Stop Choosing Sides, Start Choosing People: How to Disagree Without Disconnecting (Keep Your Peace)

And we don't have the luxury of, you know, 80 degree weather right now. So I got to say it was not bad being in Miami. So today we're going to talk about something that I think just needs to be talked about. We have as a civilization.

I think we have been going through so much change in the last decade. And it's overwhelming. And, you know, obviously in 2020, we had COVID in 2008, we had the housing bubble. You know, it seems like we have natural disasters often.

We have man made disasters. We have social media that's showing you a lot more than you ever saw before. And the list goes on in ways that we can be divided. And so that's the, I think that's the conversation that you and I are passionate about having today is how do we just learn or relearn how to love each other and give each other space to have differences of opinions without severing the whole relationship, right without ghosting each other completely.

So that's what we're going to talk about. And so we have been struggling with division now for, you know, I'd say going on 10 years is really when I felt it within the confines of grief recovery. I've been doing this work for 15 years now. I got started in 2010.

But I'd say by 2019, 2017 around then it was kind of a regular occurrence where we were having to have conversations in group and group. And so we're having conversations in group environments about, hey, let's, let's all just put down our rightness, you know, and I, when we, and we all get very attached to our rightness, we'll cover that in this episode. But let's put that down and just look at each other's losses. Let's look at, let's not try to analyze or judge.

And, and, and also let's remind ourselves why we're all here. We're all here to work on our broken hearts around an emotional loss. We've talked about politics. We didn't sign up to talk about religion.

You know, we signed up to help get some help around our broken heart. And so I was having to do that more and more is what I realized, right, is before people, you know, just, yeah, they're there to work about grief. But we kept having the group almost blow up around disagreements on, on kind of outside topics, right. So I want to talk to you about that, Tammy, because I know you've experienced that too.

You felt that in, and, and you're, you know, you're seeing what I'm seeing. So that's the topic. It's obviously going to be very controversial. You may want to tune out mid, midstream and be angry at me or be angry at Tammy.

And I, I just challenge you to not do that. And, and maybe just really just try and see where my heart is or where Tammy's heart is. And I think what you'll find is we're both very dedicated to helping human beings. And, and I, and I don't care who you voted for in the last election cycle.

I don't, I don't care about what your opinion was on COVID. And frankly, I want to, I stay away from those topics, because you don't need to know my beliefs about any of that stuff. I just need to kind of display to you that I'm here to help you with your grief. That is my purpose, right.

It's not to sway you on this topic or that topic outside of the rooms of grief or heavy work, right. So that's the topic. It's again, it's going to be a touchy one. And so Tammy and I were like, are we sure we want to talk about this.

But the reason we want to talk about this is because I see so many people's grief or recovery work include in a very strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, or in a strange, and it chose to appear Sc to appear, instead of making alien to this human bodhisattva or one 둘 of the human Automation, instead of making alien detailed Zoom.

Including PlayStation, assistants, Whoo! And if your dad told you that you were a POS, a piece of crap for your whole life, and you didn't have a way to defend that belief system, that, you know, unfortunately, sadly, you took that in. And a lot of the time that will haunt you in your adulthood is, oh, wow, someone someone said I messed up on that, you know, that report at work. And then, oh, I feel, I feel this small, right?

And dad had a huge part in that because he put that in your belief system early, right? And so again, a lot of grief for recovery work, and this is hard to mark it, but a lot of grief for recovery work is us helping our clients or ourselves do grief for recovery work. So we can get complete with unfinished things from the past and identify belief systems that are obsolete now because we know more and we're adults and we, we can give that belief system back to dad because, you know, we, we understand, hey, we're smart. We're good enough.

We're good people. We're good dads. We're good husbands, whatever. And you can give back a lot of that belief system.

So a lot of this work is letting go of past beliefs. And so that's a benefit of this work. I mean, I can tell you time and time again, I go to certification trainings and more, more now than ever in day one or day two, while we're laying the groundwork for safety and a non comparative non judgemental environment, someone will say something politically charged and someone that doesn't agree with that political statement over here, I can see we'll have trouble with it, right? And then at some point we're having a conversation about politics or we're having a conversation about COVID or we're having a conversation about, you know, the, just the list goes on.

And we have to remind everyone to come back to, hey, we have broken hearts. We're here to talk about grief. No one signed up to talk about politics or religion or any of those things. And we have to come back.

And what I found interesting is the later, the longer the group goes. So in day three or four, while we have really learned to love each other because we're all rooting for each other because we've seen the pain, we've seen the non judgment and the non comparative environment. If things are things are set on day three or four, we can give each other a lot more grace and we can give each other a lot more patience and love where if things are set on day one or two when we just come from the outside world, it can be a clash, right? And so my point is, is I have seen grief recovery, heal all these big divides with people more than any other process I've seen.

You know, and that's a beautiful thing. And that's, that's what I'm, why I'm passionate about is, is giving people the tools of grief recovery. So again, Tammy and I are going to talk about topics. We don't necessarily agree on right now.

