Permission To Feel with Dr Craig Farney: Grief Series Ep.7

In this episode of the Grief Series, I sit down with Dr. Craig Farney — who I jokingly call "the feelings doctor" — for a conversation about the connection between our emotions and our physical health. Dr. Farney has personally helped me work through my own grief, and in this episode he breaks down why so many of us were never taught how to feel our feelings in the first place, and what that costs us physically and emotionally when we don't.

What we cover:

• Dr. Farney's approach to helping people become aware of the subconscious patterns driving their wellbeing
• The three questions he asks every client: what do you feel, where do you feel it, and why do you feel it
• The inner parent / inner child framework, and how most of us "parent" ourselves the same way we were parented
• Why feelings aren't the problem — it's the behavior that follows them that we're really trying to control
• The critical difference between "I feel sad" (an experience) and "I am sad" (an identity) — and why that distinction changes how grief moves through you
• How unprocessed grief shows up in the body: gut issues, fatigue, sleep problems, autoimmune flare-ups
• Grief isn't only about death — the death of a relationship, a dream, or a career can grieve just as deeply
• Why grief has no timeline, and why something can resurface 20 years later
• Gendered grief norms — why men are so often taught not to cry, and the health cost of that conditioning
• Dr. Farney's own story: a distant relationship with his father, not being able to cry at his dad's funeral, and the moment his dad turned, kissed his mom, and passed away
• Why "the past without emotion is wisdom," and how to hold complicated grief without judgment

You can connect with Dr. Craig Farney at:https://www.docerelifecenter.com/

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrCraigFarney

Listen to his podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@mind.shift.podcasts

You can find me at:
https://www.instagram.com/cataton/
https://www.facebook.com/casey.taton/

You can find what sparks me at:
https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1AgeRtyojY/
https://www.instagram.com/lmbdcelebrations/

Music by: Jason and Ashley Scheufler
Artwork by:  https://www.instagram.com/graphx_ink/

Transcript

0:00

What if there's a difference between I feel sad and I am sad? And it might change how you grieve Hey, friends. Welcome to the Inner Spark Podcast. I'm your host, Casey Peyton. If you're looking to hear stories of transformation and personal growth, this podcast is for you. My guest and I will be sharing those sparking moments that has changed them into living a more fulfilling, authentic life. I'm so excited for you to hear each unique story. So sit back, relax, and let's get started. Hey, friend. Welcome back to the Enter Spark podcast. I'm your host, Casey Taton. This is part of the series on grief, and today I have with me a very, very special person, Dr. Craig Farney. Hello, Dr. Farney. Hello, Casey. How are you? Doing well, how are you? I am great. I am so excited to have you here. We're just gonna dive in. I just wanna give the listeners a little bit of, the reason why I asked you to come on and talk about grief in this series is you work with a lot of people that deal with grief. I mean, I believe mm-hmm. We all, we all deal with grief in some way or another. Right. And you've personally helped me in my own life deal with grief. And so will you tell them what you do? I saw a phrase on a website the other day that I really like, and I think I'm gonna kind of start going with this. It was called Aware a. As opposed to therapy. And so I think I'm gonna start calling myself an aware, which I wanna be careful how I say that 'cause it sounds too close to some other words. But that's really ultimately what I seek to do. I seek to help people become aware of, subconscious and unconscious patterns, be it physiologic or psychologic that impact their wellbeing. And so I tell people frequently, it's difficult, if not impossible to change that which you're not aware of. And so, really in all that I do, that's the first thing I always seek to do, is to create awareness of that which people are unaware of. Mm-hmm. I I love that new phrase, new word. Mm-hmm. Um, will you tell them, what does grief mean to you? So I personally think grief is one of the hardest emotions to deal with and to process. In fact, I find it interesting because one of my cousins who he does a lot of missions work overseas. We were having a conversation one time and he said something that struck a chord with me. He said, we weren't created to experience grief, so whatever your belief system is, but if mankind was created in a garden, it was placed in this perfect place. It wasn't made to experience grief. So I think sometimes grief is very difficult for people to process. But my own personal viewpoint of why I think grief is so hard outside, because my mom and I have this conversation. My dad's been gone almost 20 years now, and she still feels the pain of grief even almost 20 years later. And there's an aspect where you just miss the person you miss. Interacting with them. And I don't know that really ever goes away to a degree. I think the intensity just diminishes. But I think personally, one of the things I think that is so hard for grief is that there are no perfect