Boys, Emotions, and Cultural Expressions of Grief with Brendan Kwiatkowski

In this episode, my guest is Dr. Brendan Kwiatkowski, an educator, researcher, and speaker focused on the social-emotional development and well-being of boys and men. Brendan, who earned his Ph.D. in Education from the University of Edinburgh in 2023, conducted an in-depth study on the emotions, masculinities, and schooling experiences of teenage boys. His interdisciplinary research merges psychology, sociology, and education to humanize and empower participants by giving voice to their lived experiences.

Brendan's work explores why some boys are highly emotionally expressive while others are not, and how these differences shape their beliefs about masculinity. He teaches at a local university, training future teachers, and works directly with boys and men to help them connect with their emotions in healthy ways.

A key theme discussed is the concept of restrictive masculinity, which includes the harmful messages boys receive about suppressing emotions, needing to be self-reliant, and feeling the pressure to dominate. These beliefs can lead to emotional disconnection from a young age, often around age five and during early adolescence (13-15 years). This disconnection is reinforced through societal norms and personal experiences, such as funerals, where boys learn to suppress sadness because they see men around them doing the same.

Brendan emphasizes that expressing emotions is crucial but warns that doing so in unsafe environments can be detrimental. He notes that suppressed emotions can resurface in harmful ways, such as anger or violence, often displaced onto others. This is evident in scenarios like domestic violence spikes following sports events.

Brendan highlights the importance of creating safe spaces for emotional expression. Teenage boys often restrict their emotions due to fear of judgment, not wanting to burden others and the fear of being hurt by emotional closeness. He encourages honest conversations and support among boys and men to break these patterns of emotional suppression.

In the broader context, Brendan points out that while both socialization and biology play roles in shaping behaviors, socialization significantly impacts emotional expression. He also touches on the importance of understanding grief as a complex emotional experience, often involving a mix of sadness, anger, and even humor, which can be overwhelming without proper support.

https://remasculine.com/

https://ifs-institute.com/

Transcript

[00:00:00] Brendan: There's multiple boys that I talked to who cited funerals being a major experience growing up where they learned what was acceptable or not acceptable for men to show emotions or not. 

[00:00:13] Jill: Welcome back to Seeing Death Clearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and end of life coach. Here on my show, I have conversations with guests that explore the topics of death, dying, grief, and life itself.

[00:00:26] My goal is to create a series of space where you can challenge the ideas you might already have about these subjects. I want to encourage you to open your mind and consider perspectives beyond what you may currently believe to be true. In this powerful and enlightening episode, I sit down with Dr.

[00:00:43] Brendan Kwiatkowski, a renowned educator and researcher specializing in the social emotional development of boys and men. Brendan dives deep into his groundbreaking research on the emotions and masculinity of teenage boys. shedding light on why some boys are emotionally expressive while others are not.

[00:01:03] We tackle topics such as the profound impact of societal norms on boys emotional health, how death and grief affect boys and men, and the concept of restrictive masculinity. which pressures boys to suppress their emotions, leading to early emotional disconnection. Trigger warning that we do touch on the topic of violence in this episode.

[00:01:26] While there are no graphic details, please be mindful if this subject may be upsetting for you. If you care about the boys and men in your life, this episode is a must listen. Brendan shares invaluable insights and wisdom that you don't want to miss. Thank you for joining us for this conversation.

[00:01:43] Welcome to the podcast, Brendan. Thank you so much for coming on today. I know that I follow you on Instagram and after listening to some of your content, I really wanted to reach out to you about coming on my podcast today to talk about your specialty and some of what I think maybe overlaps with the way that our culture deals with death and dying.

[00:02:05] So thank you so much for coming on. 

[00:02:08] Brendan: Thanks. I'm so excited to be here in a different capacity than I normally am on some podcasts, but I'm curious to also see where the conversation goes, connecting it with death and dying. 

[00:02:18] Jill: Wonderful. Can you actually just tell us first off what you actually do, like what your title is, what your work is, because I'm sure people are already like, well, let's see do 

[00:02:27] Brendan: it's hard to pinpoint exactly what I am.

[00:02:29] I think sociologist is maybe the most technical term. to use, but I intentionally had my PhD that was interdisciplinary within psychology and sociology. So I just say I specialize in the social emotional development and well being of boys and men. And I was an educator, high school teacher, had my master's in special education.

[00:02:49] And for my PhD research, which I finished in 2023, I looked at grade 12 boys, so ages teen, and compared the most emotionally. Expressive teenage boys to the least emotionally expressive teenage boys and compared their experiences Growing up being male as well as their beliefs about masculinity to see how similar or dissimilar Why are some boys super emotionally expressive and some boys not and how different are they?

[00:03:15] I teach at a local university training future teachers But I'm getting more into work that's directly on the ground, working with boys and men, to live more embodied lives connected to their emotions and to others in healthy and healing ways. 