And that's fine because I know how to get complete with what's unfinished with Tammy and just care about Tammy for the person she is. And, and I'm not going into it with, I need to be right. She needs to be wrong. She can actually be right for her life and I can be right for my life simultaneously.

You know, so anyway, I'm sorry, I'm ranting now, Tammy. Thanks again for being on here. Do you, do you have any input on anywhere I just went? Actually, though, one thing that comes to mind is initially when I started my career, I was a nursery school teacher.

So I have a background in early childhood education. And what's really interesting is how it parallels with the grief recovery method because when I was doing my training to be an ECE, one of the first things we were taught is do not reinforce the belief in a child. You made your dad really angry. You made your mom really proud as your teacher.

You've made me really proud because what you're doing is teaching the child two things. They're responsible for someone else's belief or emotions or feelings. And also you can control that. And so when I'm working with someone and we're talking about a past relationship, say it's an ex or a parent or whatever, I'm very careful to say to them and teach them that proper terminology.

And the fact that when you say, you know, when you did that, you made me feel, there's no way to take that back. You've, you've given it all away and it's gone. Yes. Right.

But if you say, you know, when you said or when you did, so you're focusing 100% on the action, I felt now you're owning the emotion and you never apologize for the feeling or the emotion you have. But now you're owning it. And from that point on, you can complete that statement and heal that emotional wound because you now can take back what you gave away years ago. And it's, it's very slight change in terminology, but you made me feel or I felt is really paramount to shifting that emotion and that belief system.

Would you agree? I can't, I can't agree more honestly. We do this so much with our children. We set up the idea that others are responsible for our feelings, right?

Like as if we're wind up toys to the world, right? And, and currently we talk about triggers in our work. We talk about it being stimulus and the stimulus can be highly charged or not. It can be neutral depending on again, your background.

So in other words, someone can say the same phrase to both Tammy and I and Tammy can have a massive reaction emotionally to that phrase. And I can have a totally neutral reaction and just let it, let it kind of go right past me. Again, just depending on our backgrounds and and what happened, but, but the fact of the matter isn't again, the key that Tammy, I think is trying to convey is, is we create the feelings within us, right? Not the other way around.

So in other words, I, I'm not a wind up toy. If my wife says something, I take that in and then internally I'm creating the feelings I have around that statement. Now, that still may hurt a lot. I'm not saying and nothing affects me, right?

That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is it's not her making me feel away. I am perceiving what she said and then that's producing a feeling within me. And when you understand that, you have a lot more power and a lot more say in your reaction or, you know, what you're going to do next.

And, and that is some, one of the things that is really frustrating to me watching a very divided society is we simply didn't learn that growing up. So we think that, you know, when people say stuff, I'm just often running at 100 miles an hour and my reaction is because of what they said. And, and that's just not, that's not biologically actually how it occurs. I think the other thing you said that I want to kind of go back and touch on.

So, you know, when our beliefs are formed and I agree with everything you said, when I was in college, they taught us that the majority of how we see and interact in the world is really solidified by the age of eight. And so fast forward, you know, to 2025, I think that number has dropped considerably for a couple different reasons. One is social media. I mean, it give an iPad to a toddler and they can navigate it without anyone teaching them how to do it.

And so, you know, where when you and I were kids, it was television. Now you fast forward and now it's iPads and cell phones and television and all of these things. But everything they watch see field here affects how they're going to show up in the world and how they see themselves in the world. And so I think that number you mentioned 15 and eight and I think five even.

I have a three year old grandson. I see it in him. I think the impact of this is happening so much younger than it ever did. And if we don't teach the proper tools to our kids number one and give adults permission to hit the pause button and review what they believe to be true.

We are going to feed that divide. We're going to feed that divide terribly. And I know, you know, when I work with somebody with grief recovery, I always follow your dad's advice and I start with that script in the first few minutes. And we talk about there is no room for right or wrong here for the reasons that you just said.

Once we have a point of view, we have to defend it because it's part of who we are. And you can't heal when you're in defense mode. You can't. And so right and wrong goes in the corner and it doesn't come up again, you know, and if it does, we put it back where it belongs because it gets in the way.

And I think that's what happens with a lot of this divide. We don't have the tools to provide a safe place. We don't have the tools to just be able to hold space and let someone share. No one wants to hear what I have to say if they don't feel that they're being heard as well.

And so with this division that we have right now, we're in camps. You're in that camp, you're in this camp. And like you say in the training, in a very short period of time, people start arguing and defending their point of view, rather than just creating that safe place to listen and from that place, have a conversation. And at the end of the day, we can still disagree.

Right. And we've been really fortunate because, you know, our family has stayed together through all of these last five, 10 years, you know, there hasn't been any problem. But we'll get together at Thanksgiving or we'll get together at Easter or whatever. And the kids who are now adults in their 30s, right.

We'll say, okay, time is on one hour. And at that 60 minute mark, the agreement is we all stop discussing what we disagree about and we go back to family dinner. But we are able to do that respectfully to hear with the other person saying, do voices get loud? Yeah, of course they do.

