What Most Therapists Miss About Grief Recovery

That was not my story. I was probably one of the people that was like, oh, grief. If you would have asked me 12 years ago, would you ever dream that you would be working with griebers? I would say, oh, no, that's too sad.

I would never want to do that. And yet, this work kind of found me. So a little bit of a background is, as you could probably tell when you listen to me talk, I'm from New York. I was a speech pathologist.

I worked predominantly with kids birth to five. I would go in-home and do therapy as well as center-based as what they called it. And for some time, I would say at least the last seven years of that, I realized that it wasn't where my heart was anymore. I knew that I kind of wanted to work with adults.

I seem to be somebody who people would open up to very easily. I'm talking like on the grocery line, like just people would want to tell me things. And I had some other things in my life that led me to some 12-step programs, which I'm very grateful for. And that kind of shaped me into deciding that I wanted to do more.

For me, it was one-on-one work with adults. I didn't know what that was or what it looked like. I was a very spiritual person. I did become an interfaith minister.

And I started working with people one-on-one under that lens. I didn't necessarily want to go back to school and learn a bunch of stuff that I may or may not agree with as far as, you know, a therapist or social work or a mental health counselor, which I want to say right now, I, at different times in my life, have been in and out of therapy at different times. I have a huge respect for that field. It just didn't feel like the right course of action for me.

So I had this idea of wanting to do spiritual counseling. So I was still a speech therapist. And I started doing this at, you know, in my little home office. And interestingly enough, the people who were seeking out my services, as I, you know, let people know that I was doing this spiritual counseling thing.

Everybody that was coming to me was a griever of some sort. And they some sort, mostly somebody has died. They felt comfortable because I was a minister, interfaith minister, to kind of go in that direction. What I realized very quickly was, although we were trained as interfaith ministers to do end of life work to work with griebers, I was very ill equipped when I actually had somebody in front of me who was suffering with unresolved grief.

So from there, I was like, I need to know more about this. And that's really kind of what started, you know, so let me go into why I thought I needed more help in learning how to help people. People were coming to see me. And what was happening was is, week after week, I learned in, you know, as a minister how to hold space.

I knew what it was to be, what I now know to be a heart with ears. It wasn't called that in seminary, but I knew that. And so what happened was, as people would come in, they would, you know, just unload whatever was on their heart at that moment. And they would feel better.

But the next week they would come back. And this tape that they were on, I call it a tape, because it was almost identical to the week before. And there were certain things that they were very stuck on. Like, yeah, Gwen, I know what you're saying, because I would offer what I thought was helpful advice.

Sometimes it was and sometimes it wasn't. But they were just, you know, Gwen, the last thing that I said to this person, you know, was unkind. I never got to say goodbye. I didn't realize they were struggling before they completed suicide.

Like, whatever it was, they couldn't get past this. What was happening with me is, I was walking around knowing that I wanted to help these people. And I was carrying this stuff. So burnout started happening right away.

And that's when I said, I'm not helping them. I now believe that what I was doing, in grief for recovery language, was I was almost disturbed for people. They would come, they would build up this emotional pain. They would release it.

But nothing was ever completed. So they just kept coming back. But I knew in my heart. And I said, if I'm going to keep doing this, I got to find something else.

Wow. Yeah. Thank you for that story. And thank you for your honesty.

Because I think a lot of the time as professionals, we are kind of scared to tell that story that we are not doing everything we can for our clients. So we're truly not effective as we want to be. Right? Because we all get into these caregiving fields because we want to help people move along.

So again, thank you for your honesty. Because here's the deal. Right? Gwen said it earlier today.

A lot of people come to certification after personally having a loss, personally finding the method. And then and seeing what it does for them and their heart and then want to go and pay it forward to other people. And that's a great track. And if you're on that track, like we we love you.

You're some of the best specialists out there. The other track that Gwen is kind of talking about is we we have many people who if you ask them, they would not tell you they qualify as someone with grief. Right? They've worked through it or whatever.

And they're a professional. And those people are welcome to this work too. And we train a lot of people coming from that path. What I find though is a lot of those people come to the table and they do have a bunch of other skills that are helpful.

That help people, that work. But the ones that we get that are professionals wanting to get certified are the ones that are willing to kind of admit what Gwen admitted, which is when it came to the topic of grief, I was ill equipped. And time and time again, I know that I wasn't as effective as I could be around the topic of grief. Right?

We don't get bad professionals. Don't get me wrong. We get the professionals that have a lot of skills that are working for them. But on the topic of grief, they feel ill equipped and they come in.

They seek out our work versus professionals who are like, yep, in 1984, I checked that box and you know, I'm riding with it for the next 45 years. Right? It's like the shelf life of your education and the tools and the skill set. Maybe, maybe should be updated.

