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 108: When Grief Works Against You
Grief serves as a natural healing mechanism after losing someone to suicide, but certain thought patterns and behaviors can transform it from a healing tool into an obstacle that keeps us stuck.
• Grief is love with nowhere to go - an extension of our deep connection with the person we lost
• Our brains physically rewire in response to loss as they try to understand our new reality
• Signs grief is working against you include persistent guilt, avoiding memories, emotional stagnation, and inability to find joy
• Practical strategies include allowing emotions without judgment, seeking meaning in your loss, and taking small steps to reconnect with life
• Professional support through therapy, coaching or grief groups can be transformative when feeling stuck
• Happiness and grief can coexist - finding moments of joy honors your loved one rather than betrays them
• Everyone's grief journey differs, but there's a distinction between processing grief and being stuck in it
Take one small step today to let grief become a tool for healing rather than a force holding you back. Healing is not forgetting—it's learning to live again.
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 108, when Grief Works Against Us. Hello friends, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Amy Miller, your host of the Survive to Thrive podcast, and you are listening to a podcast designed specifically for those of you who have lost a loved one to suicide. If you have been a long time listener, thank you so much for tuning in each week. If you are new to this podcast, I want to extend gratitude for you joining me today and I also want to offer you my sympathy and my deepest condolences. I know how challenging and painful losing a loved one to suicide is, and I just want you to know that I have all the compassion in the world for you. It is such a dark, deep space that many of us find ourselves in, and it's a real challenge to navigate the complexities and the complications that arise as we're trying to navigate this type of loss. So if you are going through it, if you're in those trenches, you are in the right spot. This podcast is meant for you. It is meant for survivors who have lost loved ones 20 years ago and everything in between. I just wanted to provide a space for people to listen so they can hear and discuss topics that resonate with them, and also they can hear different stories and people that have also survived this type of loss and how they were able to get through and navigate through it. And I also wanted to offer a place where you can receive actionable tools and tips to help you in your journey, whether that be through simple strategies and steps or even just some words of encouragement. This is the space for that. So thanks so much for listening and, if it's helpful for you, please share it with someone else that you know that could benefit from it. I know there's just not enough things out there in the world for survivors of suicide loss and I really wanted this podcast to be part of that change. So please, please, please share.
Speaker 2:Okay, so today I want to talk about grief, and I want to talk about how grief can be used as a very important tool towards healing, but it also can be used in a way that holds us back, and I think a lot of survivors of suicide loss can't really tell the difference because, let's face it, when we lose someone to suicide, we are going to have a rush of emotions, we're going to have a rush of thoughts about the loss, and it's going to put us in a space where we're going to be going through a lot of different, complicated feelings and it's really difficult to really differentiate between whether or not this grief that we're experiencing is all part of our healing process, or if how we're grieving is not helpful or not useful and it's actually holding us back. And so, with this podcast episode, I really wanted to help you to differentiate between the two and also to offer you some reassurance that what you're experiencing is normal and that a lot of survivors find themselves in the same space that you are, and also show you how to get yourself back to a space where you're allowing your grief to work for you and not against you. Okay, all right, before we dive into that, I just want to get this out of the way and just offer you some reassurance that grief is not something to fix. Okay, because I think a lot of times when we go through grief, we think something is broken, but it is not something that needs to be fixed. Okay, but it's something that we need to understand and work with, okay. So I'm going to first talk about how you know if grief is being used as an important tool towards healing.
Speaker 2:Okay, the first thing I want to say is that grief is natural and necessary. It's the mind and body's way of processing loss, okay, and it's something that all of us should hopefully experience in our lifetime. I think it's necessary, it's part of our human experience and I think it's really important to note that, as David Kessler always says who I just love he's one of my mentors, he's a person of grief that I really listen to and read, and I also went through his grief educator program but he speaks about grief as love that has nowhere to go and that it is an extension of our deep connection with the person we lost. And I think we have to really digest that that grief is meant to extend our love beyond this life and that we really need to think of it that way, because a lot of times we think about grief as just this painful, sad, sad thing, but when we try to rephrase it in our minds and we think about it as an extension of our love, it really softens the pain that we experience as we're grieving.
Speaker 2:The next thing I want to say about it is that you know, there's a lot of power of allowing emotions to just be okay, and there's a lot of power when we allow these emotions to move through us rather than resisting them. So I think a lot of times and it makes a lot of sense that when we're experiencing pain from grief, we really don't want to feel it, so we try to shove it aside, we try to resist it, we try not to allow it because, let's be honest, it's painful. It's kind of the same thing when we are dealing with other types of physical pain. Right, when we get a headache, we reach for over counter medications to try and help alleviate the headaches, or maybe we try to drink more water or do something so that we can help alleviate some of that pain. Well, it's the same with grief. It's a natural response for us to resist it. But when we are able to take back control of allowing that pain and allowing ourselves to process it, there is so much power in that.