[00:03:32] Jill: It's wonderful. I think that work is needed. And in my way of thinking, the overlap to me is, in our culture, we do not deal well with death and dying and grief.

[00:03:44] Especially men, right? I find that that's the biggest demographic that really kind of holds in all the emotions and really doesn't want to deal with it. And so again, when I first saw your work and I was like, man, I wonder how much of what a lot of people consider toxic masculinity, right? How much of that is actually tied with the fact that There's a lot of grief that is not expressed because men are not encouraged to cry openly, to say, I'm in pain, I'm hurting, I'm suffering.

[00:04:17] These are things that we're not encouraging. And so I just wonder how much of it really is this underlying unprocessed grief that so many of us are walking around with. I 

[00:04:31] Brendan: think there's tons of connections. It reminds me that there's a multiple boys that I talked to who cited funerals being a major experience growing up where they learned what was acceptable or not acceptable for men to show emotions or not.

[00:04:46] Like one of the boys was like, that's where I learned that I should suppress sadness, particularly. Because no men cried at my grandma's funeral and all these women were crying. And that's his takeaway from that experience. Which also, I would say, we can unpack this or not, I prefer the term restrictive masculinity and I would say that there's three most harmful messages about restrictive masculinity in terms of harmful for boys and men themselves as well as for other people, is when you feel like you need to suppress your emotions.

[00:05:16] When you need to do everything yourself and when you need to be dominant And so there's some contextual things that we can unpack there as well but generally when those things are rigidly adhered to that's when things become Harmful or problematic and so the disconnection of boys from their emotional parts of themselves Happens at a really young age, some say as young as two, but I say age five is a pretty common time period, as well as ages 13, 14, 15 is another major pressure point where a lot of boys, yeah, restrict parts of their emotional selves and what do you call this, death?

[00:05:51] Fear and sadness are two of those major emotions that I think speaks to the discomfort that our society has with death and dying. You're 

[00:05:59] Jill: right, because we all, even me, right. As comfortable as I am with death, I still fear death, right? I still fear it coming to me when I'm young. I especially fear it happening to one of my children.

[00:06:12] That's like my worst nightmare. And then the idea of the sadness, even as comfortable as I am with death. My aunt died recently, like within the past few days. And there's a lot of sadness that comes with death. Even if you're okay with it, even if you can Be the type of person that's like, it's part of life.

[00:06:33] We are all going to die. There's still sadness. And so if we've lived our life, suppressing that sadness and then feeling like I can't express this emotion, I believe that we kind of hold it all in, right? That if we don't let it out, we're going to hold it in. And it's going to come out either in other ways, like anger and aggression.

[00:06:52] Or it's going to just make us physically ill. We need to let it out. But I know, especially with men, it's viewed very poorly for men to cry. And even a lot of women that I know now, because we've grown up in such a male dominated society. I took on a lot of, I would say like masculine tendencies, because I thought that's what I needed to do to be safe.

[00:07:16] And one of them was. I stopped crying. I forced myself to stop crying when I was a teenager because I got so shamed and so embarrassed about it. And so it's been a process even for me to unlearn that and to be comfortable expressing sadness and even fear. 

[00:07:33] Brendan: Absolutely. It's not just boys and men who restrict their emotions.

[00:07:37] And I think in our culture in a society compared to my friend who's from Greece and their culture's tradition with death and dying is to mourn for a year, especially if they're close to you and to really embrace those feelings as they come up. And one of the things that I was reminded of as you spoke is that I think sometimes we can get this mindset of conquering our emotions of like, okay.

[00:08:02] If I understand my emotions, then I don't have to feel them. And I can be like, okay, yep, this is death, this is sad, this is something scary. But you're trying to override that emotions are a complex system. Like, the psychology of emotions, people haven't agreed upon an actual definition of emotions.

[00:08:19] Generally speaking, there's six agreed upon characteristics of emotions. And all of those include that it's not just in your mind, but it's actually in your body and your body to actually experience them. And so if you work with sadness and then you think that, Oh, I shouldn't be sad or distraught when someone close to me dies.

[00:08:37] That is not really experiencing or not actually embracing that part of the emotional experience is feeling and feeling is scary, especially for people who don't live in their bodies or they were grown up thinking their body isn't safe. If you're ashamed for certain emotions in particular, that's gonna for sure create obstacles for processing through things because unfortunately the best way for healing is moving through things, but then things might actually feel worse.

[00:09:00] Before they feel better and so it makes sense why people numb from all these things and unfortunately, it's just not a silver bullet and you can just take a pill and you get the effects of Grieving the effects of feeling your emotions without actually having to also feel the discomfort of sitting with them.

