Healing Your Heart

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In the 1960s, the psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was studying patients with terminal illnesses. She noticed a pattern as they came to terms with their mortality. The patients seemed to go through different psychological phases. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross eventually classified these phases into what she called the 5 stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The 5 stages were intuitively appealing and offered people a way to understand a complex experience. Very quickly, the simplicity of this framework began to seep into popular culture— books, TV shows, and later countless YouTube videos.

Your mind is protecting you by completely denying the reality. Numbness may follow. It's nature's way of letting you deal only with your emotions that you're capable of handling.

As often happens, a system that was designed to be descriptive became prescriptive. The 5 stages, translated into popular culture, morphed into a model that told people they should expect to feel certain emotions and that their experience of grief would be a journey from one stage to the next.

Finally, 5 is acceptance. It's the 5th stage, and this is the endgame here, and it is the result of all the stages of your grief.

Over time, the 5-stage model of grief became so ingrained in people's minds that new insights based on rigorous research did not get as much airtime. For decades, the popular understanding of what we feel when we grieve was largely drawn from the 5 stages model.

Anyone who's ever been bereaved will know that people tell you about them. They expect you to go through them. And pretty quickly I became frustrated with them because I don't want to be told what I'm going to feel. I am desperate to know what I can do to help us all adapt to this terrible loss.

Today we bring you the story of a researcher whose understanding of grief was transformed by a devastating experience in her own life. The surprisingly powerful technique she learned to cope with tragedy, this week on Hidden Brain. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Southern New Hampshire University. Science consistently tells us learning starts with motivation. That's why SNHU offers over 200 flexible, affordable online programs to help you get where you want to go. Take classes that spark your curiosity, shape your skill set, and prepare you for what's next. A degree can help move you forward no matter what motivates you. Start yours at snhu.edu/brain. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Planet Visionaries. Professional climber and environmental advocate Alex Honnold hosts Planet Visionaries, a A podcast spotlighting the people tackling climate challenges with real hopeful solutions. Throughout season 6, Alex brings together extraordinary changemakers for powerful conversations about grit, determination, and the power of hope to fuel our fight for a better future. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Progressive. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save With Progressive, save hundreds. Because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on those iced lattes you love. Switch to Progressive and see if you could save. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, affiliates, and other insurers. Not available in all states. Lucy Hone is a researcher at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. In 2010, she was living near Christchurch when it was struck by a powerful earthquake. The disaster and a series of aftershocks killed 185 people and destroyed most of downtown Christchurch. Thousands of people lost their homes. Lucy had just returned from graduate school in the United States. She was about to embark on a PhD. Her area of study? Resilience. Given the disaster unfolding around her, Lucy rolled up her sleeves and started applying what she had already learned to help the people around her. One day, during a powerful aftershock, Lucy was standing outside her home, which was perched on the cliffs overlooking the city.

And I just stood there looking down on our village, and I could see the children's school there, and I could see them all lining up, obviously being looked after and counted. But what was so awful for me was that I could also see the cliffs on the other side of the village, really close to them, less than a mile away from them, tumbling down in front of them. So it was a pretty scary moment in my life.

The Christchurch earthquakes lasted for more than a year. Residents lived in a constant state of anxiety, not knowing when the next tremor would strike. At one point, Lucy was giving a talk on resilience to survivors when a woman in the audience raised her hand and described a problem she was having.

She just said to me, I'm startling all the time. I just am so jumpy. Every time someone crashes a saucepan lid, I seem to kind of, you know, jump in the air and my heart is pounding. And, you know, what do I do about that?

And I said, firstly, does anyone else feel like that? And the whole room lifted up their hands.

So I think it was, you know, a real moment of collective resonance where we all realized that we had exactly the same startle reaction from those ever-present earthquakes. You just never knew whether you were safe, and you never knew when the next one was going to come. So that kind of hypervigilance—

The problem was, some of this hypervigilance, it was totally justified.

Because we had 10,000— over 10,000 aftershocks and 5 or 6 really major events. One of those was on Boxing Day.