Right? Maybe we should. And so anyway, I just wanted to mention that because it's like a lot of people aren't willing to go on a podcast and say what Gwen is saying. But I see it all the time.

Right? Those are the type of professionals that are coming to get certified are the ones that are like, they're restless because they know that there's like something missing from their education. Right? Not to talk bad about their education.

But around the topic of grief, I will tell you that most professionals, if not all professional tracks I've seen that are caregiving tracks are woefully, woefully lacking in the topic in area of grief. Right? And so those are the professionals we get to work with or are willing, those that are willing to admit that. So anyway, thank you for that Gwen.

So you know, back to you, I'm going to pass the talking rock back to you. So you're kind of you're in real time, you're you're getting burned out. And as you said quickly, and I say that same thing, I tell people like, when I left, I was working at Fox television. And I had been there for seven years and I went and did this personal work around some loss that that broke my heart.

And by the end of that week, and I was putting in my two weeks at Fox, and I was telling my boss at Fox, hey, you know, I'm going to go work with people with grief. And he literally looked at me like I had like a like third eye ball or fourth eyeball. He was like, you're going to go dedicate your life to talking to people about grief. He thought I was insane.

And everyone at that company, they were like, you know, we, I had a lot of friends at that company by that point. And they were all pat me on the back, but they all thought I lost my mind, right? And I tell people all the time, if I was just talking to people with grief, I would have put my two weeks in at grief recovery two weeks later. I'm been you know, asking for my job back at Fox.

This is not that work. This is grief recovery, right? This is watching people unpack and and and stop that tape, like you said, right? Put press pause on that tape and find a new tape, right?

Like we're helping people and they're taking these tools and running with them so that they can live a happy joyous free life that feels lighter than it did before they got to us. So that's I think what keeps me coming back to this work after 15 years of it is it's not just talking about sadness and pain. That is a part of our work, but there is so much we can do after that part of the conversation, right? So thank you for talking about that Gwen.

So again, please continue. You're on your journey. You're kind of seeing there's this part of your game that's lacking. Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. And thanks for everything that you shared. Of course, I made some notes, but I will continue on in that just to keep the flow.

So I was talking to a good friend of mine and I was telling her about my struggles that you know, I kind of made my way into this this niche found me. It's not like I went looking for it. These were the people that were coming. She she was doing the life coaching course online.

And so she says, you know, it's really interesting that you're talking about this. She goes, you know, I'm taking this life coaching course. She said, um, they keep talking about this book out there that they are saying is the greatest book out there on grief. And it's called the grief recovery method handbook.

Why don't you get it? Okay. Go on Amazon. Um, you know, I see it.

I get it. I could do a quick like thumb through. I'm like, oh, this is exactly. And anybody that's in a 12 step program that has worked the 12 steps in any way, you know, it's work.

There's writing, there's sharing. And so this just felt like it was like, oh, this is great. And I really didn't know anything about it. Then I went to it was either the beginning of the book or the end of the book.

And it said warning, something to the effect of just because you go through this program or read this book does not qualify you to call yourself a specialist blah, blah, blah. There's a whole certification. Okay. I go on the website.

I look at it and I see how much it is. And I'm like, all right, do I really want to do this? As I'm contemplating, my email pings. And it's another client, a brand new person that I was work that wanted to work with me 26 year old woman lost her mom.

Um, and was looking for help. I took that as a sign. And I hit yes. Um, and I signed up without ever talking to anybody at the institute.

I just signed up showed up in Princeton, Bobby was my trainer. And all I can tell you is, and I feel emotions coming up halfway through this, my certification training. I knew, I knew that this was the work that I was meant to do halfway through. And I, when I do trainings, I do say that to people.

I said, you know, let's everybody is, you know, we, part of the training is, we ask what people think they want to do with this. And I will usually say, you guys, if, if you have my experience, this work, if you're meant to really do this, it's going to plug into you. It's going to hit you in such a way that it's going to be like a fish to water. And, um, you know, in so many words, I'll say that, but that was my experience, not only for me, but I was watching the other people in the certification and how profound.

I love the fact that it uses a somewhat intellectual process of reading, writing, and sharing that in my experience is specifically designed to bypass the thinking mind, drop you right into the heart, which is where the grief is, before you even know it. And by that time you're in it, you're, you're there and you walk, you're, you're able to walk through it. It's just to me. So I had my pilot group ready to go, you know, we didn't have onboarding calls back then, you know, I know, you know, there's some shifts going on, but I just, I listened to, I had a CD player in my car and I got the disc with John James on it.