relationships. And I think what happens is we have, misunderstandings, hurt feelings, things that happen in a relationship that don't fully get dealt with or processed. And when a person passes, I think we feel this sense of I'm never gonna get a chance to make that right. And I think really from my own personal experience, I think that's the hardest thing for grief, is this sense of I lost my chance to make things. Okay. Yeah. That is good. Thank you for sharing that personal experience. Mm-hmm. And I love how you guys communicate about that. That is why I am doing this series on grief, because I feel like we don't talk about our feelings. Right. And especially, I think grief is one that is probably the most challenging thing because we don't normalize that it's okay to, to really be sad. Really have those deep feelings in us, feel that lost. And there's a whole bunch of feelings you can attach with grief. I just think that in our world we don't give people that permission, to really speak that and Right. So people aren't comfortable speaking it. Mm-hmm. And so that's why I think it's so important to me to have people come on and talk about grief, what it means to them and what they've experienced. Dealing with grief and I know mm-hmm. Fillings our whole thing. So Dr. Farney does a lot with fillings in general and how they, can do different things to our body. Would you talk a little bit about that? Sure. So where I want to start, when it comes to feelings, I think first of all, the biggest challenges, we're not really taught how to work through our feelings. Most of us grow up with, you have an emotional outburst as a child. In the first response is, be quiet. You know, knock that off or I'll give you something to cry about. Something along that lines. And I think that's part of the problem is emotions are a big part of, uh, our childhood. You know, we're more emotional creatures than we are logical creatures, and if we're not taught how to work our way through these emotions, we carry that on into adulthood. So I think a couple things happens. You and I have talked a lot about the concept of having both an inner parent and an inner child. What then happens in our adulthood is we tend to parent ourselves the same way. We tell ourselves to knock it off. We try to stuff it or make it go away instead of really truly being able to work through the feelings itself, because we never were taught that. And I think people experience that with grief a lot too. They'll be around somebody and they're like, okay, well just get over it, move on. And it's, if you're not taught how to process emotions to begin with, and now you're dealing with the hardest emotion there is. It takes years for people to work their way through it. And so I think, it's something you can't rush through. And I think the hardest part too, I think we, we tend to want to just make feelings go away or try to prevent ourselves from feeling, instead of actually just allowing ourself to feel the feelings. And so I think that's part of the problem too, is we don't really allow ourselves to feel what we feel. Part of the reason that even occurs, it's not really even the feelings that are the issue, it's the behavior that follows it, that we're really trying to stop. And so if we can learn how to be able to experience feelings and still choose our behavior now, feelings aren't as hard to work their way through because we're not really trying to stop the feeling. It's more the behavior that we're trying to stop. That's kind of what I help people to work on. The other interesting piece with this too, 'cause my mom and I have had lots of conversations about my dad's passing and one of the things, that we talked about is it's one thing to process the grief, mentally, logically as the inner parent, it's another thing to process the emotion as the inner child. And those aren't the same things. And so sometimes you have to do both. Sometimes you have to go back and allow yourself to process an aspect of grief you didn't realize. You didn't process. Yeah. Well you talk about real fast, just explain the two between the inner child Yeah. So people get understand what they're Yeah. The inner child. Sure. Yes. there's a lot of different ways you can separate these. There's a lot of people that talk about the inner child work. What I don't hear a lot of is the inner parent aspect. And most people don't think about how you are parenting yourself. We grew up in a structure of I'm the child and I have this parent that tells me what to do and guides me. And then as we become adults, we take on that role with ourselves. And we're constantly, I call it a conversation, but really it's not really a conversation. We're more talking at ourselves than talking with ourselves. And so you're either the inner parents, either telling you what you should do, need to do, got to do, have to do, or inner child's telling you what you wanna do, or what you, desire. And so it's the two different parts of us. The inner parent, I think is, it's the logical part of us. It's the rational reasoning part of us. It's the one that has the wisdom and the guidance and is telling you what to do. Whereas the inner child is the creative, joyful. Spark to borrow a term from you that just, its ultimate goal is just to live and love life. And so when you live out of one or the other and not together, then neither extreme is good because either