But at the end of that one hour, it's over. Yep. And we're back to the family gathering, but it also does give us permission to have those conversations rather than them kind of sneaking in throughout the entire time we're together. There's a time block.

You've got an hour to talk about it at the end of that hour. It's off the table for the rest of the dinner. And it works really well. And we are all still speaking to each other.

We're still family. We still love each other and we kind of look forward, I think, to these debates sometimes. Yeah, yeah, that's, and that's great. And, you know, I think we've all, we've all had that experience where there are certain people we can talk to who we know we have differing beliefs about things.

And you can just have an intellectual conversation and it's a, it's a casual debate. And no one is getting fired up and, you know, yet like again, a voice could be raised, but we can, we can keep that in check. The other person keep that in check. And at the end, we can just give each other a hug and agree to disagree or whatever.

And I just wish more people had those tools, right, versus we have other people where, you know, you start talking about stuff we disagree with. The other person is going to really lose their cool. And, you know, and they will, they will be almost in a tailspin that they can't get control of. I'm excited to announce our premium in person certification training individuals who have a desire to help other people with grief and loss.

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The thing she was saying made me feel seen and normal and validated and not insane. I saw grief as this really bad dark thing instead of seeing it as the actual healing process. As someone who's been in this field for 15 years now, I would have loved to have been trained under these circumstances. It's just such a premier training.

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It was such a rich time of learning and engaging, listening to people's stories, being present, being focused with who you're talking to is such a big part of the grief recovery work. I had done a lot of things I'd done coaching. I'd been in therapy. I'd done a lot of other modalities and they were helpful.

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And meanwhile, you may, if you have the skills to just kind of be relaxed and impartial, you know, you kind of don't really see how this is happening, right? So we have people that we can just talk to about disagreements and then we have other people where again, they're really, they believe that this person is saying stuff and they're making me feel as if I have no control. Right? And and that's the beauty of grief recovery in these tools is if that is you, if you're listening and you're like, Oh, yeah, I really can't talk politics without really just getting ticked off and and and yelling and, you know, then these tools may be helpful for you.

I know I've come a long way in being able to just again have conversations with people and enjoy it and enjoy their point of view and mine and not let my heart rate get above, you know, 70 or whatever, right? It's it's it's it's something that some of us just need to develop because of how we grew up or how we're kind of built, right? It is others are not responsible for how I feel. If I have some massive reaction, that is in me and I need to take a look at that.

And when was that put in me? Why do I have such a massive reaction on that? Right? And we can I can talk about very controversial topics with people.

And again, it's I don't need to get all fired up and start yelling and and be like, I can't ever hang out with that person. I just had this example of the other the other week I was traveling for work and I was hanging out with this gentleman for like three weeks. And we were working together every day. And in the van ride home from this kind of work, not it wasn't grief recovery.

By the way, it was this other thing, fun thing I had an opportunity to do. But anyway, we were getting to know each other and talk about families and kids and wives and stuff like that. And you know, any any, you know, nowadays, right? We're always trying to kind of box each other in and figuring out, OK, who's cold?

And what box does he fit in and who's this gentleman? What box, you know, and we were doing that. And I could tell there were things being said that I didn't agree with. And then one night at dinner, right?

We're on the road. We're at a hotel in the middle of nowhere, neither of us kind of know anybody in the area. And so at dinner, like things just kind of opened up. And it was like, oh, wow, you believe that?

OK, I believe this. And it was very different beliefs on different things. But we had already put in a lot of good will towards each other. And we could simply have a conversation that included us finding out that we didn't agree on some, some big issues.

And then the next day, we said, high in the van to work and we continue just being friendly and, and, and, you know, and it didn't have to be, oh, now we can't talk for the rest of this time together. Right? And, and, and I appreciated that about him and about me. And as we know, that doesn't, that doesn't, doesn't happen very often.

I mean, a lot of the time now when we do that, it's like, oh, we are now diametrically opposed to each other. And boom, it's done. And that's sad. But it's really sad when it's your mom or your dad or your siblings, right?

I mean, I've had people from my family who chose not to speak to me because they heard, I believe this about this topic or I did, you know, this was my choice on this topic. And I've had family, you know, who is like, no, no, we're not talking ever again. And that hurts, you know, because I was like, hey, I really care about you. I think you're a good person in a lot of ways.

And yeah, I knew we didn't agree on this, but really we have to not talk ever again. Like that, that's where it has to go. And that's, that hurts, right? And I have to know what to do and I have to have tools on how to heal from that.

But, but we don't talk because, you know, because of that. And I know that's happening in a lot of families and it's just, it's sad. It's sad because yes, there are topics we don't agree on, but a lot of this is social media and the television fermenting a lot of this divide, right? And kind of fanning these flames.

And that's just another factor in it. And so I'm passionate. I know you are too. It's just again, equipping people with the tools on how to defend against that.

