The Problem with Skipping Grief & The Danger of Positive Thinking w/ Special Guest Susan Dindinger

And so Susan is one of the few out there in the world that is designated and trained to to, you know, certify folks in our methods. So she has a very, very high level of understanding and application of this method. She's very talented at this work. And again, we usually do about five minute kind of pre show talk about, hey, what do we want to talk about?

And there's literally a million ways we could go with this conversation. So we'll see where it goes. But you're not going to want to miss this. I think we're going to cover some really good interesting topics here.

Both again, for the benefit of you and your heart, if you feel like your hearts in a thousand pieces, and you'll also benefit if you're just kind of a caregiver in any capacity and you work with people around sad events from their past, and you want to just get better and get more tools at being effective helping others. Either way, I think this is going to be worth your time. So without any further ado, Susan, welcome to the podcast. I am so glad you're here.

Oh, thank you, Cole. I am delighted to be here and feel very honored and I'm excited. So thank you for having me. Of course, of course, usually where I like to start, I think it's always an interesting question is, how did you first find this method?

How did you get into this work? Obviously, we're still a very kind of small movement out there in the grand scheme of things. So how did you, how were you first introduced to this work? After it was after actually the death of my only sibling, my sister Julie, she died at 33 years old from a heart attack, which is practically unheard of.

She was not overweight, didn't have anything major going on that we were aware of. So it was a complete shock and totally devastating. My sister and I, she was my best friend. She was my safe person in our family.

She's the one who supported me, believed in me. We were very close. And so losing her was just massively painful. And really, she had this heart attack.

She was in a coma for three days. It became clear that she had gone without oxygen for too long. And so those three days in the hospital, they were one of the biggest nightmares of my life. And I would even walk into the room washrooms in the coma and her vitals would change and get better.

So I felt like I didn't understand it, but I felt like I can't leave, like I can't leave her side. It was just so much. And I remember one night waking up thinking, oh, I just had the worst nightmare. And then realizing I'm in the hospital and no, this is not a nightmare.

This is not a dream. This is real. I'm just feeling sick to my stomach. But anyway, after that, my heart just shut down.

It really did. And I was scared. I felt like I had nothing left to give. I just felt empty.

I felt like a shell of who I once was. I struggled with my faith. I couldn't reconcile who I believed God to be with with what just happened and losing my sister. It made no sense to me.

And I was angry. I was hurt to so many things. And I started kind of down a self-destructive path for a while because all my usual go-tos weren't working. And so let me ask you real quick for the audience.

I was kind of roughly how long ago was this? How old roughly were you during this event? I was 27 when she died. And so it was a while back.

It was 1999 to be precise. Okay, that's it. But she was 33. So she was my big sister.

I tried typical avenues. Talked to people at my church and felt like I was getting all these pet answers and responses that weren't at all emotionally helpful and made me feel like, oh, something's wrong with me. And then so I went to a therapist and got a lot of intellectual knowledge. And it was interesting.

But again, it did not help. My broken heart at all. I just felt like it was a disconnect from what I needed. And the more things I tried, the more hopeless and discouraged I felt.

And I thought, gosh, maybe this is just my life now. And then a dear friend who actually his brother had died told me about the grief recovery method. It was about a year or so after Julie died. But at that point, I was already kind of so jaded that I didn't even want to get my hopes up.

And so he went through it. And I kind of blew it off for a year. But finally out of desperation, I just agreed to go through it. And I was internally, not externally, but internally kicking and screaming the whole time.

Like this is dumb. This stupid, I don't want to do this. Why are we doing that? You know, not on the outside.

I was just terrified. I was terrified of doing one more thing that wasn't going to work. Yep. Yep.

Right. And so like you've already been to your place of worship, right? Where you would assume would be equipped to help with death, right? And then unfortunately, was not helpful, right?

Then then you're like, okay, I'm going to a therapist, which the society would say, okay, they're definitely equipped to help with grief, right? And you go there and you're like, oh, wow, this didn't help either. So, you know, because, and I mentioned this, because it's very common, right? This is very common with people who finally find us.

They're like, yeah, I've tried four things. None of them worked. Yours won't either. So we're okay with skeptical people.

That's we'd be all at that all the time. I know I was that way too. And that's totally normal and natural. And I want to just say that to people.

But just to be clear, because I was a little confused. So a year after your sister's death, you hear about the method. But did I hear you right when you said it took another year of putting it off before you were actually going through the method? Correct.

Yeah. Okay. So we're two years in now. Okay.

And I want the audience to hear that too, because that is also very common is people will, you know, get a copy of the grief, cover, handbook or hear about it. And then there's still wrestling around should I try this, right? And obviously I am biased. But if you have heard about the method, I'm going to go ahead.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say there's a reason you heard about this method. And then you wrestling with it is just takes as long as you're willing to let it take, right? But it doesn't need to be that way, right? It's it, you know, I'm sure Susan could agree with me.

It's like, yeah, we get here when we get here. But it's also like she probably didn't need to have another 12 months of wrestling before she tried this, right? And unfortunately, sometimes that window never that window never opens again. That opportunity never really comes again.

