Why Grief Hurts So Much and How to Live Fully Again | David Kessler

31:30So if you see that it works or it doesn't work, you can send it back. As always, I only share products that I genuinely have used and enjoyed and believe in, and I think could help you too. It's important that Pulsetto is a wellness device designed to only support relaxation and wellbeing. Individual experiences may vary, not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. So if it sounds interesting, give it a go and let me know what you think. I'm so glad that you did that because I think meaning is such a hard one to describe. You know, people search for the meaning in life, you know, Viktor Frankl, the man search for meaning, one of the most profound books that everybody should read, inspired me greatly, Even in my own work, what's given it meaning is my own personal suffering or my own personal pain that I've gone through that's kind of created so much meaning and purpose to what I do.

32:36I look at you in your life. You started meaning at 13 from the loss of your mother. I mean, you've gone on to create a whole new stage of understanding about grief. And that wasn't just, you know, academic. that stemmed from a 13-year-old child that's in pain and wanted to understand more about this. I mean, you sound like such an inquisitive, curious kid to go on and create an entire purpose out of that. And I think, you know, that's a really interesting moment with pain and grief or whatever, however we call it. I don't want to call it suffering necessarily. But it's like what can come out of that is also transformative.

33:18And here's the other thing that happens, and I know this challenges people. Before my mother died, lots of challenges. My parents shouldn't have been parents. Father had an addiction. Mother would probably be classified as bipolar now. Profound neglect. There was sexual abuse. So much trauma before I got to that moment. And one of the things that I've learned is all grief does not have trauma. Some people do have that grandparent that lives to 100 years old. The whole family's gathered. They've had a good life. They say goodbye. It's this sweet, sweet grief.

34:07And what people don't understand, well, all grief does not have trauma. all trauma has grief. We need to go back and unpack that trauma. And I think people do a lot of trauma work these days. But don't look at the grief underneath. If you had sexual abuse, you had loss. You had the loss of your innocence. if you had neglect or parents who couldn't be there. You didn't have the childhood you deserve. So there's all these losses. So fast forward, we're adults. Grief comes up. And what happens when we're trying to grieve a breakup, a divorce, a death? Our old wounds and trauma come up. Like why, when I'm dealing with this pain now, would my old wounds come up?

35:06old wounds and trauma come up in times of stress and grief is a time of stress so we can mistakenly go oh my gosh I'm doing this grief work and my trauma comes up how screwed up am I but it's actually not that it's like grief is a window that opens for healing for these old things to come up, for us to have a healing. And I'll go, rather than say, I'm so screwed up, what if it's like the little one in us knocking saying, don't forget I need healing. So it's a really profound healing moment. It's transforming. And I think we miss the importance and the bigness of this moment to take us to a life that can be even better than the one we had.

36:07I'm trying to find, because you wrote this amazing part in your book. Here we go. You say pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. And I recently spoke to Arthur Brooks on this podcast, and I asked him what his favorite chapter was. And he said, suffering is optional or don't waste your suffering that's what he said and it really stayed with me because he also talks a lot about meaning and he talked about how meaning comes from your pain and that's why you should never waste your suffering it's such an important part and I loved it and it felt like ultimately when I read your book it was very similar that it's it's optional but people might feel in the context of grief quite hard to hear that So can you explain a little bit about why it's optional to suffer?

37:00Well, pain is inevitable. I have 25 different online grief groups. People come on like, take the pain away. I can't take your pain away because I'd have to take the love away. The pain is part of the love. I would never want to take your pain away. suffering is what our mind does. Suffering is all the what-ifs, the if-onlys, the judgment, the self-criticism. The writer Annie Lamont says, my mind is like a bad neighborhood that I never want to go in alone. That's such a good analogy. I like have a, where I live, there's a million banks around. sometimes I'd rather walk to a bank at 3 a.m. than go in my mind at 3 a.m.

38:00The ATM might be safer than my own mind. And it's that suffering. Now, in grief, here's what people don't understand. I'll take my own loss. When I think about my son David, if I get to the pure grief, the pain, I miss him. I love him. Sometimes I'm angry about it. I can cry. I can yearn. That's the pure grief. That's the pain. When I'm in, I should have been there. This shouldn't have happened. He shouldn't have died. It's all that stuff that my mind is doing. It's like the noise that is there and doesn't help and complicates things. So I try to work with people to quiet that part of our mind so that we can be in the pure grief, which is the love.

39:00I think that's so beautiful. I don't know if you've ever met Mo Gowder. He's been on the show a few times. He's been on, like, you know, getting a million people happy and such. And we spoke very deeply on the show when he first came on a couple of years ago about the pain of losing his son, Ali, at the same age, that you lost yours. And, you know, he talked about, again, the importance of, like, keeping that love and how grief and gratitude can coexist at the same time. And I think that's such an important defining moment because actually, as you said, getting rid of the love is not what we want.