And so, and you may be thinking, okay, we'll get to the solution. What's the solution? Well, in our work, the solution is doing the grief recovery process on that person, on that relationship and finding all the good in the relationship, finding the bad, finding the stuff you disagree in, finding the, you know, the way they may decision that that that hurts you and learning how to forgive, learning how to apologize for your side of the street and also finding all those significant emotional statements that are positive about what you appreciate about that person. It humanizes the person again.

And oftentimes it reminds you, oh, this is a relationship worth investing in. This is a good human being. We don't have to agree on everything to still be friends, right? And, and these tools work beautifully for that.

And I would have never, ever, ever knew that that was part of grief recovery, getting an agree for recovery. When I got an agree for recovery, I was signing up to help people with, you know, broken hearts around someone who has died, broken heart around a divorce, broken heart about the loss of a pet, a health issue. I had no idea that these tools could also help with healing these massive social divides that that are coming up, seemingly, seemingly weekly now, right? And, and I'm passionate about talking about that because it's not on the cover of the book.

It's not really mentioned in the book, but I see it time and time again. Oh, wow, day four of grief recovery. These people are all hugging each other and genuinely rooting for each other. And I know that they disagree on a bunch of the outside issues that people are arguing over.

And it doesn't matter to them at this point because they have new tools that they didn't have when they walked in. Does that make sense? It does. And I think what grief recovery does is through the healing process.

It allows us to choose our response. Versus our reaction being driven by unresolved emotions. My husband and I just went through this. My husband's a really easygoing guy.

You know, we don't fight. We don't argue. And all of a sudden, he started to be very angry. And I found that for a lot of men when they have unresolved emotions, it shows up his anger.

Yes. So he was quick to criticize. He was sarcastic. He was listening to me waiting to respond versus listening to what I was saying.

He's been through grief recovery, so he understands it. And so finally I said to him, what's what's bugging you? Because like this isn't who you are and he goes nothing, right? Nothing.

And I said, you need to get a piece of paper and you need to get out of pen and you need to figure this out because something's driving this behavior. And honestly, Koli had no idea. So we sat down and he did his first relationship, rap, which he completed, which led to the second, which he completed, which led to the third. Wow.

The third was the thing he didn't know was there. And it was driving all of the anger because it had been left unresolved. And so he did three completions, three completely different relationships. It was the third one that was tucked away and hidden that he wasn't even aware was there.

And after a few short hours, I got my husband back. And I said to him, I checked into with him now for a couple of days and I said, how are you doing? He said, like, I'm totally fine. And all that low grade kind of pressure cooker anger that was driving his sarcasm, driving his, you know, kind of fast response, which was so out of character for him.

Really, it was a matter of when he started, did he know what it was? No, he didn't have a clue. But using the grief recovery method and trusting it, leaning into it and letting it support him, he was able to kind of dig through these one at a time until he really got to the core issue. Yeah.

Yeah. He was able to heal it and the anger's gone. And I like to say I got my husband back. I love that.

I love that. And, you know, I don't think it's a secret. I've mentioned this a lot. And I started a whole separate podcast on fatherhood and we talk about kind of masculine topics and from the, the male perspective.

And I struggle with that too. When I'm hurt, when my heart is hurt, I like to go to anger first and I'm constantly having to work on that and keep that in check. And so thank you for sharing that story and I can relate. And I think a lot of men sadly drive their children away.

You know, there's a divide with their wife because we don't have the tools at how to release that anger. Right. And that anger can be very uncomfortable for others to live around, especially when we're, you know, six foot tall, 220 pounds. Like, you know, that anger in a body like that can be really scary to the people around us.

Right. And so I'm, I'm passionate about helping other men learn how to process that too. And, and, and I struggle with that as well. And, and the other thing I wanted to mention when you were talking, it reminds me of another thing.

A lot of the time when we're disagreeing with the person in the room. So in other words, when, when that family member I told you about was found out that we had a disagreement. Um, and they, they chose to basically sever the relationship because I had a different beliefs than they did politically or, you know, again, spiritually or whatever the case is. I'm trying to be vague because that's a whole point is I'm sure you're listening to every word trying to put me in a box or trying to put Tammy in the box.

And it's like, I got no time for that. Like I travel around the country. I help people of all religions of all races of all genders. And I just want to share grief recovery tools with these people.

And I, I'm constantly putting people on pause that want to bring an outside topics. It's like, no, no, no, you guys all read the pamphlet around this course. This is about helping with broken hearts. And yes, we have broken hearts around all these large, you know, larger than life, hard to solve issues.

But none of us are here, honestly, to work on that stuff. We're here to work on mom or dad or, you know, or, you know, the relationship we thought we would have forever that ended. Or, you know, those kind of things are what we're honestly here to work on. Now these tools will help you navigate the world on these bigger issues.

But none of us are here to work on that right now. You know, and so I'm reminding people of that, but, but getting back to what I said about my family member, there's a good chance. He has unfinished emotional business with his father. And because he has charged with his father, something I said is, is kind of the fuse is being set off.

