Healing from Heartbreak And Grief w/ David Kessler | Matt Monday

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What we run from pursues us, and what we face transforms us.

A dear friend of mine, David Kessler, made a guest appearance on my live retreat in Florida this year, and he blew people away. David Kessler is the world's foremost expert on grief, and the stuff he talked about in this session, it should be required listening for Everybody who wants to overcome pain in life, heal from past grief, and move on to a happier life. David changed my life. We did a session together that wasn't supposed to be a session. I was supposed to be interviewing him and in the middle of the interview, what he was saying just, I mean, it broke through any defenses I had professionally and It allowed me to release some things that I'd been holding on to. So he just has that ability to break through. See if this does that for you. I think it will. I'm so excited for you to watch this. This is David Kessler.

I want to start on what may seem, after so many years of doing this, for you, David, like a, a painfully simple question, but why is it important that we grieve? You know, I know that everyone would have, you know, everyone in this room would have some kind of bumper sticker answer to that, a cliched answer to that. And yet, so many of us avoid grieving because we don't want to open that door. Whether we're grieving a person that is no longer here, whether we're grieving a person that is still here, whether we're grieving a life that was lost, a job that was lost, a future that was lost, a family that we never had and lost the opportunity to have. We all have things. No one in this room hasn't been touched by grief, and yet so many of us spend our lives avoiding it. And one of the things, David, that we've been talking about this week is that with anything that is difficult to do, if we don't have a big enough why for doing it, we're not gonna do it. Logic isn't gonna get us there. We need a deeper reason that moves us to do it. So my hope with this question is that rather than everyone just going, yes, I know it's important to grieve, everyone truly connects to the deeper why of why does life get better? How do we get helped if we actually choose to do the difficult work of grieving?

Okay, I'll give you the bumper sticker. And the bumper sticker is true, and then I'll go for a deeper answer. But the truth is, those who grieve well live well. Those who grieve well live well. Matt told you a little bit about my life. I want to also just say not only did I have to say goodbye to my mother, and by the way, before I go into this, I want to just mention triggers. I call them activators. They're those intense reactions. R, Norm, Is if we are triggered, we often run. We want to protect ourselves. We want to step out of the room. I've been triggered. Let me walk out of the room. Because I might say something that activates you, that triggers you. I want to invite you to consider your triggers for grief, for trauma, for old wounds, whatever they may be for, I want you to consider them a map of where your pain is and a map to your healing. And so we all inherently know how to run out of the room if we get triggered. But I want to invite you to try to stay present and get curious. It's so hard to do. I do this myself. When I go into a wound, I like try to stop myself and go, oh, I'm in it. Like I don't always get a chance to be this deep in it. With a pause, let me pause and be curious about this pain I'm in. So when we think about why do this, one of the other things I think about is I've done many groups like this and you come to a hotel and I remember one time coming to a hotel and having my meeting room full of people and next door was the realtors and down the hall was the nurses and around the corner was the Kiwanis Club and all that. At the end of the day, the staff came by as we were wrapping up and they said, what were you talking about in here? And I said, why do you ask? And they said, Cause your group was laughing the most. And I said, Grief. And they said, what kind? And I said, the kind you have when There's a change you didn't want to happen. And they couldn't understand it. But here's the thing. That group cried deeper and laughed heartier. Loss and grief and healing expands our bandwidth. I ran into in my neighborhood a woman who worked with me years ago, maybe 30 years ago. And we're just walking, I'm walking my dog and I ran into her and she said, oh my gosh, I've been following your career. I did it, I'm like, I'm a neighbor. And she said, I'd love to be friends with you, but it would just be too depressing. And I said, and I actually thought this, I don't know that I said it, but I thought you'd be be surprised if you're with me. I think I'm one of the most fun-loving people in the world. I mean, I love joy. I love happiness. And I appreciate it in how fleeting it can be and how precious it is. And I have been through, I can remember in my childhood, we talk about the death and the shooting and all that of my mother. But before that, my son obviously, but before that, I grew up with parents who had wonderful hearts. I can say that because I knew their hearts. But my father had such unattended rage. And I remember him coming in and being after me. and running into the kitchen terrified. And I remember pulling out this drawer from the cabinets so that he couldn't open the door and him pushing the door and all the cabinets in the kitchen came down. That was his rage. And I remember my mother who.

