What is your grief bias? Yes, you have one. We all do. Our beliefs about grief. Our grief biases define how we show up for ourselves and each other. This is particularly evident when we experience a loss. We'll call that big grief or a life altering event like divorce, a diagnosis, the loss of a home, etc.. We'll call that little gee grief. It's safe to say that we're generally pretty bad at being supportive of each other, even when we think we're doing a good job. There's plenty of evidence to prove this. I'm going to share a study that will help bring perspective as to why our beliefs about grief and how we protect them to others as a much bigger issue than we realized. And towards the end of this episode, I will share what we can do instead. In 2018, Cigna conducted a large national online survey of 10,000 adults in the United States to explore the impact of loneliness and found that loneliness was at epidemic levels in 2019. The results showed that the mental health crisis was growing, with three in five Americans, or 61% to be exact. They reported feeling lonely compared to more than half 54% the year prior in 2018. The survey found that 24% of Americans say their mental health is fair or poor, and the Americans reporting good mental health was down five percentage points from the year prior. The findings were that 20% of Americans would experience a mental illness in a given year, and there were four key determinants of loneliness that they identified. One was the lack of social support and infrequent, meaningful social interactions. Second was poor physical and mental health. Third was negative feelings about one's personal relationships. And fourth was the lack of balance in one's daily activities. So doing too much or too little of any given thing, such as sleep or work. The loneliness across key demographics varied by generation, gender, race, ethnicity, annual household income and community. And this data is alarming, but even more so when we consider that these figures were conducted prior to the pandemic. So this was 2018, 2019, and the numbers have since shifted. So to give you some perspective, the most recent numbers were from 2022, so post-pandemic. And here are some of the changes. 75% of Hispanic adults and 68% of African American adults reported feeling more lonely. So people from underrepresented racial groups are likely to feel more lonely. People with lower incomes are lonelier than those with higher incomes. 63%. Nearly two thirds of adults earning less than $50,000 per year are classified as lonely. 72% almost three in four people who receive health benefits through Medicaid were classified as lonely. And young adults were twice as likely to become lonely than seniors, with 79% of young adults ages 18 to 24 reporting feeling lonely. And seniors at 41% who reported feeling lonely. So more than twice as many younger adults as older adults experience feeling left out. Think about that for a minute. In a society where we are more connected than ever through technology, there has been a 79% reported case of loneliness among youth. Men and women roughly have the same likelihood of loneliness, with 57% of men reporting being lonely and 59% of women feeling lonely. Parents and guardians are more likely to be lonely than non-parents. So during the pandemic, KFF health tracking polls found that adults in households with children were more likely to report negative mental health impacts than adults in households without children, and that in general, mothers were more likely than fathers to experience mental health issues. Similarly, this data shows that as we emerge from the pandemic, parents and guardians of children and in particular mothers and single parents were more likely to experience feelings of loneliness than those without children. Family connections also impacted the feelings of loneliness. So how people feel about their family relationships is a major driving force in feelings of loneliness. Adults experiencing loneliness are significantly less likely to discuss their feelings or receive support from their families. And I want to pause here for a second so we can take that article. I'm going to reread that sentence. It says Adults experiencing loneliness are significantly less likely to discuss their feelings with or receive support from their families. And those are big words because as drivers, we know that we rely on our family for so much. And often one of the biggest shocks to our system is how little family comes through. So this data is in line with our lived experience, physical and mental health associated with loneliness. So like in 2019 and 2018, people that reported being in fair or poor physical or mental health exhibited more signs of loneliness. This doesn't mean one causes the other. It's important to highlight this. But there are associations between physical health, mental health and loneliness that can inform approaches to health and wellness. Adults with physical health issues are approximately 50% more likely to be lonely than those with strong physical health. 77% of adults classified as having fair or poor physical health are experiencing loneliness, while only half 50% of those with excellent or very good physical health were lonely. That was a lot of data thrown at you, and I thank you for sticking with me so far. But the reason I'm giving you these numbers is that this is research based data studied in the first case, it was 2018 to 2019 pre-pandemic, and then the second updated numbers were pandemic. This is important. This is important for us to address. It's completely tied to grief. Why should we care? Why should we care about any of this? If you've experienced that, you know all too well why people should care. But if you haven't, or this seems a little bit far fetched from your reality, then let me show you how everything ties in together. Loneliness is a bigger public health issue than smoking. This can translate to epidemics of suicidality, depression, interpersonal violence, poor health outcomes like heart disease, chronic stress related illnesses and others. The study doesn't say this directly, but the public health crisis of loneliness is a crisis of acknowledgment, visibility and connection. You're not going to fix the loneliness and effects unless we address the real reasons people feel lonely. And take a moment before we go on to think about a time that you felt lonely. Think about what