39:41We want to have those memories. And I was reading about an article with Andrew Garfield recently, and he's used his grief of losing his mom a lot in his acting. And he described grief as love that remains after someone dies. And that really touched me. It's also like that line of grief is love persevering, continuing on. It sort of is what remains.

40:13and I think the gratitude piece can be confusing. Sometimes we say to someone newly in grief, be grateful you had your grandmother that long. And it's like, grateful? I'm in pain. Why should I be grateful? I talk about there's not gratitude early on. There's maybe wins. I took a shower today. That's my win. I got out of bed. I got out of bed. That's the win. Gratitude comes much later. But we got to go through the pain first. Same thing with the meaning. You can't go directly to the meaning. You can't do a spiritual bypass. You have to walk through that pain. The only way out of the pain is through the pain.

40:55I actually think that is the one of the most frustrating, complex, annoying. Is that a word I can even use? It's frustration. Because when you're in that pain, as someone was saying, just take the pain away. And that's why I love that glass box analogy that I spoke about, because you're kind of like banging it and you're like, how can I get through this layer? But it is true. It's a time thing. I'm sure many people say to you, like, how long will my grief last? I'm sure. And sometimes my answer, you know, they'll say, oh, my wife's in grief. How long, you know, my spouse, my child, my parent, whoever.

41:34I'll say to them gently how long is the person going to be dead? Because if they're going to be dead for a long time we're going to be in grief for a long time. Now that doesn't mean we'll always grieve with pain. You know, to me the goal of grief work is to eventually remember with more love than pain. But we all have to do that in our own time and in our own way. And when we talk about the timeline, people are very confused that, first of all, there's anticipatory grief, which is the grief before the end. Someone's dying, you may grieve ahead of time. It can even be Alzheimer's, lots of grief ahead of time.

42:26Even with mental health issues, addictions, we can have it. So there's that living grief when someone's still with us. Then, after they die, we go through what I call acute grief. It's different on everyone. It can be one week. It can be nine months. I can't tell you how long that acute grief is, but I know what it looks like when I'm talking with someone. They'll go, just beginning to catch my breath. I'm just beginning to feel my feet on the ground again. They've sort of, they're not in free fall anymore. But then we move into early grief. Now, here's what's interesting. If I go down to the local town, to the local mall, say to people, when's early grief?

43:15People go, I don't know, the first month, the first week, the first year, I don't know. I define early grief as an average of the first two years. People wonder why they're still grieving, and they don't realize they're still in early grief. It takes roughly about two years just to get through the early parts of it. Grief has a longer shadow than we think. Doesn't mean, I don't want your audience to go, oh, no, there's pain forever. Doesn't mean pain, but that experience of grief will be with us. guys it's taken me eight years but I finally wrote a book and it's called healthy shouldn't be this hard and actually became bestseller this May very exciting now if you want more self-compassion in your life and you want to know the reasons on why that is so important I tell you all in this book and I give you a lot of tools to help you get there it's definitely been a lifesaver for me and I know many people that have read it has for them too so if you want to check it out head to my bio or the show notes below you'll find the link to the book I also think there is that that thing that you go through when you've gone through growth and as you said maybe your your brain networks have started to reconnect what the new familiar is for instance and you're like okay so now I feel that I can start getting through a day you feel like you're already bypassing it but actually sometimes it is really important to even a couple of years later to say maybe I am only now just coming out of it just because I'm functioning again doesn't mean that I'm not in grief the thing that and this might be a completely left-filled question that you've never been asked before but something that came up to me when I was thinking about this and grief is defined in so many different aspects as you said like losing somebody or heartbreak or a divorce or a job or a pet that's a really really big one but I didn't know and it's maybe because I had this own feeling myself recently about grieving parts of your own life that maybe you haven't been aware of before and you kind of look back and go wow I'm actually quite sad on that part of my life that I let happen is that have you ever explored that in in people in their own grieving.

45:43For instance, a diagnosis of neurodiversity when you're older, a lot of people talk about grieving their younger self and thinking they felt a lot of sadness and grief for that younger person who struggled for so long. And maybe when we go on our own self-discovery or self-learning, we look back on things and say, oh, I have a lot of grief for that person who was me in the younger years. Have you ever explored that? Yes, it is grieving all the changes in our life and all the periods in our life to understand there's all these different chapters. You know, oh, my childhood's over. Oh, my 20s are over.

46:33Ooh, the 30s. oh my gosh, am I going into midlife? Am I getting older? And all those are moments, life is a series of letting go and accepting what is. And one of the keys to happiness is I think living in reality. And if we don't let go, if I live this decade wishing I was in last decade. And last decade wasn't that good because I was wishing I was in the decade before. I mean, that's going to be our life. But if we can grieve each part, and it comes back to even where we started about being in the moment and being afraid of death. I mean, you know, when we think of meaning, we think of starting a charity or we're going to do some big organization to help people.