you're all logic and you don't really enjoy life, or you're all, you know, just partying and not really being wise in your choices. So that's kind of what I see. I think the inner child is what we felt growing up, the inner parent is the, wisdom that we learn over time. And so it's really the relationship of those two that I think is a big challenge point. Yeah. Thanks for explaining that. I think it can get confusing. Oh yeah. The other part you can tie into it too, I tell people, the inner parent lives in your head. The inner child lives in your gut. When you kind have this gut feeling or this uneasiness in your gut. That's ultimately your inner child talking. When you have this kind of headache over processing, that's your inner parent over talking too much. Thank you. I know you work with a lot of people. Mm-hmm. How do you see grief come up in people? It's typically gonna come up as a sadness. That's the most common of what people experience. The, the thing though too is you can have, anxiety or anger also be in there as well. Anger will be a, a protective aspect of. I don't wanna feel sad. And so sometimes it's both protective and moving or motivating as well. I think sometimes anger comes up to try to get us to make changes or to move. Whereas anxiety is a fear of, it's something about me that's creating this grief as opposed to it being something I'm experiencing. the most common is sadness. It's funny 'cause I've learned to really watch people in their demeanor. It usually starts as there's this quiver that either happens in the chin or in the lips. It's like you can feel something just kind of bubbling up and welling up within you. And you can even see this sadness or this emptiness in somebody's eyes as well, that there's this loss that you can see in people's face. I've really learned to listen to, their tone, the words they use and their facial expressions. Humans weren't created to lie, and it's, you have to really practice at it to be able to lie and get away with it because your body is gonna fight against that. Yeah. As you're dealing with this, most people I'm assuming don't just come out and say, I'm dealing with grief. Right. I believe, that when we're feeling these feelings, emotions, mm-hmm. Grief being one of the biggest, one of the hardest. Right. It can play a huge impact on our body. Absolutely. How do you see this and how do you get people to really get that out? So usually the starting point of the interaction is something physical. Either they're having gut issues, fatigue, sleep issues, some type of autoimmune something, and we start by going, okay, what's driving this? What's the physiologic physical mechanism? I find we just start to have conversation. And one of the things that I usually drive people towards is, okay, whatever you're experiencing, when did it start? 'cause something changed when it started Something either physical, chemical, mental, emotional, or spiritual. And so. And it's funny 'cause as I ask that questions, a lot of times their whole facial expression changes. 'cause I'll ask, okay, when did it start? Okay, what was going on around that timeframe? And something within them already knows what's going on. It's just more to subconscious or unconscious level. And once it starts to bubble up into conscious awareness, it's like this thing starts to come out and their facial expression starts to change. Like I said, either they'll get kind of a quiver in their lip, their voice will get shaky. Or they'll even well up with tears as well. Usually, it's just as we're having conversation about how did you get here? That opens its way up. And sometimes it takes time too. Sometimes, the initial emotion they're experiencing is anger. And so we work our way through going, okay, well you actually mad at. I tend to take people through, as we get into emotions, I ask three questions. What do you feel? Where do you feel and why do you feel it? 'cause I'm mostly wanting to drive towards what really is driving this thing. And then I've even added further into when did it start and what do you do with it? Or what if you weren't experiencing this? Yeah. Those three questions. You love those questions. Absolutely. They're my favorite three. When people come into you, you work on the whole body? Mm-hmm. And do you usually see it as an illness think about what grief is. Grief is a heaviness. Mm-hmm. It's an overwhelming sensation. And so that's gonna tend to have some effect either in the chest where they just, either their breathing is not as healthy as it could be. Heart rates may be off, or blood pressure's off. Or they can get into gut issues. They're gonna be experiencing stress, so they're gonna have some energy issues, maybe even some sleep issues as well. That's the most common thing I see. Yeah. So people are coming into with a dis-ease mm-hmm. In their body and they just ultimately can't figure out what's happening. As we talk about this too, I think the biggest. Problem gets back to what we talked about is if we're not taught how to process our work, our way through emotions, it isn't that we experience grief. It's that people get stuck in grief and they don't work their way through it. Yeah. That's good. I wanna start with this. I think people of often say grief is from death. Mm-hmm. I believe that grief can be from so many other areas in life. It's so big. Yes. And a lot of people just assume you only grieve someone when they're dying. Mm-hmm. When it can come with so many parts of our life. And you can take dining beyond to, you can have death of a relationship even though they're still alive, which sometimes I think can even be harder. You have the death of a dream. You have the death of a career. A lot of those things that yeah, you can grieve more than just somebody passing away. It's gonna be a lot of stuff. Yeah. I think it's just so interesting that we don't talk about this. So how would you say to someone, but it's okay to fill it or how would you tell people to start noticing it or becoming aware of it? So we've already talked about the three questions, and it's us since you already said it too. Number one, we start with awareness. 