Survived to Thrive Podcast
A podcast designed for survivors of suicide loss. This podcast explores the unique grief experiences that accompany a loved ones death due to suicide, shares insights on how your brain processes this kind of loss, and offers worthwhile and valuable tips you can start today to gain a more joyful and fulfilling life even though your loved one died.
Survived to Thrive Podcast
Episode 103: The Company You Keep In Grief.
Join us for a heartfelt exploration of how the people in our lives shape our grief and healing journey. In today’s episode, we discuss the often-overlooked influence of our relationships on how we process loss, particularly when it comes to the complex emotions surrounding the suicide of a loved one. Host Amy Miller sheds light on emotional differentiation and its importance in navigating grief without being overwhelmed by others' emotions.
In this episode we take a deep dive into the importance of surrounding ourselves with supportive people during the grieving process. We delve into how the company we keep significantly influences our healing journey.
• Discussing the impact of emotional differentiation on grief
• Identifying toxic versus supportive relationships
• Building and maintaining a healing inner circle
Discover practical strategies for assessing your relationships—do they help or hinder your progress? Reflecting on the energy the people around you impart can lead to transformative changes in your healing process. We emphasize the significance of intentionally crafting a "healing inner circle," comprised of those who support growth, resilience, and emotional strength.
This episode is more than just a conversation; it’s a genuine invitation to evaluate and, if necessary, reshape your connections. Your healing matters, and you deserve to be surrounded by individuals who help you thrive.
As always, thanks for listening!
We are a community dedicated to empower survivors of suicide loss along their grief journey. We invite you to check out our website to sign up for our weekly newsletter, along with other free materials."
Website: https://www.survived-to-thrive.com/
Email: amy@survived-to-thrive.com
You are listening to the Survived to Thrive Podcast with Amy Miller, a podcast for survivors of suicide loss. In this weekly podcast, you will learn more about your unique experiences and gain insights on your brain and how it processes grief and loss due to a loved one's suicide. While suicide grief comes in all shapes and sizes, Amy shows you that you still can have a life full of joy and fulfillment even though your loved one died. You don't have to just survive anymore. You can thrive.
Speaker 2:You are listening to the Survive to Thrive podcast with Amy Miller, episode number 103, the Company you Keep in Grief. Hello friends, thank you and welcome to the podcast. This is a place where we really talk open and honestly about navigating the life after losing a loved one to suicide, and I'm just so thankful that you are here and I'm thankful that you keep listening, and I'm really excited about talking about this topic because I think this will help you to really understand how people are impacting your grief, and I also think that this is gonna be a powerful, powerful podcast episode for you to really help you be more aware of who you are surrounding yourself with, because, let's face it, people have an impact on us, whether we like that or not. So I really want to dive deep into this topic and have you understand that who you surround yourself with in this season of life can either help you or keep you stuck. So we're going to be talking a lot about this. We're going to explore how relationships shape our healing and how to intentionally choose the people who support your growth, because, I'm telling you, it makes a world of difference. So thank you so much for joining, okay. So before we dive deep into this topic. We're gonna talk about how people around us shape your healing. Okay.
Speaker 2:Now, in order to understand this, we first have to understand that other people do not create our emotions. Okay, it's not what they say, it's not what they do, it's not how they react, it's not the way that they're behaving at all. Okay, what creates our emotions is us. We are the ones that create our own emotions. Okay, it doesn't feel like it is because it feels like other people are creating all of these feelings inside of us, but the truth is it's us. That doesn't mean, though, that the people we spend time with don't influence us. Okay, because if we're surrounded by those who keep you in a cycle of victimhood, resentment or despair, it's easy, easy, easy to stay stuck there, but, on the flip side, if you surround yourself with people who believe in healing, growth and resilience, they inspire you to move forward, and I think that's really important to note and to take notice.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure if you really have taken some time and really listened to yourself as you're thinking about these different relationships you have and these people that you choose to keep as company, and I'm talking about people that are really close to you, in your family circles, in your homes. I'm also talking about co-workers, friends, people that you are associated with, maybe in your organizations that you are in, maybe volunteer places, maybe churches, or maybe, just like you know, friends of friends, right. And I think it's really important to take note about how you're feeling around these people, because we can't change something that we don't necessarily acknowledge, and in order for us to acknowledge it, we must know who and how they're impacting us, right? And I think it's really important for us to do that. You know, there is this thing that's called emotional differentiation. Okay, this is about learning to hold space for your own feelings without being consumed by other emotional states. So, when you're grieving, it's important to recognize are you absorbing negativity from others or are you choosing relationships that help you stay grounded in your own values and healing process? And I think this is important to reflect upon, because you really need to be able to take ownership of your own feelings and not really take on the emotions and the feelings of others. Because, let's face it, when we're going through grief and we're dealing with the loss of losing someone to suicide, we're going to automatically feel a lot of emotions from our experience, because we're thinking a lot loss of losing someone to suicide we're going to automatically feel a lot of emotions from our experience because we're thinking a lot of thoughts about that. That's a lot for one person to take on, okay. Now, if you are adding okay, or absorbing negativity from others, or you're choosing relationships that bring you down, okay, it's going to impact you in a negative way. So I think it's really important for you to really look for relationships that help you stay grounded in your own values and also keep you on the upswing, in progress and in healing. So I think it's really important, okay.