you needed or wanted at that time as grievous that likely was after a person died, and that likely became amplified over the months and years to come when our reality of loss continues to live on. But everyone else who said they would be there and we could ask them for whatever we needed, they kind of disappeared. And if they haven't, they kind of wonder why we haven't moved on yet. Because there's an expectation that you will move on. This creates a dissonance between our internal and external reality and this gap, this dissonance, this disconnect is where loneliness can grow and thrive. There's a lot of loneliness and isolation and big grief and also in little grief, which can go even more unnoticed at times. People feel lonely because they do not feel connected. And this is a form of grief. You don't have to experience mental illness to feel loneliness, although mental illness adds another layer of complexity to the epidemic of loneliness. We feel lonely when we can't tell people close to us the truth about what we're experiencing without feeling like they will correct us, shame us, or hijack the conversation. If you can't share your truth with people around you, you will not feel connected to the people around you. This is why having more friends is not the answer. It's never a numbers game. Loneliness is feeling disconnected, unseen, unheard, invalidated, unacknowledged in your truth, even if you're around hundreds of friends. Until we shift the way we connect with each other, how we talk about pain and support each other will never change the downstream effects of this loneliness epidemic. We don't talk about the things that hurt because we've learned that over and over that when you do, people are quick to correct, cheer up, hijack or impose toxic positivity. How many times does a griever have you shared your reality only to hear back? Well, cheer up. They would have wanted you to be happy. Yes. And I'm still allowed to feel sad that they died. Or when you speak about your son dying and someone hijacks a conversation in a crappy effort to relate to your story by telling you that they know what you're going through because their cat Fluffy died too These are not helpful responses or ways to support each other. It becomes impossible to freely speak about what it's like to be you. If you've learned your pain is going to be dismissed. As psychotherapist, writer and grief advocate, Mega Devine says, hiding our emotions is how we get an epidemic of loneliness and all of the health concerns that ripple out of that. All of the unspoken, unacknowledged grief does not go away. It finds other ways to speak, and in some cases it manifests physically in the form of illness. We must get better at recognizing everyday grief, better ways of working with grief related to death so we can change how we listen to pain on a daily basis. It's only in changing our day to day ability to recognize grief and respond to it with skill that we can prevent that backlog of invisible grief from causing damage downstream. So how can we become better humans at this? How can we better support ourselves and each other, especially during difficult times? Or how can we, at the very least, not harm each other while trying to do what we think is right versus what is actually needed? My suggestion is to first become aware of your own biases in grief. What is grief to you? How do you define it? Is it a negative thing? Positive? Both. Neither. When someone shows you their pain, do you feel they're being a downer who needs to be cheered up? Someone has been grieving the loss of their person more than six months. Do you think something may be wrong with them? You believe we're meant to get ourselves to a place of positivity and gratitude after a painful event so we can get over the life changing event? The answers to these simple questions are your grief biases. So if you grew up in a household where your parents never showed emotions, for example, or if they told you to toughen up or suck it up or get back up, you might be prone to believe that emotions are something to be bypassed or fixed, that they're wrong or bad. Even if you grew up in a household where your parents encouraged open conversations about grief, you might be prone to believe emotions are healthy and that vulnerability is a strength. Can you see how, as a griever, these beliefs may influence how you respond to your grief? Our beliefs about grief are not just shaped by our families, but they're also shaped within our cultural and religious context. Our communities, employers. Through the media, you can see grief biases play out in movies. For example, the hero in the movie is someone who overcame adversity according to society's expectations. The villain is often portrayed as a crazy, unhinged or falling apart person because their grief was processed differently. Perhaps they were lonely, and maybe that led to their vilified portrayal. One such example is a mother who loses a child and grieves that loss for the rest of her life. Think about how she's often portrayed in movies. Think about it. How much pressure is there for the griever to get over it and find joy once again? Where is the room to hold both grief and joy on the grievous timeline, not the societally imposed one. Or, for example, the widower who is pressured to get back out there and date again because they're too young to be miserable. Go find love again, they say. Your person probably would have wanted it. These things are typically said within months to a year of a lost and grievous. No, that is but a blink in grief time. Other common biases that you may have heard are men don't cry, baby wasn't even born. Why are you sad? It's just a pet. It was just the house material. Things are replaceable. You need to be strong for your kids and so on. To quote Megan Devine again, there are not enough resources or books about the reality of surviving because it is so much easier to talk about rebuilding. This is why we have no idea what to do when someone's life has been obliterated. Staying inside the unfixable is very hard because it goes against what we've been taught and our impulse to help and fix and our natural human instinct to bring comfort. There's grief all around us that is going unnoticed and unprocessed. If you've listened to my previous episodes, you know that I've mentioned grief is not a disease or a disorder to be solved. It is a natural, normal human