47:36Meaning is found in moments. You know, this morning, I got up, I walked across the street from my hotel, Green Park. I grabbed some coffee. I walked into Green Park and I thought to myself, there's never going to be this moment again in Green Park on this day in London. And I just walked and enjoyed my coffee. And it's so strange because I thought about, gosh, my son loved coffee. He would love this moment. And as I'm walking through, I don't know London very well, I'm walking across Green Park and like, oh, there's Buckingham Palace. Oh, I didn't realize it was right there. And then I immediately thought back to my son being here for the Olympics.

48:38And I remember my two sons and I watching the changing of the guard and explaining it to him. And my younger son, David, was like, wait, they can't react? And I'm like, no, they can't react. They can't engage. and he goes, hmm. And he just went and stood by the guard and just got into formation. And I have this great picture of him just being exactly like the guard. And so this morning, like, it was just this wonderful moment filled with the present, filled with the past that's never going to be again. But I wanted to take that moment in. and it's gone and I'm in a new moment here with you and that's what life can be.

49:30If I didn't do the grief work, I could have gotten stuck in that moment. Oh my gosh, David's not here. Where's David? Why did David? All those things I went through. You talk about the grief work and I think it's important kind of, as I think I said to you, what's a good way to grieve or what's the best way to grieve or however we would kind of formulise that because we've realised that there is not a linear way. But I think the interesting conversations that I've had on this show, you know, when Shane Parrish came on and he talks a lot about being 80 and sitting on a bench and looking back on your life and your regrets that you kind of think about and what do you wish that you'd done more of?

50:15And a lot of people won't say it's work and I wouldn't say, wish I had more achievement. Yeah, no one's on their deathbed wishing for like eight more hours at work. Please let me work some more. Come on, I wish I had like X amount more subscribers. You know, all the things, you know, I think about what I'm trying to achieve at the moment and what I'm building. I'm not going to be laying on my deathbed wishing that I was an extra like so further up in the chart or another like 400 ,000 subscribers. Like that's not what I'm going to be. I'm sat about on my deathbed. I think what most people say is spending time with people that they love.

50:50But that's normally at the bottom of our list when we're living our life, right? We're all so busy. We're trying to manage everything. And I guess what I'm hearing from you is that you have so much profound connection to grief and loss that you make more of these meaningful moments and utilizing that to the best of your ability. Ooh. Or not. Let me tell you, I don't want to come across as more evolved than I am. I'm just as human as anyone else. I can get stuck in those little things. And I often think about it like, imagine, you know, we're playing a game. The game of Monopoly or chess or checkers or whatever.

51:35We're playing some game. It's really fun to be invested in the game. But ultimately, it's like, but we're playing the game together. Yeah, totally. So it's okay. We're playing a game of social media likes, and we're playing a game of podcasts, and we're playing these games. But there's also what's important is the connection around the games. Yeah. We get in trouble when we think the game is the only reality. And we think the game defines our worth. and I'm human. I get lost just like everyone else. So I don't want anyone listening to think, oh, he's walking around in a state of awe because, you know, you could run into me later today and I might be upset about, gosh, my coffee window's over.

52:27Darn it. I would love one more cup. Who knows? But you know, I say that, and I don't say that to say you're this enlightened human being, but I think you've had... I just wanted to throw that out there in case anyone had any kind of myth. You know I'm going to cut that to make you sound I'm not really. No, but I say that because of a reflection that I have to myself in the sense of, obviously, there's still things you probably go through a day and go, I wish I did that better. That's just being human. Right. But I think, and I'm still learning this, but from doing this show for so many years, it has taught me the importance of things that I need to make sure that I'm balancing more in my life.

53:04And, you know, when I had that conversation with Shane, it made me quite emotional thinking about my parents. You know, I still live in the same country as my parents, but I don't live down the road. They live a couple of hours away. And I still want to spend more time with them, but life is life and you can't, you know, spend all your time. And I even think that if you did have time to spend all the unlimited time, you still wouldn't think that's enough. But it's about these podcasts, these episodes, make me think more about maybe the balance of my life that I should be doing, as opposed to not thinking about it and then getting to the end and going, oh, wait, I wish I thought about that more.

53:42It's like these types of conversations do make you have those moments in yourself and go, when was the last time I called my parents or went to see them? Or, you know, if I haven't seen them for a while, I will make this active decision because I have so many of these conversations. It brings it more to the forefront of my mind, which is why I think these conversations are important, or sitting with people near the end of their life and hearing their wisdom. The endings make things valuable. You know, when you realize your parents aren't here forever, that is the moment where you're like, let me be in touch.

54:23Let me connect. I remember a husband saying, if I had forever, why would I hold my wife's hand? I only hold her hand because I know there's not forever. That's what makes it all so special and fleeting. And we're human beings. We're going to blow it. We're going to waste it. We're going to screw it up. We're going to do it all. and can we have compassion when we do it instead of being hard on ourselves? And, you know, last night it's interesting, I was giving an online lecture about helping people in grief and one of the surprising things is you can become a therapist here in the UK, in the US, without one mandatory hour of grief education.

