Cracking The Code: Mastering Grief And Trauma with Natasha P. Trujillo EP 385

In this thought-provoking episode of Grief to Growth, host Brian Smith sits down with Natasha P. Trujillo, therapist and author of the transformative book And She Was Never the Same Again. Together, they unpack the complexities of grief, loss, and the human experience.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

• The evolution of grief over time and why it manifests differently for everyone.
• Debunking the five stages of grief myth.
• Understanding the emotional impact of trauma and finding resilience.
• Practical tips for supporting aging loved ones and navigating life's gains and losses.
• Natasha’s personal story of survival through health challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This episode dives deep into the emotional layers of grief, offering powerful insights and tools to help you find healing. Whether you're navigating personal grief, or supporting a loved one, this conversation provides comfort and clarity.

🎧 Join the conversation and find community support at: grief2growth.com/community

You've been listening. You're doing the work. But there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place.

Maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back. 

I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you.

All of it, pay what you want. You decide what it's worth. Nobody gets turned away because of money.

https://grief2g

Want to go deeper? My Substack is where I share solo essays on grief, consciousness, and continuing bonds — thoughts that don't always make it into the podcast. It's also home to a community of listeners who get it, because they're living it too. Free to subscribe. Find it at substack.com/grief2growth.

I've been studying Near Death Experiences for many years now. I am 100% convinced they are real. In this short, free ebook, I not only explain why I believe NDEs are real, I share some of the universal secrets brought back by people who have had them.

https://www.grief2growth.com/ndelessons

Transcript

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Brian Smith  0:00  
Close your eyes and imagine.

What if the things in life that cause us the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, are challenges, challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried. But what if, like a seed. We've been planted, and having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is grief to growth, and I am your host. Brian Smith, hi there. This is welcome to another episode of brief to growth. My name is Brian Smith, this is your first time joining us. When we talk about the complexities of life, we unravel the mysteries of our existence, and we explore how to navigate the most challenging moments of life. And whether you're joining us for the first time or you're a long time listener, I'm grateful to have you with us today. We've got a remarkable guest. Her name is Natasha P Trujillo. She's the author of the compelling book, and she was never the same again. She's also a respected therapist with the wealth of experience in helping individuals and families through grief and trauma. Her expertise and insights will provide invaluable guidance on a range of topics today, from debunking the widely misunderstood five stages of grief to understand the profound impact of trauma on our perception and resilience. So today's episode, we're going to dive deep into how grief evolves over time, why it manifests differently for each of us, and some practical strategies for supporting aging loved ones while creating meaningful impact. Tasha will also share tools for navigating life's gains and losses, ways to balance future goals with present challenges, and her personal journey through health and survival during the covid 19 pandemic, which we all remember very well. So join us as we undercover the myths, explore the truths and equip you to not equip you with the knowledge of better understand and manage grief and trauma, and don't forget after, afterwards to continue the conversation at grief to growth.com/community so with that, I want to welcome Tasha Trujillo,

Tasha Trujillo  2:19  
hello. Thank you for having me?

Brian Smith  2:20  
Yeah, I'm excited to have the conversation with you today. This is kind of what we talk about. Here is grief and trauma and all those fun topics that people love to discuss. To start off, like to ask you what inspired you to write the book,

Tasha Trujillo  2:36  
a couple of different things. So by trade, I'm a counseling and sports psychologist, and when I was getting my doctorate in counseling psych, I was on a grief and loss research team, and so I've always kind of been fascinated with it, and kind of submersed in the grief and loss world. And then, and I'd written in academia. Writing in academia is very different than writing a book, of course, and so I'd always kind of had the idea, but it was more of an afterthought, and just run it to get my career going and that sort of thing. And then

in about a period of around seven months, I had to just very, very impactful losses, probably the most significant of my life up to this point. And even though I specialize in grief and loss, and, you know, I kind of do it day in and day out, and I have a lot of the intellect and the education and the knowledge, I was just really struggling, and I needed to find a way to express myself and just work through it in a way that what I was trying to do at the time was not working. So that was really the premise of the book, it was sort of that intellectual still pursuit for things, but also my own personal experiences that brought it together.

Brian Smith  3:47  
Wow, you know, so you were in the grief build before you experienced these, these griefs, which I find always really interesting, because a lot of people that I talk to, like myself, we get into this after we experience a big loss. So do you know what inspired you to go into grief? Because most people wouldn't stay as far away from it as possible.

Tasha Trujillo  4:06  
Yeah, yeah. So I'd say this is a both. And for me, right, there was grief and loss that kind of started my life and my existence. And so it had always kind of been there, and I learned from a very young age, and I address this in the book that the second chapter is about I had a flight for life when I was just under three years old. I was in full respiratory failure. It was, was born healthy, and then just kind of out of nowhere, within a period of 24 to 48 hours, was in full respiratory failure. They did not expect me to live. And so that experience, right fundamentally changed my life and my parents lives and my extended family's life. And so I think that combined with being part of a very big Mexican family, one of the downsides of having a really big family in that way is that you experience a lot of death. There's a lot of people. So those people also have to die at some point as well. So it's kind of those that combination of a. Experiences when I was a kid that always led me into it. Was very fascinated. And then, of course, you know, these two bigger significant events that really prompted the book, I think it all just kind of came together, and it was the right moment to bring the book to life,

Brian Smith  5:16  
yeah, well, you bring up a good point about the event you had when you were young, because we often socially briefing. I think we usually do with the loss of a person, but grief could come from other types of events, true too, as well. Yes,

Tasha Trujillo  5:30  
and that was one of the biggest reasons why I wanted to write the book. So as a counseling and sports psychologist, I work primarily with athletes and the grief and loss that you experience as an elite athlete, right? We could talk about this for hours, and oftentimes it's not death losses. And even with non athletes that I work with, you know, we'll talk about them losing a job or having a baby or getting married, or, you know, losing an identity or having an injury, or, you know, just these life transitions that we go through, there is loss, both gains and losses associated with those, and we don't often call it grief, or feel like we are grieving, or feel like we have permission to grieve because there isn't a death associated with it. So that was a huge reason for me. Writing the book is to make sure that the chapters, each chapter focuses on the different type of loss. Some are death related, some are not death related. But just to show that that diversity and that variety in our life experiences and encourage people to look at it from that grief and loss lens,

Brian Smith  6:33  
yeah, that's a really great point, because, you know, we because they're all these different types of losses, sometimes people feel like, well, is it? This isn't really grief. I'm not really allowed to mourn this, and I can't, I can't talk because this is not, you know, this is not a big deal. People will say to me, like, well, you lost a daughter, so this is nothing compared to that. And then people feel like that isn't then they don't have the right to say, I'm grieving.