Speaker 2:So I want you to think for just a moment and just take a moment to think about this. But who in your life currently, right now, is influencing your grief the most? Okay, and I really want you to consider this. Okay, and I really want you to consider this. I really want you to think about who in your life is really influencing your grief the most. Is it a partner? Is it your children? Is it parents? Is it another sibling? Is it a friend? Maybe it's somebody that you've been talking to. Maybe it's a counselor. Maybe it's a grief coach, maybe it's a life coach, maybe it's YouTube videos. Okay, you know, there's a lot of influencers right out there in the world, right, that can really have an influence on our grief, and I want you to really consider who in your life right now is influencing your grief the most. Okay, and I want you to consider if whoever it is you're listening to or whoever is in your life that is influencing your grief the most, are they helping you to move forward or are they keeping you stuck? And I think it's so important that you really spend some time and reflect upon this. Okay, this brings me to recognizing what is toxic versus supportive relationships.
Speaker 2:Now, in coaching, we have learned a lot about our thoughts and we think about people and we think about people and we think about how we think about people, create our experience of them. Right, and sometimes it's not just our thoughts. Some people genuinely drain our energy or reinforce unhelpful narratives. Okay, like, for example, if you are really stuck in a thought loop and in my last podcast, if you haven't had the opportunity to listen to it, I talk about these thought loops that can keep us stuck, that kind of keep us in this victim mentality that some of us find ourselves stuck in. If you're thinking a lot about these scenarios like life isn't fair. Why did this happen to happen to me? And you are surrounded by a person that is reinforcing these negative loops? Right, then it's going to be a little more difficult to get yourself unstuck from those loops. Okay, if you always have this little voice on the side saying you're right, life isn't fair, I can't believe this happened to you. It really sucks. Right, it's not helping. Right, it's just reinforcing the negative thought loop. And so I want you to really be mindful about the people that are genuinely draining our energy and reinforcing unhelpful narratives. It's important to recognize. Okay Now, if certain people make you feel worse every time you talk to them.
Speaker 2:I want to talk about these people right now, because I think so many of us allow that into our life, where we allow people to really make our lives harder and they really drain us, right, when we're around them and we leave the situation and we just feel worse and worse and worse because we spent time with them. I think, at this point, this is where you gotta make some choices here. You really gotta decide am I gonna start creating and reinforcing more boundaries with this person, or is it time for me to move forward from this relationship. Okay, now, it's not up to me to decide what to do in this situation, because sometimes this might be a partner, maybe this is a child of yours, maybe there's a family connection that's difficult for you to completely live this situation, maybe this person you know you are going to have some responsibility for, okay. So I really want you to decide whether or not it's time to set these boundaries or if it's time to move forward from this relationship, depending on each individual and unique circumstance.
Speaker 2:But I want you to be mindful that you are just one decision away from a different life and I think this is important and that decision might be limiting time with those who bring you down, or creating those boundaries, or walking away. Okay, and I want you to be very considerate of that, because it is huge how much these people impact us. So we have to really make decisions to really help improve our lives. Okay, now I want you to think about this in a practical way. Pay attention to how you feel after interacting with someone and do you feel heavier or lighter, more hopeful or more hopeless, and that's your indicator of whether they belong in your close circle right now. Okay, now I want to talk about the power of strong supportive connections.