And I'd taken my 2 sons and a friend visiting from England over to one of the big malls to the Boxing Day sales. And we were all just sitting there afterwards having something to eat in one of the cafes. And I was sitting there with my 2 sons, and and suddenly the whole mall started shaking.

And so we got under the tables and, you know, all the cups of teas were being knocked over. And— but it really terrified us. And I remember locking eyes with my eldest son, and it was probably— that was probably the moment that we realized that these earthquakes weren't going to go away, that actually we were probably now in for a pretty rocky ride.

So I want to fast forward a couple of years.

In the summer of 2014, this is a couple of years after the earthquakes. I think you're still working on your PhD at this point. You organized a family beach vacation.

It was several hours from your home, and you were planning to go with 2 other families.

You and your husband and 2 teenage sons drove together. I understand your daughter, Abby, Went with another family?

Yes, that's right. So, um, my friend Sally and I had arranged a family, you know, getaway on a long weekend in June. And, um, at the last minute, Sally's daughter Ella, who was the same age as Abby, just 12 years old at the time, phoned up to say, hey, can Abby come with us in the car? You know, they were great girlfriends and always together. So we thought nothing of it and said, yeah, absolutely, you hop in with her. And we dropped Abby off and went on our way, and we had a sort of 4-hour journey ahead of us. And they didn't turn up, you know, later when they should have done, but we didn't really think anything of it at the time.

Lucy and her family went to a local restaurant and sat down to dinner. Abby still hadn't arrived, but they were not too worried. The family Abby was traveling with had probably just gotten stuck in traffic.

And so we just carried on having dinner without them. And then the hotel owner came and said to us, there's a policeman on the phone for you, and he'd like to speak to one of you.

When Lucy's husband Trevor got on the phone, the police officer didn't say why he wanted to talk. He only said he needed to drive out to meet them.

I think he said, there's been an accident, and I need to come out and talk with you in person. That was the defunct That was the defining moment. That was the moment when I remember Trevor looking across at me and saying, he's coming to see us, and he wouldn't say any more, but they don't bring you good news, do they? And so we hunkered down in the lodge's office with the manager, who, who we did kind of know through other families who knew her. And so That was reasonably comfortable being with her. But actually, the whole experience, of course, was anything but comfortable. And I remember pacing the room, and possibly it was about a 20-minute wait. You know, he'd come from the local police station that just isn't very local. So we had an agonizing wait.

When the police officer finally arrived, he had an odd question about Abby's shoes.

He asked me what she was wearing.

And probably like any mother, I knew exactly what my dear daughter was wearing.

And so I told him.

Abby was wearing black Converse Chuck Taylor high tops.

And he said to me, in that case, I'm sorry to tell you that Your daughter— that was your daughter in the accident. And, you know, I tragically have to tell you that she has died. And he also told us that Sally, my friend, had been killed. And Sally's beautiful daughter Ella, who was such dear friends with our Abby, had also died. So all 3 of them had been hit by a car who drove through a stop sign and It's hard to even imagine what you were going through at this point, Lucy.

This is literally every parent's worst nightmare, but this nightmare was actually happening to you. Did you have a sense of being able to process what was going on? Were you in shock?

I was definitely in shock. I think it is a bit of an out-of-body experience. You can almost observe yourself. Going through the process. I remember the physical sensations of feeling sick and sweating and having a dry— drank so much water. I remember that. And I remember pacing. I couldn't stay anywhere. You know, I remember getting on the floor, getting up, walking around. I just— you know, you don't know what to do. In that moment. I remember calling my sister and not being able to get through to her, and then calling every member of her family, and it turned out they were all together in a bar, and they suddenly realized that something awful had happened because they'd all had these missed calls. And I remember the other people in the lodge and kind of feeling sorry for them, thinking, oh, this is such an awful thing for you to watch. So you have kind of odd I think, odd thoughts. But actually what I remember, Shankar, most of all is this feeling that that was our new life story and that her death would be part of our life story for, you know, the remainder of our days. That night, the police drove Lucy and her family to a hospital in Christchurch Where we then met my sister and her family, which was just a terrible moment. You know, you can imagine family collective grief. And we were asked to go and identify the body. And, um, my dear son Paddy went, said to his dad, come on, Dad, we've got to go and do it.