But really it's unfinished business around dad. It's not me. We've always been good with each other. We've always been friend with each other.

We just got to a point where there's something I agree with that maybe your dad agrees with. And now, you know, you're kind of transferring all this unfinished business from him onto me. And that's not fair either. And so that's a lot of the time, you know, and that's what Tammy was talking about, right?

It's like, I need to search and I need to find the relationship where this anger is happening. And, and for, you know, Tammy's husband, like courageously doing this work, it took him three relationships to find what the, what the root of it was. And that kind of self reflection, frankly, is like a thing of the past in our society, right? It's like, our women want to watch the Kardashians and judge them, right?

Our men want to watch fantasy football and, you know, pretend that they're football players. And, and the self reflection is not there, right? The, how do I grow as an individual? How do I evolve spiritually or emotionally or intellectually?

You know, I just feel like we're in society in a lull on self reflection. And it's a big problem, right? And one of the big pieces of this, again, we keep going back to it. But one of the big pieces of this is others are not responsible for my feelings.

I am, I am responsible for my feelings. Now, they can say something that creates sadness or frustration or anger in me, but I did create that feeling. And it is my responsibility on how I'm moving forward. I can't think of a greater universal truth than that, but that is not what's taught to the youth.

And it's especially not what's sold on on the social media and on television these days, right? And so we are being, there's a trap being laid out for us and we are falling into it perfectly, right? The truth of the matter is, mostly a lot of us agree on a lot of topics. A lot of the time we're more kind of in the middle than social media would like us to believe.

You know, even offline, Tammy, you know, trusted me enough to share a part of her spiritual journey, you know, and then I trusted her enough to share a little bit of my spiritual journey. And they're, they're in some ways, almost the exact opposite routes, right? And, and it doesn't matter. That's the whole thing is like, oh, I'm so glad that Tammy has found something that's working well for her.

I'm so grateful I found something that that's working well for me. And it's not, it doesn't, I'm not keeping score of who's right and who's wrong because I'm not in Tammy's body. I'm not living in her experience and vice versa. And we can just talk about it and then move on to another topic, right?

Versus, no, no, I'm right. And she, she's not, you know, like that, I'll tell you what, around 2020, I was very humbled in terms of, I thought a situation was one way and then watching it play out, it was a different way. And in my opinion, I felt very wrong about my assessment about it. And honestly, I had a lot of arrogance before that, you know, of course I'm in my late 30s.

I know everything. I've had the whole world figured out, you know, and boy was I wrong, right? And I was humbled in the best way possible. You know, and what it really showed me is I can be wrong.

I can be, you know, I can misjudge a situation. I can, I can, you know, think that I'm 100% right and then through review or through time passing, I can see, oh, I was not right on that topic. And it gave me a lot more humility to just allow others to make their own choices without them satisfying me, without me getting lost, you know, in the moment and going out of the moment and, you know, trying to figure out how to, you know, tell them that, you know, or manipulate them into thinking some other way. It's like, oh, no, they could be right and I could be wrong on this topic, right?

I just try to do that more and more. And that that's another thing I wish a tool that people could just kind of accept is like, oh, that's an interesting way to look at it. I could be totally wrong. And you know, and I try to regularly do that to, to have some humility because for me, in my makeup, that, that is a flaw that I have.

I can get so stuck in my rightness and it can consume me. It can take away from me being in the moment. It can make, you know, other relationships rocky and, and so again, I constantly, well, Tammy could be right. Maybe, maybe I'm off.

I don't feel that way and I'm going to keep going this way, but she could be right and I could be wrong. Huh, that's an interesting way to look at it. Just doing that if that's not a usual part of who you are. Like I'm trying to just build reps, having this thumb over this one, even though I'm comfortable having this one.

Well, that takes a lot of time before that's going to feel comfortable, right? And so another thing I wish people were doing is having ownership on, on, you know, again, how they're going to hear information, perceive it and then have some humility that it's like, oh, maybe I could be off on that. Or not, you know, it doesn't matter. And you know, there's, there's another element to this and it was a hard lesson I learned through grief recovery.

I thought being responsible for someone else's happiness, trying to fix things, trying to make sure everybody's world was all happy and smooth and running, you know, the way that, you know, I would like it to run. I thought I was being driven by being heart centered, by being caring, by being empathetic, by really wanting the best for other people. And what I learned through grief recovery was that's a trauma response. You know, that people pleasing that trying to fix everything, especially when somebody didn't ask for my help.

That's a trauma response. And so owning or trying to control someone else's path is a trauma response. So when you look at the division and you look at how much of it is being driven by one person trying to change another person. Yes.

Yes. Right. So much of that reaction is actually being driven by unresolved trauma, unresolved emotions of our past. So the more inner work that we do on ourselves, the greater the tolerance, the greater the acceptance, the easier it is for us to hold space for another person.

And those of us who are familiar with grief recovery, understand that concept. But then there are so many people out there that have never experienced it. So imagine this divide divided world that we live in right now. And then move forward where everyone is taking responsibility for their own emotions, for their own healing, for their own past, for their own broken relationships, whatever.