[00:09:21] Jill: And in your work, right? How do you tend to see boys and men expressing these things if they're trying really hard to repress them? Because, again, I'm thinking in my mind as a mother, right? I have teenage children, well, almost teenage children, and I see some of the negative ways That some of these things are expressed in our society.

[00:09:43] And I did worry for my kids. Like I worry that something will happen to them, right? Because there's people in the world that are not expressing their emotions healthy and even having a 13 year old son, I worry of. What potentially, if he's not going to express his emotions, even though I encourage it, it's just me and my husband.

[00:10:04] It's not like we can completely overcome the grander scheme of what my son is being raised in. So what are some of the things that you see, especially from some of the children that you talk to, will say, I held in my emotions because I learned at funerals. What's the outcome, I guess, is the right way to ask the question?

[00:10:23] Brendan: Yeah, the outcome of suppressing your emotions, you could go all the way from a personal perspective, if you suppress your emotions, whether they quote unquote negative emotions, the fact that even if you actually qualify certain emotions as negative, actually, it's called an emotional ideologue. That's a negative emotional ideologue that also correlates to poor mental health and well being outcomes, because emotions are neutral experiences is like what you do with emotions can for sure be negative.

[00:10:49] But if you view certain emotions as problematic or wrong to have. That's a telling sign to start with. You suppress your emotions, or certain emotions, it also impacts your ability to feel positive emotions. Now, I'm not sure if you've seen the movie Inside Out, I do think it's a good analogy that a lot of people think depression is sadness, but depression is more of a numb state, kind of detached from all of your emotions.

[00:11:11] And that's one thing we also know and we also see that if you suppress your emotions one way, it's going to bubble up somewhere else. I think the most common one that people talk about is anger and rage, that you're holding in resentment or all these feelings and it comes out, it lashes out. It could be called like anger by proxy, which is a terrible research found in multiple contexts, but I'll share one in Scotland.

[00:11:36] There's a Protestant Catholic soccer club, football club, they call it in the UK, and the Celtics, or the Celtics, and the Rangers. And regardless of which team wins, they've had to move the games up earlier, they're not allowed alcohol at the games, but domestic abuse hotlines, anytime there's a game, they are spiked.

[00:11:56] They, to the call centers, because, generally speaking, these men that have lost, The game take out their anger on someone else and so it's by proxies one of the boys in my research who was quote unquote The most emotion restricted according to my screening tool was actually super self aware He's like, yeah, I know I've suppressed my emotions and probably in like seven years time one day Something small will set me off and I'll just blow blow up emotionally But at the same time, you talked to me earlier before the recording, I think, about school shootings and things like that.

[00:12:27] That would be, one, I think we talk about mental health and suicide rates of both boys and men being higher. Generally speaking, they're going to be way more of a harm to themselves than to other people. But of course, they can also, by suppressing emotions, can be deadly to other people around them. And on a not so extreme scale, it's just that, here's the thing, expressing your emotions is super important.

[00:12:50] And super important, but if you express it with someone who's not safe to do so, that can actually make you feel worse. A lot of people have had unsafe experiences, but it requires a level of vulnerability to put yourself out there and test it out in a new relationship. And a lot of men or teenage boys have just lost any sense of trust with anyone in society that they don't actually venture out to actually be vulnerable, to actually have a better connection with people in their lives.

[00:13:17] Jill: Yeah. Vulnerability is hard. For sure. I can understand how, especially for men and boys, it's even more so. And I think as a woman existing in the world, I do have to navigate my life differently because I know that most of the time, if I am going to be physically harmed, it's going to be by a man or the city that I work in.

[00:13:40] It's a city that there is a lot of gang violence. Most of it is done by men, by boys, in a lot of these cases now. We're seeing it, the shootings are younger and younger boys that are shooting and killing each other. And it's not that women don't do these things. And I'm not even saying there's anything wrong with these boys.

[00:14:04] I view it more as a problem. problem within our culture. There's something that is unwell about our culture that it seems like it's really coming out in a way with the men and the boys. And I don't know what to do about it. And like I said, before we started recording, there's going to be things that both of us are probably be like, I have no answers for this, but this is why I want to have this conversation because I feel like if we don't have the conversations, then we'll never find the answers.

[00:14:33] But In your work, in your research, I don't know what it is. Is there any ideas as to why most violence is done by people that are male identified, male bodied, whatever you want to call it? 

[00:14:50] Brendan: There's lots of different facets to this question, and I don't even know if I'll mention the most significant or those competing theories.

[00:14:58] If we're just talking about the emotional lens, is that, like, we're talking about violence. is that anger and violence are two ways. Anger can be a very externalizing behavior, especially how men are socialized to experience anger. It's where anger can be a way of, by externalizing, like putting it out onto other people.