Just awful moments.

We went home at 5 or 6 AM and all just walked back into the house and sat there in disbelief. I do remember in those first hours and days, to be honest, feeling like I was on autopilot and that people were kind of moving me around Standing behind me, kind of pointing my shoulders in the direction I had to go. You know, it was just staggeringly numb. And you're just in disbelief. I think that is the thing, isn't it? That when it comes out of the blue, your world has been smashed apart. Nothing makes sense. And you're just struggling and grappling. to get through each hour. Yeah, and I honestly, I remember those awful grief sweats and not sleeping.

Sleep—

it was just, it was awful.

I understand that at one point soon after Abby's death, a couple of grief counselors came to your home.

Do you remember what they told you?

I do.

We had, we had A few people come and give us well-meaning advice. And really what stands out for me is that I remember them saying to me, you're going to need to write 5 years of your life off to this grief. You know, you're really not going to be able to function for the next 5 years. And that we were now prime candidates for divorce, family estrangement, and mental illness.

And honestly, I remember thinking, wow, you know, I thought my life was already truly terrible.

I can't believe that people are kind of dumping all this on us as well. And I was horrified. I remember someone talking to me about the fact that they'd lost a brother who had died. And then he said, to be honest, I don't really speak to my other brother any longer. You know, his death tore our family apart. And I remember thinking, okay, right, that's something else I'm going to have to watch out for.

The friends and counselors obviously meant well. But after they left, Lucy felt worse. It wasn't just that they were telling her that her life was terrible. They also seemed to be telling her that there was nothing she could do about When we come back, Lucy started to wonder if that was true. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Progressive. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive Save hundreds. Because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on those iced lattes you love. Switch to Progressive and see if you could save. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, affiliates, and other insurers. Not available in all states. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Quince. We all have those pieces in our closet that we can count on. The versatile jacket, the perfect t-shirt. These are the pieces that make getting dressed easy, and that's what Quince does best. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials in designs that are timeless, thoughtfully crafted, and made to be worn again and again. And when the temperatures start to drop, Quince makes it easy to build on these everyday staples with versatile layers designed to keep you warm and comfortable All season long. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Hidden Brain. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Lucy Hone is a public health researcher at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.

She studies resilience.

In the summer of 2014, Lucy experienced every parent's greatest nightmare. Her 12-year-old daughter was killed in a car crash.

Before the accident, Lucy had been helping survivors of the Christchurch earthquakes. Suddenly, she needed help herself.

Lucy, you've described a moment soon after the accident when you found yourself standing in your bedroom asking yourself a question. And the question was, can I go on? Can you describe that moment to me?

Yes.

It was my darkest, bleakest moment, I think, where I did have a sense that it all felt just too hard. You know, every day it felt like we were climbing a mountain. And instead of ever— we never got to the top.

Every day, you'd be put down to the bottom and have to start the whole thing again. It was exhausting.

And I lost hope. And I'm a pretty hopeful person. And so I think that is a moment that really stands out for me.

So something that many people don't realize is that grief isn't just in the mind. As you say, it's physically exhausting.

It certainly is, honestly, physically exhausting.

I did a lot of sleeping. And of course, sleep gives you a temporary break as well from the thinking because it is— dust goes round and round in your head. And I was lucky that I could sleep and that our boys were of an age where I could, you know, go to bed at any time of day if it was all too much. And I knew because of my training, you know, the importance of sleep as well.

I understand that you had conversations at this time with your husband where you were running through what-if scenarios regarding Abby. Do you remember what they were about, Lucy?

We once sat down on the rocks. We live by the beach. And we sat there and, yes, having those kind of what if we hadn't arranged that weekend to go away and what if You know, we hadn't let her in the car, but then we also said to each other, she didn't suffer. We didn't have to sit, like so many parents, at her bedside for weeks and months and watch the life drain out of her. We took, yeah, some comfort from the fact that she died instantly and wouldn't have known what was happening to her. And so we were, yeah, in that sense, we were And just trying to help each other focus on the bits that weren't so terrible.