55:20and so one of the things I really have devoted so much of my life to is educating therapists helpers everyone who's running groups and all that I have a great program to certify people to really get them grief literate who are the helpers and look last night I gave this online talk, 25 ,000 people from around the world. Really meaningful today that I did it. I can tell you last night, I spent an hour in misery. Oh, I forgot that. And can you believe I came all the way here and forgot to pack my mic? My sound wasn't as good. I mean, you know, we are the duality of the imperfection and the meaningful all living at once.

56:12What's the thing that 25 ,000 therapists listen to you, what's the thing that shocks them the most about grief that you teach them?

56:23I think that there's real, clear tools and techniques that we can do. And I think what's also different is these days in that program years ago, it was only therapists. Now it's therapists, coaches, group leaders. Most grief groups are run by non-degreed, non-professional people in the world. and they don't get training. So I'm just a big believer. And the other thing is we also used to live in a world where if I want the knowledge, I'm going to only get it from the doctor or the therapist. Now we're, because of podcasts, social media, we're like, tell me what my therapist learns because I can just apply it directly.

57:12So we're in that world too where we all want to know sort of how to help ourselves. Yeah. Are you worried about, I know this is maybe a random question, but are you worried about how AI is going to intercept? Yes. What's your thoughts around this? You know, I fought it for a long time. And I finally, I always talk about don't have contempt before investigation. Right. So in my own little world, I decided, and people had newspapers so many times called, written, did interviews with me. What do you think about being replaced by AI someday? All that. I used to answer that question. It's never going to, you know, all that.

58:04But I got curious about AI. And so I said to one of the general AIs, how long does grief last? and it said for a lifetime and I'm like that's a pretty good answer and then it said or one month for every year you knew the person and I'm like wait one month for every year I knew the person wait so if you have a five-year-old child that died you get five months of grief I said where did you get that information? What's the underlying info for that? Oh, this person said it, they went viral. And I'm like, that's your source? Someone who just put something on social media and you're passing that off.

58:53So I ended up, an organization said to me, you know, people can now ask, what does David Kessler say about this? And I decided to take some control and get my own AI. So I have an AI now that has studied every book, every lecture, every podcast, and can speak only my words. So it's curated. It's more pure to what I would actually say. And in fact, it's kind of smarter than me because it remembers everything that I forgot. But not everyone's getting curated, thoughtful information from AI. It's easy to get profound information from AI and you can also get slop. And that's the danger. But do you know what I worry about when it comes to this?

59:54my worry about AI is and you wrote it in your book you were talking about how important community is yes connection right and that is the foundation the flip of that and you write about this amazing village um in Australia where when somebody dies they kind of move all the furniture around um and maybe remove a piece and it's all kind of you're together in that community and you can even visually see the shift. Because you witness when you wake up, now that your loved one has died, everything has changed. Yes. That's seeing it in connection. And AI can give us information, but not human connection.

1:00:38It can never replace that. And this is the worry that I have around grief. Because I think when you are in grief, you're also sometimes in desperation. You know, You're very vulnerable when you're in that stage. And the 24-7 access that you have to AI is not like a therapist or even your friends and family. They're not with you 24-7. You have to learn to kind of self-soothe in whatever way that looks like to you. But I also think when you're in that desperation, you normally want to remove yourself from the world because you're finding it hard to cope. And a lot of people struggle with showing their emotions or feeling like a burden or not even knowing how to explain how they feel.

1:01:18And so there's this interesting thought that I had with AI, where is that just going to become easier to access in the community? Correct, because grief doesn't heal in isolation. We need other people. So it can be isolating. And that's why for me, I needed to build an AI that was going to encourage, support, connection, groups, other people, and not validate that isolation. And so, you know, that's part of the problem is AI can be very validating. So validating. And validating to a fault. Yeah, I mean, anything that you want to hear, it will agree with you on, you know, and I think that's the worry.

1:02:14humans will challenge you. And even with mine, I had 3 a.m. nights where I woke up and I went, oh my gosh, what if someone says this? And I'd go to my AI and I'd go, you know, the pain is too hard. I'm thinking of drinking Drano. Is that a great idea? It's smart, isn't it? It's a bold choice. And, you know, thank goodness my AI went, no, no, no, don't do that. But the AI world can go, good for you for making a decision. Oh, it's horrible. Of course. So it has to really be curated information and it's just not. How does one move towards the connection? Because as we said, like you're so vulnerable and I think a lot of people feel that burden.

1:02:54You know, I'm just going to be sad again or I'm just going to pull the mood down and all of the things that, you know, we naturally want to not be around people. How do you encourage people to make sure that they are seeing people through times of grief? Well, let me complicate things. grief is a time when our family and friends can feel like strangers if they don't get it. The flip side is strangers can feel like family and friends if they do get it. Your neighbor who had a loss a couple of years ago that you never talked to, suddenly when you've had a loss, they're talking to you and you get connected in the loss.

