Missing. And you can look back in the history of my podcast. There are many, grief episodes to help you navigate it. It is a feeling that we cannot avoid. And here's the thing, there is a gift in grief. Grief allows us to cut through everything in our life and get to what is essential. What's essential here? And so there is a a rebirthing that can happen, and please hear me. I am definitely not trying or wanting to to spin it.
Insignificant losses, if you've lost a parent, young, if you have lost a child. I mean, just there's so many things. If you are, if your homeland has been destroyed, and you are listening from a war zone, if you you know, there's just so many things. I'm I'm not at all painting a positive. Life has handed you, has has come and given you this devastating loss. And so I'm more saying this, like, how can we now carry it? And there is no good. There there there isn't we don't have to make good out of that loss. Instead, we want to look at what is here, what is here now that is good.
And I hope that that is a clear distinction. So I wanna invite you to find a space in this moment to notice your breath. And as you notice the your breath, it can be very, automatic to kind of judge. Oh, wow. I'm breathing shallowly and or, you know, wow. I'm so tight. But here's the thing. I just want you to observe it without judgment.
Just notice your breath. Your breath right now is what's giving you life. You're here, alert because of your breath. And as you're noticing your breath, if it's hard for you to track it and your nose allows it, then I encourage you to breathe in and out through your nose, noticing the air coming in through your nostrils. And just you can put your hand on your belly as well, like, can you increase your belly through your breath? Just play around with it, get to know it, notice it. And as you're doing that, I want to encourage you to soften your eyes. When we are overwhelmed, our eye strain can happen. This is sometimes the catalyst for headaches.
So just right now, in this moment, you're safe. You are safe. So allow your your that knowledge, that truth to come in and soften those muscles around your eyeballs. You can even have your eyes open if you want, but if you're in a space or you feel safe to close them, then close them and see if you can soften your eyeballs muscles, your muscles. But if your eyes are open again, try it as well. If you are laying down, you might even put if you have a weighted eye mask, you can put that there. Uh-oh. Sometimes, I have a few leftover stuffed animals.
I'll put those on my eyes. But just a little bit of pressure there is like a, a spot that that is soothing. You know, there is truth to, you know, the no you know, your mother putting a washcloth on your head. There is there is a a pressure point there that can help our whole system relax, and maybe it's that our ventral vagals, muscle nerve is is there, connected to our face, and that is our ventral vagal is safe safety. It's engaged when we feel safe. So I encourage you also to take the tongue off the roof of your mouth, A slight gap between your top teeth and your bottom teeth can make your tongue heavy. Often, people feel comforted by putting the the tongue up against the back of the top teeth. Just notice your breath and soften your hands.
Your hands are another place that hold a lot of tension. So in this moment, I invite you to open your eyes if they are closed and just look around your space. Slowly move your head to the right, up and down. Notice everything in front of you all the way to behind you. Take in colors, textures, and come back around. And now move to the left, noticing up and down, front, all the way to the back. Look up, look down, and notice your body receiving the gift of gravity. Notice what is touching something solid without any effort of your own.
Your body is being supported. And when we are devastated or overwhelmed in grief, the gift of gravity is right here. This is one thing you don't have to hold up, your body. Because it's it's making solid connection to the Earth, and your bones were created from 1000 of years of your ancestors walking with this exact type of gravity. So here in your genetic makeup, you are not alone. There is wisdom and physiology that is here with you. And if your tongue has gone to the roof of your mouth, just take it off, relax your jaw, and, yeah, just notice, does it feel more comfortable with eyes open or eyes closed? And if you can, invite you to put your hand on your chest, maybe over your heart, and see if you can feel your heartbeat and just notice it connecting with your hand, a different body part. And sometimes, this is possible, but if we think about our hand, the warmth of our hand, we can transfer that heat onto our chest.
And, again, I just invite you to put away your evaluative observation. Oh, my chest is tight right now. Oh, it's hard to breathe. You know, that's observation, but it also has a slant. And so I wonder instead if we can say, oh, let me notice this heat right now on my chest. Let me see if I can make more room. Or, oh, wow. My breath is still moving even though my chest is so tight.
So, instead, kind of observe with a positive spin, not because we are into being over positive. No. But it's just as true as thinking that my chest is tight. They're both true. So let's give you some relief by admiring your body even in this grief brain fog or this place you're at that you do not have to think about breathing. It's happening right now all on its own. And admire you can admire your body right now. Yes.