'cause I think over time people tend to, you kind of just, it's like an alarm clock that's going off and it's there, but you start to tune it out. And so I think that's where it starts to have physiologic effects on you, that you don't even always experience it as grief. You feel unmotivated or you just don't feel connected or you feel, some bitterness or you start to have other things that are really just coming from this unprocessed grief. And so, you know, we've talked about these three questions. What do you feel? Where do you feel it and why you feel it? That's the whole point of that is to gain awareness. The other thing I tie in with that too is you said it this way, it's okay. Because what we tend to do, and I think this is even a bigger problem than the emotion itself as we go, I feel angry and that's bad, or I feel sad and that's bad, or I feel anxious and that's bad. The feelings are not bad. They're just feelings and they're ultimately just information. I think it's when we say these are bad, that it becomes a problem. That's when it's harder even to process it and to give yourself permission to feel it because you're trying to stop something that you perceive as bad. So when you can go, these aren't bad emotions, they're just emotions, then it becomes okay to just feel the feelings. Yeah. I think that so many times let's just use someone dying for instance. Mm-hmm. That we. Have maybe felt the feelings of grief right then. I don't believe there's any timeline on grief. And I believe that grief can come in your life, two years later, 10 years later. Mm-hmm. 15. You said 20 years later, right? How old would you still go back and ask yourself those three questions because if you're thinking 20 years went by and I'm doing okay, and then all of a sudden I start filling these things in my body that I'm just sad, right? You would go back to those. So here's, this is where the two other questions come into play. And you also, we've talked through this too. So number one is once you get to what, where, why, when did you learn to feel this way? Because think about even grief itself. Where did you learn to grieve? Because if you, in your lifetime, never experienced death, never saw it, how would you know how to deal with it? So we've been unintentionally or unconsciously taught how to grieve as well. Even in small areas like we talked about too, is, if your parent had a friend that they had a falling out, how did your parent deal with that? Or, if your parent had this dream that all of a sudden the dream went away or they never got to, how do they deal with that? I found something interesting as I've worked back through some of my own childhood thoughts, feelings, and belief, there's an aspect that I grieved part of my childhood because I grieved the fact that, wow, if I didn't think and feel this way about myself, I could have. Done more. I could have been more, I could have experienced other things and there was an aspect that I grieved that lost opportunity, for lack of a better term. So I think that's where sometimes it can hit you 20 years later, is you don't realize the impact of something on you until you actually address it later on. Or you have a trigger that, brings that to the surface. Yeah. As you've dealt with grief in your own life. Mm-hmm. And I mean, there's obviously many different ways you could talk about this. How have you helped yourself, besides asking yourself those questions, how have you dealt with it? The biggest thing is just allowing myself to feel and in conjunction with it. Part of what makes it powerful is being able to feel feelings and still choose behavior because again, I don't think it's the feelings that are the issue. I don't think people, that nobody wants to feel grief, and yet it's appropriate if that makes, you know, I talked about this too, is when somebody you care about passes away, it's appropriate to feel sad. Yeah. That's not a bad thing. It's that if you allow that sadness to make you depressed and unmotivated and you stay in bed and you don't do anything and now you've just, 'cause in some essence you've died also. Yeah. You've allowed somebody else's passing to cause you to die. Even though you're physically alive, you're not really. Connected, wise, alive. And so I think it's, if you can feel sadness and still go, I'm, I can still behave or choose the behaviors I desire, then I think that's a healthy processing because you're not taking on the grief as your identity. You're taking it on as an experience. And that's the biggest difference is if you start to, you said this, if somebody says, I am sad, that's an identity statement. Whereas if they say, I feel