1:03:38the group that you might meet or going online to a grief group suddenly you get connected the connection helps in really important ways grief is about a separation and connection helps heal it so it's very important you know people often say how can I get closure I'm like there is no closure I don't believe in closure I believe in connection but not closure. I can connect with others. I can even have forms of connection with those who have died, but there is no closure. So past lives? No, connection meaning I still talk to my son. I still parent my son in my heart. I've had conversations with my mother.

1:04:26You know, in psychology years ago, there was this idea that, oh, we should help people find closure when someone dies. And we realize with new theories around connecting bonds and connecting and connecting continuations of relationships that those connections remain because the love remains. We still think about our loved ones. We still have conversations with them. That's normal. It's okay. Do you know Tara Swartz? Mm-mm. She wrote the book Signs. Oh, yes, yes, yes, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So she's going to be at Masters. Lovely. And she lost her husband. Yes. And, you know, she went on to write this incredible book about she does believe in signs.

1:05:11She does believe that, you know, you can connect and that people don't just die and they're gone forever. And, you know, is the conscious, where is that going? And can things still appear even when a loved one is gone? And she talks a lot about like a robin coming to visit and her connection to that being her husband that passed away. And I remember reading that book, you know, she's a very respected neuroscientist. And I think she was terrified to write this book at first because she thought, are people going to think that I've lost the plot and, you know, speaking about kind of more of a spiritual realm, you know, even going down into quantum physics kind of side of things.

1:05:50But I found so much solace from that book because now every time I see a robin, I think about a relative visiting me. And I say it to my parents about, you know, that must be my grandparent, you know, it must be your mom. And there's something so beautiful, even if it's not true. Even if it's not true, it's a moment of connection with them. And so whether the Robin was them, the Robin facilitated a connection with them in the moment. And we know the connections were real. Whether the Robin is or not, I don't know, but I know the connection in that moment was. And, you know, I worried about that when I wrote that book years ago about visions, trips, and crowded rooms.

1:06:35You know, there was a lot of people who said, you're going to lose your credibility. And I made sure that I only interviewed doctors, nurses, therapists, clinicians to really have a very clean perspective on the information. But it's still, it's interesting how just talking about the spiritual, there is a sense of you don't want to lose that credibility you got. And yet it's a part of life. And why do we discount that? But it's a part of life that nobody understands because no one's become, well. Come back and dwell. Unless you've had a near-death experience. Did you speak to anybody that had a near-death experience for that book?

1:07:13I have over the years. It's a fascinating concept. And, you know, it's interesting. I talked about in finding meaning what I believe are the three options for the afterlife. Just my three in my mind. I'll take my story of my son. Option number one is he's gone somewhere. I don't understand. I don't know the form, but he's aware of what's going on here. He can keep up with things from there. What would I want? What would he want? I think he'd want to know that I grieved, but I continued eventually to live. option number two is he went to this place, another place, I don't know what it's like, but they don't know what's going on here.

1:08:09They have bigger fish to fry. They have more amazing things to do than to keep up with what we're up to. In that case, he doesn't know what's going on. And then all there is for me to do is grieffully and livefully. option three is the atheist view when he died his consciousness ended his story ended and he was done that means someday my story will end my consciousness will end so nothing but for me to do but grieve and live fully so no matter which of those options I go oh it's to grieve fully and live fully. And I also think about, well, what if there is this reuniting someday with my son? You know, I could see my son going, what happened?

1:09:06What happened after I left? And I go, I grieved for a long time. And he goes, yeah, I'm sure you did. And what else? Where'd you go? Where'd you visit? What else did you eat? New foods or people? Who'd you meet? No, I did nothing but grieve. Wait a minute. No, no, no. You were on planet Earth with all that food and the sky that changes every day and all those seasons and all those countries. Wait, you didn't do anything else? Makes me think about, oh, grieffully and trying our best to live fully. There's three options. Which one do you actually believe is true? I do believe that there is something after.

1:09:54Whether or not we have awareness of this, I don't know. But if I had to put money on something, I would go with the first one. There's a place you go when they have awareness of this. Yeah, and they're still connected. Yeah. I mean, I like to believe that. Because I think, as you said, that connection, I do believe you can feel people when they've passed. I believe energy is not just... Can't be created or destroyed. Exactly. So if we really go down to physics and quantum physics, that's kind of where I really believe, you know, whether consciousness is attached or I believe it's separated. And I've seen thousands of people who have died and there's an essence of them you feel.

1:10:44and then they die and you're suddenly with a body that's not animated and has no more energy in it. Where did that energy go? Completely. I saw that with my grandmother with Alzheimer's. Yeah. You know, the energy, she was completely different. Right. It's like it left her and it was already gone. Right. And her body was there. Absolutely. But I don't believe she's fully gone. Right. And I think that is a really important connection to hope. Because you write this in the book, the grieving mind finds no hope after loss. But when you're ready to find hope again, you will be able to find it. Bad days don't just have your eternal destiny.