Tasha Trujillo  6:56  
Yes. Oh, and I think the comparisons again, another reason why I wanted to write the book. There is not just one way to grieve, and it gets really challenging when we start to compare losses, or feel like, Oh, well, I can't do this because this didn't happen to me, or I shouldn't be feeling this because that didn't happen to me, or it didn't go down like that, and this person's grief is worse, etc, etc. It just gets really hard, and then there'll be there's so much judgment and self evaluation and self deprecation, and it becomes very isolating and restrictive and constrained, and it doesn't help people work through their grief. So that was a, again, a huge premise of me writing it is to help people understand your journey, is your journey, and it's okay. It doesn't need to be compared to somebody else's.

Brian Smith  7:43  
Yeah, and that comparison goes both ways. Sometimes people will minimize their own grief because they say it's not as big as someone else's. But I've also heard people say, like, for example, if someone's lost a pet, well, it was just a dog, you know about someone else?

Tasha Trujillo  7:57  
Yes, oh my gosh. And the language there becomes so important, right? I always talk about bad words and grief, at least still write some of these messages that could be well intentioned even right, like it's okay, I just want you to feel better, but can really be invalidating and quite harmful and detrimental to the people that are directed

Brian Smith  8:19  
towards. Yeah, let's talk about that more. Because when I wrote my book, I included some of those things that, just as a layperson, the things that irritated me that when people said it, and as I've worked with people, help people understand how important language is when you're trying to console someone who's grieving, and you use things like at least or still, yes, yes.

Tasha Trujillo  8:39  
And you know, I always want to start with a caveat when we have this sort of conversation, because I think part of the barriers that people don't know what to say, and they get really fearful, and they feel like they have to say the right thing, or that there's one perfect thing to say. So I always start these conversations by saying, Please suspend some of those expectations, right? I'm not going to give you just one thing that you can say that's going to work in all of these situations, but I do think being aware of our language and what messages might be being sent are really important, because when you say something like, oh, at least, or you're still struggling with this or that sort of thing, we are sending this Message. There are timelines or expectations and that we whoever's saying that, we are uncomfortable. I am uncomfortable with your grief. Why are you still struggling with that? Why are you still doing that? And so language becomes very important, because you just want to communicate. I see you, I hear you, and even if I don't understand or agree with where you're at necessarily, can I still say something where you feel seen and heard, and it doesn't become about me and my distress with your grief?

Brian Smith  9:49  
Yeah? Yeah. I think it's I think it's great. I think it's really important that you know that you said that, because there's those things can be so invalidating of our grief. You know, even I've heard. People who've lost a child, well, at least you still have another child, or you're young, you can have more children. You know, things of that nature, and they think it's helpful. But for the for the person that's angry, if it can be very invalidating,

Tasha Trujillo  10:14  
yes, yes, absolutely. You are reminding me, one of the biggest instances where I hear that talked about a lot is with miscarriage. I feel like that comes up a lot, and then people who have miscarried feel what we call social constraint. They don't feel like that safe is that that space is safe enough to talk about it right? Like my grief is not it doesn't have a seat here. It's not appropriate. Yeah,

Brian Smith  10:42  
I love the title of your book, and explained why you chose that title.

Tasha Trujillo  10:49  
Oh my gosh, yes. So it's called and she was never the same again. And I picked that title for a few reasons. First of all, I thought the and was really critical to have because so much of these grief situations end up being both and situations not either or right. You're either over it or you're not. No, you either still hurt or you haven't or you don't know. You're either in anger or in denial. No, oftentimes it's both and when we look at these things. So that word was very, very important. It actually came to me because with with the two losses that I had suffered pretty close together, I was thinking through how other people were talking about me, and I had friends and I had family that were like, you're, you're, you're just different now you're just different. And so I was almost thinking about what they were saying about me when I wasn't around. And they were saying, She's She has never been the same, she's never going to be the same again, sorts of things. So yeah, it was like, three or 4am in the morning. That phrase just came to me, and I was like, that's it. I knew the title of the book and the last line of the book before I started writing it. Oh, wow.

Brian Smith  12:01  
What's the last line? If you don't mind,

Tasha Trujillo  12:04  
the last line is, and then I met her, and I was never the same again.

Brian Smith  12:11  
Time for a real quick break. Make sure you like and subscribe. Liking the video will show it to more people on YouTube and subscribe. You will make sure you get access to all my great content in the future. And now back to the video, yeah, yeah, yeah. I you know, it's interesting that you said, you know, you'll never be the same again, because I remember when my daughter passed away, thinking I, like, made a vow that I would always be miserable, because that was my way. I was going to honor her. Was just to and I wanted people to say and he was never the same again. So that was something that they actually went through my mind,

Tasha Trujillo  12:52  
yes, yes. And that's why that and is so important, because you will, you will absolutely continue have to have days and moments of misery, right? That's never going to go away. And you can also have moments of joy and pleasure and satisfaction. It really is a both and and, I think that really speaks to the duality of life and of our life experiences, which, again, was a huge reason for me wanting to write the book, I really wanted to highlight the gains and losses of life events, both desirable ones and undesirable ones, and help people see the complexity with this a little bit more. Because I think the more we get into the nuances and understand how complex these things are, I think we can be a little bit more compassionate with ourselves and with other people, and a bit more understanding and hopefully react and respond in ways that are more useful to people grieving.

Brian Smith  13:47  
Yeah, well, and it's interesting, you said the gains and losses, because we think of grief and we think of losses, so what would be some of the gains we might see? Yes,

Tasha Trujillo  13:57  
and again, this is so interesting, because with the book. People are like, Oh, God, your book must be so sad. You wrote a book about grief and loss. And I'm like, Well, yeah, definitely has some sad moments, but you see some really beautiful, powerful stuff in there too. You see some gains. You see some ways in which some of the most challenging life experiences that we've gone through as individuals and collectively have done really good things for us. And I have to be really careful with this too, because there's a time and a place to bring up gains, yes, after a significant loss, yes. So in the immediate aftermath of a death or of a career ending injury for an athlete, that is not the time to be like, let's talk about how you're growing right now, right? Like we don't want to bring that up, right? Yeah, in time, we're able to kind of think through, okay, you know that injury taught me that I can work really hard and come back first from something that death gave me the opportunity to get closer to other people in my life that I had been estranged from. Um, or hadn't put effort into or, you know, I realized what values were actually important to me in life and what I wanted to do at the time I still had. So I think in time, we can consider these and I wouldn't call them positives. I do call them more gains, because it we recognize our own strength and resilience and learn things about ourselves that we otherwise would.