And that's really like the heartbreaking thing for us is if you have some sort of an awareness that this exists, right? It was designed specifically for the emotional things that we're talking about, nothing else. Just rest assured that like giving it a shot would be a very good move versus like waiting and waiting and waiting more and more and more. Yeah, oh, I completely agree.

And I mean, you know, I'm sure you've heard it too cool. Like the number of times people have gone through the grief recovery method. And like, oh, I wish I had done this, you know, years ago, or I wish I knew about you like 10 years ago, you know, whatever. And I agree because that that second year after hearing about the method before I actually went through it, I was making, you know, more and more self-destructive choices out of just being broken, right?

Not knowing what to do, where to turn and and everything else. And so there were consequences of those things too, you know, that I suffered that, you know, brought more pain in addition to, you know, the pain I was already feeling. But anyway, so I finally, let me say this real quick, Susan, just to paint a picture for the audience, you know, I know we've all seen videos where you're, you know, so there's a camera and they're driving through San Francisco and you see the homeless epidemic or, you know, they're showing you the kind of the roughest neighborhood in Philadelphia and it's just people, you know, on drugs that make them look like zombies, you know, I think we've all probably seen that in the media. And obviously it's tragic and heartbreaking to an unimaginable level, right?

We all know that. And at some point, for a lot of those folks, things have progressed into mental illness, like true mental illness and they've progressed into very, very deep addiction. I, you know, I'm not here to contest any of that. But what I will tell you is like when Susan and I see that footage, we see a bunch of unresolved grief that people were desperately trying to numb and it and it progressed into these other things.

And so grief unresolved grief unresolved trauma as well. I know trauma is a very popular term right now. So I use it a lot, but unresolved loss grief trauma. It is, it is such an epidemic and creates so many of our societal problems yet is not given the credit that it is due, right?

And so that's why we're so passionate about, you know, telling people about, hey, yeah, you know that big societal problem that we all talk about around the water cooler? Yeah, it's because of unresolved grief. Hey, you know this whole thing that we're dealing with with with kind of us not being able to really kind of be as health as we want to be at some unresolved grief. Yeah, you know that whole divorce rate.

Yeah, that's unresolved grief. Yeah, you know, you know that whole drug problem. Yeah, that's unresolved grief. Hey, you know how like our prisons are filled because of violence.

Yeah, that's unresolved grief from the past, right? I could go on, but I know you guys probably get it by now. So when Susan says she's making more and more destructive choices like I've been there too. And I have, I have, you know, I don't drink alcohol and I don't use drugs one day at a time.

Because of unresolved grief and because of the path I was going down, just trying to numb the pain like same thing, right? And so I want to paint that picture like Susan is 27, right? Now 28, 29, whatever. No one expects to lose their 33 year old sister, big sister, you know best friend.

No one expects to do that when we're still just trying to figure out what our life is, right? So this is a massive, massive, massive tragic bewildering, confusing, having your whole world turned upside down event. And we're just trying to like, we're just trying to move through each day. And so I am so glad that like you found this because the alternative for Susan, again, I don't know, right?

But the alternative for Susan or for me could be drug addiction, could be going to prison for violence, like it can and does escalate that way for thousands and thousands of people worldwide every day because of unresolved grief that they desperately are trying to numb the pain of, right? So anyway, sorry, go ahead Susan, but I just wanted to say that a little bit. I mean, those are the consequences. That's how dire this stuff is, right?

If Susan doesn't find this method. Oh, it's absolutely like I truly now know so much more than I did then obviously, but at the core of so many things is unresolved grief. We just don't know for the most part that that's what it is. But I think too, I mean, just to add this element into it, this whole other story, but you know, my father struggled with mental illness, with major depression.

He often talked about wanting to die, wanting to kill himself and growing up with that was terrifying. You know, always took him seriously, felt even responsible to talk him out of it as a child. And it was it was a lot to carry that I had no idea what to do with any of that or whatever. There was a time my sister Julie struggled with major depression and even attempted to take her life and thank God wasn't successful.

So that's something I had also struggled with was just at times, you know, struggling with major depression. And at this point, there was a time in my teens, but this was the second time in my life out of hopelessness, out of feeling like, where do I turn? What do I do? Nothing is working.

Nothing I know to do is helping. And I don't know how to live with this pain. It's overwhelming. It's like crazy making.

And so I went there again, like I considered, you know, I considered suicide. I didn't want to die. I did not want to kill myself, but I didn't want to be in pain anymore. And so that's why out of that desperation, I did reluctantly go through the grief recovery method because you know, you get to that point where it's like, well, something's better than nothing, right?

And practically speaking, going through the method, how did you do that? Did you do that with a grief recovery specialist in your area? How did that work? So I did not actually, we broke the rules, but I had no idea.

I was breaking the rules. I had done my friend who told me about it, you know, this guy he had gone through it with a specialist. And so four of us got together. I had another friend whose father had recently died and and stuff and was concerned about him.

So we just kind of agreed, like the four of us, we were going to read the book together, do the exercises together, and we just followed it. You got it. Okay. Yeah.

You know, Rue, and it would have in hindsight been much better had I worked with a specialist, but I didn't know any better, you know, at the time. Sure. Yeah. So and it still worked, like it was incredibly effective.