Speaker 2:So, there is a huge importance of surrounding yourself with people who are mentally tough and resilient. I can't tell you how important that is. You know, when I was going through my own grief and when I had people that were going through some hard things, you know as much as I wanted to be supportive of them. Sometimes you have to take a break from that and sometimes you just have to be okay with maybe limiting your time with those type of people and surrounding yourself more with people who are mentally tough and more resilient. Okay, this doesn't mean you know necessarily that you are surrounding your people who dismiss your pain. These are people who can hold space for you without drowning in it with you. Okay, I always like to look at it this way and they teach us a lot about this in coaching, where, as a coach, I'm standing outside the pool to help you from drowning. Okay, if I get in the pool with you which happens right with people then I'm not helping. I have to be outside the pool so that I can help you get out of your situation. Okay, and so you really need people who are mentally tough, who can stay outside of the pool and help you throw a life preserver out for you or pull you in, okay, and I think this is really important. Now, another connection that I would highly recommend is somebody who doesn't come from this space of who is trying to fix your grief, because I think a lot of times, when we're around people who are constantly trying to fix your problems for you, try to fix it all for you, try to fix it all for you it doesn't really help so much, but you need to surround yourself with someone who allows you to own your own experience while, at the same time, encouraging your growth. So this person would look like someone who just allows you to express your feelings, to allow you to feel your feelings, but also, at the same time, encourage you on a path moving forward, as opposed to those who encourage you to stay stuck or feel worse about your situation. And I think that that is a very supportive connection to have Another person that I feel like that's a very supportive connection. To have Another person that I feel like that's a very supportive connection to have is the people who challenges us to think differently about our loss. Okay, I think sometimes we have this way that we are habitually thinking about the grief we're experiencing or about the loss that we've experienced or the person that we've lost. And sometimes we need an outside perspective to help shift the way that we're thinking about it, because sometimes we're out of ideas and we don't really know how to change the way we're thinking about it, because we've been thinking the same way for so long that we don't see any other, different way to think about it, right? So we don't really want someone who just helps us to replay it over and over. We want people who help us evolve, who help us to think about it or consider something different about our loss. And when we start interrupting these thinking patterns that we have into something that's more positive, that moves us forward in more of a positive direction, it can be huge in our growth and in our healing. All right. So, with all of that said, this is what I recommend.
Speaker 2:Okay, about building our healing inner circle. I want to call it our healing inner circle because I think this is super helpful. We need to be super intentional about our relationships. If you don't have that support, you need go out and find it. Okay, there's lots of places you can go. There's grief groups, there's therapy, there's friendships with people who align with your healing goals. You know, going outside of our own circles, sometimes it's really important to just go look for the people that we need, the support that we need, the people that are going to help encourage us, to help us to move forward, and I think this is super important. So just be intentional about who we're choosing to keep as company.
Speaker 2:The second thing is if you want something different, you have to do something different. Okay, if your current circle isn't helping you heal, take action to change that. Choose someone to include in your circle, or maybe change your circle completely. Okay, I think it'd be very helpful for you to really think about that and to change. Take actions to change it, okay.
Speaker 2:The next thing I want to say is and I want to tell you is, to step into your strength and surround yourself with people who remind you of your resilience, not just your pain. Be with people who really teach you and show you how strong you've been, who are encouraging you, who are supporting you and pointing out the good points in you, the things that you've been able to overcome, the things that you've been able to do, and who really show you how brave, how resilient and how strong you truly are. Okay, so my final thoughts is that you know, healing is not just about what you do. It's about who you allow into your space. So, really, just take a moment this week to evaluate the company you keep. If you need to set boundaries, do it. If you need to seek new connections, just take that step, because here's the truth your healing matters and you deserve to be surrounded by people who help you move forward. Okay, so, with all of that, if today's episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts Reach out on my podcast.
Speaker 2:You can leave a review, or you can email me at wwwsurvived-to-thrivecom and just send me a message. Tell me your thoughts and remember. Just take care of yourself and remember you're stronger than you know. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, bye-bye. Stronger than you know. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1:Until next time. Bye, bye. Thank you for listening to the Survived to Thrive podcast. If you like this podcast, please share with your friends and write a review on iTunes. Also check out survived-to-thrivecom for more information and to subscribe to get the podcast's latest episode, along with useful tips you can begin to use immediately to feel better, directly sent to your inbox.