process, a normal response to loss. It doesn't feel like it because we've been conditioned to bypass it or any emotion. That is not a feel good emotion. Telling people to look at the bright side is driving the loneliness epidemic because it's impossible to feel connected and supported if you cannot tell the truth about who you are and how you feel. One of the challenges of grief is not just the loss of the person, but it's feeling like everyone thinks you're doing it all wrong. They shame judge advice you into doing things better. It's feeling like there's something deeply wrong with you for feeling what you're feeling. Not only do people not understand you, but no one really cares to try. This is true for grieving a death and also for people grieving divorce, a major life change, illness, addiction, fears of the future or just your average bad day? There is something deeply and fundamentally wrong with our approach to pain, and there is something deeply and fundamentally wrong with how we support each other and the tools we use to communicate that care and concern. We are all longing for connection, but the tools we have are driving a wedge between us and they are fundamentally unhelpful. These tools like cheering and medicating and toxic positivity, it's not the helpful tool you think it is. We think we're helping, but what we're actually doing is leaving the griever alone in the hardest time of their life. The reason we have these epidemics of loneliness, addiction and suffering is because we are not good at talking about pain Our fundamental approach to pain of any kind is to just make it go away. If we can't solve your pain or situation for you, then we want you to rise above your circumstance. Lean on strength and resilience. The more I learn about grief, the more I realize that there is room for all of this. If it comes from the griever, if it's an intrinsic motivation, but not when it's imposed onto the griever by false expectations that are very out of touch with grief. Our ideas around what grief should be are at odds with what grief is. Just acknowledging the complex human reality of grief is the most hopeful interaction you could ever have with somebody. Let me say that again. Just acknowledging the complex human reality of grief. Is the most helpful interaction you can ever have with somebody. People absorb the cultural messaging about grief. Just because you did your self-care really well doesn't mean that things aren't going to hurt sometimes. Just me being able to say, Of course you're having a rough time and that makes perfect sense. That's helpful. The issue is not the biases. The issue is that we don't know we have them. Almost everything we know about grief, we have absorbed from a grief phobic environment. And that is a problem because we apply our ideas about grief to other people using those beliefs as a way to assess and often invalidate their grief Whether it's accidentally or on purpose, understand that grief is not a disease or a disorder to be solved, not something to be diagnosed and healed or something that you recover from. Most of our ideas about grief and loss are not even conscious. We're just part of a grief averse culture. We believe what we've been taught, and if you don't understand what you have absorbed throughout your life, then you will act on those biases without your conscious knowledge. By now, I hope I've driven the point home and you could at least recognize there is bias in our society and perhaps even see how it's shown up in your family, with your friends, and in your life. We all have generational, cultural and professional biases about grief, and those biases impact all of the decisions we make consciously, unconsciously, professionally, personally. What do we do instead? I say lead from a place of genuine curiosity not to be confused with nosiness. So for example, being knows these sounds like, Oh my God, I'm so sorry for your loss. What happened? And just to be clear for the record, how someone died is none of your business. Please let that sink in. How someone died is none of your business. If the griever decides to share that information, that is their business. But it's never yours. On the other hand, leading with genuine curiosity. Sounds like I can only imagine what you're going through, and I'm not sure how to help. Do you like to talk about it at this time, or would you rather have some alone time? Let the griever lead on their terms and at their own pace and timing? If the griever decides to share, acknowledge and validate their reality. And that can sound like your loss sounds impossibly difficult. And I'm so sorry this happened. I see your pain. And that's it. You don't have to correct or try to fix or try to bring a positive light to something that is so painful and life changing. You just have to acknowledge and that in and of itself is enough. So to summarize, first, check your bias and how you're projecting that onto the grieving person or even onto yourself if you're the grieving person. Understand that your biases are at play at all times and just acknowledge how that may be showing up for you. Number two would be to lead from a place of curiosity, not nosiness curiosity. Number three would be to acknowledge the loss and validate the grievous feelings without fixing what cannot be fixed or without correcting what they're feeling or telling them about your dug cat. If you're the griever, be careful how this shows up against yourself. How are you talking to yourself in the time of grief or deep pain? Are you trying to tell yourself to toughen up and to get over it? And whose voice is that? Is that your voice or is that a voice that you've learned over the years? Acknowledge the loss and validate their feelings. Acknowledge your own loss and validate your own feelings. Feelings are neutral. I feel this way and I allow myself to feel this way. Feelings are not permanent. They show up, you acknowledge them. Number four. Let your grieving person lead. You can offer ways to support them and let them tell you if that's something they want as a grieving person. It's okay to check in with yourself and ask yourself, What do you want? I invite you to take a moment to reflect on your own grief biases and see how they've showed up in your life, consciously or unconsciously, whether you aimed them against yourself or onto another person. How have your family's beliefs about grief, conscious or