And I listened, I sat in like eight hours of traffic from to New Jersey, the Long Island. And I just listened to it over and over because I wanted to learn this language. You know, people in 12 step programs, we know, we, we, there's a language of the heart that we learn. And I found that in grief recovery, it was the same thing.

And I needed to know what this language was. Yeah. Yeah. And I just hit the ground running.

And it was so much of the world needs to know that this exists. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's so powerful.

Our tracks are very similar in a lot of ways. Gwen, you know, obviously the details of our lives are different, but like our tracks were very similar. Like, you know, obviously I, two of the most important profound things in my life that have made me who I am today are the 12 steps and, and grief recovery, you know, and, and I really too, I was in a, I mean, you were still a caregiver, but I was in a separate field altogether, but I had found that I really enjoyed working one to one with people through sponsorship, being sponsored by guys and sponsoring other guys. And I, I really, I really was like, wow, like, once, once you really experienced that deep connection with someone else, it's, it's hard to not want to do that more, right?

And so grief recovery became this avenue where I could do that professionally, you know, and, and so anyway, there's like some parallels there. And then the other thing that you touched on, which was, what, what was, why I think this stuff works so well is, we, we have, you're doing this work alongside, again, 12 people, 18 people, 20 people. And so even if you aren't yet a true believer in, in this work, right? You quickly become a true believer because you see what is happening to you and your heart doing this work.

And it's undeniable when you see 15, 20 other people been affording from this work, right? And so if people think it's crazy, but in four days, like you will, you will be sold for lack of a better term on the grief recovery method, right? And it's like we could never change the format of our training because of that, right? You can, look, we have more competitors now than we ever have, right?

People are like, oh grief certification, looks like these people are successful. Maybe I'll spin something up. Be aware of that because a lot of those programs, guess what? We're there next, we're there next stop, right?

Is people invest in these other grief certification programs? And then we get a discovery call with them and, you know, I'm curious, you just got certified this other thing. Why are you doing this? And it's like, because that stuff is, there's no meat and potatoes to it.

You know, there's no, there's no like act, there's no program. I don't know how to help clients. Still, right? And so I would be very cautious, if you're going to get, if you're going to fork out your, your harder money, I would make sure that that there is a process that you can utilize to help people very definitively, not not platitudes.

And I'm kind of like, like, no, like does, does, does, is there a plan? Is there a game plan for, for people, right? And I don't know why I was going down that, that tangent. I think it's because, again, going back to why, why our format is the way it is, because we want to show you right from the very start how powerful this method is to people and not just you, right?

All these other strangers in the room, it's undeniable. And that happened in my first training too. I think that's what jogged my memory of this, like you, you, you touched on that. And that's, that's a part of this program is we want to prove to you right away kind of what the tools are you're working with.

And they're, they're, they're very powerful, you know? It's true. And, and, you know, so the bulk of the people that I ended up, I remember when I got finished with the certification, and, you know, was like, I need to get the word out. Now, there was really nobody on Long Island that I could find that was doing it.

So some people would be like, oh, that's great, right? You're like, the only one. But I'm the only one. I have to get the word out.

So I started with my community, which was the 12 step community. In this sense, it's not like I'm going to meetings and for, you know, recruiting people, you know, traditions, something on that. But people, I started talking about, I started posting about it. And it fits so well.

I always say that grief recovery picks up where the 12 steps leaves off. And anybody that's listening that has that will understand, especially in that fourth or fifth step, where we are only taught to look at our part. The problem is in relationships where we are resentful or we are disturbed by, there's a whole another person there. There's a whole other dynamic that doesn't get addressed for good reason, totally see it.

But anybody that's coming in, and the fact that just like the 12 steps, grief recovery, like I can tell you about what it was like to go through the method. I could tell you what I did. It is experiential. You must experience the grief recovery similarly to if I, you've never eaten an orange, I can tell you what it's like to eat the orange, but until you go through the process and experience it.

And what's great about grief, there's so many things. But what I, one of the things I love about grief recovery is every relationship that I've completed is different. My experience is different. Each one builds on the next.

And you know, you kind of mentioned it before, but when it so it's funny. If you ever go to a party and if you're a doctor or a lawyer, people will corner you, right? And they're like, oh, I got this going on. And I'm dealing with this.

Wait till you say you're a grief recovery specialist. Oh, and what I hear often is, oh, and I think you mentioned this at some call we were on a long time ago. I could have really used you 10 years ago when my mom died, right? So there's the thing grief is about death.

And that in some way, shape or form, this time piece where I look at it is, I have adjusted to this new life limiting level of pain. And I've adjusted to it. And now I keep going until that one more next loss happens, which may or may not be significant, but that tip over happens. And then we have this opportunity to go back and really have this kind of blueprint of all the losses because of the misinformation out there that have really not been addressed.