Brian Smith  15:21  
Yeah, I think it's, I think it's we recognize our own strength and resilience. And I always think about this, and we also, I think gain strength and resilience, it kind of helps us to grow, in a sense, so it's both, it's like, and I've had so many people say to me, Well, if I ever lost a child, I could never do what you do. I would just, you know, I would crumble. And people think that's the case, until they're put in a situation,

Tasha Trujillo  15:48  
yes, yes. Well, yeah. And to that point, we truly don't know how we are going to respond until something happens. And even if we've been through death before, right? It's a different person that dies every time, so it looks a little bit different. And so the complexity of that and the conflict in that too, right? Our emotions can be very conflicted, our identities can be very inflicted, but that is all very normal and natural and part of greed.

Brian Smith  16:21  
Yeah. And the other thing about the title, because it reminds me, like, when people, when they're they're suffer like a really big loss, and maybe it's their first one, and they just want to know, am I ever going to be the same again? When am I going to go back to normal? So if you gotten that, that question from from people you've worked with so

Tasha Trujillo  16:41  
much. And again, I think the title that very much plays into part of why I chose that is because I want people to understand you aren't going to return to your former self after you suffer a loss that significant and that that's okay. That's not the goal. That's not what we're trying to get back to because I would think from a clinical perspective, when I have people coming in to work with me as their psychologist, and those are some of their expectations, it's really hard for them to feel relief or to feel like they're moving forward because they're all They're not meeting those expectations,

Brian Smith  17:16  
right, right? I think it's, I think it's really important. But again, everything the message of delivery have to be delivered very carefully, because people could get despondent when you say, Well, what do you mean? I'm never going to be the same again. Or in your family, it's like, What do you mean? He's never going to be the same again. But I tell people, why would you waste all this pain, all this growth, all these things you're going through? If you return to who you were before, then this won't have served any purpose. Yeah,

Tasha Trujillo  17:44  
yeah. I also talk about some of the potential freedom I try to instill in those sorts of conversations, yeah? Because again, when we feel so bound by, you know, I must return to my former self, or I must be over this by now, we ask ourselves those questions, why does it still bother me? Why am I still doing this? I think sometimes opening up and saying, Hey, you you have fundamentally changed, and that will continue to be so as your life progresses, I do think there can be a little bit of freedom, and then it's like, oh, okay, so I gotta reshape my goals a little bit. I gotta think through and kind of reconceptualize and reframe what I'm trying to achieve here and what I'm trying to work through. So I found in a lot of cases, it's alleviated some of the pressure.

Brian Smith  18:38  
I like the way you phrase that freedom, because, you know, society, family, people are always trying to put us in a box. They're always trying to say, you know, this isn't like you, this isn't you were, and it's and so you which we're saying is we're giving people it's okay, it's so you get to choose now who you are. You get to choose how you go forward, so that that could be a positive, or a benefit or a gain or whatever word we want to use for it. And I think, you know, it's really important for people to understand, you know, this grief will always be with you in some form. And for me, it's a personal thing. It's like, today is the ninth anniversary of my daughter's passing. And so, you know, as I've as I go through this process, you know, there are times when you feel like, I kind of, I got, I kind of got this, right? I've got this. Now, it's been, it's been five years. It's been eight years. Whatever I do this, I work with people in grief. I talk about it all the time. This is my life. But still, every June 24 you know, when I wake up in the morning, it's like, I'm taken back to that to that day, and it's, it's, it's a little, it's different every year, but it's also still the pain is still there.

Tasha Trujillo  19:50  
Yes, yes, absolutely. Well, first and foremost, thank you for chatting with me and having this discussion on such an important day. And yes. Your point that I think sometimes people will, if they feel like they've taken a couple steps backward, they're like, oh, you know, I was doing so well, and I'll all of a sudden, I feel like it's a first day all over again, and I can't seem to get it together, right? Like that is life. There are going to be things that pop up that that impact us and kind of take us back to this place, and that is normal. And yes, it's exhausting and it's draining and it's really, really hard, but that is part of the process. And I think that education is really important to give people too, because again, it can create a sense of freedom where it's like, okay, I I think I get it. I can get it. Today's a hard day. Anniversaries are hard days. It's okay that I'm experiencing this a little bit different, or it's hitting me a little bit harder than it did last year or last week. Yeah,

Brian Smith  20:51  
and that's what I what that's the reason I brought it up, because I want people to understand it's okay. Because, again, sometimes people, especially in early grief, I think, are often in early grief, they'll feel like they're, quote, doing better, and then they'll say, But then something happened. I just had a setback, and I went right back to where I was at the beginning. I'm like, No, you didn't I know it feels that way, but you're not in the exact same place, but you you are going to have those those days, you're gonna have those times, you're gonna have those moments and and they're okay when, when Shayna first passed, there was an album that I listened to, like, every day for like, I walk every morning and I, and it's a really, really sad album. It's just really sad. But that's that was the way I was feeling. And I hardly listened to that album anymore. But I did. I listened to it this morning and and I, and I was my friends were sending me messages and stuff, and, you know, trying to give me encouragement. And I was like, should I tell them that I'm listening to this song? And I sent the song to them, because I'm like, Yeah, I do feel bad today, and that's okay,

Tasha Trujillo  21:52  
yes, yes, you're also speaking to the power of the arts, I think, too, and how important art is for grief, whether it's, you know, written word or music or some sort of drawing, art, that sort of thing, in some ways we are drawn to that when we're feeling that intensely, because it is validating. It is validating. And in some ways it's a bit of a it's a relationship with an inanimate objects. So it can't quite hurt you or put you in your place in the same way, but it can allow us to feel like we are connected. Yeah,

Brian Smith  22:30  
so that would talk about that, because I it's an observation that I made. You know, it's like, sometimes you want to listen to music that lifts you up, and sometimes you want to listen to music that just like speaks to where you are. So why is that?

Tasha Trujillo  22:42  
Yes, yes, yeah. I think part of that is because when we are in those places, it is so lonely, is so lonely and so isolating, and so when we can hear something that allows us to sit and be with that feeling and isn't trying to at least, or still. Yeah, right, yeah. That isn't trying to take that away. And can just let us go there and be with that. It is a sense of connection and grounding, and I think it's a great way to let us process and be with our grief, which is the only way we can go through grief, is to be with it and go through it. We can't get around it, we can't avoid it, we can't distract and that's helpful to a certain extent, but at some point we really do have to move through it. And I think, yeah, listen to sad music when you're sad. It'd be really beneficial in that way.