I really didn't think it was going to help at all. And I felt like, you know, when my sister died, I felt like a huge part of my heart died with her. And I felt like I, I'm never going to get that back. And through doing all the steps of the method, and being able to get these tools and implement them and use them in my relationship with her, being able to have tools to heal my broken heart, I did get that part of my heart back, which I did not believe was even possible.

Wow. So if you're listening, I just want to reiterate what Susan said. And if you feel like that is impossible, like if you heard what Susan just said, and you're thinking yourself, that's impossible. You're in the right place.

I'm glad you're listening to this podcast. We're giving you a hug. Yes. And just keep listening because we're going to have guests after guest after guest talking about this stuff, right?

And it's like we were all skeptical. And so many people, and I know this is true for me too, like let me just, you know, rearticulate what you said, Susan, I felt like I had lost a part of my heart that I was never going to get back. And through this method and through these actions, I got that part of my heart back. Right?

Now, now again, let me say this because you're probably you're probably yelling at your car or wherever you're listening to this right now. I'm not saying that your life isn't forever different because of the loss. I'm not saying that any of us wanted these losses. I'm not saying that was fair or right or any of those kind of things, right?

But what we can't not say is that you can have a very beautiful, wonderful life with a huge heart and with with huge depth of joy in spite of these tragic things that happen to us, that is possible. And a lot of the time when you're in the throes of it, you want to contest that, you want to disagree with that. And that's all okay. Like, we're okay with all of that because we hear all the time from people that are in that spot, you know, in their journey.

And that is okay. We love you. We're giving you a hug. And we want to help you, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, if if nothing else, I just want people to know that there's hope. Like, there's so much hope.

Like, I was thinking about this just the other day, I look at my life now. And my life is amazing not to brag or anything, but like I could not have imagined my life now. What I have now back then back then everything seemed dark and hopeless. And and I remember even with my sister, like I felt like it should have been me.

I should have been the one to die. She had just gotten married. She had just started, you know, her career as a teacher. Like, her life was just coming together.

And me, like, I was single. I didn't really have a good, you know, stable career to speak of. I was struggling with a lot of physical health issues. Like, I felt like I'm a huge mess.

And she was doing great. So why was it her? And so it helped me even to deal with those feelings. Like and and, you know, be able to wrestle through that so that I'm not carrying that forward.

Right? What a huge gift. Because you don't want to take that through the rest of your life. So anyway, I know I'm like, not and not, but that is what brought me to the grief recovery method.

And then it was one of those things that was so life changing, so profound. It quite literally saved my life. I believe that whole heartedly. I don't think I'd be around on this planet if I hadn't found the grief recovery method.

And it helped me stay faithful to my beliefs, you know, in my faith. My faith got really rocky, really shaky. I was not happy with the way things were. And it helped me, you know, the way I kind of explained it sometimes to people is there was just this veil of pain, right?

That was warping and distorting my view of everything, everyone, including my faith, my belief in God. And so I was seeing God in this warped way through this pain. I couldn't really see him as he is. And so it wasn't until I was able to use these tools to get rid of that pain and remove it that my faith was restored and strengthened.

And I could see not just God, but the people in my life more truly, you know, for how they are and who they are and all those other things. So I hope that makes sense. Yeah, it does. It's such a powerful way to put it to say a veil of pain that kind of like distorted your view of everything, including your faith in God, right?

And I'm sure including all of your relationships here on earth and you know, all of it, it's like what a powerful way to put it. In terms of, you know, obviously, well, I don't know, I shouldn't say obviously, I love this method because we focus on the emotional part of grief, which we find to be really the major part of this human experience of grief and losses is the emotional part. No doubt that there's a massive spiritual part for many people. And there can also be, you know, there's an intellectual part as well, you know, there's all those parts, but we find that if you can really help them with the core emotional stuff, which most people don't know what to do with, you can truly help a lot.

What would, you know, I know that you that we work, you do and I do and we work with a lot of people from different faiths, right? Specifically, let's let's talk about Christians right now if you're good with it. What would you say is kind of some of the pitfalls of churches when let's say somebody in their congregation has a loss, right? And comes back to the church to to kind of seek support and refuge from this loss.

What are some of the maybe the not helpful things that happen at a church when a loss occurs for someone? Yeah, no, that's a that's a great question. And, um, you know, and that is where I started just to know a little bit more about like I first when I became a specialist later because of my powerful experience, you know, going through this personally, I became a specialist and and that's where I initially wanted to bring this work was to my church. That's where my best friends were.

And, you know, people who felt like family and I and I recognized and saw the need so profoundly. So I think one thing, because we talk in the grief recovery method about these different myths that we are all taught about dealing with grief that don't really work. I think in a religious setting, there's an additional one. Whereas, you know, there's sort of this unsaid unspoken thing that if you're really spiritual, you won't grieve, right?

You shouldn't be sad. You shouldn't, you know, struggle with these things. And that's so damaging and so destructive because one, it's completely unrealistic. We are human beings and we are given a wide range of emotions and you can't shut down sadness with also shutting out joy, you know, it's just the way we are as people.

So I think, you know, I remember specifically like getting my heart broken, you know, this guy who I had connected with on a really deep level and we became super close, really good friends. But then, you know, he just didn't like me in that way. Just the great stuff that we all never wanted to feel like. Right?