And to me, I love human behavior. I love unders trying to understand why we do the things that we do. There is no better process that I have found that hits where it needs to hit in a the quickest way possible to uncover so many things like I love the saying, you know, we are who we are for reasons long past. And I think things that happen to us or happen to me as a child because I'm looking through the lens of what happened as an adult, I tend to minimize that stuff.

And yet so many things in my life that despite how many 12 step inventories I did or how much praying I would do, whatever tool I was using, these things were kept coming back. And it wasn't until I discovered through grief or recovery in which relationship these patterns were taught and then going back and getting complete with that relationship, would I ever dream of actually having any lasting change in some of these patterns that weren't working for me. And so there is no end to what the grief or recovery method can do for someone. And you know, I do other things, I do life coaching, I do, I still do some spiritual counseling.

When in doubt, I really always try to have people do grief or recovery first, whether they think they needed or not, because of the plethora of information that one gets from just going through the process with those foundational relationships. Mom, dad, siblings, anybody that was significant. So yeah, I mean, I want to go on forever. Yeah, no, and I plan to you, you know, go ahead and I joke before we started this call, it's like, this is just episode one, because it's again, I'm inspired talking to you and I'm just so grateful that you're out there doing this work.

I mean, you're just incredible at it. The way you can articulate it, it's very frustrating, right? I'm like the kid that grew up in the grief recovery home. I had it around me my whole life and I still find specialist time after time that just can talk about it way better than I can.

I'm like, how is this fair? Right? But anyway, that's kind of what you pointed out, right? It's like, I remember the first time I went through the 12 steps and how I felt, right?

And it was such a gift. And it was like, and I just see, like for listeners out there, I was 21 years old when I finished the 12 steps, right? So like, it's such a gift to start your life, because I was just an absolute train wreck before that. I was just immature nightmare of a person in a lot of ways.

And, and the, again, the 12, the 12 steps really, really put in me in my heart and had me do work, I desperately needed to do. And I got to start my life, you know? Now, now I'm 43. And it's like, yeah, that was, you know, anyway, my point being though is coming out of the 12 steps, I was just like, everyone, the whole world needs to work the 12 steps, right?

And it's like, well, there's just a little problem, right? It's like, to qualify, you need to have, like, have a problem with drugs or alcohol or, you know, other things. And, and I was like, okay, but still, everyone has, the whole world has to do the 12 steps. And when I love about grief recovery is like grief recovery, it has the ultimate qualifier.

It's like, if you've been a human being for, you know, five years, you know, you qualified to do grief recovery work because we start accumulating grief again at basically the dawn of conscious memory, you know, the way we look at it. And so my little, you know, cousin who, who is six at the time when I think about her, like, I saw, I saw her accumulating grief. Unfortunately, as much as I love my kids, 12, 10, you know, seven and five, like, I'm seeing them accumulate grief, like it is just part of life. And if society gives us zero tools on how to deal with that, we're going to find out the tools that, that, you know, that we think work or we think at least relieves the problem or, or distracts us from the problem.

And that's where we're at as a society right now. So it's like, I think the problem you and I have, Gwen, is it is hard to convince people that don't think that they're the exact right time with their grief where it happened, the exact right time ago, and they're still feeling it and they meet you or me and they are exact right time in the party, they think that they can't benefit from grief recovery. And that's kind of this myth that I think we're trying to figure out how to dispel is no, no, no, like it doesn't doesn't matter if you, you met us a year and a half ago or five years ago or, you know, that loss happened 10 years ago, like the work can be done very effectively right now today. You know, and that's, I think what is tricky for us is like, the whole world needs to do this work.

And they qualify for this work and they're welcome to do this work, but they don't think they qualify or it's the right time. Like it's a timing thing, right? We put out a lot of misinformation about grief on time, right? Time's going to heal.

Therefore, people have the idea, okay, I just got to keep waiting, you know, and then one day this is going to heal. The problem is you and me find clients all the time that are working through something that happened 20 years ago, that happened 30 years ago, right? I just had a wonderful guest on a specialist who was 78 and she got certified at 70, right? And her kind of one of her big heartbreaks like on the podcast, well, or I don't want to say heartbreaks, but frustrations was she didn't find this, you know, 40 years ago is the the term she used, you know?

And so anyway, it's, it's, it's interesting stuff. Yeah, yeah. And it's, that's where I think before the call, you know, Ed was, you know, kind of on also we were talking and, you know, he loves this tagline that, you know, I did not come up with and anybody is in a tool that I know is, but what I found was again, another similarity was how many people I would work with, whether they, they found me somehow or their therapist sent, sent them to me because they were so blocked on this particular grieving experience or loss that happened all those years ago and that despite so many well-intended therapists, you know, mental health counselors, social workers, they, they were not equipped to deal with it. And so by the time they made their way to grief recovery, it was like the last thing they tried, but the first thing that really worked for them.

