How do you know if you're a sad person? | We help Sad People with Cole James

Some of them are just, they live in small towns across the whole United States and they're just incredibly inspiring, good human beings. So I'm going to kind of scour the globe to find good guests for you. But I figured in this first episode, why don't I tell you a little bit about who I am, what I'm about? Because again, hopefully you're going to hear mostly from my guests in future episodes.

I mean, I can't help but all chime in here and there and I like to participate in the conversation. But my goal with this podcast is really to have you guys listen and be inspired and get good information from other people who have been stuck in pain and sadness and have found away through that. Some of the solutions, some stuff we talk about is going to be the work that I do and a lot of the solutions and things people have found helpful for them will be stuff from all over the place, right? So I'm going to really be open to all of that.

Without any further ado, let me tell you a little bit about who I am and we will go from there. I am 42 years old. I live with my wife and my four children in a rural part of Idaho in the Rocky Mountains of Idaho. I like to, we homeschool our kids.

We homestead a lot of our own food and both meat, animals and also garden stuff as well. And we do that on the side. I do this work full time, meaning I help people with most sadness and pain full time. I work with a lot of counselors and therapists, but I myself am not a counselor or a therapist and the work that I do is not counseling or therapy.

So I think that's a just a good clarifying point is the method that I'll discuss called the grief recovery method or TGRM for short is is the process we use to help people with sadness. How did this all come to be? Well way back in the 70s my father lost a son who was, would have been my older brother. His lungs didn't develop and he died in the hospital and he and his wife at the time were devastated by this loss and out of this tragic, tragic loss of a child, my dad searched everywhere he could to find helpful things to help heal his heart and through a series of miracles I would call them.

He came up with this beautiful process called the grief recovery method that ended up helping a lot more than just my father with that the death of his son. Through the evolution of this for decades now we discovered oh wow grief, emotional pain, loss, bereavement, trauma, these hurts from our past are so much more than just and we figured out we can help people with a lot more than just losing someone to death. Now again you may be watching this and you may say, my heart is in a thousand pieces right now and I'm here because someone that I love dearly has died. So I'm not at all trying to minimize that or just say that is one of the many things that we do.

What I'm trying to do though is I'm trying to open everyone else's eyes to the premise that grief and loss and pain and trauma and emotional hurt from the past is not just about death, it is about many many different life events that we have that can be very very debilitating for us. What are some of those other ones really briefly? Divorce, romantic breakups of any sort at any point or stage in that relationship, moving from one state to another. If you think about it more like this grief and loss and pain and hurt is really at the core around changing a familiar way you were doing things of familiar counter behavior.

If you're used to having someone around for a long time and then they're no longer with you, that's grief. If you are used to a certain town for a long time and you move to another town, that's grief and loss and pain and hurt. If you are used to being in a relationship with someone and being in love with someone and then that has changed, that's hurt, that's pain. If you are used to not having any children and being completely independent of that and then you have kids, that's loss, that's change.

If you're used to being single and making all your own decisions and then you meet someone that you've fallen in love with and then you decide to get married and now your life is vastly different than what is before, that's massive change, that's loss, that's grief. My point is here is that we are grieving, we are we have trauma, we have pain, whatever I don't care what you call it, but this stuff is in us on a daily basis. Now sometimes we have big kind of long spells or long kind of lengths of time when things are just kind of on cruise control. So I'm not saying you have grief every day of your life, but we all have a lot more emotional pain than we're willing to really kind of think about and discuss and this beautiful tool helps us stay complete with our current situation because what happens is a lot of the time as we accumulate this stuff and we don't know what to do with it, it adds up and it builds and it affects every part of our life.

It affects the decisions that we think we have to make, it affects the choices or maybe we don't think we have a lot of choices and in the background what's happening is we have under resolve of grief, we don't want to open our heart to the premise or the even the option that something could be in store for us that is really incredible because we've been hurt from the past and so we don't even want to open the door to that again. So it's very life limiting and if we don't know what to do with it, it stacks up and it can come up in all sorts of ways and we desperately don't know what to do about it or how to resolve it or how to again stop replaying those memories in our head or stop just continually obsessing over past events or we don't know how to interact with people that have hurt us before and so that colors every moment of interaction that we have right there in real time with them.