And I was devastated because, you know, I had a lot of trust issues and all these other things that, you know, I brought in with me for other stuff and, and so like I gave my heart on like a deeper level than I had ever done before. So it really hurt and I remember the women's ministry leader telling me, you know, quoting Philippians about rejoicing always. And I just remember looking at her like, what? You know, like, what are you saying to me right now?

And wanting to be humble and wanting to listen to her and wanting to be like, okay, like, there's something I'm not getting here clearly. But how is this making any sense? Like, you want me to rejoice that I was just rejected and I just got my heart broken? Like, that doesn't make sense.

And I think, right, there's this whole kind of be strong mentality of like that somehow, you know, if you're not letting things get to you, that you are more spiritual. And, you know, I have fought that battle for and with so many people because it's so damaging and unhelpful. And honestly, you know, for those who are Christians, it's totally unbiblical as well. In Genesis, it talked about how God grieved when he saw the wickedness and evil in man of the way that, you know, man kind was treating each other.

That was so far from his, you know, expectations and hopes and dreams for mankind. And it grieved him. And later, you know, Jesus at the grave of Lazarus, he wept. Jesus wept.

It's this, you know, shortest scripture in the Bible. And he was about to raise Lazarus from the dead. It wasn't like it was the circumstances. It was, he was grieving with and for the people out of such a compassionate, loving heart.

And so obviously, it's not wrong. It's not unspearial. It's not sinful. But I think that sometimes there's a lot of judgment around it.

And so people worry it and keep it hidden and aren't telling the truth. Yep. Yep. Yeah.

That's, that's, this is really helpful because, um, again, sometimes I feel like on our podcast, you know, the, the mental health community is going to feel like we're picking on them. And it's not that, right? It's just us trying to point out that this tool is can be of benefit to them, right? Same with, with the religious communities.

I don't want any, any Christian listening to this feeling like that we are picking on you as a Christian. Um, what, what I want, what we want to point out is, is just some other tools that can be so helpful for you and your church because here's, here's the, here's what we don't want to happen. So I'm going to experience as a loss and, and their heart is in a thousand pieces. That's how they feel.

They feel like there's literally an invisible knife in their heart and they're bleeding to death emotionally. And they go to this place, their place of worship, their community where they have found comfort for so long, um, and, you know, you come in and say, Hey, there's this, this knife in my heart, right? And some very well intentioned loving, well-meaning person puts some scripture in front of you that is not at all the context of what you are dealing with right now. And so then you are viewed as very aloof or very kind of unaware of, of the truth about us.

And unfortunately, a lot of grieving people go following a major tragic loss of their life. They go to the church to find comfort. And they don't find it there because we do things like put the wrong scripture in front of them at the wrong time. Instead of meeting them really where they're at right there, which is meeting them emotionally, right?

We're going more to the scripture and kind of thinking about stuff, which pulls them into their intellect and kind of, you know, is also varying into the spiritual, but it is no, at no place really meeting them where they're at right there is, which I'm bleeding to death emotionally. And so what happens is so many of those people never go back to the church again. And that's what we don't want, right? We want churches, we want Christians, um, to not have support one another, uh, with their grief and with the emotional aspect of their grief, because again, right?

Susan, um, and, and, and me and many other people like, and I should, I just want to say this right now, like I'm, I'm a Christian as well. And I'm a newer Christian. So that's where I'm, I'm being very, I'm being very careful not to quote scripture because I know barely anything right now. And that's a good place for me to be.

Like super humble. I don't know anything. I'm going to let Susan talk about scripture because I'm, I'm not equipped to do that. But what I will say is that I get it even more now because my family and I are going to church weekly, I get it even more now.

Some of the pitfalls that Christians can do again, loving, well intentioned Christians, but if, if, if all you know how to do is put scripture in front of the other person, it can be very, very, um, separating, not unifying for that person. Um, and, and again, right, maybe, maybe there is, like again, Jesus wept. That, that would, I think, be more helpful scripture to put in there because really what you're trying to do is say, hey, it's okay to cry right now. That's where you're at right now because your, your heart is in a thousand pieces, right?

But, but a lot of the time what we try and do is again, as we try and fast forward all of that, right, which in our myths is called don't feel bad. So basically what you're doing is don't feel bad and rejoice all the time, right? And Susan's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, like that's not really where I'm at right now. Um, so we just again, we want to be very mindful of, of what we're putting in front of people and really understanding where, where we need to meet them, which is right.

And most of the time when they first confide in you, it's just I'm, I'm so hurt emotionally right now. I'm so broken emotionally. I'm not looking at the joy part of it. I don't even know if I'll have, right?

Susan earlier in the conversation, I lost a piece of my heart and I don't think I'm going to get it back. So you coming at me with some scripture that is like trying to fast forward past all of that is really problematic for the individual, right? Um, it's not different than it was. Yeah, it's the right.

We're, we're again, to get it away from the Christian, um, Christians for a second. Let's go over here to this new invoked thing that's happened for the last 20 years is instead of having like a memorial or a funeral, like we all want to have celebrations of life, right? It's the same thing guys. It's fast forwarding past.