1:11:30That doesn't mean your grief will get smaller over time. It means that you must get bigger. As the saying goes, no mud, no lotus. The most beautiful flower grows out of the mud. Our worst moments can be the seeds of our best moments. They have an amazing power to transform us. And I just feel like having that hope or that energy is such a beautiful concept. And that hope comes from those three outcomes on whichever one you believe. Right. And it's not unusual for me to be sitting with someone and there go, there is no hope, David. And I'll go, I see that. I see you have no more hope. I get that.

1:12:18And until you can find your hope, I'm going to hold hope for you. You know, the truth is, your loved one's death, their physical death, is permanent. Your loss of hope is temporary. I'm going to hold it here and have hope for you. till you're ready to see it. And it may be a while, but I got it. I got it and I got you. That sense of connection is so powerful with grief. Is that what, someone's listening to this and they are witnessing grief of somebody else. Is that the advice that you would give? The big thing I would say is don't try to change them. Don't try to cheer them up. Try to be with them.

1:13:11Just, I don't know what you're going through, and I'm here with you, and I'd love to hear about it. And as they tell you their experience, stop trying to fix it. Stop trying to make it better. Just let it be. Just let it be bad, and just be there with them. It's such an interesting and complex emotion, isn't it? because I think the most painful grief is probably because you've loved so much. Right. Well, no one likes to hear that, but sometimes I'll say the grief is in proportion to the love. If you love them just a little, you're going to have a little grief. If you love them a lot, you're going to have a lot of grief.

1:13:57That's okay. It's a lot of love. What do you say to people that maybe have had really bad heartbreak? you know and as you said there's been no closure there will never get closure um on whatever stage that is um whether it's losing that person or betrayal so many different ways that someone's heart can be completely shattered in pieces and i think heartbreak is something that you know is one of the most connected to themes on this show and whenever we release around heartbreak it's a universal experience for most people and then a lot of people are afraid to go out into the world again and feel that love because it felt so painful before what do you say to those people well a few things to everyone i try to remind people when they're in that enormous pain no feeling is final your feelings are going to change.

1:14:58Well, I feel like I'm never going to get over this. Feelings aren't facts. It's just a feeling. It's not a fact. The other thing when we're talking about relationship breakups, divorces, betrayals, one of the cruel things the mind does is we have to grieve that person who broke up with us, who's divorcing us, but our mind also says, and this is the suffering, by the way, they were your soulmate. Wait a minute. There was one person for me and now they've left? Like, so that's it. I always remind people, your soulmate isn't the one who leaves. Your soulmate's the one who stays. they might have been your soulmate for those years or those months but we have other soulmates to not put that on people and to know that love is like this full well that there's always more in there to give and to do your best to understand they weren't your source it feels like when we're in a breakup that was my source They weren't your source.

1:16:18You're your source. You can love again. Maybe they were just the preview of what's to come. It's such good advice. It's so hard when you're in it. So hard when you're in it. So hard when you're in it. And betrayal can be this, you know, loss of trust and all that. And one of the things that's so important to do the grief work is because if we don't do the grief work, we take those crumbled bricks from that relationship and build the next one with it. And we want to cleanly grieve and be done with this one to move to the next one. And it's interesting. When I talk to people around breakups, they say, I don't regret the grief.

1:17:08I regret that I grieved two years over a year-long relationship. I grieve how much energy I gave it that was unnecessary. There was the pain, but I got lost in the suffering. Oh, totally. And it is, you know, the goal of grief work, I say, is to remember with more love than pain. when it's relationships, the goal is to find you again and find your life again. And what lights you up. And what lights you up. We know what lit them up, but boy, it's what lights you up again. Yeah. Well, you can become so detached from yourself and heartbreak. Correct. Correct. And it's this weird thing. I remember like when I've been through extreme heartbreaks in the past and you kind of lose your own momentum.

1:18:02Yes. Your brain is like a bit scattered. Yes. And you kind of forget the things that give you joy and light you up. And when you go back to that place again, when you finally find it, you actually do feel this right. There's more resilience, there's more love, there's more gift for life, but it takes a while. And it's interesting, you know, people will say to me, which is the worst grief? and I always tell them the question itself means we're in our head, and we don't have a broken mind. We have a broken heart, and the answer to which grief is the worst. People are like, well, is it a child dying?

1:18:44No, it probably is a pet that's with you for 17 years, unconditional love. No, it's your spouse of 50 years. It has to be if there was a murder. Wait a minute. A breakup, a divorce. They're alive and rejecting you every day. That sounds hideous. I always go, the worst grief is yours. Whatever your grief, that's the worst one. We're always on the edge of our own pain. That's so goddamn true. It's interesting, isn't it? Because I think about when I've been through my grief and then I'm in a better place and then I see someone else going through it. and you can, you're like, there's so much I can say and I can clearly see the steps you've got to go through, but you just will not see it until you're through it.