[00:15:17] And so, it's believed that one of the easiest ways to prevent feelings of shame, sitting with your own discomfort, and I don't necessarily mean shame, Like someone shamed you and you should sit with that. I just mean shame about like, if someone in your life is expressing that you've hurt them and you might need to change as a result, that can just bring up feelings of shame and defensiveness.

[00:15:39] And one of the quickest responses to not sitting with their own shame is to go transfer that to anger. Cause then that can point the finger to someone else that they are the issue and the problem. We talk a lot about patriarchy and power. And I think violence. is a way a lot of men and boys don't actually feel at all powerful.

[00:16:01] And so you have this disconnect between this sociologist, Dr. Michael Kimmel. I think he wrote it in one of his books saying it's hard to convince men that patriarchy is all powerful when most men don't feel all powerful. And I think that violence is the language in certain contexts more than others, but it's a way to feel powerful.

[00:16:17] It's a way to enact. One's ideals of masculinity. Sometimes it's in a more constructive way, but also can have consequences like through sports, maybe it's more acceptable and channeled in a positive way and for a lot of men or boys looking for guidance or looking for a way to be a man, is that violence?

[00:16:37] can be a way to solve problems, especially if there's less emotional language for it. And we've got to talk about intergenerational trauma. There's so many different dynamics. We can talk about that, on average, male at birth bodies also have more muscle mass. And so, it's their ways at resorting to anger or resorting to violence.

[00:16:57] Might have like an aspect of biology that connects to it as well, for sure. 

[00:17:02] Jill: I was actually wondering about that. I have a son and a daughter, right? And my husband and I don't necessarily We've often said we're not the typical gender stereotypes. In some ways I'm actually more of the masculine energy in the relationship.

[00:17:17] He's more of the feminine. It's not like our children are growing up seeing a very like masculine man and a very feminine woman, but yet they are definitely gravitating towards my son is obsessed with guns. And like, we don't even own guns, but he like watches YouTube videos and he's learning all these different things about different guns and how they work and all the different parts.

[00:17:41] And like, Things that I'm like, okay, cool, I have no idea why you've got this obsession, but like, sure. And then my daughter's more like, makeup, and the videos where the girls are doing their hair, and like all the things that like, again, she's not getting it because she's learning it from me. And so I do wonder sometimes, is it either that just because society and what they're seeing is kind of pushing them that direction, or is there just in some ways that there's things that are hormones or whatever it is that just makes us gravitate more towards different things?

[00:18:19] Because I don't know why they're interested sometimes in the things that they're interested in that are so stereotypical boy and girl type things. I'm not sure how that happens. 

[00:18:31] Brendan: Yeah, it's important to be like, when we look at just one family, like anecdotal evidence that often can either confirm or reject our biases in so many different ways.

[00:18:42] I think that like the simple answer is that is there something hormones that like is specific to guns or to makeup? I would say no. And all of the research that boys are more tactile learners and girls aren't and things like that, all the research that tries to study that has found there's no gender difference Which is surprising to a lot of people.

[00:19:01] It was surprising to me when I've double checked the research finding that out. But I do think it's one of those situations of kind of like the chicken and the egg in certain areas. They've, they've done this. They put toddlers in stereotypical opposite gendered clothing and saw how childcare workers worked with them and the types of toys.

[00:19:20] And the types of conversations that they had with what they thought were female toddlers versus male toddlers is actually crazy. They immediately brought more tactile toys to the male and did more constructive 3D space. So maybe some reason why some men have better spatial awareness. It's because they've just had more practice with it in the same way that they thought they were girls.

[00:19:42] They did more play with talking and dolls and things like that. So you get more emotional language, even how you're coached in more emotional language if you're socialized as a girl. And so it's kind of hard to pick apart where is the actual line of socialization or not. All I know is I can confidently say socialization is a huge part of it.

[00:20:00] But as a biology teacher, former to any of my masters, Like I don't want to override that biology is also an important aspect of our identity and that biology as well. There's more variants. There's lots of variants overlap between people identify as men and people identify as women. We have a lot more in common than not.

[00:20:20] The extremes are going to get highlighted in terms of biology. 

[00:20:23] Jill: In your experience in all of your studies, as well as working with people, is there ways that we can empower, especially men to be able to work with their emotions better to help people? express themselves differently so that physical violence that's not always going to be what some men would automatically go to, right?

[00:20:50] Like, I got hurt, so I'm going to hurt this person, or whatever it is, right? What can we do to help this problem, this situation? 

[00:20:58] Brendan: I will clarify or Expand that most of the most emotionally restricted boys aren't going to hurt anyone. That was one of the things that I tested. In fact, I went into my PhD research thinking that emotional expression is the silver bullet to gender equality, or all of these things.

[00:21:15] Like, hey, if we focus on more open relationship with one's emotions, That will trickle down to kind of all these other areas. But that wasn't the case. That the boys that were emotionally expressive, I had 170 teenage boys in my research, there was no difference in their levels of endorsed violence between their levels of emotional expression.