subconscious, impacted how you view grief? And I actually want to know, so please share them with me on Instagram. You can me and just type my grief bios and list them. No explanation needed at grief in light. I've made a list of my own that I'll share with you. So, for example, I believe grief has the power to change us completely. I believe grief is an alchemical process if we allow it to be. I believe how you handle your grief can make your life better or worse. I believe all behavior that lacks compassion and empathy or is outright harmful can be traced back to unresolved grief and grief as a lifelong process. And it evolves as you evolve. To grieve is to live and feel fully. Can you see how my biases can shape my grief experience? So much of the work I do today is based on those beliefs. The difference is that I've also done the work to become aware of my biases. And I actively notice when I'm applying them to someone else's experience. I often disclose them. So if someone asks me for advice, they will understand where I'm coming from. That said, my truth does not has to be yours. And it's perfectly fine for someone to believe that grief is not a lifelong process. It's also fine if they don't believe it's an alchemical process. Many people believe it's simply a series of unfortunate events, and there's no bigger meaning behind it all. I honor that. In fact, you'll hear me say I honor your truth. Too many of my guests in my podcast because it's their truth, not mine. We may agree on many things or disagree on others, but ultimately our lives are exactly that uniquely ours. So is your grief experience. My ask is that you self examine. You take inventory of your beliefs. You become aware of them. And be conscious of when you may be unintentionally applying them onto others. This can make a big difference in how we relate and create genuine connection with each other, whether in our families, with our friends, or at work with our colleagues, people within our communities, or even strangers, whether in person or online. You don't know what someone else is carrying inside. So let's not add to their suffering or to our own. Let's find ways to help each other move forward on this strange journey called life. Whether in our everyday little grief or our life altering big grief, each seemingly insignificant interaction creates a ripple effect in impossibly powerful ways that we may never know the full effect of. Let's make sure we're making a positive impact with each interaction and leaving people better than we found them. And when grief comes knocking on your door, I sincerely hope you're met with kindness, understanding, support, and the connection you deserve. And I allow myself to feel this way. Feelings are not permanent. They just show up. You acknowledge them. And you don't try to change them. Changing them makes them persist. Number four. Let your grieving person lead. You can offer ways to support them and let them tell you if that's something they want as a grieving person. It's okay to check in with yourself and ask yourself, what do you want? I invite you to take a moment to reflect on your own grief biases and see how they showed up in your life. Consciously or unconsciously, whether you aimed them against yourself or onto another person. How have your family's beliefs about grief, conscious or subconscious, impacted how you view grief? And I actually want to know your answers if you feel and I actually want to know your answer, so please share with. And I actually want to know your answers. So please share them with me on Instagram. You can DME and type. You can do me DME. You can message me. You. And I actually want to know, so please share them with me on Instagram. You can do me and just type my grief bios and list them no explanation needed or you can just email them to me at Nina at Grief in Light Dot. I've made a list of my own that I'll share with you. So, for example, I believe grief has the power to change us completely. I believe grief is an alchemical process. If we allow it to be. I believe how you handle your grief can make your life better or worse. I believe all behavior that lacks compassion and empathy or is outright harmful can be traced back to unresolved grief. Grief is like grief is the lifelong process, and it evolves as you evolve. To grieve is to live and feel fully. Can you see how my biases can shape my grief experience? So much of the work I do today is based on those beliefs. The difference is that I've also done the work to become aware of my biases, and I actively notice when I'm applying them to someone else's experience. I often disclose them. So if somebody. I often disclose them. So if someone asks me for advice, they will understand where I'm coming from. That said, my truth does not has to be yours, and it's perfectly fine for someone to believe that grief is not a lifelong process. It's also fine if they don't believe it's an alchemical process. Many people believe it's simply a series of unfortunate events, and there's no bigger meaning behind it all. I honor that. In fact, you'll hear me say I honor your truth in too many of my guests in my podcast because it's their truth, not mine. We may agree on many things or disagree on others, but ultimately our lives are exactly that uniquely ours. So is your grief experience. My ask is that you self examine you, take inventory of your beliefs, you become aware of them and be conscious of when you may be unintentionally applying them onto others. This can make a big difference in how we relate and create genuine connection with each other, whether in our families, with our friends or at work with our colleagues, people within our communities, or even strangers, whether in person or online. You don't know what someone else is carrying inside. So let's not add to their suffering or to our own. Let's find ways to help each other move forward on this strange journey called life, whether in our everyday little grief or our life altering big grief. Each seemingly insignificant interaction creates a ripple effect in impossibly powerful ways that we may never know the full effect of. Let's make sure we're making a positive impact with each interaction and leaving people better than we found them. And when grief comes knocking on your door and when grief comes knocking on your door, I sincerely hope you're met with kindness, understanding, support, and the connection you deserve.