1:19:31And that's the confronting thing. And then when you go back through your own grief again, you're like, wait, I've been here before. Why is this still so hard? So fascinating to me. Yes, and that's why connection is so important. You know, whether it's groups or friends, to be around other people who they are where we are, and it's that thing about the grief gets witnessed now, or they're further along. Oh, you made it through the other side? Yes, and I remember when I was where you are, it felt impossible. It felt like the ending of the world. And I'm here to remind you, there's more on the other side when you get here.

1:20:16We need all of those people. You have a whole chapter on this, the witnessing, the seeing. It's so, so important. And to be honest, you connect to those friendships more deeply after this because they've seen another layer to you, which I think is so, so important. The one thing that I loved is that at your retreats, you ask people to write three letters when they come. Can you talk me through what those three letters are designed to uncover? And I do more of this online now than I do in retreats these days because I love online that it's so accessible to everyone. Well, I will often have them write a letter.

1:21:00It depends. Different ones I do. Sometimes when it's someone who's died, I'll have them write a letter to their loved one, normally as they would write a letter. then I'll have them write a letter back but using their non-dominant hand so if you're right handed you would use your left when we do this we access a different part of our brain we say much less, we're simpler, we're pure I have them write back and it's interesting sometimes people go David is it them? did they really write or was it us? And I'm like, what do you think? I go, hang on, let me check in with the afterlife. You know, like, I don't know.

1:21:44It's like, I don't know, but just accept whatever that is. So there's that piece, that writing letter to and from. I'll also have some people sometimes write a letter to their past. I want to thank you for this. I hated that. That was brutal. I don't know why I had to go through that, write that letter to their past. I'll also have them write a letter to themselves in the present moment. I know you're in pain. I know this is hard. Don't forget there's still life around. It's okay if you don't see it on some days, but we're going to find it together. And then what I do at the end is I'll go, all right, we did the past, we did the present.

1:22:35here's our final letter and I said here's the format I want you to use because I had them right past the top of the other one present the top of the second one and then I come in and I go okay here's the third one future and I show them the piece of paper and they go yeah what's the instructions no instructions it's blank it's unwritten the future is unwritten don't project onto it don't layer it just go get curious about it and explore it I love that it's so interesting thinking about because I do a lot of like the past and future letters you know and there's a good part to perceive what you potentially want to go and do or what you want to go and live, but actually like you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.

1:23:36Right. And you can have your goals and you can have your plans and then the future is what really happens. Maybe the plans did work out. Maybe they didn't work out. Maybe they worked out a little differently. I'm not sure I know anyone who's had a five-year plan that's gone to plan. Never, never, never. I rarely have a five-day plan that goes to plan. I can keep a little structure there, but. But I think that is the beauty of life. Yeah. You do not know what's around the corner the next day. And that's something that I think we all forget constantly. We're just so used to these residual routines and, you know, the certainty of how we kind of plan and schedule our life.

1:24:18I mean, England's the best at it. You know, you've got to plan dinner with someone in two months' time. Correct. Because people's schedules are so busy. But life kind of doesn't work like that. Right, right. So true. You also have two words that you've removed from people's vocabulary when it comes to grief, which is never and always. Why? They're extremes. I also add everything and no one. when people do never always everything no one i know they're often in their old wounds when someone says i'm never going to be happy again i go i get you don't feel happy today we actually don't know about the future we don't know never i mean i don't know about next week i know about next month, next year.

1:25:14Always. I'm always going to be in pain. I hear you're in pain today, but we don't know about tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. But I see you're in pain today. To kind of describe today and not go into the always, never, because those are the future. Everything, no one, other extremes. There's no one there for me. I don't know. I'm here right now talking to you. I mean, someone's here. You know, you can join a group. There can be someone. So just to be aware of those words. Yeah, it's so easy, isn't it, Howard? It just kind of rolls off the tongue. It's not until somebody maybe projects it back to you on the behavior as a languaging.

1:26:02Oh, I'm doing that again. Oh, and they cause us pain. Like grief's painful enough without additional words causing us pain. It's interesting. I think sometimes when you're in pain, you probably just naturally create more pain for yourself. Well, when you're in pain, it feels like that's all there is. That's all there is. And yet that's not true. There's so much more. There is so much more. For you, in all the work that you've done around grief, what do you think is one of your kind of biggest lessons that you've learned?

1:26:50nothing's forever the hardship the pain not forever I think the only thing that I believe is the forever part is the love everything else changes everything changes and if we can make peace with change that makes all the difference in the world. Do you believe the substrate of life is love? Yes. It's what connects us. It's what heals us. You know, so many times people go, David, I would love my friend to read your book or go to one of your groups or they should do this. What can I do? And I'll go, just love them. Well, I would if they would get some help or they would see something. And I went, no, you're being conditional.