Brian Smith  23:32  
Yeah, well, for and for me, because I want to hear your perspective from a professional perspective. But for me, it's like, feel like someone understands how I feel, someone it's that shared humanity and the music. It's Amy Evanescence. I love, I love her voice. I love, I love the songs. Yes, yeah, I know the loss that she's been through. And it's like, it makes me feel like, okay, I'm not alone in this. Someone else understands how I feel. Because these are things you can't say to people. You can't tell people the song, particular songs to talk about, people will think you're suicidal. So it's nice to be able to just listen to it and feel those feelings and say it's okay, and then when it's when the song's over, the album's over, then then you go about your day,

Tasha Trujillo  24:17  
yes, yes, yeah. That's what I was getting out that like inanimate there's less risk in some ways. And again, you don't have someone telling you you're doing it wrong or just trying to and again, most people are very well intentioned and want to pick you up, and they care about you, and they see you're in pain, and they want you to feel better. But that's also, I think, a huge part of grief, is that there's often not things that we can do to help someone out of it. Yeah, oftentimes the best intervention is being. There's a difference between doing and being, and how we show up and how we listen and how we be alongside them, can be way more impactful than quote, unquote, doing something that you think is going to take their group. Take away. Yeah, that's

Brian Smith  25:00  
that's really interesting, because we do as human beings. We want to help. We want other people. We want to see them feel better. Sometimes it's for our own benefit, because it makes us feel uncomfortable when someone's sad. But also we want to, we want to say the right things. We want to do right. We want to lift them up. And so again today, and this is really interesting. We're having this conversation today because all this stuff's going on today. But, you know, my Facebook friends, you know, they're like, oh, and they believe, like, I believe that my daughter's still with me. And so people will say encouraging things like, you know, she's still with you. She's, you know, hopefully you'll feel her presence this day and stuff. But another one my friends is like, she was talking about, like she shared a song with someone, and they said, sounds like you're still in grief, and she's like, Yeah, I am still in grief. I'm always going to be in grief. Yeah, you're right,

Tasha Trujillo  25:48  
yes, yeah, yes. And I think people know that on some level, right? But it can just be met with such discomfort in the moment where it's like, Ooh, I see that you're upset, and I just want to make you feel better. So that's why I say it's often well intentioned. And I think this has been one of the biggest lessons I've learned as a psychologist. When I first got into this field, I was very proud, and I'm a former athlete myself, so I'm I'm a go getter, right? I'm very oriented. I'm like, what are the skills that I need to teach people? And, you know, what? How do we problem solve? And I want all this stuff to be in the agenda for each and every session, and so I guess I apologize to my first set of you know, clients during training way back in the day, but at this point, the biggest takeaway for me has been, how can I just show up? Because I don't always have the right thing to say, and I can't always do something or say something that's going to take away the pain that my client is experiencing in that moment, but I can be with them. I can say, I see you. I am with you. This does suck. And you're not by you're not by yourself, yeah, so I'm just going to let you have your feeling, yeah. I

Brian Smith  26:59  
think that's great. I think that's that's so awesome. I was listening to a meditation this morning, this called when we when you must endure and talk that the thing about the grief process is, I liken it to growing a plant. You know, you can say it's like a caterpillar changing into a butterfly, whatever. And I'll tell people, if you put it, if you, if you're gardener and you put a seat in the ground, you don't look at it every 15 minutes and say, grow, grow, grow. But we do that with grief. We're like, why aren't you over it yet? Why am I not over yet? And we have to understand, it's a it's a process. It's a you, you can't rush it. And clients will come in and say, I feel like I'm stuck, and I'm like, You're not stuck. You just you're where you're supposed to be.

Tasha Trujillo  27:45  
Yes, yes, that sense of stuckness too, and that is part of why I wrote the book. Because I know all these things intellectually, but what I was saying to myself, and I mean, still, frankly, if I'm being honest, why still say to myself about my harder days, it is not helpful. It's very mean, and it's very evaluative, and it's just it's, it doesn't, it does not honor the, I keep using this word complexity, but man, it is just such a fitting word. It does not honor the complexity of what it is like to be alive.

Brian Smith  28:22  
Yeah, everything's a mixed bag, and everything's a matter of perspective. And sometimes our perspective even people that are trained, even people that know better, sometimes our perspective gets off. Sometimes we have those, those bad, those sad days, or whatever you want to call them, and that. But if you can just, if you can accept that, not judge yourself for that, because that's, that's what makes it even worse, is when you can pound it by. I shouldn't be feeling this way.

Tasha Trujillo  28:49  
Yes, yes, yeah. I think, in my experience, too, as a helping professional, and as someone who's always been pretty good at solving problems, and, you know, come across pretty even keeled. And, you know, I kind of got some of this mostly figured out. You know, some days are better than others. I think that was really challenging for me too. Because when I did choose to emote or up and open, open up to people, or speak with them a little bit about what was going on for me, it was kind of met with like, Well, you're the professional, so if you can't help yourself, like, I don't really know what to tell you sort of thing. And so again, it was just like, yeah, I gotta I feel stuck right, or I feel like I'm not. And then it just makes you kind of question everything. So you gotta get yourself with some compassion.

Brian Smith  29:37  
Well, it's Yeah. It was like, You, like you said that. To use your word complexity. This is a, this is a, this is a process. We are human beings. We're not robots. We can't We can't just rational and use our brains to work our way out of it. Feelings or feelings, you're, we're going to have emotions, and that's okay. That's that's part of that's part of being human. Um. And we can get into, in my community, spiritual bypassing, where we say, Okay, well, everything's okay. We know we're we know that there, there's there. We're going to see them again. That's that's not a good place to do. Or it can be that that very rational, logical thing that just says, Well, this is not doing you any good. Just get over and accept it and move on, which is the early way that they would deal with grief. They're like, they're gone, except they're gone just, you know, let them go and go on with your life.

Tasha Trujillo  30:28  
Yes, yes, yeah. And that just does not fit the human experience. And so we have to do a better job of talking about grief and educating about grief and showing some of the nuances so that people can still feel connected and supported, but also know that their process is going to look different than anybody else's, and that's fine. Let's

Brian Smith  30:54  
talk about the five stages of grief, which I guess I hope everybody knows by now is a myth. But why is that so persistent and so pervasive?