At the same time, I think this is really revealing about people's grief journeys in general, which is that very often when grief strikes a family, the people whom you would normally turn to for help are also suffering. And that can really make it difficult to find your way out because everyone around you is also being weighed down by this thing.

Oh, it's so true, Shankar. And everybody grieves differently, you know? And my mother had died when I was 30, and Trevor lost his father when he was 12. So we had both experienced grief before. But we were very aware that, you know, we have 2 14- and 15-year-old beautiful boys who were obviously processing it in a different way to their parents. And then we had all Abi's friends. We live in a small family. community. And so we had all of them. And we weren't just one family, but 2 families. And so there was a real sense of collective grief. You know, they lost 2 girls from the local primary and one of the mums, and particularly so soon after the earthquakes.

You say that grief had a way of sneaking up on you.

You call these grief ambushes.

What do you mean by that term?

Honestly, that awful aspect of grief is that you just can't control the emotions. And in the least likely moments, they seem to absolutely take hold of you. And so whether it was sitting at the traffic lights, or once— I write about how I went to the supermarket, which, because it had fallen down in the earthquakes, we didn't have a local supermarket for some time, you know, 5 or 6 years. So it wasn't until after Abby died that they reopened the local supermarket. market.

And I'd swanned in there thinking, fabulous, it's back, you know, how good is this? And I just got to the aisle that had her favorite snacks in it and just stood there and dissolved. And it just took me back to so many times when her little kindergarten was across the road and we'd come there after kindy and, you know, and she'd buy her favorite bits and we were always together.

And I just— Oh, that's so beautiful. Stood there and thought, oh, seriously, this is literally that kind of grief ambush that overwhelms you, and we're almost powerless to do anything about it.

And it was okay for me because I was in a quiet supermarket aisle at the time, but, you know, when it happens at work, that's just—

it's a really tough, challenging aspect of grief.

So the grief counselors and others told you that the next 5 years of your life are going to be consumed by grief, that you were prime candidates for divorce and estrangement, mental illness.

You also heard about the 5 stages of grief.

What was the conventional wisdom about the 5 stages of grief, Lucy?

So I think, to be fair, like most people, I was kind of aware of those 5 stages.

Like most people, I could probably name 3 of them.

But when people started telling me about them, and boy, anyone who's ever been bereaved will know that people tell you about them, they expect you to go Go through them. And pretty quickly, I became frustrated with them because I didn't feel anger and animosity towards the driver. I knew that that was a terrible mistake, but he didn't do it intentionally. And I wasn't in denial, you know, from the very first moment. As I've said, I remember thinking, okay, this is my job now. You know, my mission is to survive this.

Yeah.

And so they didn't kind of fit with my experience. But the other aspect that quickly frustrated me about the 5 stages is that I just found them too passive. You know, it's reasonably helpful to be told that these— you might feel, you know, depression and acceptance, or anger and denial, and all of these different things. But actually it was like, I don't want to be told what I'm going to feel. I am desperate to know what I can do to help us all adapt to this terrible loss.

I'm struck by the fact that at a certain point in your journey of grief over Abby's death, you were thinking like a researcher or starting to ask yourself whether you yourself could be almost a research subject, that you're studying yourself, you're observing yourself, you're thinking of your own experience, not just as a person going through the experience, but like a scientist. Did you have a moment of epiphany when you realized in some ways that you could become your own research subject on this topic?

I think I did. I think it's fair to say that, yes, it was kind of an epiphany, aha moment. And it is also who I am. I am a researcher. And I'm a mum and a wife. And so you're always— we all wear multiple hats, don't we? It's just that mine happened to be that I was experiencing this devastating loss and curious about my experiences simultaneously. And that was the kind of aha moment that I was doing this internally, kind of observing my loss and my reaction to it. And then I thought, well, what I'm really curious about is, we have all these tools from resilience psychology, which have been shown to help people cope with potentially traumatic events. Well, how useful are they when they are brought to the context of bereavement? And so that's been the question that I've been really exploring, you know, ever since Abi died.