And now we all land in this place of tolerance and acceptance. We can again be in that safe place where we can have conversations with another person without being triggered or reacted by what they said. And I think a lot of this most back again to what I said in regards to children, our nervous system was designed to live within community. So you know about your family, you know about your neighbors, you maybe know about the small business down the street, that sort of thing.

Your news is local, everything is localized. That's how our nervous system is designed to process the information we received. But look where we are now. We are getting worldwide news.

We know what's happening in Turkey. We know what's happening in England. We know what's happening in Israel. We know what's happening in Africa.

We know what's happening in the States. You know what's happening in Canada. And all of a sudden our nervous system is on overwhelmed. And if we don't have the tools to process the emotions that come up, if we do what we're taught and we skillfully bury them, where we'll never speak of them again.

Again, division has no opportunity to heal because again, we're back in trigger mode, we're back in reactant mode. And a lot of that is coming from the fact that we're being exposed to information that our nervous system really was not designed to process. Yeah, that's such an important point. I love that you said that.

And the other thing is too. We also, you know, in this day and age, it's like you have three children. They all go to different parts of the United States in my case. They all go to different colleges.

They get world views and beliefs and, you know, and they're impressionable and they, and the people professors are authority figures. And they all get three separate kind of world views that can be completely, you know, opposing. They may settle down there and, and, and then we're all expected to still be a family unit, even though now we have many different world views on things, right? Versus, you know, what happened more back in the day, we all kind of lived in the same town.

We all started families in the same area. We all had very similar beliefs. Like you said, we had access to the same kind of localized information. And there was a lot less things to disagree on, honestly.

It seems like. And, and, and again, like you said, the expectation and what's expecting for human beings, the amount of change that's offered up on a weekly basis that we're just supposed to, you know, make that change. It's just not how it works, right? And, and, and grief is about change, right?

That when we define grief, you know, it is, is, is about change or the end of a familiar pattern of behavior, right? That, that's grief. When you move, that's a massive change. When you have a loss of health, that's a massive, massive change.

When you have a breakup in a relationship, that's a, you know, could be a betrayal. That is a massive change. And so that's what's happening in the world is changes on overdrive and we don't have the tools to, to process that change. I mean, I think it's that simple, even though it's very, very complex, right?

But, but like you said, Tammy, at the core, it, it always comes back to unfinished emotional business from your past, from past relationships, from past experiences. And if you don't go and, and complete what's unfinished in those emotions, all of these things that are being asked of you in real time today, feel overwhelming because your backpack full of loss from the past is overwhelming. Right? And if we can go clear out a bunch of that backpack from the past in real time, it's still be, it may still be a challenging moment, but I don't have 35 years of unfinished business dictating how I react or how heavy and overwhelming this current circumstance is, right?

I can actually just agree or disagree with this person right in front of me. And it, it's not about me disagreeing with the three people that hurt me from the past that have this similar idea. Right? It's, it's very interesting.

I was telling Tammy this the other day, you know, I primarily right now the way I help people with grief recovery is through our four day certification. So I'm working with people who, you know, whether they know it or not are going to be doing serious personal work in the group. And then they also have the expectation that they want to get the tools to help other people. But we always start with us.

We always start with our work. So we do very, very significant emotional work in that I'm walking people through the method on a personal loss. Day in and day out. So anyway, in day one and day two, especially day one, everyone is really scared, right?

You walk into a room. There's there's Kleenex boxes on the floor where, you know, where the chairs are in a semi-circle and people are like, whoa, what is going on? And my job as a facilitator is to do what we do in the grief recovery method, which is we put layer upon layer of safety on people. We set up a non-judgmental, non-comparative environment for people to understand that they're very unique relationship.

That's one of a kind is unique to them. And therefore they're a unique griever. And I don't know exactly where they're going to go. There's plenty of places they can go emotionally.

And also that their grief is 100%. You know, their heartbreak is 100%. No one else gets a vote in it. There's no pecking order or list of this is the heart of loss.

And this isn't. So once we get on board by day two by day three and everyone just has seen everyone's lost. They understand that there is no pecking order. In other words, the person that is divorced over here is grieving at 100%.

Their heart is broken in a thousand pieces. The widow who had her husband die over here is her heart is broken to a thousand pieces. She's grieving and we've created safety for both of them to do work in other words, right? They're not scared of their grief because, oh, no, that grief's worse or that that's harder or this person.

They can't write. It's just like, hey, we all are rooting for each other and we've all seen each other's losses. So what's interesting is if I mention on day one that I archery hunt elk, right? I look over in that vegetarian is, you know, is it's going to be hard for them to relate to me, right?

But if I'm on day three and I haven't mentioned anything and I just, you know, on day three, I do try and challenge people a little bit because we all know each other. So sometimes I may sprinkle in something like that, you know, oh, yeah, you know, I hunt elk so that we have our own meat that we provide for the family and stuff. And I can see the difference in someone receiving that information about me on day three versus day one, right? Because by day three, they understand my hearts in the right place.