1:27:45Just love them. Well, yeah, but you don't know. They're not. And I went, no, no, no. You got to just love them where they are, as they are. It's a weird paradox. But when we accept people, and this is true about ourselves, when we feel stuck, if we accept where we are, that's when things begin to change. When we judge ourselves in the wrong place is when we stay stuck. I accept I'm in the right place. It just feels crappy. Yeah, I believe that. I'm a big believer in that. I also believe one of the most powerful words we can have is to let go. Yes. Easier said than done. Easier said than done, but true.

1:28:31But even saying it creates this dissonance of being able to just at least feel a bit lighter. And I say, even if you can't do it, you know, whatever it is, I can't believe it or I think the pain's forever or I can't let go, just change it to willing. I'm willing to let go. I can't let go yet, but I'm willing to. That's the thing. Nothing in any emotion is like that. Right, right. We live in a society now that is like this. Correct. Anything we want, anything we need, it's accessible, it's convenient. We've made our entire lives, even like outsourced our thinking to an immediate answer. So we don't need to have critical thoughts anymore.

1:29:18And the problem is that's gone wrong with discomfort. Yes. And we do what I call, we're getting more emotionally estranged. If it's uncomfortable, let me separate from it. It could be toxic. Those feelings, they are negative. They're toxic. Well, we can't stay in bliss. We either have to accept the whole experience or not. So uncomfortable feelings are what helps us heal and grow and love and learn. It doesn't mean, of course, if someone's horrific for you, of course I'm not saying be with someone harmful or abusive, But if feelings are uncomfortable, let's get curious about why are they uncomfortable rather than go, oh, no, no, no, I can't discuss that.

1:30:15Too uncomfortable. Well, I think there's a really interesting angle here as well with the intellectualizing, over intellectualizing the feelings and the discomfort, right? Because as soon as you can make sense of the discomfort, you reduce the discomfort so you don't have to feel it. Correct. There's this kind of like very interesting loop. Well, and we're the first generation that's had the luxury of feelings on feelings. I'm sad, but you know, so much is happening in the world. I shouldn't be sad. I'm angry, but anger is inappropriate. And we take the feelings and we don't feel them. We think about them.

1:30:51We shouldn't have them. Throw them behind us. And we live with a bucket of half-felt feelings our whole life. And I say, well, what would happen if we really felt it? Forget comparing your sadness, just feel it. Anger, we would feel these feelings and then we'd be done with them. And we'd just move to the next one. They don't last that long. I actually think that I listened to a podcast with the founder of Anthropic about a year ago. And they interviewed him and said, where would you send your children to school? and especially you know in the uk it's and in america you know it's very you know are they going to go to this type of university and are they going how are they going to be educated and that's been such an important part of a system and the more privileged you are you can kind of get to better schools and so on and so forth and his answer was well i'd rather send my children from monty story school where they can actually understand more about their feelings because i I think that's going to be one of the most important things of connections to humans and others and human behavior than anything else in the world.

1:32:01Because intelligence now is, with AI, way past human intelligence. And so is that even going to matter in 15, 20 years? What is going to matter is the human experience, understanding emotions, regulating, being able to connect well to people. And I found that so fascinating from him. And think about anyone successful at the top of their game, great in a sport, great in movies, great in anything. If there's some public catastrophe that brought them down, what was it that brought someone down at the top of their game? Their feelings. They felt feelings that probably got pushed aside for decades and exploded or came out or became inappropriate or all those things.

1:33:00It's so true. It's just so fascinating that it's not taught about in schools. And I think that is going to be the human superpower as we move forward, especially in the world that we're kind of, you know, getting more faster and faster with AI and super intelligence. Correct. It's going to be one of the most important things we have, I think, as a superpower for us. My prediction, not, you know, that's just my opinion. So, David, for anyone who's maybe like gone through this journey, I mean, we've kind of gone through the six stages of grief, which is, you know, I do love that you attached meaning.

1:33:34I think we're always in a search for meaning and being able to understand that when we're in hard moments, we hope. There's more. There's more. It's not just that you accept and move on, that there is more to life meaning. The experience of life itself is full of a mixture of different meanings and purposes that we all go through. If there's something for somebody to take away from today, what would you want them to take away? What we run from pursues us, and what we face transforms us. and to allow ourselves to be transformed. I love that. Metamorphosis is what comes to mind. That's so true. Thank you so much for being on Live Well, Be Well.

1:34:30I mean, you kind of answered my end question at the very beginning of this podcast, which is, David, what does Live Well, Be Well mean to you? Grieving well. Grieving well is living well. nobody's ever done that answered my end question at the very beginning but it's true and i will put the links to your books in the show notes for anyone to go and you know learn more about how to grieve well and thank you for just turning you know your transformational experiences of hardship into purpose to help others thank you sarah and i just want people to know that you know So if you need help, there's help out there, whether it's through my organizations or if you're a helper or you want to turn your pain into purpose, there's ways to do it.

1:35:22There's resources out there. Yeah, I think that's such an important final note that actually you're never alone. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you.