Pondering this question, Gave her the space to analyze how her own mind was responding to grief. When she noticed something about how she was coping, she reserved judgment about what it meant. When she engaged in what-if scenarios— what if she hadn't allowed Abby to drive with the other family, what if she hadn't planned a beach vacation— she noticed how these thoughts made her feel. She paid attention to how she felt after getting exercise or a good night's sleep.

sleep.

In other words, she started behaving like a scientist. She eventually discovered there were things that made her feel better and things that made her feel worse. She came up with a series of techniques that gave her a measure of control over her grief.

I distinctly remember standing in the kitchen thinking, seriously, Lucy, choose life, not death. Don't lose what you have to what you have lost.

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Support for Hidden Brain comes from Air France. Air France Business Cabin offers comfort throughout the journey with priority check-in, boarding, and lounge access. Onboard, enjoy menus from renowned French chefs, wines and champagne selected by a sommelier, and free high-speed Wi-Fi. When it's time to rest, settle into a fully adjustable lie-flat bed with added mattress comfort. The art of travel elevated, because Air France business cabin goes further in every detail to make your journey exceptional. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Lucy Hone is a public health researcher at the University of Canterbury. After her 12-year-old daughter was killed in a traffic crash, Lucy tracked her own bereavement process closely. She realized that she herself did not follow the 5 stages of grief. She also realized that we are wrong when we think grief is only something that happens to us. While it's true that grieving people do not feel they have much control over their emotions, There were things she could do to change the way she felt. There were active choices she could make. These choices did not erase her grief. That was neither possible nor healthy. But they did allow her to feel like she could manage it. The first step was to realize there was a difference between her reaction to grief and her response to it.

Yes.

So your grief reaction, you have very little control over, and that is all those physical symptoms that occur when we are bereaved. And, you know, for me, that was that aching right in my solar plexus, and that the grief sweats, those awful nighttime sweats, and then the torrid, you know, roller coaster of emotions. So it's really hard to control those, and we call that grief reaction. But we do also have the grief response, which is about how we choose to respond to the grief. And that is about, you know, the ways of thinking and acting, and the micro choices we make all day long, which can really help or harm our grief. And so, you know, while grief reaction, we have little control, grief response is pervaded with choice.

As Lucy started to analyze her own grief like a scientist, she stumbled on the work of Columbia University researcher George Bonanno.

Well, certainly George Bonanno's work is really comforting. And what he discovered was that actually most people get through grief on their own without needing any kind of medication or clinical intervention. And so this kind of really gave me hope. The other great researchers in this field are Stroube and Schutt, whose oscillation theory I came across, which is a different kind of model of grief that says that we need to approach our grief, and then it's okay to withdraw and take a break from grief. And that's not avoidance and denial, but actually a really healthy way to grieve.

You're talking about the researchers Margaret Stroube and Henk Schutt. Describe for me again what they meant by this term oscillation, because you found both yourself going through this, but also in some ways deciding to sort of pursue this yourself?

Yes, I think it made sense to me. So their theory of oscillation is that we oscillate between approaching our grief and then taking a break from it, but we also oscillate between attending to these 2 different types of grief. One is loss-oriented, And the other is restoration-oriented, meaning that you kind of fluctuate between coping with the loss, the actual— for me, you know, Abby and how much I missed her. And then the restoration bit is about, and who am I now? And how will I learn to live without her and her place in the family? And how am I going to get back to work? And go to the supermarket and face my friends. So you kind of ebb and flow between these 2 processes, and it's a real kind of dynamic process. What resonated for me was that we needed to take breaks from our grieving process, and actually that's where positive emotion can come in too.

When Lucy first confronted Abby's death, grief felt like an impassable mountain looming before her. When she was told she was a prime candidate for divorce or mental illness, that mountain grew larger. But when she started looking at the scientific evidence, she discovered cause for hope. While a small minority of people do get stuck in grief, the majority recover and regain healthy levels of psychological functioning. When Lucy chose to spend time away from her grief, this wasn't denial. Her brain was doing the perfectly healthy thing of oscillating between attending to grief and attending to recovery. Lucy also arrived at a third insight.

