22: The fake stages of grief

Hello friends, and welcome to Grief Guts and Green Smoothies. I am your host, Melissa Dugalecki, and I am so excited to be here with you all to chat about ways in which we can all get through different adversities, challenges and loss and how getting outside of our comfort zone and maybe having a green smoothie or two can help us do so. We will cover different topics, ranging from interviews to recipes to sharing my own stories of my grief journey and the loss of my daughter, Layden. Honored to be able to share her light in hopes of helping you spread yours. Now, let's dive in. Hey everyone. I am so excited that this week I get to dive a lot deeper into grief. And grief is a widely misunderstood topic and I believe that it's through it being misunderstood, it feels really overwhelming. And so my goal is to use this week to break it down. And each day, Monday through Friday, I will have a short sprint episode hitting a different topic of grief. You can go back and listen to them. Let me know what you think, and I hope that you will learn a lot of new tools that will support you or the people in your lives in managing this inevitable energy. Now, I think universally nobody welcomes in grief. Nobody wants it. For those of you just tuning in, my grief journey started in 2014 and it was this week, June 19, 2014. I lost my daughter Laden at Boston Children's Hospital. So I'm dedicating this week in honor of her life and in my grief journey to helping disempower the overwhelm of grief and empower each of you to manage and navigate it with a little more clarity and a little more confidence. Let's get started. Okay, friends, we have made it to day three. Thank you for joining in this week with me where I recognize the start of my grief journey, which began five years ago with my daughter Leiden, and the different paths that has taken and honoring her life by sharing resources with all of you around grief and loss and how we navigate forward. Today we are talking about what I call the false stages of grief. So there has been a lot of research done and I believe with all the best intentions around grief and what are called the stages of grief and different models have come out. There are two primary ones. You'll see the five stages of grief and the seven stages of grief. And while I believe there are facts within them, they are very misleading, I think do a disservice to people who are experiencing grief. And that's not to say that there's not benefit and understanding them isn't important. It was, I think it's just like anything over time. We have new information, we have new data, we have new research and we can create more informed conclusions. I always reference when people are resistant to change or new ideas or relationships, that there was point in time where we didn't realize that smoking was bad for us. There used to be smoking breaks and smoking rooms in schools and in offices or just anywhere with new information and time. That perspective has shifted so very similarly to these five and seven stages of grief. We do the best we can with the information we have at any given time. What I think is important is building awareness that things have changed. What we know to be true has shifted. And with that, I do not believe that grief moves in linear stages. It doesn't move from one cleanly to the next, cleanly to the next, cleanly to the next. And so first we're just going to touch on what the stages of grief are, then break down what I believe to be the more realistic way in which they integrate into our lives. So more widely known are the five stages of grief. The first one, denial. The second one, anger. The third one, bargaining, the fourth, depression. And the fifth, acceptance. The two that were added since then include shock, the very first stage, and testing as a stage between depression and acceptance. In this progression, depression serves as the lowest point. Shock is complete shock and surprise, not processing it. Denial is when we are in disbelief, we try to disprove it. Anger is defined as frustrated outpouring of bottled up emotion. Bargaining is seeking for a way out. Depression, finally realizing that this is inevitable. Testing, seeking a realistic solution and acceptance. Finding the way forward. And it's interesting, some of these on Google, it says finally finding the way forward. And there's like a little bit of layer of judgment there. Like finally, and I will say this all the time, there is no timeline on grief, There is none. So if you're feeling that you haven't found that way forward, that's okay, keep going one day at a time. Or if you feel as though you found that way forward and then you lose it, it's okay, you're going to find it again. And this is, that is more in line with what I really believe is an actual web of grief. So I do not believe in the stages of grief. I do believe in these different pillars or aspects rather of grief. And I believe that they are experienced more in like a web, some will say a cycle. I don't think it's even that clean. I wish it was. I wish I could tell you it was that clean. It was that easy to understand, it was that much of a process. But based on everyone's experiences, whether it's the first time in grief or not, whether you've had previous experiences with grief that aren't fully resolved, those are going to have a much more significant impact on any future grief journeys. Whether families impacted, how much of a percentage of your world it takes up, all of these things are really going to impact how you navigate these stages of grief and in what order. So now what I would love for you to do is take yourself back to the classroom. You guys know I love teaching analogies, comparisons, that is my, my background and I love it. But take yourself back to the classroom. When we would use, or you did, or your classroom, whatever it was, you would use. Graphic organizers. I loved and still love a good graphic organizer. I use graphic organizers when I coach my one on one clients, whether they are making decisions, whether they are preparing for a job interview, even to find clarity around having a difficult conversation with a significant other. We use graphic organizers all the time. So it is no surprise that I use it here in grief. So think of a graphic organizer. Now, if you're not familiar with one, you can look them up, but essentially there's a central circle, a little bubble. And I want you to put yourself in that center. That's you, your grief journey. And then coming out from you are like little arms, like little lines, and each of them comes to another circle. And these are going to be parts of your grief journey. And fill in each of these stages. And you might even have other experiences that would fit into a completely