Tasha Trujillo  31:07  
Yeah, yeah, because I think once it makes its way into more mainstream sort of media, what you hear is what sticks, and it's easier for our brains to make that automatic and to not challenge it and unlearn and relearn other things, it just sticks. So yes, and I think most people, even Dr cooler Ross, who had created that framework initially, she, before she died, she definitely spoke about, hey, this is who I was actually studying. This is not the end. All be. All this is not the only component. But yeah, I think that message really stuck, and I think it is easier for people to wrap their head around than it is for what you and I are talking about, right? If you hear, okay, there's five stages, and you get over it and you move on at some point, yeah, I'd rather to subscribe to that than you and I saying, hey, this sticks with you forever, and you're always going to have hard days, and you gotta accept the both the gains and the life, the losses in life. I think a lot of people are like, Yeah, I'm gonna go over here. Those stages make more sense. This is kind of concrete. I can kind of work my way through that. Yeah,

Brian Smith  32:16  
it's interesting to me, because I'm pretty old, so I was long, long time ago in college, I was taking Psych class, and we were taught the five stages of death and dying. It wasn't the five stages of grief and correct somehow that got transitioned to the five stages of grief, yes,

Tasha Trujillo  32:32  
yes, yeah. And unfortunately, it has done a disservice, I think, to people who have subscribed to that. But that does kind of come back to this freedom that, or liberation that we've been talking about a little bit, because it's really useful for clients. And I've had this experience time and time again where I will help them unlearn that and kind of see it another way. And it can be very freeing to be like, Oh, okay, so I'm not pathological, because I was angry, and then I thought I moved to acceptance, but now I'm in denial again, like, that's I'm not crazy. It's like, no, no, you are not so I think it can be really freeing when people have the right information and expand their understanding.

Brian Smith  33:21  
Yeah, and do you have clients come to you and say, Okay, what? What's your process? You know, how are you going to fix me? Because I, you know people, I, my experience is like they want, like, we're going to do this on week, you know, week one, and this on week two, and this one week three, and then by week six, I'll be fixed.

Tasha Trujillo  33:36  
Yes, quick fixes. Tell me what I can do tell me how long this is going to take. Yeah, yeah, right. I'm I'm ill in some way, so fix me, or I'm broken in some way, so put me back together. I also see this too, a lot with anxiety, especially working with with athletes and performers. You know, they'll come in and they'll say, Oh, I I can't be anxious. You gotta help me get rid of it. I can't be anxious. And so both with grief and anxiety, I always shut them down kind of right at the beginning, and I say, Look, if that's what you're looking for, you're you're probably not going to find it here, because we're not. It's unrealistic to think that we can just rid ourselves of those things, or that there's this quick fix, and you meet with me for four hours, and suddenly everything's going to go away. So I try to do a lot of education to say, hey, you and I build a connection. We build a relationship where we can get into the weeds with these things. But I can't give you a timeline, but what I can say is that I've seen this be effective and helping you adapt and adjust and know yourself a little bit better over time, and so people can pick and choose. Right? Is that? Do I want to subscribe to that or not? It's interesting.

Brian Smith  34:49  
I didn't thought about the parallel with anxiety and grief, but as as I think about that, you know, and I was just think, I was talking to a friend the other day who has a brain injury. You. And so she thinks and acts a little bit differently than other people do. And so, you know, the doctors want to give her like medication. She's asking me my opinion, and I'm like, you know, we want to make everybody like the same people process things, you know. We want everybody process things the same and think the same and talk the same and act the same. And we want to, we want to get rid of our anxiety. And I used to have terrible panic attacks, and I want to get rid of them, but I realized anxiety is part of life. You know, I have to do public speaking, and I get anxious when I do public speaking, but I think almost everybody does, yes,

Tasha Trujillo  35:38  
yes, well, yeah, in the context of this is true for athletes or non athletes, but I talk about it most frequently in the in the athletic or performance realm. And I send this visual that you know, you know when you're really anxious and you feel like you have butterflies in your stomach, right? So there are some butterflies that we probably do want to get rid of, right? If you have anxiety that is so overwhelming that it impacts functioning. Yes, we want to do some work around that, right? But we also know, we know from a performance perspective, research tells us that we perform best at a moderate level of anxiety. So whether you're playing football or you're about to run in the USA Track and field trials that are going on right now, or if you have to get up and give a speech, we want a little bit of anxiety so they The idea is to maybe get rid of some of the butterflies that are not so great, maybe not as pretty to look at, but we do want to keep some and help you figure out how those butterflies can fly in formation. How can you control where they're going a little bit more.

Brian Smith  36:39  
Yeah, I

Tasha Trujillo  36:40  
love that, yeah. And I think that's similar for grief, right? If we consider all of the emotions and the conflict and the ways that these emotions interact and, you know, they butt heads and all those sorts of things, we're not going to get those emotions or those connections to go away, necessarily. But can we figure out how we can maneuver a little bit better, right? Maybe we gotta move it just a little bit because the pressure in that one area is a little too much, but it's still going to be there sort of thing. Yeah,

Brian Smith  37:09  
we have to learn life is life is messy, life is complex, and we are going to go through various emotions. And we can't, we can't get rid of all the ones that we we call bad, you know? We have to understand that they're they're there for a reason. They're there to, I like to tell people I think they're there to teach you something. So you know, when you're having anger, for example, people you know, anger is a big part of grief. I'm like, Well, why? Ask yourself, why are you angry? And some of it's probably, you know, justified. So it's okay, it's natural, yes,

Tasha Trujillo  37:42  
yes. And our emotions do give us really important information, yeah, to your point, with anger, when we can identify why we are angry, you know, if we have been wronged in some way or hurt in some way, and we're feeling that anger, that's valid, that's really good, important information for us.

Brian Smith  38:00  
Yeah? Well, you know, I have suicide is a very complex thing, because there's so much around suicide, which, if you're a survivor, you're the person that, you know, the other person's taking their life. And, you know, I'll have clients say, Well, I don't really want to say this, but I'm kind of mad at him. I'm mad at him for for, for leaving me, and I'm like, That's okay. If you're feeling it, say it. You know it's you're not going to hurt that person, and you've got to process that, because the alternative is to just stuff it inside and say, This is something I shouldn't feel. Yes,

Tasha Trujillo  38:35  
again, it's that both and it's that both and, when you do try to shove it down or bury it or deny that that part exists, it makes the process just that much more exhausting and draining and challenging. I hear this a lot, too with p and i actually speak to this in the book a little bit, but with those who have had chronic illnesses and family members are kind of in this position where, of course, they don't want their loved one to die, but they're also like it will bring some relief, and I acknowledge that right like my loved one has suffered so much and there's so much guilt and there's so much shame, and nobody wants to say that out loud or talk about that, but that's a very normal, natural response to seeing someone You love and so much pain and have been for so long, where it's like, I get you're not wishing them dead. You're not right, but you're like, yeah, yeah, gains and losses,