I know from resilience psychology that it's really important to choose where you focus your attention. And so I absolutely had this voice in my head that would be aware if I was bargaining, if I started to do that, What if I hadn't booked that weekend away? What if we had just left? They just left 10 minutes later that day. And then I'd think to myself, you're only allowed to have 2 what-ifs. So once I'd done one, you know, what if we hadn't booked— I actually, I booked the holiday, the weekend away. So what if I hadn't booked it? And what if we hadn't allowed her into the car that day? And then I'd go to do another one and I'd think, nope, that's your limit. Go and distract yourself because any more what-ifs are going to be harming you and you need to survive this. And so I would distract myself by phoning somebody else or doing something that really demanded my attention.

This was part of a larger idea borrowed from cognitive behavioral therapy. As thoughts went through her mind, she started to ask herself a simple question: Is this thought good for me or bad for me? An important fork in the road came when Lucy and her husband were asked to attend the trial of the driver who had run the stop sign and T-boned the car in which Abby was riding. Lucy asked herself, Would going to the trial be good for me or bad for me?

Grief is full of choices. And so when we were invited to go to the trial, I used a strategy that asks— encourages you to ask yourself, is doing that going to help me or harm me in my quest to survive this loss? And so Trevor and I both agreed that we didn't want to go to the trial, that actually that wasn't going to help us. I just didn't didn't need to be standing in the same room as the driver at that time. I needed to focus my, you know, energy and attention elsewhere. And that was on the boys. So in fact, we went instead to their school just that day to meet with the teachers and just kind of check in with them because they'd just been back at school about 3 weeks, I think. And that felt like a much better use of my time. And I distinctly know that what I appreciated was that I was kind of putting myself in the driver's seat and taking back a bit of control.

So in some ways, I think what I hear you saying is that when people are experiencing grief, partly what we almost expect them to do is we expect them to follow scripts. And sometimes we provide scripts to them and say, here's what you're supposed to feel, and here's what comes next, and here's what comes before this, and here's what you're supposed to do after this. And in some ways, by taking back that narrative, you can start to make choices that in some ways craft your own journey. And it may be that the choice that you make is different than the choice that your husband makes, but it's important that each of you exercises the agency to make the choice that in some ways is the best fit for your mental makeup and your psychological wellbeing.

Yeah, that's completely it, that we all grieve differently. Grief is as individual as your fingerprint. There's actually very little evidence that says that we go through those 5 stages.

They have been perpetuated because they're a tidy model and health practitioners and people like to— they are drawn to the that when people are grieving and it's such a torrid time, that if they can just give them a tidy 5-stage model, then maybe that, you know, makes them feel better.

And it's easier for the health practitioners to kind of give this model.

But actually, grief's not like that.

It's messy and untidy. And in our work, people rarely say that they go through those stages.

I'm wondering if there were other choices you found yourself having to make where you could ask yourself the question, is this going to be good for me, or is this going to be bad for me?

Absolutely. It became my kind of go-to strategy. And I would— I'd often find myself, of course, you know, I'm weak-willed like everybody, and I'd find myself trawling through Instagram late at night, looking at pictures of Abi and noticing the comments that her friends have put on there. And I'd do that for a few minutes and then think, seriously, Lucy, you know, is this helping or is it harming you? Be kind to yourself, put your phone away, and go to bed. And I so often did find those things, you know, looking at photos, even just hanging out with her friends. As I say, we're a pretty small community, so I would bump into her friends. And sometimes that would be good. And other times I'd think, no, that's actually not what you need right now. That's not going to be good for you.

So just walk back out of the supermarket and come back later, or whatever it was.

But it was definitely my kind of practical question that enabled me to find my own pathway through grief.

It's worth pointing out that I think that what you did is not easy to do. It really is easy to get angry. It does feel natural to engage in what-ifs. These are human reactions. And I want to flag that while making conscious choices about what to focus on does make sense, that doesn't mean that it's always easy to do.

No, and I would totally agree with that. And I always make that point of saying to people, you know, this isn't easy, but it is possible. And I think it comes down to— for me, my motivation for survival was huge because, you know, we had lived through every parent's worst nightmare. And I felt like the stakes were pretty high and that almost made that easier to stick to. The 2 what-ifs rule, because I felt like if I didn't, the grief could completely consume me. And so that's not saying that I'm in denial, because I certainly did grieve. And we did— you know, I'm all for experiencing all kinds of emotions, and I didn't want to shut them out. But I definitely wanted to find my way. And wallowing in— Things that are beyond my control was not helpful to me. And as I say, I felt like the fight was on for survival.