Now this can be parents and siblings and ex partners and current partners and again if we have a whole history of unfinished emotional stuff around someone or something and we don't know how to get complete with the past, it is coloring every moment of the current and most of the time that's for the worse. Okay. So in other words, if I'm under resolve with my relationship with my mom, then every related action or discussion I have with her right now is going to be affected by my incompleteness with 20 years of other stuff that is piled up in our relationship. So a lot of us want to learn how to manage our anger or a lot of us want to learn how to really be better communicators and a lot of us want to learn how to be have better present moment skills and a lot of us want to lose 15 to 20 pounds and a lot of us want to learn how to be more patient with our children and if we have a whole lifetime full of unresolved stuff, it is very hard to turn a new leaf with all these different endeavors that we so desperately want.

So in other words, if I have a lifetime full of unresolved emotional pain in my heart, there is no way that that diet program or that exercise program is going to stick for me. If I have a bunch of unresolved emotional pain from my past, then that food that sugar those cookies, those carbohydrates, whatever, those things are my solution and that is my distraction. And so no matter how hard I track my macros and I use my fitness pal and no matter how good my personal trainer is, if I am robbed of the energy that unresolved emotional pain from your past causes, you on a daily basis, all these things are doomed to fail, right? Same with if I go to anger management courses, but I have a bunch of anger and I'm withholding forgiveness for people and I'm doing a bunch of stuff to harbor all these feelings inside of me, then it's going to be really hard for me to change the anger part of it, which is just a symptom of this massive amount of unresolved turmoil in my heart.

And so my whole goal in life and until the day I fall over dead is to try and educate people on this missing core piece, right? We're all trying to fine tune parts of our life and that's all great. I do that too, right? I'm not obsessed with unresolved emotional pain from my past all the time.

I'm looking at what's the most current, you know, healthy way to eat, what's the best way to parent, what other things fulfill my life, right? I mean, I am very inquisitive and interested, interested guy, like I'm interested in a lot of stuff and current things and I'm kind of a student of history, but at the core, why I wake up in the morning every day is number one, to take care of my family and to my wife and my children, it's very, very sacred to me and important to me. And number two, to help other people in this world. And right, there's some ancient Chinese proverb they tell me that says, may you live in interesting times, I think is what it is.

And 100% that's where we are, right? The world needs this work more than ever. The world is more divided than I've ever witnessed it in my 42 years of being, you know, life. And one thing that I wish people would really kind of look at more is how to give each other enough room to really not judge each other's pain, to minimize each other's pain, to kind of negate their pain by saying, oh no, it could have been worse.

Let me tell you my pain. We kind of do this pecking order thing where nobody can really feel bad about their situation because there's someone else that has a worse situation than yours. And so what that tends to do is that tends to have us all isolate our pain, not want to discuss it, not want to work through it. Because that would make us a whiner or complainer and we don't want to do that because don't, don't you know, that one person down the street, they have the worst story.

So they're really the only one allowed to do any work because we've all found ways to minimize our own stuff. So again, my kind of one of my passions is just to get this out there. It's funny, I fly quite a bit for my job. And this has happened, I can't tell you how many times I'll get on a plane, I'll sit next to some nice person and you know, we'll strike up a conversation.

And that happens less and less too. And again, that's a side issue, right? But the world is not kind of marching in a direction, I think, is healthy for humanity in a number of ways. And so we'll be getting into that throughout this podcast, right?

Hopefully this podcast challenges you. I'm not, I'm not going to just try and find an audience that just agrees with me on everything. I really want to tell from my perspective what I think the core truth is on what's going on in this society. But anyway, let's go back a couple of years before COVID even when we're more open than what COVID did to all of us.