[00:21:34] So in that one metric, it was the exact same. There was boys that expressed homophobia who were highly emotionally expressive. Some of the most highly emotionally restricted boys. We're allies of the LGBTQ community. So it's not like this box of, Oh, they're emotionally expressive. They're healthy in all these ways.

[00:21:51] Or if they're emotionally restricted, they're going to be a harm to other people. No. What was the main difference is that they're way less likely to ask for help if they're emotionally restricted and they're way more likely to feel lonely and feeling lonely is a huge issue in our society that's connected through social media, but not really deeply connected and I think boys and men particularly struggle with that.

[00:22:09] With close friendships. And so what can we do? I think one of the things to start with is like understanding what I found is the three most common reasons why teenage boys restrict their emotions is one is fear of judgment from others, primarily males. But of course they for sure have, there's lots of stories of their sister shaming them for their emotions.

[00:22:29] There's research saying there's lots of double expectations for women in our society. There's that monologue. That's famous from the Barbie movie that highlights a bunch of those double standards for women. But one of the main double standards for men is wanting them to be emotionally expressive and vulnerable, but then also feeling sometimes disgust or shame when a man around them does express vulnerability and emotions.

[00:22:55] Working on creating a safe space so there's not judgment on their emotional expression. And the second slash the tide reason why a lot of teenage boys restricted their emotions is that they didn't want to burden other people. So, for instance, their parents went through a divorce, and like, my parents are going through enough of their own stuff.

[00:23:11] I'm gonna restrict my emotional needs because I want to take care of other people. I don't want to bring them down. And so, especially as parents, I think that's one of the hard things with our children is to, obviously, we're human. We're gonna be impacted by our children's emotions. But to not make our children take responsibility for us, our emotions, as parents.

[00:23:32] That I express to my children quite often, especially as they age. That, you're not responsible for caretaking for my emotional response. Daddy's in charge of his emotional regulation. And you should be able to tell me anything, and I will work on myself. So that's also something else. to work on for people to be aware that a lot of the teenage boys just don't believe people if they tell them, Hey, you can tell me anything.

[00:23:56] Part of them wants to believe it. But another huge part of them is like, yeah, they say that, but then I'll share it and then they're going to have a reaction. So that's one area to look at. And then the third reason why teenage boys stop sharing with other people is that they're afraid that they'll get hurt by being close to someone.

[00:24:14] And these boys had experienced emotional closeness with someone in their lives before and that ended actually often tragically, often it was a loss either through death or through like their best friend moving away suddenly and there wasn't much unpacking or processing to do with that. And they're like, You know what, I don't want to get close to anyone again because I hate how that felt last time when I lost it.

[00:24:34] I'm gonna prevent feeling future pain by not getting close now. And so just having honest conversations with the boys and men in your life, boys and men having this with each other would be a huge start. But I also, like you're saying this, And I think in a super well intentioned way, I do find in my work that I do, it's mostly women asking the questions, like, what can I do to support?

[00:24:55] And I think that's great, that's awesome, and it's also like, but men and boys need to support each other. And here's the thing I would tell to boys and men specifically, is that I am so confident. That within a group of friends, there is another man or boy in that group that wants more emotional connection with other people in that group, and that you're not alone in that.

[00:25:15] For instance, I had all these teenage boys telling me, yeah, they wish they could have, like some of them said, just once a year would be nice for an emotional conversation with my other friends. But they all assume that none of their other male friends want that. But they're all telling me that they want that.

[00:25:28] So I'm just very confident that, maybe not in a group setting, group mentality is one thing altogether, but individuals, one on one, there's more men that want closeness than other boys and men might suspect. 

[00:25:41] Jill: That's something that Hopefully people listening, there is men and women that both listen to my podcast and hopefully there will be more men that will be encouraged to be a little bit more willing to start the conversation with a friend of theirs and then it'll hopefully ripple out.

[00:25:58] And I was thinking when you talked about this idea that boys feel this loss of either somebody died or they moved away or they left or whatever it is. And that's one of the biggest things that I find is in our culture. We don't grieve things well, and it's not just death, right? Like the ending of friendships, the ending of any type of relationship, the ending of jobs, right?

[00:26:22] There's a lot of things in our life that bring up a feeling of grief that we don't even know that it's grief. And we don't process grief well, so we really don't know what to do with it. So we shove it down or we self medicate, go out, you have a drink, you go out and you do whatever makes you feel better.

[00:26:39] Shopping, gambling, whatever it is that in small quantities is probably okay. But when we're using that as a coping mechanism over and over and over again, it's not good. And I find that then when. Somebody dies and our grief for that person comes up all the other grief bubbles up again. And I could say this, especially because I just went through it like five days ago when my aunt died where I was okay with her death for a lot of reasons, but yet I still was like, but you're still grieving, right?