Because there are days, there are times, especially when I was blindsided by loss, that I would not have remembered to breathe if it wasn't already baked in. And so you're taking this moment just to admire admire your carrying this burden. And so some of the the answer is how how do we carry grief how do we carry grief and do life? Like, I still have to work. I still need to parent. Everything is unfamiliar, and that's that's when we have to put the and there. Yes and and your body, even though it may feel as if it has a massive weight on it called grief, your body has been with you since you entered this world, and it has shifted and changed. And yet, here it is care helping you carry this. So we want this is true.
We want your mind to kind of land here, marinate here. As I said before, your grief container, it needs some holes. It needs some drainage. It needs some drainage. So this is one. This is one thing that and we're doing it right now. You're doing it right now. Another very practical skill or tool, I guess, is is wins.
What have been your wins today as you are carrying what you are carrying. What are 3 things, 3 things that are wins? And at different times in my life, it would be I got out of bed. I ate something. I'm listening to this podcast, and I'm doing whatever I can to follow along. Yes. My mind wanders, but I'm still here listening and trying as best I can in 32nd chunks to follow along, and that is admirable right now. That is enough. That is good enough.
So to notice those things right now. And here we are together, we are holding the background noise today. I, this is lots going on in my neighborhood. And so, we're just noticing that and letting it roll through. Because here, in this space, as we carry grief, good enough Good enough is the standard. And Kristin Neff, she does she's done I think, dedicated her her career. She's a researcher and to self compassion. And during the Olympics, I saw her post something about, you know, good enough is one of the ways, that athletes can actually become gold medal winners with their mental health intact, because we're all going to fail.
And we need if we can put self compassion in when we fail, it helps us realize that many of our failures are no big deal. They're just not that important. And, in fact, for many people, that makes them better, makes their training more efficient, more effective. Or in life, right, you know, you you forget to put the lunch. Your child forgets the lunch. You gotta go to work. And you and in some ways, you're like, well, in this moment, our our previous nutrition, previous what's going on in their stomach? They're not going to school without food in previous days. Right? So I'm gonna trust something to happen.
Now, of course, that and and food will come or the hunger will be able to be sustained until after school. And that isn't I don't have to, like, I don't know, make things up. I'm not trying to minimize, like, yeah, that's gonna be a tough day a tough day for your child, but there might be something that happens there. There might be something. Maybe there's someone who has more. Maybe it allows your child to ask for help to let her needs be known. So how can you use self compassion in good enough so that it quiets your internal judge. That's part of how we carry grief.
Like, your situation alone is enough burden to bear. You don't need your mind to be piling things on. And but it wants to. It wants to pile on because it doesn't want this pain to happen ever again. And so it does that's, you know, that's the purpose of your judge right now. She or he just does not want this ever to happen again. And so it's really trying to help you, and you can just name that. Like, oh, thank you for showing up.
And right now, what else is true? What else is true in this moment besides kind of your narrow focus of what's going wrong? How can I broaden my mind to also include the and the and? That's important. So, if you want, I'm gonna give you a writing prompt off of one of my favorite poems. You can grab a piece of paper and a pen. I know it's tempting to skip this. But one of the other things that I recommend is that you journal. Part of carrying grief is being able to unload your grief, and and often that is by talking about it. But the other thing is to get to know what's happening inside of you. And usually, that requires a pausing.
So you can type on your computer. You can even speak it into an audio file. You you don't have to use pen and paper at all. But what's going on in there that needs to be seen, that keeps knocking on your heart, on your mind? And so taking just a moment time out of your day to just get in touch, and when I was really, really, weighted down in the the beginning part of my grief, really still in shock. I didn't have words. I I didn't have sentences. Sometimes, I didn't have words. So you you don't have to write in, complete sentences.
Don't worry about grammar, spelling. Just keep your mind moving. What else is here? You can even name the process. I hate this. I hate that I'm writing for 5 minutes. This feels so awful. Why am I even doing this? What I really wanna say. And that's to me, I learned that prompt from Natalie Goldberg.
What I really wanna say. That's always a start over. If your mind goes blank, what I really wanna say, what I really wanna say can keep coming back to that. And I, you know, I just wanna encourage you. You are carrying your grief. You are doing it. Again, you're you're getting support right now. You're listening to this podcast.
So how can you admire yourself? And and there may be things that you need to do better at. Those both can be true. But if, again, pain is such a, a megaphone, it's just blasting us all the time, that we need this pausing to help reorient us and to help us get our bearings, get grounded. And so, again, you know, if if this resonates with you, if you would like to to do more of this, if you know that on in and of yourself, you will not take these pauses to feel your grief, to integrate it. Why why do we feel it? Well, unfortunately, the research tells us that our mental health will suffer in the long run if we just jump to the other side of grief and say, oh, it's over and done. What's the use? What why do I need to feel this? It's what's over is over. What's happened has happened. And that is almost a guaranteed way to find yourself in a later situation, not in such a great mental state.