Brian Smith  39:32  
yeah. Another one, because it's such a prevalent thing right now, is, you know, people who are like, I said kids, because, again, I'm old, but people who are struggling with drugs, you know, and they're addicted, and their loved ones are watching them, you know, taking that chance time after time, and then they overdose. And there's, there's sometimes a sense of relief, and it's like, and then people feel guilty because, but it's like, well, I don't have to worry about them anymore. And that is. That is a that is a benefit. I mean, it is

Tasha Trujillo  40:03  
yes, yes. And does that take away the pain and the sadness and the hurt? No, right? It just shows that both exist. Yeah,

Brian Smith  40:12  
it's against. It's going back to which it's not either or. It's not like I either am sad that they're gone or I'm relieved that I don't have to worry about them anymore, but it can actually be both things at the same time. Yeah, yeah,

Tasha Trujillo  40:25  
which, again, is really hard for us as humans to wrap our head around, because we like to categorize, we like, we like to make things easier in our brain, so that it can just be automatic and we don't have to think that much about it. And this, you got to think a lot about grief. Yeah, yeah, you gotta be with grief a lot. I

Brian Smith  40:44  
wanted to talk to you because, again, we talked about other types of losses, and I know she talked about, you know, aging people, but also, like, it's really interesting. I have a friend who just retired recently, and I'm at the age where my friends are, you know, a lot of my friends are retiring, and I'm like, in that process of evaluating, you know, what I'm going to do. And I know sock, my wife there, was like, you know, we're here. We never thought we'd be here, but we're, we're here at this point. But my friend, it was really interesting, because he got a he got a pension, he got a great buyout package, you know, from from the from the bank that he worked for, but he was like feeling lost, feeling worthless, feeling like he had been rejected. Have you? Have you experienced that?

Tasha Trujillo  41:32  
Oh, my goodness, yes, yes. This is why I think it's so important to talk about grief, not just being associated with death, right, with things like retirement, and this is also we have to think about someone's belief system and the cultural system and that sort of thing. What? What identities matter, right? Certain culture and a certain community that this individual is a part of, because all of that, you know, if you are, if you have been used to, and, my goodness, I talk about this in athletics all the time, if your self worth is tied to your production or your accomplishments or what you do, and then you retire. Yeah. Who are you? What are you? What are you doing? What is your purpose? You know, is there satisfaction? Is there meaning? There can be a lot of grief around that. I think it's also there's more space, there's less structure, and so you're also in a place where you're having more time to think about these things and figure out what you want to do with your time. And it can bring up a lot, and you don't have that same sort of production to strive for, to do every day, and it can be very, very displacing. Yeah, well, I

Brian Smith  42:45  
think, I think that surprises a lot of people when they, when they get to that point, even their own, their their, their own feelings about, you know, who they are. And then, in fact, you have said to me, it's like, well, I don't, I don't know I am anymore, because this is what I've done for, you know, 40 years and and people, you know, I had to go to this place and do this thing, and now it's like, what do I do with my day? Yes,

Tasha Trujillo  43:08  
yes. It's interesting too, that you point out rejection, because I also think that is a really misunderstood or not talked about level of that sort of thing as well, with the aging process, right, when we are no longer desirable in the same way for for whatever reason? Yes, that rejection can be very displacing. And so when you're throwing all of the identity stuff, and then you've got some some social rejection, or this perception that you are unworthy, both for yourself, because you're not producing and other people don't see as much value in you, that's a lot of grief.

Brian Smith  43:46  
So what would be some effective strategies for supporting loved ones as as they're aging?

Tasha Trujillo  43:54  
I think part of it is naming that right, naming that process, and talking about it without trying to take it away. Because in this case of your friend, if he is feeling that rejection, there's some validity to it. There's some validity to it. So I think naming that and just kind of being with him and giving him that space to talk through it, I think that can be super useful for our loved ones. And I think we have to be careful too, because, you know, there's this jump. I'm even thinking through conversations with my grandma when she was kind of losing some of her functioning and that sort of thing. And she would say, I feel very burdensome. I feel very useless. And my go to was like, No, you're not burdensome. You're not right. Was just to argue a little bit, you know, well intentioned, right? But I wish I would have had the understanding to say, like, Help Help me understand that a little bit more. And just to say that is hard, that is hard, that sucks. And of course, look for opportunities to say, I still see a lot of value in you and our relationship. And our connection still matters a great deal to me, but I do wish I would have had the opportunity and allowed myself just to say, Tell me more. Yeah, well,

Brian Smith  45:12  
I think, and a big part of it is, and we're not going to be able to change our society, but I think we can maybe recognize how society doesn't value the elderly, you know, and other societies, societies do and past societies have, where elders were considered wisdom. They were they were valued. They were sought after. People went to them to ask for their advice. And this, and then this society where it's all about what you produce in terms of material things, people sometimes feel like they're not worthy anymore. And so what I what I try to like with my friend, I was like, You've earned this, right? You have worked your whole life to get to this point. You've earned this. This is not, this is not, you know, a punishment. This what think about it as, an opportunity. And it's really interesting, because he turned around really quickly. I mean, in a few months, and I was talking to him a little bit later, he's like, Yeah, I'm starting to enjoy it. But again, it's shifting the perspective of being rejected to now I have an opportunity.

Tasha Trujillo  46:16  
Yes, yes, yeah, gains and losses, right? Yes, that Rejection hurts and is painful, but what is it opening up for you? And again, day one day two? Probably wouldn't bring that up, but yeah, in time, that becomes a lot more easy to talk about. I The the phrase that I use in these circumstances, basketball was my sport, so I use a lot of basketball references. But right, when you come to that point where that something like that has happened, you you can do a couple things, you can pivot, you can persist, or you can totally bow out, right? And for most people, that is not that one is like, No, I don't want to give up. I want to be a fighter, that sort of thing. And so it's like, okay, if you pivot, what does that look like because you're you're changing perspectives, you're giving yourself a different vantage point there. And if you're persisting, are you go? Are you persisting in the way that you're still pursuing, right? You're still trying to get through that one barrier, or are you pivoting and persisting in another direction? So I always make sure persist doesn't mean just keep trying the exact same thing over and over again. But what does that persistence look like when you are able to pivot and see things from a different angle, see different openings? Yeah,

Brian Smith  47:28  
that's great. I love that. So how, how has perspective or the perception of grief changed over time, if it has, and what would you like for people to know about grief.