[00:27:10] I'm still going to miss her. I still loved her very much. And all this old grief started coming up. Grief from my father and I didn't have the greatest relationship, all the way to like my best friend that I don't really talk to anymore. Like this grief was just coming out of me and I had to let myself feel it.

[00:27:26] So I stood in the shower and I cried and I let it all come out. But even that night, my daughter said to me, it's not every night that you see your mom cry. And I was like, Oh, you're right. Like, you don't see me cry very much. And I tried being really honest with both of my children. Like, yes, I'm sad. I'm crying.

[00:27:44] I'm going to miss Aunt Karen. It's okay to feel these things, but I'm still a little bit. reserved, and I hide my emotions, but that old grief, it is in there, right? It will come out eventually. And if we're not grieving these friendships that we lose and relationships that end, it's in there somewhere.

[00:28:04] We're maybe hiding it for now, but it will come up. 

[00:28:07] Brendan: Absolutely. I can so relate that every time I go to a funeral, it's the grief of all the people I've lost often come up to mind, or even in the movie that I'm watching. And I don't know, If I actually stand by this, but all these things about like, there's two types of people in the world, people that A or people that B, and I generally don't like any of those, but I remember when my best friend died five years ago, I remember thinking in that process of really getting acquainted with grief in a more profound way, in a profound way, I was like, Oh, there's such a difference between people who are comfortable with grief and people who are not comfortable with grief.

[00:28:44] And that being such a divider that I noticed in my own grief process of people who were just okay with the discomfort of it all, and the uncertainty of it all. And I think what's so confusing about grief is that grief is not just like a singular emotion, it's an emotional experience. Whereas something like anger, There might be a secondary emotion underneath that.

[00:29:05] But grief is like, all of a sudden you're crying so deeply and then you're laughing about something crazy, and then you're angry at your friend that's dead, and all of these emotions, and then you're ashamed that you feel anger at your dead friend, and it's like It's that milieu of complexity, which is distressing, especially if we are unused to emotions.

[00:29:28] And if you don't have a guide, you really get through it. 

[00:29:31] Jill: Yes. And I'm very sorry to hear about your friend, but your description of grief is, So accurate to what people feel. Everybody I think has in their head, this idea that grief is just sadness, right? But there's so much that comes with it, including anger.

[00:29:49] Sometimes there can be joy and laughter because you think about something that you did together or something that they used to do that annoyed you or whatever it is, and then you're laughing and then you feel bad. And in some cases, depending on the relationship that you had with the person. There can actually be relief that they're gone for a variety of reasons.

[00:30:09] Maybe they were really ill and so you're like, thank God they're not suffering anymore. I've talked to people that their abusers have died and they're like, thank God they're gone. I'm glad they're dead. And I feel terrible that I'm glad they're dead. And I'm like, well, yes. But also that's valid too. And so there's so many things that come with grief that we don't expect because grief makes other people so uncomfortable.

[00:30:36] Think about how many times if somebody's grieving, we try to say, Oh, but they're in a better place. Oh, don't be sad. It's okay. Let me give you the tissues. You'll stop crying. Like all these things. Where then again, then we're taught, Oh, this isn't good. People don't want to see this. I need to keep this inside because it makes other people uncomfortable.

[00:30:58] And really, the more that we can all be comfortable with grief, the more we would be able to grieve in a way that is healthier. Which, again, I feel like in some cases would actually help us be less of a, I don't know, unhealthy society. Right? I'm not, I'm not saying everything in the world is wrong with our society, but there's definitely some things that I think could really help if we would grieve more openly and talk about it and be together, right?

[00:31:28] Like you were saying about your friend from Greece, so many cultures. When somebody dies, they come together, where in America, we're so very individual in some ways, including death and grief. We go off and we're expected to just go back to work and act like nothing happened, where in other cultures, people would come together and the men would maybe go on one side and the women go on the other side, but they would come together.

[00:31:51] and grieve together and they would do it over multiple days. And we just don't have that here. 

[00:31:57] Brendan: Yeah. And as someone who grew up evangelical, I would say, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the term spiritual bypassing, is that I think our grief can get spiritually bypassed a lot of times with spiritual bypassing.

[00:32:07] Things like, yeah, they're in a better place, or this is all part of God's plan. And it's these isms, which regardless of we're gonna argue whether they're true or not, they're not honoring of people's actual experiences or feelings. And it adds to this confusion, especially for children too, of like, oh, I should be happy that they're, it's all this certainty around death that makes people confused about their own experiences.

[00:32:33] around how they're feeling of, Oh, then I shouldn't feel this way because of all these things I was told is happening. So there's just so many different layers and messages we hear about grief from different institutions, from different things. And I know that religion growing up was such a powerful source of comfort as well.