And I would talk to someone on a plane and they would say, what do you do? And I would say, oh, I help people with grief and loss. And this is the term I've heard so many times. Where were you when I needed you?

Oh, wow, where were you when I needed you? Right after I tell them what I do. Let's look at what that implies. Where were you when I needed you?

What does that imply? It implies that they don't need me anymore, right? Or let's say they don't need this work anymore. And so why are they saying that?

And the reason that they're saying that is because an undetermined amount of time has passed since their loss has occurred. And so the implication is they are fine now. They are good. They're through their grief now.

It's not my job to rain on anybody's parade. But what I know from experience is that person probably really didn't have access to any tools around their grief. So yes, time had passed since I saw them. But there is absolutely really important things that they could do to move through that loss that they have not done yet.

There are many, many things that are happening in their body that they are feeling. Maybe sometimes subconsciously, sometimes consciously around that that painful event, right? If it was so painful that you would say, oh, where were you when I needed you? Let me tell you about this event because that's what they'll do next.

When I tell them what I do and they say, where were you when I needed you? I said, Oh, what happened? That's where I'll always go. Right?

And they'll tell me the story. And then if I kind of press, I'll ask you, well, did you, did you like do any work around that loss? How did you, how did you gain a sense of completeness around that event or what happened there? Right?

And most of the time, it's just like, Oh, you know, I just kind of time, time kind of helped out and or and sometimes they, they, they, oh, I saw therapist and I'm like, Oh, that's cool. And, you know, again, I work with a lot of therapists. I work with a lot of really cool therapists. So this, this next thing I'm going to say is not a knock on therapists.

But when you, when you've been in enough rooms like I have with therapists talking about grief and specifically, and they trust you and they kind of trust what you're doing is, is, is hopeful to them and it will be a good tool for them. When they, when they kind of feel all that, they'll say, and I've heard this again, many, many times, I can't tell you how many times, but a lot, they'll say, Cole, I know this sounds crazy, but we spent a half a semester on the topic of grief, my entire education around becoming a counselor, masters degrees, right PhDs, Cole, we spent maybe a half a semester, maybe a couple of weeks on the topic of grief. And I, I hope that sounds as crazy to you as it did to me the first 15 times I heard it, but that's the reality. When it comes to grief and loss and emotional pain from your past, there is very little time spent in traditional mental health education around this topic specifically.

Now, if there, there's a lot of stuff you would come and want to see me about and I would tell you, whoa, I'm not qualified to do that work. Go, go see a therapist, go see a counselor. So again, we get to work with the best counselors that identify that hole in their education and want to come get this work, even though no one's forcing them to get it, even though we don't even give out CEUs right now for this work, we get the counselors in the therapist that just know that they don't all have all the tools they need when they're working with their client around, around grief and loss and they go out on the internet and they find us and they come work with us and we give them this whole other toolkit and it's a beautiful thing. So again, I'm not trying to put down mental health in general, but I will say that there's a huge, huge missing component around grief and loss and like I said earlier, so many life events are grief and loss at the core that really it's a tool that that everybody needs, especially people that are wanting to sit in a room with someone and do therapy with them.

So anyway, that's kind of a side note. Getting back to really mainly what I'm what I'm wanting to talk about those, that person on the plane and they say, where were you and I needed you and I say, oh, what happened? Now in the back of my mind, I wouldn't say this right, but in the back of my mind, I said, you know, you could use our work right now. There's a lot to be done still to get complete with that unfinished thing, but here's the problem is if you have a loss or a grief event or a divorce or someone, you know, or big, a strangement with a living relative or you get fired from a job, you've been after a long time or any of these things that really at the core are loss that are emotional pain from the past.

If you sit next to me on that plane too recently, then you say, no, no, it's too soon for me to do work because someone, no doubt, will tell you that, right? Oh, you shouldn't do work yet. It's too soon, right? And so then you wait and then you wait.

And then at some point, right, those same people tell you time will just kill it. And so at some point in five months, six months, seven months after after the loss, then you go, okay, good, I'm through that. I'm good. Okay.