sad, that's an experience and it's easier for experiences to pass than it is for identity to pass. I think that part right there is really big identifying as like your identity, right? And allowing it to pass. So many of us, even going back to the basics, don't know how to fill our feelings. I think that more females are more willing to cry in public. Mm-hmm. More willing to fill their feelings where I've said it. I'll use a funeral, for example. And I've looked at some men in my life and I'm like, whew. There's no tears. And I know there's no right or wrong way to fill it, or show you're going through something. I think that when we see that, when we're young, I know, I saw that when I was young, that they didn't feel their feelings. How do you know that it's feelings, if that makes sense? Or help them understand, some people don't even know what feelings are, if that makes sense. We know happy, sad. Right. You're also tying in now a cultural and a upbringing thing as well. 'cause most guys grow up with the idea, be tough, don't cry. And so they're not really taught to express that. It's funny 'cause I think one of the most powerful things is when you see an adult male cry in a healthy way. You can get on the other side of that too, where it's this guy's crying all the time. He's way oversensitive, when you have a strong masculine energy that is willing to be vulnerable and cry, I think that's very powerful. And so I think most guys are not taught that. And so they don't know how to, I think they're basically taught and you have to just ignore your feelings and be tough and get things done. And women don't carry that, women are almost expected to be emotional for, and so I think that makes it easier. So I think for guys, yeah, it is harder for guys. I look at one of two things. Either look at their energy or look at their health. That's where they're, show their feelings. And that's why I think this is part of why guys died earlier. Because they're not taught how to process emotions, and I think they end up having major health issues, earlier than women do because of that factor. I think you could even look at if they shut down as opposed to just their normal energy, that's another, indicator that they're experiencing something. They're just trying to be in control. If they become overly controlling, that could be another indicator that they're experiencing something. They're trying to control their world to make that feeling go away. I personally found it very difficult to cry at my own dad's funeral because I don't think I was taught how to do that. Thank you for sharing that. I think that's, kind of where I can relate is watching my own father catches me off guard, not crying and then I'm crying. Right. And so it's like, am I doing something wrong? 'cause I'm crying. Right? But these are his parents and he's not crying. Right. Well, you know, the farther back you go, the more and more you have that, rugged masculine thing, men don't cry. That's just, that's kind of the concept. And so men are basically taught to be unemotional. They're taught to bury their feelings and to, just ignore it as best they can. Is there anything else you would like to say about grief? There's so many ways you can take it. And you are a person that works with fillings and health issues. Mm-hmm. And so that's why I think it's so important to have this conversation with you you've seen it, and you're human. You've experienced it in your own life, and I thank you for sharing that journey and just being honest and open about I didn't cry. Yeah, I found myself asking the same question that, it's funny 'cause you said what is wrong with me for crying? I was asking it the other way, what is wrong with me for not crying? And this kind of ties back into what I said about I think why grief is so hard is because there's this sense of I'm never gonna be able to make this relationship right. My dad was emotionally distant because that's what he experienced growing up. He did not have an emotionally healthy dad that could teach him how to express emotions and feel emotions and connect. And so he struggled with that. And so that's one of the things that to me, never really got fully healed in my relationship with my dad while he was on earth. And so I think. That's one of the things that made it difficult is this sense of, I didn't feel like we were as healthy as I would've desired it to be. So I think, there's even the hard part in grief sometimes too, is I don't miss the fact of the emotional distance, if that sounds weird. And yet I miss my dad. And so I think that can become a conflict too, because the number one process of the body and the brain is protection. And especially if you get into, let's say somebody passes that was somewhat abusive, part of your brain is gonna go, it's a relief. And yet you're gonna be stuck with, I'm not supposed to feel that way. It gets very complex because I think. Grief comes from a place of finality. If you have a falling out or a breakup or whatever, as long as a person's alive, there's always at least the hope or a possibility of things can be restored or reconciled or that type of stuff. But death has that finality of, now I can't fix this. As you've worked with people, or even let's say your own journey There's so many words that people say, when we're dealing with death and dying or even when someone leaves, and I feel like, people often say the wrong words, to the person because they don't know what to say. Right. With dealing with all of the feelings and emotions, do you have any suggestions on that? Yeah. this applies from my own personal internal work. And this is part of what I help people do because we do this internally as well. If somebody's dealing with grief, if friend trying help they try to logic their way through it and go, it's okay. They're in a better place. All that type of stuff. Logic doesn't make feelings go away. So what I really seek to do is go whatever you're feeling, tell me why you feel it, and just allow them. 