Look, the celebrations of life that come, you know, three weeks after someone died unexpectedly or, or no one thought they were going to die, you know, when, when you have a celebration of life who for someone who's 102 years old, like I kind of get that, but when you have a celebration of life for, you know, like Susan, right? You're 33 year old sister. If we were just trying to magically do a celebration of life two weeks or three weeks after the death of, of, of her, who, who's celebrating in the first three rows of that celebration of life? Yeah, no one.

The answer is nobody, right? But we're so, we're so wanting to, to get through all the sad heart, heartbreak stuff and we want, we want to go to celebrate. I have no problem celebrating people who have died. But if you do it in the wrong order, there's no celebration going on.

There's no completion work happening on the unfinished hurtful sad stuff, right? And therefore, you know, a celebration isn't, is not going to transpire in that meetup. Now, if you all, like if we want to do a funeral or a memorial and all talk about how we felt about the people and then, you know, hopefully, you know, do grief or cover work to get complete emotionally with your individual relationship with that person. And then we want to do a celebration of life after all of that at some other time.

I'm all for it. But that's not what we do, right? What we do is we try and just slap the, the, the smile on and the, and the positivity, right? Again, and another example of this that I see more in kind of the new age community, right?

Is just think positive, just think positive. Oh, no, you just got, oh, you know, yeah, you know, you're getting a divorce or that person that you thought was the one broke up with you just manifest what you want, right? And that is just another version of short, short, you know, just skipping all of the sad painful stuff and going right to the happy, right? Or right to the, and, and so again, we could pick apart 10 different groups that do this.

And again, the takeaways, they're all well-intentioned people. I mean, they'll want the best for us as grievers. But it is very unhelpful and hurtful for us when we get these messages because there's, we know intuitively, there's no way what, what you're asking me to do is possible. Yeah, it's not, you know, not in this moment, right?

Yeah. There may be another part of your life. And I know there is, right? Where you read that, that scripture in the Bible and you go, oh, I get it.

I know exactly what this means. And I'm feeling this and this makes total sense, right? And then there's other times in your life where, where that, that scripture is not relatable to you in that moment, right? Yeah.

Oh yeah. So I think just even, you know, circling back to to my sister, it's like how I, you know, described that veil, right? While I'm shrouded in that veil of pain, you know, everything is distorted, everything is just hurt and pain and everything else. So for someone to come along and say something like, you know, well, God won't give you more than you can handle or, you know, just have faith or she's in a better place or, you know, you know, rejoice always, which no one said that at that time.

Thank God. But those things are emotionally unhelpful, whether or not they're true, okay, is one thing they could be true, but emotionally unhelpful and really insensitive. And that's not going to help me to lift that veil from off of me, right? And when I was able to get tools that actually helped me lift that veil without anybody saying anything or needing to do anything, my faith was strengthened, right?

My faith was deepened and became stronger and truer than ever before. And it's been like that with every loss that I've walked through because of the tools that I, I believe God, you know, personally, this is my belief that God led me to the grief recovery method. And he enabled me to learn these amazing things, right, that have profoundly changed my life. And bringing, bringing these tools, I do want to share this because in no way am I trying to bash churches or religions, I know there's a million different churches with a million different things going on and some are much more emotionally healthy than others, some are much more emotionally sensitive than others.

I mean, you know, there's a huge gamut. Sure. But I'm bringing this work into, I've worked with many churches over decades. I have firsthand seen it transform congregations.

I have seen people who were ready to walk away from their faith, be healed and stay faithful. I've seen marriages that were on the brink of divorce, heal, and they're still together. I've seen people who, you know, were struggling. Oh, this one comes to mind.

I don't want to share it on the podcast because I would want to get her permission. First, this one woman was struggling when she remembered these suppressed memories. And it's this crazy story how we got connected. And I mean, she was in a really desperate place.

And not only did this work heal her heart, help her heart strengthen her in so many ways, she went on to do amazing things. I think because, you know, that wounded healer is a powerful person. So I do want to just say, you know, I think that they're so much good that comes out of bringing something like the grief recovery method into a church congregation. It doesn't compete with faith.

It doesn't conflict with faith in any way. It actually enhances it. It strengthens it. It heals.

It empowers. And I think it really equips people right to be more who they were created to be. Wow. Yeah, I would, I would 100% agree with that.

It is wild. I, you and me, right, and other trainers, we used to fly around a lot more after COVID. That's a whole another story. But we still do trainings in person.

We do trainings online. But here's what I'll tell you is when you, when you create enough safety for everyone to be emotionally honest with what they're going, what's going on for them without any judgment or, you know, offering up your advice on how they should handle it or tell them why they need to look on the bright side. If they just feel comfortable knowing that I'm going to be able to tell the truth about what I'm hurting about and no one's going to say a word about it, they're just going to hear me. You can, you can bridge the gap on so many things that we struggle with in society.

All the divisiveness on who you're voting for or who I'm voting for, you know, what you did, you know, did you, how did you handle COVID or how did you handle COVID or what do you believe is the way forward or what do you believe those way forward or, you know, or, you know, what skin color is mine and what skin color is yours? Like all the things that the media likes to just like ferment and get us all, you know, fired up about. It's so beautiful because within the first or second day of a grief recovery course or group, right, we've, we've moved past all of that. Yeah.