They understand I have grief just like them. They understand I care about them and we don't have to have the same beliefs around me eating meat or not, right? I respect them and they respect me. And that's the beauty of grief recovery is once we get through and we start utilizing these tools with each other, we can give each other a lot more space.

You know, and one of the things you said earlier and maybe we can put this up on on the screen when we talk about this, but really what Tammy was talking about is our definitions of love, right? And one of our definitions of love is love is loving others is having the ability to allow them to make their own choices without any insistence that they satisfy us. And loving ourselves is is having the ability or getting the ability to make our own choices for ourselves without any insistence that they satisfy others, right? And some of us grow up in homes where that was impossible, so that feels very unfamiliar and we're always making choices to make others happy as if that's possible.

And we covered earlier today, biologically, that's not how it works, right? So some of us really need to learn how to make our own choices without any insistence that they satisfy others for us and others need to learn how to allow others to make their own choices without any insistence that they satisfy me. So at some point along the lines that family member that I told you about that we're broken up, we're not friends anymore. I allowed them to make their own choices without any insistence that they satisfy me.

But he didn't know how to use that definition with me. He didn't know how to just allow me to make my own choices without any insistence that they satisfy him. So when I make choices that are not satisfying to him, right? Something has to blow up, something has to give.

This person has to be wrong. I have to not talk to them, whatever the case may be. And so we'll put those definitions up somewhere, but I have seen those heal people. And again, by day three, we're all kind of living those definitions.

So when the lady finds out that I'm a bow hunter, it doesn't mean I'm a horrible monster that has bloodlust, you know, it just means, oh, wow, calls a human being that is complicated, just like the year belief system, just like mine, right? And but there's enough other stuff in there where they've seen my pain, they've seen my, you know, we're rooting for each other in that point. And that's where I wish more of us were operating from is the day three and the day four of the training versus the day one and the day two. Again, there's a possibility if that person hears that too quickly on day one, they're walking out of the room.

They won't even give me a chance to show them who I am or what grief recovery is because it's like, oh, I got coal in this box done. But by day, day three or day four, we can hug and have a conversation on, hey, call, why, why do you do that? Oh, well, here's why I do it. And oh, wow, you're not, you're not a monster, right?

I kind of, that's what I thought from Facebook. But now I see some other points of view. I just had an amazing conversation like that with someone in the Miami training. We're in day three and day four.

We were, I don't want to say, we were, we were disagreeing with some topics. And by the end, we did find common ground and we could both just stay in ourselves and give the other person some room to tell their truth. And I could tell my truth. And we found some really common ground.

I see that week after week after week in this work. And so, you know, that's why we're just like, yep, let's just have this conversation. You know, it's like, again, we so want to put people in a box, you know, but you haven't seen their lost history graph. You haven't seen the 25 significant losses from their life.

It's really hard not to love someone when you see all their struggle. And you see them working at getting new tools to be better, be a better husband, be a better wife, be a better parent. Like you root for these people. And it doesn't matter who they voted for in the last election.

You know, and I think, I think it's so important. If we are going to address the division in the country, if we're going to face all these numerous changes that are being thrown at us almost daily, then it's so important to do our own inner work so that we can step up to the table, have these difficult conversations. And in spite of our belief system, support one another through the changes. You know, there's a there's a meme I put up on Facebook a lot and it's a it's a king and his soldier at the top of the top of the castle.

And there's all these people at the bottom of the castle with pitch works and and the soldier that's talking to the king says, oh, we don't have to do anything. We just have to convince those people that the pitch for people want to take what's theirs. And then we can just walk away and they'll take care of it. And that's kind of where we are.

We're so divided that we're attacking one another and we really don't even know why anymore we're arguing. So if we do our own work and we heal and we come from this place of tolerance and acceptance, then we can start to have these difficult conversations and support each other as they continue to throw these changes at us. And when I say that, I mean, it's coming from everywhere. It's coming from education.

It's coming from here. It's coming from there. And we're just expected to accept it. But like you say, it may conflict with our values and may conflict with our belief system.

And we need to hit the cause button. We need to see for first of all, if that's true for us. And secondly, if it is, is there any healing that needs to be done around that belief system so that we can come back to the table and just be an equal participant in a discussion that really needs to take. Yeah.

Yeah. Well said, Tammy. Well, we're at the one hour mark. And so I can't believe we got here that flew by.

But I want to use just the last couple of minutes we have to just kind of talk to our grief recovery specialists who are listening. So I know we have quite a few people that listen that have been trained in our work that do our work. And I love you. And I want to thank you again and again and again for what you do.

If you're listening to this and you haven't been through the method, but you're wanting to go through the method. If this sounds like something that could be of benefit to you, you know, if you go on our site under our programs, it'll take you to a list of the local community programs that we do, the online programs we do. And all of those are led by these grief recovery specialists and they've been trained by us. They're incredible people.