'cause I think that's part of what people need is an avenue to be able to work their way through of going, okay, why do I feel what I feel? And I don't think they even give themselves that, liberality to experience that. They end up just going, man, I still feel sad. I shouldn't feel sad anymore. Instead of going, okay, why do I feel sad? What am I feeling? This question gets back to that inner parent, inner child, because it's the inner child. Logic doesn't make the feelings go away. The inner child, in some essence, has to work their own way through the process. And I find that why question really helps. Yeah. I'm laughing, not because this is funny, but because of why, why. Mm-hmm. And that's always what we seem to go back to is why. And the hard part too is sometimes you may not even get an answer, but it gives permission for you to feel. And I don't think we're given that very much in life, that we're not given permission to just feel what we feel. I think you just nailed that right there is, we don't hold space for people. And then we just trap it all inside of our bodies. And you're very good at, that's, your practice but you as a human and who you are, are very good at holding space for people and just allowing them to set. Before you even start speaking. I was thinking about this, there's a cultural aspect in our society that we don't tend to see death as part of the cycle. That we do everything we can to avoid death. And there are other cultures that it's just, it's part of it. I don't know what culture it is, but I've heard of, where there are certain people when they know that they're about to die, they go out into the wilderness, they lay down and they let nature and whatever consume them because that's, they don't fear it. They don't begrudge it. They just, it's part of it. And I think that's part of why grief is hard for us also is because I think we, we don't have that in our society. We think we should die. Or we fear death as well. And that gets into a whole nother aspect as well, which I think makes grief hard I find this happening as well because, all my grandparents are gone, my dad's passed away, some of his siblings and some of my mom's siblings have passed away. And I'm like, that protective layer is going and it eventually, it's my turn. And I think that's where grief can get you to is you fear your own mortality instead of just welcoming that and just being okay with life. So I think that's another factor in there as well. I thank you for bringing that up because that's something that we've talked about is, when you lay your head down at night, are you afraid of dying? Yeah, things have come up in my life. It's like, why can't I sleep? Well? Am I afraid I'm gonna die when I go to sleep? Right. And so I can't sleep because I, it's then became late. Am I afraid to die? Right. I experienced the same thing. I was having some issues at night and I'm like, and I basically just finally gotta the point. I'm going, what are you afraid of? And I was afraid of dying. And I'm like, well then, but why am I afraid of dying? Even if I can take it beyond that? Am I afraid that what comes next is bad? I mean, and I think there's a part of that, that there's a part that won't ever go away because your body's natural instinct is to stay alive, is survival. And I don't think that part ever completely goes away. I think there's a lot of it though, becomes more, mental emotional, that we fear what comes next. Yeah. And every part of our lives. I have a mentor who says, no one is getting outta life. She just flat out says it. Mm-hmm. Right. And she is like, so start living because no one is getting outta alive. That's right. That may be another point as well, I think we grieve what we didn't do. Yeah. I think we grieve not being who we would desire to be. And so maybe that's even a factor too, that as somebody passes, I think we, maybe we fear not ever being who we truly wanna be. I think that point right there is really powerful because that's, it comes up with other feelings and other things, but a lot of times is it, are we truly living to who we wanna be? Right. I think most people are just surviving more than they are truly living. That's something I've, I'm challenging myself with, of just, I wanna truly live, I wanna live fully. Yes, joy is so much easier to talk about. Mm-hmm. People wanna see people happy, they expect to see happy. Right. And even if you're not at the highest frequency, people are smiling, doing their things living, but you can still have grief mm-hmm. Underneath there. Mm-hmm. Until it makes you stop. I feel like it forces people to a stopping point until they face it. Yeah. I think sometimes we, again, this goes back to emotions aren't bad. If you never experienced sadness, would joy be the same? Would it have the same