So, the way to carry grief is we have to process it. We have to carry it in time. Time, time, time, time. Time doesn't give us forgetfulness. It's not like we're gonna forget the grief. No. But we are going to be less triggered by it, and it's really going to help us find the things we value, those things that are most important, and there's usually a surprise in there that we don't even know. And the surprise for me, I had no idea that I was braced.
For my whole life, I had a group of friends, you know, for 16 years. I did community with them, was doing community with them. I would have never said that I was self sufficient. But what I was often the helper, I loved to be needed more than I wanted to need. And being when I had nothing to offer, nothing, and had to be carried and and made mistakes and wasn't very relationally I didn't have really have much to give in that moment and and yet, I had these friends who showed up for me. And then for the first time in my life, I realized I don't I don't have to be self sufficient. Anything can happen to me and I'm gonna be okay because I have this group of people that are carrying the burden with me. Yes.
I have to go through it. I you know, they can't do the grieving for me, but that took me to a whole another level of safety in my life. And and, I I mean, I would have never wanted that, but that's what I found. That is what I found in my nervous system, My whole system, my whole the muscles learned to relax and my whole system learned how to be calmer. And I can't separate her from who I am today. Like, I don't think I would have gotten here. I don't think I would have gotten here. Someone I was at a workshop, and I got my evaluation, and someone said, I just wanna be in the same room with her and hear her talk.
She's so calming. And, friends, I'm here to say, without the death of my son, that would not be the root that would not that's not that wasn't who I was before, but that is who I have become as a result of carrying my grief. Because the only moment that it's guaranteed is is right now. And that's very cliche and at the same time, profound. So let me read to you one of my favorite poems. It's called The 5 Stages of Grief, by Linda Pastan. And I wanna say this is about the death, but you can really put it for any of your losses. The 5 stages of grief.
The night I lost you, someone pointed me towards the 5 stages of grief. Go that way, they said. It's easy. Like learning to climb stairs after the amputation. And so I climbed. Denial was first. I sat down at breakfast, carefully setting the table for 2. I passed you the toast.
You sat there. I passed you the paper. You hid behind it. Anger seemed more familiar. I burned the toast, snatched the paper, and read the headlines myself. But they mentioned your departure, and so I moved on to bargaining. What could I exchange for you? The silence after storms, my typing fingers. Before I could decide, depression came puffing up, a poor relation, its suitcase tied together with string.
In the suitcase were bandages for the eyes, and bottles of sleep. I slid all the way down the stairs, feeling nothing. And all the time, hope flashed on and off in defective neon. Hope was a signpost pointing straight in the air. Hope was my uncle's middle name. He died of it. After a year, I am still climbing, though my feet slip on your stone face. The tree line has long since disappeared.
Green is a color I have forgotten. But now I see what I am climbing towards, acceptance, Written in capital letters, a special headline, acceptance. Its name is in lights I struggle on, waving and shouting below my whole life spreads its surf. All the landscapes I've ever known or dreamed of, below, a fish jumps, the pulse in your neck, acceptance, I finally reach it. But something is wrong. Grief is a circular staircase. I have lost you. So my journal prompt is I finally, but I finally but And a second prompt, if you want to choose something different, but now I see And, again, you can come back to what I really want to say or what I am really feeling, Can use that also as as a way to keep the hand moving across the page or your fingers typing.
So thank you so much for being here. The program is called A Journey to Hope. I would love to support you in your grief. You are not alone. You are not alone. And, of course, you have to do the work. That is true. But I wanna say, when you get the support you need, whatever that is, I for me, I went back into therapy twice a week to carry my burden that 1st year.
And I my husband and I, we did a support group, a grief support group together, and those were invaluable, invaluable. We also got play therapy. You know, this was spread out over time, not all at once, but, you know, we had a 3a half year old. She she had her brother die, and so we did some pre play therapy together. So you are not alone. Do not try to pull your bootstraps up with grief. Let's figure out together how to build in a drainage system so that you're not overwhelmed. Look in the show notes.
You'll find my links there. Thank you so much for being here. Keep the pen moving. Thank you for taking me with you. If you haven't already signed up for my newsletter, one reader called it a letter to your soul. It has reflections, questions, and suggestions in each one. Go to doctorkimber.net to sign up. That's drkimber.net, net.
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