[00:32:52] So it's like mixed when people deconstruct, or if people deconstruct their faith. I think one of the hardest things from people I know that have gone through that is letting go of their certainty around death. Like, it was so nice for people to have this neat box about what happens, and I'd never want to take that away from people.

[00:33:11] But at the same time, when people feel like, They're grappling with that like that's so much emotional distress to even let yourself question some things that you may have been taught about death and grief. Yeah, it's complicated. 

[00:33:24] Jill: It is for sure complicated. And there are times when I would say I probably envy people that are religious.

[00:33:33] enough and set enough in their beliefs in some way where they're like, well, no, I'm going to die. And I'm going to go to heaven and I'm going to see my family that has already died. I don't believe that. I don't not believe it, but there's not that conviction in me. And so I've heard of people That as they neared death, they really leaned back into maybe the religion they grew up in.

[00:33:54] People that God forbid lose a child. I can understand that the only thing that might get you through that is to say, I will see them again though one day. I'm going to die. We're going to go to heaven. We're going to be together again. So all of that I can understand. And even for me, I haven't been Catholic.

[00:34:10] I don't know. I'm 45 now. I probably left the church really. I still went, but I probably left the church when I was about 15. So it's been a long time, right? But tomorrow I'm going to go to a funeral in a Catholic church, and part of me is looking forward to it, and I wasn't expecting that. Part of me is looking forward to going and being with My friends and my family and sitting through the mass and singing the songs and then going to the cemetery afterwards.

[00:34:37] I didn't think that I would want that, but now that I have that coming up, I need it. There is part of me that's like, no, this is making me stop work. It's making me take the entire day off and just focus on this thing. And I didn't expect it. So like, this is kind of a surprise for me. 

[00:34:55] Brendan: From my own experiences of grief.

[00:34:57] That word unexpected is probably what epitomizes most of my experience of like the anniversary of my friend's death was just three, three or four days ago, and it's like on that day, I ended up grieving, but not for most of the day, but it was actually two weeks ago when I had my birthday and that's one of my One of my last memories with my friend and I just spent the whole night like crying that day and be like, Oh, that's interesting.

[00:35:22] I'm like, I would like to be able to plan my grief sometimes when it's convenient, but I haven't found that to be the case. 

[00:35:28] Jill: Correct. You definitely cannot plan it. But with that being said, one of the things that I do try to tell my clients when I work with them is your grief is going to get triggered at unexpected times, right?

[00:35:40] It is. There's nothing we could do about that. I teach them tools for how to get through that moment. To get to a safe space where they can then fully feel it rather than being like I'm in the grocery store. A song came on. It made me think of my friend and now I'm sobbing and I can't do that. So I'm going to just turn it off and shove it down.

[00:35:58] Okay, cool. Maybe you need to do that for a few minutes. But then when we get home, let's come up with a way. Right? It can be your own ritual that you do where you're like, you know what? I want to put the song on. I want to journal. I want to move my body. I'm a person that I like to move. I, I need to get the energy out.

[00:36:17] I like to break things. I break pencils because breaking other things is not. Good, right? So like I found things that I could break to help me get the energy out. So we can't plan it. But also I find that sometimes if we set aside time around things like holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, things when you're like, this might be a trigger for me, I'm going to set aside an hour.

[00:36:42] For that day, so that I know even maybe in the morning, I start to feel like I have meetings. I feel like I'm not going to make it through the meeting very well. But I know I have this hour set aside to feel it and to honor them and it and be planned kind of, but not really. 

[00:36:59] Brendan: I totally agree with exactly what you're saying.

[00:37:00] It's not planning when it comes up. But then when it comes up being like, All right, I need to bookmark this, but I'm going to give it time at a certain moment. That's what's key, because what's problematic is when our emotions become stuck in our bodies or in our systems. And so it comes up. View that as such a beautiful opportunity to be like, Ah, my access point is open again, or this door to grief and feelings and emotions around this person that I love.

[00:37:27] Or, well, I'm viewing it in a loving way, but you've mentioned that not all deaths are with that emotion around them. But viewing it as an opportunity to process more of that experience. But yeah, allowing it to not just be in that moment, but setting aside an hour, I 100 percent agree with that advice.

[00:37:46] Jill: Yeah, because it's important for us to feel all the feelings, right? The good ones, the bad ones are quote unquote bad. Because again, sadness is not necessarily bad. It might feel bad sometimes in our bodies, but it's not a bad feeling. And the more that we try to push it away, the more we have an aversion to the things that we don't want to feel, just the more that we're going to not feel the good stuff as well.

[00:38:11] We need to feel both. 

[00:38:12] Brendan: And the more power we It feels like the unnamed emotions have when you actually name them down whether through journaling That's something I love ice, which is internal family system model of therapy But I basically have an ongoing conversation between different parts of myself.