And all of a sudden, right, we all just love each other. We're all just rooting for each other. We all just understand we all have massive amounts of pain from our past. And we're not comparing it.

It's not a pecking order. You know, it's none of that. It's just like, oh, wow, I see a bunch of human beings in here and we're all hurting. And then, and then we give you a couple really cool emotional communication tools on how to talk to each other, how to complete things that are unfinished, even with people that were strangers 10 hours ago, right?

Now, and now of us then, we're communicating on this whole deeper level, right? This happens every group we have, right? Every single group we have without fail, whether it's Susan's group or my group or my dad's group or Russell Fried's group or, you know, for the last 40 years, this is how we create unity. That's what we want for churches who bring the grief recovery method in, right?

It's not only a group that happens, you know, three times a year for that church, everybody that goes through that that that group, that grief recovery group in that church, their capacity to connect with other people in the congregation, whether that's at some other volunteer event or on Sunday or after you guys are breaking bread after after service, like all of those things will be enhanced because people can be more real and human with each other and they can have deeper connections, right? That are that are way different than what's going out there in society right now. And that's what we want, I think, for every group we work with, but also, like you said, Susan specifically for Christians, right? That's what we want.

This is not competing. This is not critiquing. There is a time and place absolutely for scripture. And I would say, right, I would say just practically speaking, that's when the individual finds that scripture themselves, right?

That's when, that's when they go, oh, you know what? I am at a place where this feels right to me or, wow, this really popped out at me. But when we from the outside introduce something, it's very dangerous to do that just because again, it can be not where they're at. There's nothing really more to, you know, that's what I would just say.

Yeah, I think it is very much like using intellectualizing of natural emotions, right? To try to like, it's almost, I mean, I don't think it's evil intended, but it's almost like a, you want to quick fix, right? Like, let me just say this to you because it's awkward and uncomfortable. And, you know, and then move on and feel like, well, I've done my due diligence, I can check that box and, you know, but it's not at all helpful.

And honestly, not to get all, you know, super religious on this, but, but it's also nothing like Jesus quite frankly. Like, Jesus met people where they were at. He walked with them, he served them, he met their needs specific to them. He loved them unconditionally without judgment, you know, he never held back the truth, but he was full of love.

And, and I feel like that's, you know, sadly no longer what most of, you know, most Christian churches are known for. That's who we should be. We should be emulating that. But sadly, I think most of the world looks at it and sees judgment and condemnation and, and a bunch of rules.

Yeah. And, and let's, let's go back to a practical piece, which is someone at the church finds out that Joan that they know very well, lost her husband, right? That he's been battling cancer for a long time and, and he, he passed. And this is the first time that Joan runs into, or this person runs into Joan, right?

And, and again, it's well intentioned. It's loving. It's like, hey, at times I've found comfort in this scripture, probably not in this exact life experience, but I'm going to, again, well intention, say this. And what happens is if Joan, who is not going to be able to take this scripture most likely, unless it's maybe Jesus wept, but if it's any scripture that is kind of directing them towards, hey, it's all going to be okay or, you know, we'll find, you know, joy in this at some point.

If it's, if it's that's kind of a message, the problem is is here's what's Joan is going to do, right? She's going to be heard inside, but she's going to probably thank you for thinking of her or something, something like that, right? But she knows in her heart, her heart, she can't get to where you're directing her to get to in this scripture, right? The reality is this is a year, two, three year process for Joan.

Let's say she's been married for 40 years, right? This is a long road that she is going to have to hoe in terms of grieving her relationship with her husband, right? And so what happens is is people keep giving her these indications that this is where she should be, or this is where she needs to aim to be, and she knows she's not going to meet that mark. And so she is more and more isolated with the feeling she has inside, right?

And then she has to go more and more underground with these feelings. She can't admit them, right? And every time someone gives her some piece of advice like that, which is basically jump to the end when you're okay, right? Right.

She is more and more isolated from her group, where before this last may have felt like the most connected comforting place ever for her, right? And all of these people, right? Like we're not saying they're mean or they're being judgmental, all they're doing is they're using scripture at the wrong place at the wrong time for this woman. That's all we're saying about these people, right?

And but the tragic thing is this person, the more and more she hears us, the more and more she will feel separated, because, right? And then she'll have to hide how she truly feels. And that's all roadblocks in her way, rather than helping. Yeah, I mean, I would say what would you agree that that is pretty much the most common thing that we see as it pertains specifically to grief at churches that happens?

Or are there other ones that you think are things that happen? But I mean, like that one specifically, if we could just solve that where people really, really just keep in check, like the scripture they want to offer up to very acutely, recently grieving people, like that would, that I think that would help a lot with people. Now again, of course, right? Our answer is, yeah, but it'd be great for them to apply the grief recovery method as well, right?

Because like you said, then there's a very high probability that our faith is going to be enhanced, going to be strengthened. We can read other scriptures and be like, okay, I get it, like because I'm in a different place. And then everything is better for their faith and their sense of belonging in the church and how they're relating to other people. So that would be obviously where we would want to go.