Speaker 2:Another thing I want to touch on is our brains. Okay, and I want you to understand that our brains, they rewire in response to loss. Okay, because our brains are constantly seeking to understand a new reality with our loved one, and so I think we have to be mindful of that that there's actual physical rewiring that is going on in our brains. I want you to know that healthy grief includes waves of sadness, memories, meaning making and, ultimately, reintegration into life, and eventually, as we allow all of that, we can process it in a healthy way that can lead us to deeper resilience and purpose.
Speaker 2:Okay, now, how do we know when grief is working against us? Well, grief becomes harmful when it turns into this prolonged suffering period. Okay, it keeps us stuck in patterns that keep us from healing, and a lot of times, that comes from the way that we're thinking about our grief, because we attach our thoughts to our grief, and we attach it in such a way to where it can either serve us or harm us. And when we tell ourselves harmful thoughts, you know, or if we're telling ourselves that we should have done more or that life will never be good again, what ends up happening as a result of this is we deepen our suffering, okay, and it can really create this paralysis of grief and it causes us to truly withdraw from life, relationships and opportunities. So how do you know if you're in this space?
Speaker 2:Well, there's some signs that are pretty apparent that can really help us to know whether or not grief may be working against us. Okay, the first one I want to touch on is persistent guilt and self-blame, for example. Let's say, for example, you lost your brother to suicide and you find yourself replaying that last conversation over and over and you're just so convinced that if you would have done something different, your brother would still be here. Okay, and you were for you to forgive yourself. And this just keeps you stuck in this endless loop of endless regret. Okay, and this is a sign that grief may be working against you.
Speaker 2:Another sign is avoidance of anything that reminds us of our loved one. For example, say, there is a restaurant that your wife who you lost loved to frequent and you avoid that restaurant. Or you refuse to listen to songs that you once enjoyed together. Instead of processing your emotions, you end up just shutting them out entirely. You try to imagine that they don't even exist, because there's something about being in that space that brings the pain and you just don't want to deal with it. You just shut it out, you don't go to that restaurant, you don't listen to that restaurant, you don't listen to those songs, and it really creates this environment where it's impossible for you to engage with life in a meaningful way. Okay.
Speaker 2:Another sign is you're feeling stuck in the same emotional place for years. For example, say, you lost your son five years ago and you still wake up and you feel like it just happened yesterday. This could be a sign you haven't sought any support, or you resist talking about it, or you believe you have no future anymore beyond your grief. You believe this grief is just your new reality. This is a sign grief is working against you. Another sign is this inability to re-engage with life or find any moments of peace. An example might be you find yourself isolating yourself from family gatherings or friends or work responsibility, because you believe that if you allow yourself to enjoy something, it means you're betraying your loved one's memory, and so you just stay withdrawn and alone. This is a big sign that grief is working against you.
Speaker 2:Another sign I wanted to bring up is when you're using grief as a reason to stop living fully. Maybe you have a fear of happiness or you have guilt for moving forward. Maybe you have a fear of happiness or you have guilt for moving forward. Maybe, for example, you're offered an opportunity for a dream job, but you turn it down because you just feel like any step towards a future might be meaning that you're leaving your loved one behind, okay, and your grief just keeps you from embracing new possibilities. This is a sign. So those are the big signs that I find for those who are allowing grief to be working against us.
Speaker 2:Now, I say allowing because what I want you to understand is there is some choice involved here, that you don't have to allow grief to keep you stuck. Okay, and the reason why I want to say this is because you can shift the way we experience grief. Okay, and I want to talk about some of these strategies and practical ways you can do this. Okay, the first one is allowing all emotions without judgment. Okay, for example, maybe you've struggled with suppressing your grief, believing you needed to be strong for your kids, for example, you can finally give yourself permission to cry, to journal, to talk about your loss openly, and you'll find, as you do this, that these emotions that you were so afraid of feeling were less overwhelming and they actually start to feel a little bit lighter over time. Okay, the second practical way to shift grief from working against you to working for you is to seek meaning or find meaning in loss.