And, and wasn't it, I, I don't want to misquote your dad. So bum that I never got to meet him in person. But, oh, here's coming to tears again, that he said one of the biggest mistakes was that he put grief in the title. Am I remembering that correctly?

Yeah, yeah, that he did say that to me one time. I think we're in Edmonton, Alberta freezing our butts off in a break. It was like negative 10 or 15. And he said that it was profound.

Yeah. And he didn't say that a lot, but he did say that one time to me. Yeah. And I asked him why, you know, but go ahead.

But, I interpreted that for the very same thing that, you know, despite our, you know, we as specialists or other people who go up gone through the program recognize that, you know, that grief is is is not just about death, the majority of people who will put that, you know, grief in the Google search is because somebody has died. And I'm going to carry this over next to say that about I'm going to just say 65 to 70% of people who come to me thinking they were going to do one particular relationship as once they have gone through the process when it comes to that first the relationship that they choose, it's actually not the person that they called about because they're recognizing through the method that there are some losses that they have experienced that really needed to be addressed first.

So, you know, that's why I say there's just why I religion does not come into play in grief recovery neither does me being a minister at all ever unless, you know, some people come in, their faith has not been rocked and it may or may not be comforting that I am, but it doesn't come into play why because religion tends to divide we know and all that. But I lost it. Where was I going? Yeah, no, I think the thing the thing that and I don't know if you know Gwen, but I a couple of years ago I became a Christian and so I am I am, you know, working on learning my faith and doing a lot of that and so there has been a lot of questions lately as a as a new Christian on does does this?