But can you think of other kind of things that maybe, you know, just unhelpful things that occur in churches around grief? I think the key honestly is telling the truth always, right? But it's not always easy or possible because when you telling your truth, whatever that might be, whether it's your broken hearted or you're struggling with whatever, you know, maybe you're wrestling with your faith in God because, you know, I related to that with when I lost my sister, I remember being told once, you know, well, that whole thing, which many people have heard, you know, well, God won't give you more than you can handle. Well, that made it sound to me, like, well, God did this.

And so then I almost kind of blamed God and was angry with God. Like, how could you do this? How could you take my sister? Like, this makes no sense, right?

So again, it's just putting more stumbling blocks, roadblocks on my way to recovery. And I think the key is to provide a safe environment, a safe place where people can tell their truth emotionally, spiritually, you know, mentally, whatever that is, where they can be honest with the good, the bad, the ugly, right? To get it out and, you know, to just love them where they're at to listen and and be, you know, what we say, like be a heart with ears, you know, not ahead with ears and not like ready with a scripture necessarily, but just really listen like you would to, you know, your best friend and and and just love them. So I think that it's such a simple thing.

It's such a simple thing to listen and love people and hear them and not try to fix them. Right? We often say, gravers are not broken. They don't need to be fixed.

They need to be listened to with dignity and respect and they need to be loved. That is the key. Yeah, it's interesting. A couple weekends ago, I was at church and I ran into a friend of mine and I knew he was out of the state because his brother was dying and I and and he was back now and I but I didn't know, you know, kind of if his brother had died or not, I knew and he was terminal.

So I just kind of checked in with him, like what's going on? I heard that your brother is sick and, you know, and he and he told me the whole story and like you said, right, whether it's in a church setting or I'm at the supermarket, I just went in a grief recovery mode, which is what you said. Just love them and listen. Right?

And so I just listened to the whole this whole story and at the end, I said, I can't imagine how difficult this has been for you. Can I give you a hug and I give him a hug. Right? And in the context of that interaction, that's all that's that's the biggest gift I can give to him is listening and then, you know, maybe at the end offering a hug.

Obviously, we don't have time to do all the actions agree for recovery. I hope he does them at some point. But if we could just do that, again, whether we're at church or whether we're at the supermarket or on a plane, it's like if we can just listen to people like you said, love them and not not need like don't think this is a problem solving situation or that they, you know, asked me for my advice on how to get through this or, you know, because that's the thing is a lot of the time we assume like, hey, I need to have a role in this conversation. And most of the time, yeah, your role is like being a heart with you or just listening.

And then at the end being like, wow, I heard you. And that alone will make you different than 99% of the other people out there. You know, it's, this stuff is not rocket science. That's what I love about it.

It's not complex. We want to overcomplicate it. I agree. And I think it's, you know, just because of the uncomfortability that our society has with grief and loss, we feel like we have to do something.

We have to say something when it's kind of quite the opposite, but it just made me think when you were talking, one of the most loving things that anyone has ever done for me when I was grieving, we were at the hospital. We just took my sister off life support. And I was, oh, there's no words, right? I walked out of the room, bowling, bowling, bowling.

And I don't even know how I found my way, but somehow I found my way into this little chapel that was in the hospital. I didn't even know it was there. And my uncle followed me and walked with me. And I sat down and just, bowling hard for a long time.

He said nothing. He sat with me. And he just helped me to not be alone in that moment. He just sat with me.

Right? Seriously, that was one of the most loving things anyone has ever done for me. Now, he's gone through a lot in his life. So he's not an acquainted with grief and loss.

So somehow intuitively, he just knew, right? Yep. And I'm so grateful for him. So grateful, such a simple thing that's so much love in that.

Yeah. And I think people get nervous, right? They, if you don't do what you and I do professionally, I think a lot of people get nervous. And when they get nervous, they want to talk.

And when they get nervous, they want to kind of make it a two-way conversation. And I get that. But we mentioned it on another podcast too. There was an old study, and I don't know where it is.

But basically, they set out of 141 comments that grievers receive. How many of them are helpful? And the group came up with 19 things out of 141 communications that were helpful. 19 things that they deemed okay to say. And out of 141.

So the odds of you offering up opinions or guidance or any kind of back and forth with this person that will be well received from a griever who's heart's broken is pretty low, right? And so you may say, wait, but Cole, you're the expert at grief. So when this guy says that his brother has died, you have nothing to say about that, the whole conversation. But you're an expert at this.

Yeah, exactly. I'm good at this because I know not to say anything, right? A lot of the time when people are telling their story, you don't have words for it. You think I, you know, you think I have words for Susan when she tells me this whole horrific story where she's like, and then I woke up and I was like, oh, good, that was just a nightmare.

And then I'm at the hospital and it's not a nightmare. This is my life. Like what words would I, what words of, of, of, you know, advice do I have there? I don't.

So just remember like most of us are uncomfortable talking about grief. Most of us don't talk a lot with the other person about grief. You know, but what we don't want to do, which is what the report back we get from griebers is like, I know she saw me at the market and she went to the other aisle. You know, we don't want that for people because grief is already so isolating.

So it's like if you just go up right, just if you see that person and you make a beeline to them in the market and say, I don't know what to say. I just want to give you a hug. Oh, yeah, let me hear you. You know, and, and, and a follow up could be like, you know, what's going on with you or, you know, whatever.