They signed up to help humanity to help people with grief. And so please look into reaching out to them. And, you know, again, for our specialists, I want to remind you that, you know, when I go to a certification training, I am there for those people with broken hearts and my job is to create safety for them to take these tools and use these tools to help with their, you know, help them heal their hearts. That's my job.

My job is not to sway them politically, sway them spiritually, sway them, you know, on what medical choices they want to make or not make. You know, and the list goes on. The point is, is as a grief recovery specialist, I stay out of the way. I'm a heart with ears with no mouth until they ask me a question about grief recovery.

I share another tool. And, and that's my job. And this work is beautiful when you just stay out of the way and let that happen. For some of us, as specialists that are very passionate about what they believe, I want to remind you that this work is about helping the other person.

It's not about them knowing what you believe on this or this or that. In fact, that will get in the way. Right. So in other words, when I'm doing this work, I don't want that individual that is my client to know anything about my beliefs on this or that.

I want them to know a little bit about the grief or loss that I've had. And that's it. You know, to describe the method. So again, please, please, please.

Keep the singleness of purpose around grief recovery, grief recovery, keep the singleness of purpose around helping people heal their broken hearts. Right. And, and, and you'll do just fine. But the minute we veer off into, hey, let me tell you about this or let me tell you.

In other words, on day three or four, don't tell them about you being a bow hunter. You know, I'm in a certification where I'm just challenging people a little bit to do this kind of stuff. And if I hit some hot button topics with people, then we can just work on that. Because again, my goal is to train specialist to work with anybody.

I don't care if you voted for Trump. I don't care if you voted for Kamala. I want you to be willing to help that individual. Because that's grief recovery.

That's being a human being. Right. So again, thank you for listening. If this challenged you a little bit, or you don't want to ever hear from me again, you know, that's fine.

But that's, that's on you. That's, that's some serious stimulus you have from your background. And that's work for you, for you to do. And that may make you angry too.

And that's okay. But the point is I don't want you to live with a bunch of hate in your heart with a bunch of unfinished business. You know, and, and so if things like us talking about these things make you angry, maybe there's some work to be done. Tammy, do you have any any kind of closing thoughts?

No, that was, that was a great way to brand, wind this up. And that's exactly the point that I hope that the specialist take away. Our job is to provide that safe place to guide them in using the tools so that they can get to a place of interpiece where they can choose how they respond versus being directed how they will react by all of these incomplete emotions. And they can't get there if we get in the way with our stuff.

That's not our role. That's not our place. Our place is to create a safe place for them to feel so yes, well, yeah. And Tammy, where can people find you if they want to work with you?

Because I can pretty much guarantee almost almost completely. But again, I'm not Tammy, but I can almost guarantee that if you just want to go do a group of recovery work with Tammy again, she will just help you with group of recovery work. So Tammy practices what she preaches. So Tammy, how can people find you?

How can they get in touch with you? They can find me either on the Great Free Recovery website. If they put in brandford, I come up under the brandford area. My personal website is T Adams dot C a and or they can email me at TD Adams at Rogers dot com.

Okay, awesome. And Tammy, thanks again for being on. I really enjoyed this conversation. I'm sure we'll have part three at some point with you.

And so have a great rest of your day. And for all of you listening, if this was helpful, thank you. Thank you for listening. I'm glad it was helpful.

If it was helpful, please share, please like, please leave a review. Let's, let's, you know, get found by the algorithm. Let's let other people find this work. I think it's more needed now than ever, you know, and it's it continues to floor me.

How many different things you can apply this method to to transform the quality of your life. And, and by doing so, transform the quality of people around you, right. Again, every father on the planet, in my opinion, should be doing grief recovery work. If you have a bunch of anger that is normal, that is natural, right.

But there are tools that we can use to let go of that. Okay, because a lot of the time it's about unfinished sadness from your past. And we just go to anger to cover it. You know, a lot of the time it's about us not having things happen the way we wish we wished we hope we dreamed what happened.

And there are tools that you can have to let go of that anger. So that you're not you're not scary to your kids. You're not scary to your wife. I say this with firsthand knowledge, right.

I am not as good a father as I can be if I'm holding on to a bunch of anger because things aren't happening the way I had hoped they would happen or things from the past didn't play out how I hope they would play out. Right. I can't tell you how many times I see kids scared pushed away from actually loving well intention dads, but they didn't know how to get their anger and check. They didn't know how to process that.

And so anyway, again, I'm just kind of feel compelled to talk to you dads out there and to you men out there. We have men do tremendous work and grief recovery. It's not the majority, but I'm trying to have it be at least 50 50 because men and women both benefit from this work. It's not all touchy, feeling it's not singing, come by off.

You know, this is this is real real heavy lifting of emotional stuff. And you know, again, I have seen some of the toughest guys I've ever seen on this planet do this work brilliantly. So that's an option for for the dads and the guys out there too. All right, until we see you again, this is the feel free again podcast.

Thank you for listening. Have a great day and we'll see you next time.