Speaker 2:Okay, for example, for me. I lost my sister to suicide and one of the things that I found super meaningful for me was to be able to offer some support to other survivors of suicide loss. And it started out small and now it's become what it is today, where I really really help thousands of survivors of suicide loss navigate the complexities of this type of grief. So I mean, it's just a matter of using something, and it doesn't even have to be that right. Maybe some you could just start volunteering at a crisis hotline, or maybe you want to help a neighbor out, right? Maybe you do something in your loved one's honor. I know my sister. She really loved to be able to help those that were a little less, that were disadvantaged, and that was basically how she liked to live her life. So I felt like, you know, doing something small, something small volunteer or charity really was able to help me find something special that I could do in my sister's honor, because I know that that's something that she would have loved to do. So it could just be something small like that. It doesn't have to be any kind of big deal, but I think it's really helpful if you seek meaning.
Speaker 2:Okay, another way to bridge from this wet space of grief and shifting from how grief might be working against you towards allowing grief to work for you is by taking small steps to reconnect with life, with hobbies you enjoy or people or routines. For example, after months of isolation or routines. For example, after months of isolation, a husband who lost his wife forced himself to attend a weekly painting class and at first he felt super numb, but over time, the simple act of creating art helped him process his emotions and re-engage in life. So just taking a small step to re-engage For me. I was a runner and I've talked about this on my podcast, and that was something that a runner, and I've talked about this on my podcast, and that was something that I enjoyed and loved doing, and I started losing the zest for it. So even just you know, jogging a little bit for me was a small step that I took towards getting myself back into what I once loved.
Speaker 2:Okay, another way to bridge it is challenging negative narratives that reinforce suffering. I think sometimes we get so stuck right. You know, there was this survivor that I was talking to who felt like they would never feel happiness again. Right, she began to reframe her thoughts and realize that happiness and grief can coexist. She could still miss her loved one, but she could also experience some joy and some peace and some happiness.
Speaker 2:Okay, another suggestion is therapy, coaching or grief support groups. Okay, there's so many fantastic support groups that are out there. If you go to your state or if you're listening from a different country, I would go and look in your own areas for support groups that are out there. It's really great to just go to a space where you can just talk about your loss with someone who gets it, with other survivors who have gone through it. Okay, it seems to be super helpful.
Speaker 2:Therapy can be very helpful, especially when you're still in the midst of the trauma and you're trying to organize all of that. Coaching is so helpful for those of you who have lost a loved one and you're feeling very stuck in the grief that you're in and you just can't seem to move forward. Stuck in the grief that you're in and you just can't seem to move forward. And a coach really helps you to look deeper into your patterns, your thoughts, the things that you're continually thinking, and help to shift your mindset and to change those patterns and look and think about your loss in a little bit different way to where it helps you get back on a path towards healing again, and it can be so, so helpful. In fact, I would be bold enough to say that therapy is so fantastic when you're dealing with the trauma, but the coaching is what's going to propel you to move forward. Another way you can bridge that gap is reframing happiness as a way to honor your loved one and not betray them.
Speaker 2:Okay, so instead of feeling guilty whenever you laugh or enjoy a day out, begin reminding yourself that your loved one would want you to find moments of peace and happiness. Okay, your loved one would want you to not be in this situation. Okay, a lot of times, we have to really wrap our heads around the loss. Sometimes we just think that our loved one may have done this to punish us. Okay, the truth is is when individuals are thinking suicidal thoughts and considering dying by suicide, they're not thinking about what they're trying to put you through. What they're overwhelmed with is the pain that they're experiencing inside of them, and usually it doesn't have much to do about you or anything to do with you. Yet somehow we interpret it as something that they're doing to punish us or to get back at us or to show us that we didn't care about them or love them enough. And it's the opposite is true. And our brains like to trick us and lie to us. Okay, all right.
Speaker 2:Well, with all of that said, I just want to acknowledge that everyone's grief journey is different and there's no timeline. But there is a difference between grieving and being stuck in grief. And if you find yourself in a space where you're feeling like you are stuck in this grief, just do one small thing that we talked about today to let grief be a tool for healing rather than forcing yourself to hold back. Okay, and I know it probably feels like it's not that easy, but again, if you just take that one small step, you're going to see a glimpse on what could be, and it's going to be really, really helpful to just try one small thing. And, hey, if that one small thing helps you feel a little bit better, then it may give you the motivation and the feelings that you may need to try another thing. Okay, and you will see that it will have a domino effect in your life and you will be better off.
Speaker 2:Just know, my friends, that I love you, that I think about you all of the time. I thank you so much for being here and for honoring your loved one through listening and taking some time to navigate your own healing. I really encourage you to seek support, share your journey with loved ones. Talk to a trusted friend and just remember that healing is not forgetting. Talk to a trusted friend and just remember that healing is not forgetting. It's learning to live again, and I just again appreciate you joining us today and I can't wait to talk to you next week, until next time bye-bye.
Speaker 1: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.