It doesn't matter. But really the, the, the, the, the message is just like, if you want to talk, I'm going to listen. Like, you know, again, that, that right there is such a gift. Now we have other stuff.

Again, if you come to the certification training, we have a bunch. I mean, ultimately we want to get them into the grief recovery method. But not, I don't know, you know, a lot of the time it's doesn't ever go to that. It just goes to, hey, I'm just, I'm, I'm going to be the person that just listens and doesn't put my foot in my mouth unintentionally.

Right. And, and you will be different than most people if you just do that with people. Again, the, the context doesn't matter. Church, plane, party, work.

Right. Um, that feels very good for people with a broken heart. It's just how, wow, they listened to me. They were in the moment listening to me.

They weren't thinking about their rebuttal or waiting until they could say the thing they wanted to say or waiting until they could tell me a little bit about what, you know, how their losses were recently. It's just like, wow, they just heard me the whole time, you know, it's such a gift and harder than you would think to do. Yeah. I think it really, it really shows or communicates that you care that you love them.

Well, I can't believe we're at the 58 minute mark. I really, can you believe that? No. But I just, what a powerful way to end this, right?

Is your uncle went into that room, didn't say a word and just let you have a really normal and natural human emotion, right? Called tears because you had just had to, you know, stop life support for your third or third year old sister, you know, I want to thank you for being here. I want to thank you for all that you do. You're just an incredible human being.

You're so talented at this work and you're, you know, and I've had the joy to see you around your family, you know, and just like the beauty of your family and you as the mother of that of that little tribe, you know, it's just like, I just, I love you very much, Susan. I love you too. Thank you. And we will definitely have another episode because I know there's other things we really want to talk about and, you know, just just as a teaser.

One thing that's really on, I think both of our hearts is having some experiences around COVID with parents, you know. So I think a lot of people are still coming out of COVID really hurting on so many different scenarios that played out during COVID in general, but then also like a lot of us had parents who were struggling, who were sick, who were, you know, dealing with hospitals or, you know, all different things and we had a lot of hopes and dreams and expectations based on our life experience, on how that would play out and because of COVID, those things didn't play out how we were expecting them to play out, right? And there were a lot of things that were getting in our way of showing up or supporting or grieving or, you know, those kind of things and that all creates unfinished emotional business.

So I think that's where we're going to go in our next episode. But again, Susan, I want to thank you for being here. Where can people find you if they kind of want to work with you or, you know, that kind of stuff? You can always reach me at Susan, my email, Susan at thegreifercoverymethod.com or go to the Greifercovery website and, you know, search.

I'm in the greater Austin, Texas area. So there's a place on the landing page that you can look, you know, geographically and although, you know, I'm in that area physically, I'm, you know, also able to work with anybody online anywhere in the world and would love to. So thank you, Paul. Thank you so much.

Awesome. Well, and everybody, thank you for listening. I hope you have a great rest of your day and make sure you subscribe to this podcast. So you get notifications when it comes out.

If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave a review. That'll help us be found by more people. And if you are out there and you're, have you listened to several of these episodes, I'm assuming one of two things. Number one, you have some unfinished emotional pain in your past that you've identified as probably grief and this is an interesting topic for you.

And so if that's you, don't wait any longer. Do work, work with the Greifercovery method, right? Do some work. You will not regret it.

And the other person that may be listening to this is somebody who is considering getting trained in this method to help other people. And I can't tell you like what a gift that will be for you to get these tools. Yeah. If I could just say something really quick, I think honestly, I truly believe doing this work is the greatest job in the entire world because we can take, you know, the most devastating, painful things that we've walked through in our lives.

And when we are healed from those things, we're able to share them to give other people hope. Right? To show them you don't have to be stuck in this place forever. And so you can bring something beautiful out of something still painful and devastating.

And what a gift that is to be able to bring. Yep. Yep. It's turned into my life work and your life work and turned into a lot of people's life work.

Right? So if you're looking at that, book a call with us will tell you more about what it takes to get certified and you can apply with us and all that good stuff. And then again, the third person listening is probably someone who did get certified. And as a certified group for every specialist and you know, you feel connected to this work or you want to learn new things.

And for those people, I want to say, thank you. Thank you for doing this work because as we know, the world needs this a lot right now. And there's plenty of work for all of us to do. And I think one of the major kind of things that we need to do heavy lifting wise is just raise awareness that like everybody out there has unresolved grief from their past that's affecting them and when we can help with these tools, right?

And so again, if you're out there and you're already doing this method, you're already helping others like from the bottom of my heart, thank you for doing what you do. Keep doing what you're doing. And if you ever need help or assistance, you know, where to where to call right? Because a lot of the time you'll be on a call with Susan.

Susan is one of the key players in our support team, right? And she helps people every day specialist with this work and implementing this work and you know, figuring it out. So anyway, Susan, it's been a pleasure. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.

And I look for to seeing you in Texas at some point soon. I know I don't know why, but I think I'm going to be in Texas at some point soon. So I'm giving you a hug and have a great rest of your day. Thank you, cool.

Thank you so much. Thank you, everyone.