Tasha Trujillo  47:43  
Awesome question. The first thing that comes to mind is a visual for me, and I often talk about how grief never goes away, as you and I have talked about, but it does change shape over time. It takes up different space around you, and of course, that can look different day to day. But I think that is a really important idea to think through, you know. And as you said, there are certain anniversaries I know, for me in my life, there are certain old months that are that are just a lot harder, and I kind of recognize that, and I know, and now I kind of plan for it, and I get that that space is going to feel different, and it's exhausting to kind of prepare for that and know that that is coming. And I can't say that I love it or agree with it or even like it all that much a lot of the time, but I do think that is helpful recognizing some of the cyclical or kind of temporary nature of some of the feelings. It is always there, but the intensity, I think, can be a little bit different, and that's a message that's really important to send to people.

Brian Smith  48:50  
Yeah, I like that a lot. What you just said, I was thinking about it as you were talking and, you know, the anniversaries, they feel the same, but they're also different. It's not as intense as it used to be, and it's really interesting, because as we come up to the day, all my friends, you know, they know it's coming up, and then they're really well intentioned, they'll start sending me messages a week before, and I'm like, Okay, so now, not as just the day. It's like a whole week that, you know, people are saying, I'm going to be thinking about you and stuff, but also understanding the temporary nature of it. Because I'm like, I know it's going to be intense on that day, and then the next day it'll be less intense. It'll be totally different tomorrow than it is today. And I used to, I used to suffer with seasonal affective disorder, and I live in Ohio, and the weather here is horrible. In the winter, it's gray, and I struggled with it for years, and it finally got a light. I got a sad light, and I put it on my desk, and I was like, this is helping. And then one day, I was like, You know what? I'm just going to deal with it. It's natural. It's a normal cycle of nature. I know it's going to be for a couple of months. Um. Um, nature shuts down in the winter. The animals hibernate, the trees drop their leaves. Why do I feel like I should feel the same all the time? So I stopped using the light, and now, like in the winter, I still I hate the winter. It still sucks, but I'm like, but it's short, and it's shorter every year, because the older you get, the faster time goes by. So I'm like, I could do.

Tasha Trujillo  50:22  
Yes, yes, well, and that is something too this idea of I can deal with it, I can adapt, I can right, I can figure it out. And I find that so fascinating about the human condition, because I think about some of the things that people survive and live through, and I'm like, wow, how, how did you do that? How do you do that? Day after day? And it's incredible to me. And so I think this idea of, how can I be a little bit better? I almost bring in some sports, like stuff in that too, because it's like, what is this idea of not that I'm going to be a perfect Griever by any means, but what is this idea of continued improvement and kind of striving for excellence and trying to make the life that I have left a bit more bearable? Right? How do you deal with the unbearable and really appreciate, have gratitude for the bearable, because that, even that feels very different after you've gone through a significant loss.

Brian Smith  51:28  
Yeah. Well, I think sports, sports is a great analogy for lots of things. And as people, as we go through these processes, we go through the pain of being human, the traumas, again, losses of people, but losses of all other types of things. I'll talk to people, and I believe that we're spiritual beings and that we're here having a human experience. And I believe that we we choose to come here, whether we choose each individual, individual event or not. I think we choose and people will say, Well, I would never choose that. Why would I do that? And I turn to sports, and I say, I would never run a marathon. I think it's insane for people to run 26 miles. I would never do a triathlon. That's like, that's insanity, but people do it because they want to test themselves. And it's, it's painful. It's like, it's not easy to do. It's like you're pushing your body. You're going through pain, but you're doing it because you feel like it's worth it. And I try to tell people, it's like, when you're going through these grief events, think of it that way, that you know you are you are building these muscles, you're building these skills, you're building you're going to come out of this eventually a better person than you were going into it.

Tasha Trujillo  52:40  
Yeah, yeah. And a more adaptable person, nonetheless, yeah. And I think grief, you know, I wouldn't even compare it to a marathon. It's more of those. It's the ultras, it's the 50s, the 80s, 100 200 mile races, you know, just extends beyond what we think we're capable of,

Brian Smith  52:59  
yeah, well, and that's a really great point beyond we think we're capable of. Because when that event happens, you know, and I've talked to so many people that have said, this is more than I can bear, and it was talking to someone the other day that said something about like, you know, sometimes we get more than we can bear. And I say, if you're still here, it wasn't more than you could bear. It feels like it is. I know it felt like it did at the time, but you've shown that it's not more than you can bear.

Tasha Trujillo  53:26  
Yes, yes. Oh, and that's one of my very favorite concepts to play with. Is this idea of I call it checking the facts, helping us recognize that sometimes we might feel something and our feeling is valid, but it doesn't necessarily fit the facts of the situation. Yeah, and I think that can be really helpful to kind of tear apart. You know, what is the the evident? What does the evidence tell us? What what do my thoughts Tell me? What do my feelings tell me? And I think looking at that with a critical eye sometimes can be really, really helpful. I mean, your feeling is still valid, but it doesn't necessarily fit the facts of the situation. And again, I think that can be quite freeing. Yeah, we can adapt and work with that feeling a little bit more.

Brian Smith  54:11  
Yeah. Well, yeah, because you said what you said, they reminded me, I interviewed a guy who wrote a book, and he was feeling guilt after his mother passed away, and the guilt he was feeling was he didn't spend enough time with her. I should have spent more time with her in the hospital, you know, etc, but he sat down and he kind of checked the facts, and he's like, I spent every moment I could with her. I couldn't have spent any more time with her. But so he's like, so the facts are the same I spent X number of hours with her. Now I can choose how I feel about it. I can tell myself this story, the story that I'm not a good son, that I wasn't there as much as I should have been, or I could tell myself the other story, that I spent as much time with her as I could. Now, again, it's objective how many hours you spent with her, but it's. Subjective whether it was enough or not, and that's the choice that we get to make, yes,

Tasha Trujillo  55:05  
yes, even that, though I could turn into a both an and because it sounds like he spent as much time as he could and still didn't feel like it was enough. And with our most significant relationships, isn't that the case, right? We never feel like we can spend or like we can get enough time with as much as we pour into. It's like, oh, there's always, there's always more. And I'd like more, and, you know, like, this is this person or this thing is just so important to me. So even that is a both end,

Brian Smith  55:36  
yes, yeah, it absolutely is. And so again, it's these things that are, that are subjective, the things that our feelings. We can, we can, I believe, I know, we can make choices. We can make choices how we look at it. And it may not seem that way at first, but when you talked about, like, you know, checking the facts, I think that's so important. It's like, let me sit down and really think about this, and I'll talk to clients who feel guilty because they did do something or they didn't do something, and I will play out like both scenarios with them and say, if you, if you made the other decision and something happened, would you still feel the same way? You know? So what it's people, and maybe you can explain to me why it's like, sometimes it's almost like we want to make ourselves feel bad. We will. We will blame ourselves we're harder on ourselves than we're on anybody else. We'll say I was a terrible parent because I let him walk to the park by himself, or I was a terrible parent, because whatever we fill in the blank,

Tasha Trujillo  56:40  
yes, yes. The way. I'm sure this is not the only way to think about this, but where my mind goes in those situations is that when we convince ourselves that we have control over something that we don't, that feels better than sitting with the uncertainty and the lack of control that we have in certain situations, right? So it's like, if I can tell myself that I if I just would have done this one thing different, then the outcome would have been what I wanted. Instead of saying, here's the process, I did everything I could, and I this outcome still happened. Yeah, that is just so much harder to sit with, and there's so many more feelings than giving us the sense of control and blame?