Now the truth is we didn't do any real work in the middle, generally speaking. We may have found that we ate a little bit more food or that we drank a little bit more wine at night or we watched a little more Netflix. Okay, so we may have mixed in some serious, some, you know, let me say subtle two serious distractions in there, but we haven't actually done much specific stuff during the grieving process to help us get emotionally complete with what still hurts from that loss. Okay.

So if you don't sit with me on the plane in the exact right time, in the exact right place, which no one will be specific with you about, but if I'm not right there with you at this right time where you go, oh, I am actively grieving this. Can I work with you? If I don't catch you in that right time, society will convince you that this work isn't for you. And so this podcast and all my life's work is around telling people that any time in their life at any point is a good time to look at emotional pain from your past.

There is never a time where you can't look at some stuff from your past, clean it up so that you have a more fulfilling life right now. If I have one or two ex-girlfriends that were very impactful in my life and there's a mountain of unfinished stuff or memories or me thinking about them or, you know, things I wish I would have been different, better, more in that relationship or things that, you know, or I'm looking at their social media page and wondering how their life turned out. Like if I'm doing those things, it's very hard for me to have a successful marriage in real time. If I'm unfinished with some past girlfriend's transgressions against me, it's very hard for me to truly trust my wife moving forward.

If I'm unfinished with the way that my father raised me, it's very hard for me to raise my child the way that I want to. If I ended my last job and I have a bunch of hurt around how that job ended, it's very hard for me to continue to be open with my heart to the new role and to the new boss. And so what happens is, life, again, keeps knocking us down a peg or two and all of society will simply offer you more distractions. They're not going to help you go and really look at that stuff and put it behind you truly.

And that's what we did, okay? So I want to thank you for listening to this and I want to invite you to subscribe to this podcast, subscribe to this channel wherever you're seeing this. Stick close. If I'm not the best messenger for this work for you, for whatever reason, that's great.

We have thousands and thousands of people that come from all different backgrounds that do this work. And so if you don't feel comfortable with me, you may feel comfortable with someone else that does this work. This work has been translated into like 25 languages. We work with people from all the major religions.

We work with all different people from cultural backgrounds. And this is like a real unifier. At the end of a four day training that we do, we'll have, you know, black people, white people, Asian people, we'll have Christians, we'll have Jews, we'll have Muslims, we'll have men, we'll have women. And by the end, when we create a place for us all to know that we are hurting at 100% of the capacity, what our heart is hurting on whatever event or whatever life we come to and have had up to up into this point.

If you can, if you can safely and openly share that with a bunch of other people, we move way, way around past the gender stuff and the color of our skin stuff and the religion stuff. It's like you can truly empathize with other people. If you set it up in a way that just honors it, we all are here on this planet having a human experience. And that transcends all of these things that currently we're getting so tripped up on, you know, another passion of mine.

In a very divided world, I get to work with these tools and I get to work with these people that actually bring people together more profoundly than most organizations I've ever seen. I see it when I go to church, I can see that. And I see that when I go to AA because I'm a, I'm a, you know, I do that too. And so those are the places where I can really see like us transcending all this because we have the singleness of purpose and we have this mission to help each other throughout, you know, whether it's your spiritual beliefs or whether it's you and that other person battling addiction or again, whether it's you and that other person helping overcome, a campaign full feelings and emotions from the past, right?

As long as we can all be unified behind something, it's a beautiful world. But when, but when we don't see past, hey, I'm a white male. If that's all you can judge me on and then say, oh, you know, blah, blah, blah, you know, or vice versa. If I do that and I make a blanket judgment on someone else based on gender or color of their skin, you know, what, who's that really helping?

Is that really a world that we want for our kids? Because I know I know. Anyway, I want to invite you to this podcast. I think you're going to get a lot out of it.

Give me any comments in the comments section. I appreciate. Give me feedback. You know, what kind of stuff do you want to see?

What kind of stuff is of interest to you? And stay tuned. We're going to, we're going to kick this off in 2024. Thank you.