Had.

Unmedicated We would call it bipolar now. And so, and with all that going on, I also ended up being sexually abused. So I have been a buffet of things. And, you know, even with my own mother dying in that hospital when there was the shooting outside, a small note, my parents had me in the room. When they had, and remember, this is a husband and wife, wife is dying, they had a monogamy discussion. Note to self, never have a monogamy discussion around kids. Not a good idea. Talk about screwing up relationships for a really long time. So, I came out of this with a lot of abandonment issues, trust issues, I mean, so much. And one of the things I have trained therapists for years, and they have always showed up and told me how they got into this work or they're helpers or coaches because of what they've been through. And they were always evidence for me that healing is possible. And if I can hope for anything today with me sitting with you, that I can be evidence that no matter what you've been through, and I'm sure it has just been brutal at times, that I can be evidence that you can find healing too. So, why to live, to live fully, to enjoy this life we've been given in spite of the wounds of others?

I love the line that you said, Grief is a change you didn't want to have.

Yes.

And how diverse of an umbrella, how wide of an umbrella that is for so many different experiences.

Yeah, we think it's about death, and of course it is, but it's also about the parent you didn't have, the childhood you should have had, the relationships, all of those things, just neglect. There's a million grief and losses in the world.

So we talked about why, how.

And.

How can we grieve.

What we run from pursues us, and what we face transforms us. What we run from pursues us, and what we face transforms us. Now, here's the thing people probably outside of these rooms don't understand. People will go, oh, they've been through loss, they've been through grief, they've touched the pain, they touched the hot stove. For a lot of you, the hot stove fell on you. You didn't touch it, it fell on you. And so part of this is, Being with it. Now here's the thing, it is as simple and as complicated as feeling it. We can't heal what we don't feel. And one of the simple things to think about is we're one of the first generations that has feelings on feelings. Right? Oh my gosh, I'm so angry, but angry is inappropriate. I shouldn't feel anger. Let me toss it behind me, half felt. Oh, I'm so sad. Oh no, but someone else has it worse than me. And what about everything that's happening in the world? I mean, mine is nothing. I minimize it. I toss it behind me. We have all these half felt feelings behind us, and we never Feel them and what happens? People always say, David, you don't understand. If I started crying, I would never stop. And I tell them, I have sat with thousands of people and they have all stopped crying. They may cry again someday, I would imagine they would if they're human, but they all stopped. You know, one of the things our wounds of our childhood does, is when we're in pain, it whispers to us, you might be in this pain forever. And you're like, crap. And that's not true. No feeling is final. No feeling you have is final. Every feeling is going to change. So it's about being present and feeling it.

How do we create moments for that? Do we wait for them and when they strike, not run away? And what does not running away practically look like? Or do we proactively pursue those moments?

You have to do none of that. What's in front of you is your healing. Let me give you an example. We're judgment machines. We're always judging. What if I walked into this room and I went, oh my gosh, I gotta find an audience for my healing. Let me find, I need this specific, oh, there you all are. Mmm, not the right audience. You're not the right audience for me. What would happen even if I thought that subtly, so subtly I thought that, you know what would happen? You would feel it. You would feel on some level, David doesn't feel right about being with us. And it would bring a disconnection to us. How do I know you're the right audience today? Because you're here. Because you're in front of me. You're the ones that showed up to dance today. You're exactly the right person. You are exactly the right audience for my healing. Matt's exactly the right person for my healing. You know, I remember that day we talked on that walk and you said something about, you know, I feel like there's something here, like, you know, we're gonna be friends. And I said, it can't work one way. I can't be here for your healing without him being here for mine too. And that's true with every single situation. Every single person is our healer, is our teacher. It doesn't mean you like them, doesn't mean you approve of what they do or how they treat you. But there for your healing. Every situation is a clue. So the question becomes, here I am today, what's up for me? What's up for me today?