Does this is this not in line with God? Is this, you know, and I again the short answer is no, I can't find anything that isn't aligned, but the what I would say is the reason that we we tend to not focus on the spiritual side of grief is because there is so much on the emotional side and that is the bread and butter of grief recovery is helping people focus on the emotional stuff, the emotional work that needs to be done around around grief recovery and and it's really as simple as that right and we're we're not experts on grief on a spiritual plane. We're not experts on any of that we are we're really good at helping people with the emotional components of grief and we find that if we can unpack that first help them work on that first then all of a sudden when they go to their pastor or they go to their minister or they go back to church or to the temple or wherever their their place of faith is there's a lot better possibility for them to like find comfort in those places when they have gotten complete emotionally with the loss and I was just talking to a guy that the other day that I that I go to church with I attend church with him and he's a great guy and we're getting to know each other over coffee and I was trying to explain this method and you know and that's what I was telling him is a lot of the time people go to church following the loss and it churches a place that has been comforting forever for them and everyone around them at church who loves them and is trying to support them all are throwing spiritual tools at them including scripture and you know if you pick the wrong scripture to a heartbroken griever you become an unsafe person for them you know because you you are now viewed as like not understanding what they're going through not meeting them where they need to meet meet them and again these are all well intentioned people that desperately want to help this person right but when we go to the wrong tool at the wrong time whether again in our opinion whether that's spiritual tools too quickly or psychological tools too quickly again depending on what what you're qualified to help people with if you go to those tools first in the case of grief you run the risk of not meeting them where they are which are they are bleeding to death emotionally so if you can just imagine that griever who just lost that person or you know it's hurting over this or that event if you can just be like you know what let's stop the emotional bleeding first that requires emotional tools then we can help them with the other tools that we are good at right and so that's just one thing I wanted to throw in there as you were kind of talking about religion as it pertains to grief right yeah and I think I did remember where I was going with that is that you know it is the method I found is extremely transformative and a word like transformative in my mind often my mind tends to go to spirituality or spiritual things because it has the power to transform where nothing on the outside has changed no circumstances have changed but the way in which I'm viewing it is vastly different and so I think that that is something that I can certainly say that you know grief or recovery has the power can and does transform the quality of people's lives and it's one of the first slides we use in our trainings yeah you know I know that that can sound a little hokey especially like day one or you know it's like really does it really have the power to transform it absolutely does yeah and so yeah and can I just want to add on to something that you said before when people and their hearts are broken they may seek out you know clergy or some sort I have also found that a similar experience when it comes to meetings so AA meetings or I'm sorry 12 step meetings let's just say that so here's something that you know it was the worst time of my life my life was going in a terrible direction I was almost going to die very close I go to a 12 step program it completely transforms my life I'm looking at things different and then I experience a very tragic loss and so what do I do I do what I've been taught to do as a 12 stepber I go to a meeting and I share about it and please just like with the therapy piece I would never have even made it to grief or recovery if I if I didn't have a 12 step program I think behind me that ready me to do the work when I was ready but I think that every time you take a drink I will not do it again I promise no no more I will not hydrate I got a fact the because the 12 step program that I was going for was there to treat a disease it's actually for me when it came to grief it was the wrong tool because it is a spiritual tool and I needed to be able to go to my 12 step meetings for what I needed it for which is to keep me alive so that I didn't relapse but what I have found not only for myself but with a lot of people in 12 step programs that I worked with is they were doing that same thing they weren't getting relief people were coming back at them sharing a lot of intellectually slash spiritually accurate comments that were falling very flat and then they didn't want to go back they didn't want to go back to their 12 step meetings and now we got two problems now we got unresolved grief and now we have I'm not going to meetings and if that's what I have found that keeps me from dying from a fatal progressive illness now I'm in trouble so what I what I love doing with people is saying go do that because you need to do that for this but do this for the grief and then what often happened is they were able to resume their meetings and get that relief for what they needed it for and then you know grief recovery just came in and just rounded it out I am so glad you brought that up because that's kind of the point that I was trying to get to around the church right is it makes me sad but this is a fact there are a lot of Christians that after a tragic grief event never returned to the church again or returned once or twice and then again don't don't feel comforted because well intention loving people are just they don't know how to comfort when that person is where they're at it happens again in a like you just touched on and it happens a lot of different communities right and our preference would be hey let's meet them where they're at let's give them emotional tools first and then guys they're gonna there's gonna lean on you and go back and and get all of the relief that they've always got in those other communities if you just introduce the right tool first this is the for some reason we're we're telling John James stories today which is cool one time my dad was in a 12 step program too so we shared that as well and he you know one day he goes I got you and I tickets were going to the world convention in San Antonio Texas for for the you know this 12 step program right and when I say world convention I mean like tens and tens of thousands of people were in stadiums doing the Lord's Prayer you know with like you know 30,000 people or whatever it is and it was this really cool memory I have of my dad is like doing this convention meeting a bunch of his friends from a different generation him meet all my friends from you know my generation going through this work and just a bunch of good human beings together it was amazing but we're looking at the itinerary of different talks we can go listen to and one is applying the 12 steps to grief and we were like oh no right and we kind of look at him and he's like man we gotta go see what this is all about and it's is and we go and we sit down and it was just we cringe the whole time you know because again it was a person that was just said well 12 steps works so good over here we'll slap this label on and it'll work for grief too right and and it was a bunch of bad misinformation trying to apply tools that were not designed for this and it was just a really hard talk for me and my dad to sit through right because we just we knew what you just talked about that is why guys a quick little history lesson here Elizabeth Kubla Ross this really great lady that that figured out that like people we were not treating