Brian Smith  57:23  
Yeah, I actually cut and dry. I kind of came to that conclusion. So I think you validated the conclusion I've come to, because I think it's a, it's a matter of control we want to have. We want to live in this illusion that we can control the world. So if we go, if we take ourselves retroactively and say I had control over that situation, that means you have control over the future, so you don't have to give up this illusion of control, and to say that I didn't have any control also means I don't have control over the future, and that that fear is greater than we'll have to deal with the guilt now, because it's my fault, and I've had people say to me, They're like, they'll say to me, they're like, well, obviously it's my fault, because this happens, so clearly I made the wrong decision. I'm like, that's not true.

Tasha Trujillo  58:09  
Yeah, yeah. It's an avoidance strategy, really, yeah.

Brian Smith  58:16  
So hopefully we can help people to kind of pick these things apart, you know, and to understand the reasons why we do the things that we do, to basically self sabotage and help them, you know, move through those things a little bit more easily. And I know you have some some tools in your book that can help people, but they're not like, you know, do these three things and you'll be okay in six weeks. So what? But what types of things do you offer?

Tasha Trujillo  58:43  
Yes, yes, it's definitely, and I'm very upfront about that from the beginning, it's not a how to book. There's not going to be this certain set of skills or steps to take, but throughout the book and in each chapter. So the way that it's it's set up is that I start with a narrative, so I talk through what the event is that I'm covering, and to create those narratives I interviewed. So some of the stories, it's a multi generational memoir. It's not just a personal memoir, because I look at people who have impacted me and their experiences. Because all of that impacts who I am too, whether I was alive for an event, or there for an event or not. And so I think that piece is really, I mean, that's a whole nother conversation we could get into, but I think that is really, really powerful and important. So I interviewed people to put the narrative together. And so the first part of each chapter is very raw, very like, here is the narrative, here's what happened. And I infuse everyone's perspectives to try to make it, you know, as comprehensive and well rounded as I can. The second part, each chapter is a bit of a synthesis, so it kind of goes through and I incorporate education, I incorporate knowledge, I incorporate questions for the reader, but it's, it's not academic. I don't cite. Research. It's not heavily footnoted or anything like that. I'm weaving that together in a way that anyone can just pick up and read and kind of put some dots together. And so through that synthesis, I encourage you know, I and I will pause in certain places and ask people, you know, here's a series of questions for you to think about, how does this impact you, that sort of thing. So I weave some different interventions and things people can take away as I'm synthesizing

Brian Smith  1:00:29  
awesome. I think that's I think it's great. It sounds like it's very much needed, because we can, we can help people, we can offer a little bit of guidance. We can come alongside them, but we can't chart the path for them. We can't offer them a pill. And I guess maybe the last one of the last questions I want to ask you, because as we've talked about grief and what it is, and, you know, pretty recently, or fairly recently, the DSM, you know, I think the DSM five talked about prolonged grief disorder. And so what are your thoughts about that?

Tasha Trujillo  1:01:05  
Yeah, this is the second time I've been asked this question. Yeah, it's a bit of a hot button for me. I understand, and I do think it's important that we look at how people are functioning, and if someone is truly being affected and functioning as being highly impacted. Yes, we need to look at that, and we need to help people figure out how to, you know, restore that or optimize that as best as we can. But I think to pathologize grief, which is something that never goes away, right? So if prolonged grief disorders whatever six months or whatever. So if I'm grieving for six months and one day or right, nine years later on, on the anniversary of your daughter's death, if you're upset today, that's pathological. Yeah, we'd have to diagnose you and prescribe you something for that. No, no, so I struggle with that a little bit. Again, I understand, and I think that's humans goal and desire to categorize things or to cluster things in a way that makes it easy for our brain to digest. But grief is just tough to do that with. And so I struggle a bit with the diagnosis. I get its purpose. Yeah? I think, well, in my opinion,

Brian Smith  1:02:18  
yeah. Again, back to that thing, that things are complex. I think that I understand the purpose, and I understand if someone's like, can't get out of bed and can't, can't get to work, you know, stuff like that. Okay, then find that we need to, we need to maybe intervene. But there's a, there's a danger of pathology, pathologizing grief, which I think is always a real danger. And the thing that when I heard about it that upset me the most was they're like, Well, if we treat grief like a like an addiction, like a drug, just a drug addiction, then maybe we can find a pill that would cure it. And I'm like, if you think there's ever going to be a pill that's going to cure grief, you have no idea what grief is, or human consciousness for that matter, yes,

Tasha Trujillo  1:03:05  
yes, yeah, which is a whole. And I make this point in the book. The goal is to help people understand that we cannot pathologize it, nor can we overmedicate it. And I that's always something. I cannot tell you how many people have found their way into my office or their work with me, and said, Oh, well, you know, I was prescribed a, b, c and d because I was having a hard time sleeping, or I was having cognitive fog, or I was having it's like, yeah, that's all, that's all grief. I don't know that we need to throw medication at that. And again, I want to be very respectful of the impact on functioning and looking at some of those things, but I just think it does more harm than good. And we're also sending this message, you have six months to deal with all that. If you're still feeling this way after that, then there is something wrong with you and there isn't.

Brian Smith  1:03:52  
Yeah, yeah. Well, I've really enjoyed our conversation. Thanks for being here today. Remind people of where they can find you and remind people about the name of your book. Yeah,

Tasha Trujillo  1:04:04  
great question. So I'm in Denver, Colorado, that's where I live, and I am licensed in like 40 states as a psychologist. So yeah, I can work with people. And I even have on my website, NPT therapy.com, you can check a little map to see if I would be able to work with you in your state as far as the book goes. And she was never the same again.com. Is the website for that. You can get it on Amazon now. The audiobook just dropped last week, in fact. So it's ebook, paperback and audio so far. And then socials, of course, I have Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook, my instance at NPT therapy.

Brian Smith  1:04:44  
All right. Natasha, thanks so much for being here today.

Tasha Trujillo  1:04:46  
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.

Brian Smith  1:04:49  
All right. Enjoy your afternoon. You.

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