For people who relate to feeling something and then they almost Shut it down. We're so used to that, right? We start crying and we wipe away the tears and we say, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. We kind of immediately lock it up again. We snap ourselves out of it. And for some people, they may not even get there. There will be people in this room who will say, I just feel completely numb. Like, how do I access it when I just feel numb. I feel so disconnected. So perhaps that's a two-parter, but what can people do who feel like something comes up for them, but there's almost an instinctive and reflexive shutting down?

Because you needed to. Because you needed to protect yourself in the past, and you're trying to protect yourself in the moment. You know, we talk about, oh, I'm being triggered. Your mind actually isn't triggered. Your mind is predictive. Your mind is predictive. It's this amazing computer that's trying to predict the next moment to keep you safe. And what does it have to rely on? The experience of the past. So it takes the past to predict the future. Warning, warning, warning. and we see danger when there's not danger. So to recognize, oh, that's the protective part in me trying to run from this. That's the part of me that's just trying to take care of me. Here's the thing, I always tell people like, oh, we're so judging ourselves and they go, I'm not judging myself. We are judging ourselves. But I won't even explain that because we all know we do. But this work isn't self-help. This work is self-acceptance. When Matt says, what if they're feeling numb? To go, oh, all right, I'm feeling numb. Numb's good. It's okay to be numb today. Because here's the thing, when we accept where we are, it magically changes. When we fight where we are, it sticks with us.

Yeah, because there's always been moments on a retreat where I know certain people feel there is a judgment that says, I'm not feeling what I am supposed to be feeling right now. I can see other people around me getting emotional. I can see that just resonated with everybody, but for me, I don't feel anything. And then they go into a story of, therefore, I must be broken.

But who's going to do you if not you? I mean, I get she's doing this and she's doing, but I gotta be me. I'm not supposed to do them. I gotta be me. Oh, look how much they're crying. Okay, look how much I'm not crying. I'm doing me perfectly. I am doing me perfectly. Here's one more thing I want to say about that. People say to me so many times, David, you don't understand, I'm so good at my work, but I'm so screwed up in relationships. Anyone ever thought that? Yeah, right? So, most of us, You are doing relationships 100% correctly. Like if I could grade all of you and you shouldn't be asking me for a grade, but if you wanted a grade, I would give you all an A+. You are doing relationships exactly right. Exactly the way you were taught. You were doing it by the imprint you were given. You're following the imprint. The work and the imprint has the loss, has the abuse, has the grief, has all of it in it. How do we go past the imprint to come into this moment and just show up? That's where the new relationship begins.

[Enclosure] [Enclosure] Isn't David brilliant? I remember the first time I sat with David, I knew instantly, wow, this person has a gift. And it's one thing to listen to it, it's another thing to work through the stages that David talks about, to work through the things that he's saying. If this resonated with you, and you want to apply what David is talking about on a practical level to work through something in your life, David has a brand new workbook out called Finding Meaning: the Sixth Stage of Grief. It is a practical workbook that you can go through to actually apply what he is teaching. So go check it out. I'm going to leave a link, grab a copy for you, grab a copy for anyone in your friend group or your family that you know could also benefit from this. And let me know in the comments what you thought of this session. It was very, very special for me and for the people inside that room. I hope it was for you too. I can't wait to read your comments and I'm excited to know the results you get from going through the workbook. Be well. Thank you to David, my friend. I so appreciate you doing this. And thank you to all of you for watching. Be well and love life.