Lucy thought back to her days as a graduate student studying resilience at the University of Pennsylvania. At one point, her professors worked with the U.S. military to develop a resilience training program for a million soldiers. That program was based on the same underlying idea: Pay attention to where you pay attention.

There was very much that kind of cognitive focus that you need to be aware of the way your thoughts and actions are combining and really question whether the ways you are thinking and acting are working for you or working against you. And so they did lots of that, sort of took positive psychology, this field of being strengths-based and Put that into a package so that they could train the drill sergeants, who then in turn could train all of the rest of the army.

And I love the phrase that they used in this training, which was hunt the good stuff. And I love that idea because you're speaking to your audience in a language they can understand, but it's the same idea that's being preached in cognitive behavioral therapy.

Absolutely.

So they actually created the hashtag #HTGS, hunt the good stuff. And actually, somebody after Abby died gave us a poster that said, accept the good. And I think these 2 phrases, accept the good and hunt the good stuff, speak to the fact that language is really important here. That what we're talking about is that we want to encourage people to tune into what is still good in their world despite everything that's happened. But we're also encouraging them to find language that fits with them. So for me, you know, being told to count my blessings or asked to do random acts of kindness is just not language that sits well with me.

But having this great big pink fluoro poster in our kitchen that says, accept the good, seemed to do the same job.

So I think it's important for people to find the language that works for them.

Lucy also realized that language could help her. She was not just a grieving mom and a researcher, but a writer, and she found that putting her experience on the page gave her both perspective and comfort. Her writing eventually became a book titled Resilient Grieving. One of the ideas she explored in the book had to do with how many people deal with grief by asking, Why me? Lucy came to see that this was counterproductive. She once gave a TED Talk to illustrate the idea. She asked people in the audience to do something for her.

If you're comfortable, please stand up if any of the following have happened to you, you know, whether it is dementia or whether it is a physical impairment or whether it is cancer or divorce or redundancy, you know, and actually if And of course, within, you know, 30 seconds, we've got the whole room standing. And the point is to make people realize that adversity doesn't discriminate. You know, as much as we don't want this to be true, terrible things happen to us all. And knowing that makes it so important to understand how you react. in tough times and to understand the ways of thinking and acting that can help you navigate your darker days.

You say that resilient people understand that bad things happen, that suffering is a part of life, and that knowing this keeps them from feeling like victims.

Can you expand on this idea, Lucy? What do you mean by that?

Yes, I think, um, understanding that everybody suffers in parts of life, you know, that actually very often daily we struggle and suffer, and that is absolutely part of the universal existence, stops you from feeling singled out and discriminated against when something goes wrong. But critically, it also stops you from beating yourself up. when things go wrong. And so when we live in an era of perfectionism, it's so important for people to understand that, you know, we all stuff up and do things wrong all day long. And that doesn't mean we need to be punished.

It doesn't mean we're useless.

It just means we're human.

And this idea actually goes back a really long ways, Lucy.

Hidden Brain is a show that's primarily about science, but I can't help but make the connection with the origins of Buddhism. You know, according to the story, The Prince Siddhartha is supposed to have seen people age and suffer and die. And as a result of seeing that, internalized the very idea that you're talking about, which is that suffering is inevitable. And so in some ways, the lessons that you're talking about here might be in some ways confirmed or backed up by modern empirical scientific tools, but they really are really age-old ideas.

I couldn't agree more. And even there's elements of Stoicism in there as well, isn't there?

Yeah, we did an episode about Stoicism with the philosopher William Irvine, and he had this great line, do what you can with what you have where you are. And it's the same idea, which is we can only do what we can do, but if we pay attention to what we can do, that's not nothing.

Yeah, absolutely. And in all of our work, we always encourage people to focus on the things that matter and the things that they can control. And that's very similar.