[00:38:28] So the part that doesn't want to grieve And maybe the part that is really missing and they have a dialogue back and forth. And I find that a really helpful entry point in how I process at all things. But I 

[00:38:39] Jill: actually like that point that I think a lot of times people, cause I will encourage people to journal.

[00:38:45] I think it's a good way. Because it connects the body right the movement of doing it as well as what we're processing in our mind But I think a lot of people think well, I'm just gonna open up a page and write. What am I supposed to write? Well, some people like journal prompts. Sometimes I like them Sometimes I don't sometimes I look at the prompts and I'm like what the hell does this even mean?

[00:39:03] It does nothing for me, but there is other ways to do it, right? There is other ways to still use a tool. And that's why there's coaches. That's why there's people out there. That's why there's therapists. That's why there's other people out there that can help you on these journeys. But there's definitely things that we need to do to express our emotions.

[00:39:24] Talking could be it for some people, maybe not moving the body, right? Like journaling. Just, we need to find the tools that work for us. I'd never heard of that one before, right? So I learned about a new tool today. There's lots of tools out there. When I talk to people at meditation, they're like, but I can't meditate.

[00:39:40] I can't turn my mind off. And I'm like, okay, you tried meditation once for five minutes and it didn't work. That doesn't mean it's not going to work. Try a different type, try a different style. There's so many different things out there. Don't just try one thing and then be like, nope, this doesn't work for me.

[00:39:55] Expand yourself. Look into other things. 

[00:39:57] Brendan: Yes. Like I love cold plunges. I love embodied things like breath, work, things like that. I got a punching bag for Christmas as well, just because I know we talk about men having so much anger. But also in my research, a lot of boys were scared of their anger. And I think there's a perception that boys and men are just so easily access anger.

[00:40:19] And I think, yes, more than a lot of women who've been socialized to suppress their anger, but a lot of boys are growing up actually being like, I'm afraid of what I might do if I'm angry. And so they have this relationship with anger. And I would say I suppressed a lot of anger growing up as well. And it's, It's been a healing thing for me to punch an object as part of my processing.

[00:40:40] And so yeah, I would highly encourage multiple attempts at multiple things for people to try. 

[00:40:46] Jill: And I love kickboxing. I love punching a punching bag. I, I love punching people, but again, with pads, like I'm not, I'm not out there just punching people. But yes, I find that that for me is a good way to get it out.

[00:41:00] But again, it might not work for everybody. I also love yoga. So like, we can be a variety of different things. I want to give you a few minutes if you want to talk about your work. Again, I know you have an Instagram, but where else can people find you, find out more about what you do? 

[00:41:14] Brendan: Everything is on my website, remasculine.

[00:41:17] com. And so yeah, TikTok, Instagram, but I also will be creating a lot more resources. I have a couple free resources about how to talk to teenagers. about Andrew Tate and things related to masculinity that way. But I'm working on a couple of guides about like, talk about emotions, teenager who doesn't want to talk about emotions, things like that.

[00:41:40] So I have things coming up in the works and my website is where you can find those things. 

[00:41:45] Jill: Wonderful. I'll put a link to your website right in the show notes so people can easily find it. Thank you so much. This was awesome. I feel like I could continue talking to you for hours about a variety of different topics that we've kind of touched on, but I appreciate you taking the time being here with me today.

[00:42:02] Brendan: Thank you so much. And I love what your mission is of this podcast to destigmatize and normalize grief and death. I fully support that. 

[00:42:11] Jill: No, thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of seeing death clearly. And my next episode, I talked to Stephanie Jones, who reflects on pivotal childhood memories, including a formative experience with abandonment and death.

[00:42:27] Growing up as a Jehovah's witness, she faced intense challenges, and Leaving the faith at 22 due to its restrictive views and coming out as a lesbian, which led to estrangement from her family. We explore her path through grief and anger after her mother's unexpected death, the transformative power of therapy.

[00:42:48] and the healing process that improved her relationship with her children. Join us for her story of resilience, self discovery, and the quest for personal growth. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or family member who might find it interesting. Your support in spreading the podcast is greatly appreciated.

[00:43:05] Please consider subscribing on your favorite podcast platform and leaving a five star review. Your positive feedback helps recommend the podcast to others. The podcast also offers a paid subscription feature that allows you to financially support the show. Your contribution will help keep the podcast advertisement free.

[00:43:21] Whether your donation is large or small, every amount counts. is valuable. I sincerely appreciate all of you for listening to the show and supporting me in any way you can. You can find a link in the show notes to subscribe to the paid monthly subscription, as well as a link to my Venmo if you prefer to make a one time contribution.

[00:43:38] Thank you, and I look forward to seeing you in next week's episode of Seeing Death Clearly.