people who were dying we were not treating them well and and we weren't treating them with a ton of respect and she went in there and she was as pioneer in the hospice movement right and she created this this thing called the five stages of death and dying right and these five stages make a lot of sense if you have just been diagnosed for a terminal disease or you're in the process of dying right and people right incorrectly said well it works so great for death and dying let's just call it the five stages of grief right and we took tools designed for a different emotional human experience and we just slapped it on another one and we have been mistreating people and leading people astray for you have close to what probably 60 years now 50 years at least right and it's like do not apply tools that were designed for something else and just think that that will absolutely work perfect for this other thing because this tool worked over here right we we have to kind of move away from that because it's at the very bare minimum it's just confusing for people and at the worst it's it's destructive for people and absolutely hurtful for people right and we're and so anyway I love that we went here it's not a pleasant part of the conversation and again we're not trying to to talk bad about other tools that work brilliantly for for what they were designed to work with right and and again I feel very very comfortable saying that that grief does you can't put the 12 steps over grief you can't put the five stages of death and dying over grief I do think that if for people's spiritual beliefs right and and the holy text and the scripture of whatever faith you're in I think absolutely there's a whole spiritual aspect of grief right that that again it does need to happen and people do need to work through grief around their spirituality so I don't want to say that I want to be respectful of of people's faith that yes absolutely you can do stuff and you can grieve and and and lean on your faith to help you grieve but all I'm all I think where I'm trying to convey and when you can speak for yourself but what I'm trying to convey is the grief recovery method is beautiful for those people on the emotional side where we feel like a lot of the time people in church just don't know how to apply emotional tools and that's a massive aspect of grief as well well and and I think that that's kind of could be true in the 12-step community where they don't do emotions all that well I find at least the you know recovery that I was it was kind of like oh you're dealing with this go help a newcomer or repage 80s to 88 and in in our language of grief recovery to me that's like the don't feel bad replace the loss with this it's not that those things like I was taught like writing a gratitude list or think that they weren't helpful in providing me some relief it just did nothing to help me deal with the unfinished emotional business that I was suffering with yeah unresolved grief and I think that what the way I explain it to people whether that's on a console call like the spiritual aspect of it is that the way and this has just been my interpretation is that so with for me a god a higher power the spirituality of it grief is in the human experience and I have to deal with it here you know and I believe that my god higher power whatever it was did make me as an emotional being and so when I'm dealing with the pain of grief it's here in the human experience and I I want to deal with it here and the method comes in to allow for that and it's been my experience also that if there was something of a disconnect for somebody's faith because of a significant loss that they've experienced I can't think and maybe I'm wrong I can't think of any person that I worked with that once they completed the method and I and dealt with the emotions attached to it that their faith did not resume and resume stronger yeah I would say I can't I can't think of an example that went the other way either um I remember when I was newly sober right I heard the term halt right never be too hungry angry lonely or tired right and I'm thinking about it as you're talking and it's like okay hungry that's an easy one we can check that box but anger right that's an emotion right lonely there's emotions around that tired okay I could go you know get some sleep so hungry and tired I can kind of take care of but the angry and the lonely um those those are hard again to navigate if you don't know how to navigate those right and that's where I think you you are I totally agree with you it's like again I think everyone should do the grief recovery work but certainly people in 12-step programs we will help you navigate and then find ways to not just like distract from the anger or not just for 10 minutes feel less lonely right we will give you tools that will will truly help you uh connect more because grief is a very very lonely place to be right and one of the biggest kind of topics around helping people with grief is helping them reduce their sense of isolation right and if we have a if we have a bunch of grief and we have lost a lot of people we have so many walls up because I can't get close to this next person there I'm just gonna lose them too right I can't I can't open my heart to this uh potential you know romantic partner they're just gonna you know stop on my heart too right it's it's like so the lonely with you know so anyway my point being is yes I agree like I think every single person in 12-step program that is looking to to maintain long-term sobriety like this is a great secondary piece no doubt about it so I'm so glad that that you brought that up yeah the uh it's you know they they have a term for it they call it emotional sobriety and um you know and then you come across the case uh and talking strictly with people with substance use disorder um who are struggling to get sober and I talk to them or I talk to usually the mother or the father or the sibling whoever is very concerned and I I I feel like I could speak on this um I lost my brother to um that to substance use disorder seven years ago um and interesting the grief with my brother started way before he died way before when that disease took a hold of him and he's walking around and just nothing in a shell of who he was uh and and uh and so then you know I come across like I said people who they're struggling to get sober and they have bolt loads of unresolved grief that seemingly is you know they're just they're just trying to deal with the pain and you know that's a that's a tricky line sometimes because you know I always tell people you know look it is a grief program it's deep you know don't let the you know whatever it is that you may be thinking oh we're gonna write some stuff that don't let it fool you it's a deep process and it is when done correctly um it's very very powerful so that kind of line of like somebody that's you know it I mean there's things that I'll do to um protect if that's the right word or shield somebody making sure they're well versed in a support system they may be working with another therapist you know before I would think of diving in with somebody and yet there are have been those cases where you just know um you know they lost their son or or daughter or whatever and they haven't been able to get sober since so I find that I've talked you know with gone to treatment centers and given talks um a lot of the you know again people feeling ill equipped to even open the door because they don't know what if I open that door and then you know I don't know what to do to put them back together you know the therapist or the counselor would say um and so grief recovery is like you said earlier there's a plan of action yeah yeah and that most grievers they just they they need to know that there is something you can do there's something you can do that really really helps yeah yeah no I love that Gwen and I want to we're we're kind of winding down here I can't believe we're we're coming up on the hour um and again we I just want to I would love to have you back whenever you have time because you just you're just