As Lucy looked for ways to apply these insights in her day-to-day life, she started to seek opportunities to find serenity, pride, and awe.

Yes, I do remember taking myself off into the hills to do a walk one day and standing there in the really kind of big mountainous kind of landscape of New Zealand. And that made me feel better because I I kind of felt like when you're in that, um, surrounded by majesty on that kind of grand scale, it makes you feel smaller. And I found that really helpful. And somebody recently in one of our courses was just saying to me, I've done exactly the same thing by visiting a cathedral or a park. So, you know, getting out there into nature. I also used to attend my boys' rugby matches to go and be kind of inspired and feel proud of them.

And I used to listen to Desert Island Discs, which is a BBC radio podcast, because that kind of checkered life journey that people go on would give me hope.

So just different little ways of bringing those positive emotions back into my everyday life.

Is it possible that some people resist doing those things because they almost feel guilty about doing them? They might worry, are other people going to say, you know, she's just lost her daughter. What is she doing at a restaurant? Or what is she doing watching a movie? That again, we are compelled to follow the scripts presented to us about how we're supposed to grieve and deal with loss and trauma.

Exactly.

That is what people say and experience, that they feel judged and feel guilty for experiencing any form of positive emotions, for laughing with friends or wanting to go out and see a movie or just be out, you know, enjoying themselves. Isn't it a shame But so much of what is kind of out there and expected of grief is that you just have to be miserable for a long time. And that if you're experiencing positive experiences, there's something wrong with you, when actually, we know that that is, you know, so far from the truth.

So your work has attracted a lot of interest, Lucy. And obviously, there are people who are deeply moved by your story and your insights about healthy grieving. But some people might hear you saying that you want people who are at the lowest points in their lives to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, that grieving people need to be responsible for their own emotional recovery. Is that an accurate representation of your work?

Oh, I certainly hope not.

No, I think I really do make a very deliberate point in Resilient Grieving to say to people, Never am I trying to put more pressure on the bereaved. Wow. You know, that would be furthest from my intention. All of our work is created for people who come to us saying, thank you for validating my desire to be an active participant in my own grief journey. And so we know that so many people now are are looking for ways to support them through that adaptation to loss. And so we're not forcing people, and we always say to people here, actually, these are all of the theoretically sound and scientifically backed strategies that we've come across. Try some of these out for yourself, see what works.

Be your own personal experiment and find the grief journey that works for you.

So I think that giving people a prescription for hope, I think, is the number one aim of our work.

You lost your daughter Lucy in 2014, and you've written about how it's a mistake to think that time shrinks grief, but time does do something else. Can you tell me your insight about Tell us about the circles around your grief.

Yes, so this came from a local grief counselor, and her theory is that the bereaved often think that their grief, or they're told that their grief, will shrink over time. But yet what really happens is that your grief stays the same and your world, your life, grows around it. You know, 7 years we are on now from Abi's death, and I can notice how our world has grown beyond her. You know, as much as I'd love to have her with us, there are new experiences and new people in our world who weren't around when she was here. And so I can see that life literally has grown around her and her loss.

And her—

she will always be in my heart, all of our hearts, and we carry her forward. We'll never forget her. But life grows and goes on, and as long as she's with us and we have her legacy, then— I don't want to say that that's okay, because it's not, but I guess it's good enough.

Lucy Holmes is a public health researcher and practitioner in New Zealand. She's the author of Resilient Grieving: Finding Strength and Embracing Life After a Loss That Changes Everything. Lucy, thank you for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

Thank you so much for having me, Shankar, and for all you and your listeners' time.

Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Bridget McCarthy, Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querelle, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, and Andrew Chadwick. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. Our unsung hero today is Lisa Turner. Lisa is a content Content strategist at Facebook. We were recently having some problems making tweaks to the Hidden Brain Facebook page. Lisa came up with a solution, even though our request was outside her area of responsibilities. She also followed up several times to make sure the problem was solved. We're so grateful for your help, Lisa. If you like Hidden Brain, be sure to check out our sister podcast. It's called My Unsung Heroes. Each episode is about a time when an unsung hero came to the aid of someone in need. I promise it will renew your faith in humanity. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.

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