different category. I would love to hear about it. You know, I think isolation is one that could go under, perhaps denial, perhaps depression, but it could also hold on its own. Right. There are many others. I think sometimes there's almost this joy or relief that grievers can experience if they've been caring for somebody who's been sick for a long time. To have that kind of weight taken off of them. And that's not always lasting. It can be momentary. And then guilt can creep in. Right? So guilt can get in there as well. So. So I think our webs are a little bit more intricate than these clean stages based on the type of grief. But put yourself at the center of that web and then put all of the stages around it. Now what you want to do is become really good at identifying where you're at in the beginning. This would mean and you can help anyone do this. And we talked about if you didn't Hear Monday's episode. Grief does not only mean death of someone you love or someone that you knew closely. Grief can be changing a job. It could be an injured athlete grieving what they expected or what they had worked for. It can be a relationship change, moving, change of identity. So this can be for anybody, but what you do is you put yourself at the center of this web and you put all these different energies, emotions that you can be experiencing around and learn to identify which one you're at maybe each morning. Typically, I coach individuals to do a daily manifestation, right? And all that really means is each day aligning energy in a way that we want to move forward. Now when we're in the depths of grief, we're in a little bit more of survival mode versus then thriving mode. So I would coach and encourage this at first, first before manifesting. Because I don't think manifesting and being in alignment with energy is really realistic. When we're in the depths of our grief, I believe that it's more about being aware of where we're at so we can meet our needs and hopefully not do damage and then have to go back and do damage control. And I mean damage by, you know, self destructive choices or lashing out at others or making an impulsive decision. So we don't want to do damage control. So when we're in really, really deep parts of our grief, I do not coach the same daily manifestation mindset work that I do. I coach this, which is really understanding and identifying your energy and recognizing where you're at. Now to take it further, for each little circle that you have, you want to have about 10 to 15 routine tools of things that feel good for you in those times. So in shock, honestly, it might be naps, it might be quiet time, it might be processing with somebody, it might be researching, it might be looking at pictures. It could be any of these things. But knowing what you need, knowing what you can manage. If it's anger, it might be going to a batting cage. It might be working with a therapist. There are a lot of anger therapists and I do not agree with this definition of anger that it's built up frustration or emotion. Anger can be very raw and very new. Typically, yes, it is a deeper energy I think surfaces. I think it is all, all of these are associated with love. Every single one of these stages, webs, I believe is going to come back to love. But if you think about it that way, I really love the web because at the core of it is love and at the core of it is you. So at the center, you can envision yourself as just love. This incredible source of love has been threatened, hurt, or taken from you, right? This portion of love in your life. And so now it's surfacing in these different energetic ways. When I coach this each day, it's understanding and really checking to see where you're at. I would encourage a midday check in and an evening check in as well. I don't think we can be too much more structured than that. But with time given this, a week, 10 days, two weeks, depending on the circumstance, this becomes very automated. It doesn't have to be laborsome, doesn't have to actually be intentional. You become able to just envision yourself in this web and picture this chaos, this storm, this tornado of grief swirling around you. And you can choose the skills, the tools, the supports, the teammates, whatever you need, the naps. It doesn't always have to be hard to feel your best, right? To stay grounded and to stay centered. Rather than you chasing everything around, rather than you moving through this progression, it's just you standing in your truth, your reality, and finding ways to be steady, calm and grounded and at peace through all of the swirl. And that, my friends, is what I believe is the difference from surviving in grief, kind of getting through grief, maybe not managing grief, to really having the opportunity to strengthen and grow within the most difficult or among the most difficult experiences of our lives. As I say all the time, adversity is inevitable. Growth is optional in my experience, and I believe it can be a part of yours too. We can take the hardest challenges, adversities, heartaches, heaviest heartaches that we encounter. We can hold space for them to be terrible and we can position ourselves in the center of our truth to allow it to be an opportunity to grow. And in my opinion, what an amazing way to honor the loss or the tragedy or the life that's at the core of this struggle. It doesn't make it easy, but it makes it so very possible. And you know, I am cheering you all on in your journey as you seek to do this. So if you love this episode, if it resonated with you, please go ahead and share it with anyone grieving, anyone who's experienced loss. Even if you're not sure, there's no harm in offering it and asking a question. Because if it can support somebody, well, that's why we're here, to do this great work, right? To allow Laden's light to shine, to help others, to raise awareness in an area. There's not a whole lot of awareness. And so I thank you all for being on this journey, supporting me in my mission to do so. We have two more episodes left in this sprint week of grief honoring the beginning, the commencement of my grief journey tomorrow. Thursday. I'm talking about linking objects and grief. Those are the items, the physical things that help us feel connected to loved ones. I'm also going to touch on grief gifts when people are always curious about what to give to somebody who's grieving or what you can get for yourself. And Friday I'm going to hit on a really highly requested topic from all of you, delayed or incomplete grief. So thank you again if you are inclined. If this resonates with you, please share or head to itunes and rate review this. That's going to help us spread this work so that more people are aware of it and have access to it. Thank you so much. We'll chat soon.