uh passionate about this work like I am you you just I get fired up listening to you so I want to do this again but I want to I want to go back to kind of where we started right which is I loved how you put it you were seeing clients at the beginning and it was like a tape and they were stuck on this one event or this one memory or this one last conversation right and they would get some relief because you you you had the kindness to hear them and hear their story right but then they had to come back the the next week and tell release that again right and I I shouldn't even say the word release they needed to express it but it was going to build up throughout the week and then they would need to express they weren't actually getting what we call emotionally complete with that event or with that loss or with that memory um and so for you listening you know if this has been an interesting conversation I want you to think about you know again at midnight when you can't fall asleep like what memory comes back to you you know when you when you cross that street um where that accident happened you know and and there's that just punch in the gut about that or you know when you think about um that person and it just feels so painful and unfinished right I want you to think of that stuff as unresolved grief as unresolved pain emotional pain from the past because that's what it is right and I and again it does not matter how long ago the the loss happened um if it is coming up for you and it is painful there is something you can do about it and and this process is deep like Gwenzhis said but it's also very loving and very supportive and you will feel like the person that you do this work with either in a group or a one-on-one setting you will not find better allies and and advocates for you and loving people um then in this work I've I've never found it um and so I just I want to I want to beg you to look into this work uh because for anyone on the planet this is in a great additional tool for your toolbox right um and and I think that's what really what we've talked about this this whole time um is just everyone qualifies for this work at any point in your life today tomorrow if if you started working with Gwen tomorrow right don't don't you worry we will help you find some stuff that you can work through and again this work isn't about yeah go ahead no I just want to interject because I think that this is something that I I've come across a lot in people that I've worked with I have worked with people who have done a tremendous amount of work on themselves in many different ways I've also worked with people who have never stepped foot into a therapist's office of any sort because I believe this process is what it is it meet the process not just me the process meets everybody where they're at so if you're somebody that like I don't know what this and I've had people say I've done everything what what is this going to do and it comes at you from a just a slightly different angle and so for those of you who are sitting going I've worked through all my stuff I promise you if you do the method and you do that I I was one of them I've done all my you know child of origin stuff and man I was I wrong so just once yeah I want to do you know how many times Gwen that I've heard that right right hundreds hundreds of times I've done all my work Cole I've done this kind of a graph Cole I've done this kind of a thing you know I've I've done this many years of therapy I've this done this much work in 12 step program you know whatever the case is and you're right it it is a slightly different angle that is profoundly transformative like you said um uh we use these terms because we're confident that that's what what it is right after working with hundreds thousands of clients Gwen and myself it's like that's what this work is and and that's why you know again years and years into it for you years and years into it for me we're like hey let's do a podcast where we just talk about this stuff and hopefully reach more people because again um we we're hurting as a society guys you know I think we all know that right coming out of it last five years have been a challenge to put it lightly right and it's it's in a lot of ways it's not getting better right and and we firmly believe that time won't simply heal this stuff we need to take action within that time um and so anyway we want to thank you for listening Gwen um uh I again I can't I can't think of a better person for someone to work with than you you know if I had a friend or a family member that was hurting uh you would be like first on my list to to to help work with them you know and so a lot coming from you so well that there's there's no that that is a truthful statement 100 percent um so Gwen um where can people find you if they want to work with you if they want to talk to you how where can people find you yeah so um you can just the best way is either go on my it's just go on my website there's a million different ways you can get in touch with me um signing up or call the website is hopeful heart solutions at g um at dot com gmail is the email uh yeah but you can find there there's a you know phone number there if I have some calls on my calendar you can jump on um just to even talk like I always tell people I'm the least I'm not gonna pressure anybody I know there's a degree of timing when it comes to doing grief or covering for people um I just would love to have the opportunity to just you know talk to about it yeah um and so hopeful heart solutions dot com right and um and you can again just get get on Gwen's calendar have a conversation uh and I I promise you you were you'll be grateful that you you did that um Gwen you are absolutely again you're you're you're a hero of mine you're you're I am so glad that you found your way to this work and you've just like embraced it and I think next time I just want to talk about you you when you got certified you were so professional and and um what's the word and determined and to to get really good at this work you know and you did so much to just kind of rise through the rank so quickly it to just just just because I know you wanted to be that effective with people you know and you take this so seriously when when you're working with people's hearts um and I just want to thank you for that and I I love that part of your story too so maybe next time we can just talk about you know all of the things you did to get to where you were at being effective with this so until next time guys um you know um thank you for listening and Gwen uh I want you to close this out any final thoughts um yeah no it's just it's been an honor and a pleasure um I thank God every day that I made my way to grief recovery and uh if anything on any one of these podcasts even just gives a little inclination of wanting to know more just reach out you know I believe that's your intuition something we're often you know just taught to discount um and uh just just just make a call that's it yeah yeah thank you Gwen um thank you for listening if you think um if you got some value out of this conversation please like this podcast please subscribe please share this with people that you think could could get something out of this conversation as well and again Gwen's not not not kidding we we talk to people every day right Gwen does we do over at the institute like we like to talk to people there will be no pressure we just we're all big big fans of this work we know what it did for us and we want to we want to help other people do it and there's a lot of different forms of what that looks like right you could work with someone one on one you could work with a group you can come and get certified there's a lot of different ways but we'll have that conversation with you and and and we'll be no pressure at all so anyway thank you guys Gwen thank you for your time i can't wait to have you back and um and i hope everyone has a great rest of your day or evening or whenever you are listening to this and again this is the feel free again podcast and thank you for being a part of it thanks everyone