intensity? I don't know. Yeah. For me, the biggest thing isn't the feelings, it's the behavior. Because I don't think, I don't think we ever regret feelings. I think it's, we regret behaviors. Yes. And on that, when you work with people that are dealing with grief I've seen anger, meanness, things like that come up. And it's just really going back, would you say to those three questions of when did the anger start, right? Yeah. It is more likely than not, it started somewhere around where the loss was. And that's the best answer the brain could come up with for a protective mechanism. And most likely they were taught how to do that. Probably some parent was that way or parental figure. Yeah. Why I'm doing this is I wanna normalize talking about our feelings, which is huge, right. And talking about grief, because I mm-hmm. I see it happen a lot. I've seen it come up in my own family mm-hmm. And not be recognized for a couple years until after. Right. And then it totally stopped a person. Right. And we don't look at people and say, I, oh my goodness, they're so happy. They're so happy all the time. We don't question why people are happy. Right. So I think that a person can go on and be happy and then hit this wall. If we're going to talk about feelings, like how do we make it normal to the younger generations that it's okay yeah. It's, it has to start in childhood. We have got to, and, and there's a balance, the point isn't to let a child just scream, and kick in a store without any type of effect. It's also, uh, you know, 'cause you can't just let their feelings dominate their behavior. We have to find a way to help them work through it themselves. So you can, we can. We teach the younger generation how to experience feelings. 'cause I, again, go back to we tend to make, anger and sadness and, anxiety, bad things. Mm-hmm. And if we can just help people realize these aren't bad, ultimately it's just your body giving you information is really ultimate what it comes down to. 'cause you either feel unsafe, you feel, overwhelmed, or you feel, uh, there was one other one I was thinking about. Anxiety comes when we feel unsafe or in danger. Sadness comes when we feel overwhelmed. And anger comes when we feel unprotected, which is similar to unsafe, but it's, or anger is when we feel stuck or out of control. So if we can help. Kids realize why they're experiencing what they're experiencing, gonna be able to walk their, walk them through it. Now we're going to, we're gonna change things. Now it's okay to feel emotions. It's what do you do with them? That's really the key. And I think what parents are really trying to do is control the behavior without addressing the emotions and it doesn't work. So I think we have to have a realization within our society of that. Would you suggest, as people are doing that, start getting curious with kids, why are you crying? Okay. Why are what, what is making you feel this way? To have them start opening up and being aware. Yes. Yeah. Because basically what you're doing is you're helping them. Answer that question and work their way through it. Because really what they're having is they're ultimately having a communication issue. They don't know how to communicate what they're experiencing. And if you help them to realize what they're experiencing now, you're giving them an avenue to communicate. what a gift to learn at Young, to be able to speak and feel your feelings and Yeah. I think that's why the trick is the parent has to learn it first, because if they weren't taught it, you're gonna have to learn it, so then you can teach your kids, so then it's easier for them to teach their kids. I think that's why it's hard for parents and why they're wanting to shut it down is because they're really seeing theirselves reflected in their child and they don't like what they see. Yeah. So interesting. Right? Mm-hmm. It's just such a heavy topic and mm-hmm. You know, working with the hospital parties, I do, even if their kids are alive, they're grieving. Yes. Their child is losing their childhood stuck in the hospital. And we've had kids who've passed away and look, I've looked at it that way and then, you know, just losing my own family members I just wanna make it. More normal to talk about our feelings and to acknowledge how important it is to be able to say I'm not okay. Yes. And to have someone truly hold space. Mm-hmm. So now we're getting into your driving factor too, because you've seen a lot of grief and you've seen a lot of pain, and you're wanting to create an avenue for people to heal. Yes. So you can take grief, another step, not has grief, the hardest emotion. It's hardest when it's the parent losing the child there. I don't think there's anything harder. And in my office I recently had a mom. Who brought her son in and he had a brain tumor and he passed. And, it's so difficult to watch what she goes through, and it's so painful and it's, I think, the part, logically we know it could occur, yes, but emotionally we don't expect that, you know, that's, that's not the norm. That's not the typical. So not only are we not taught how to deal with emotions, but we're not taught how to deal with the unexpected grief. You don't tend to have a child and they go out in, you know, 8, 9, 10 years, they won't be around anymore. So. That's hard. It is gut wrenching. It is. It sucks the life outta you. It's not an easy pathway. So, yes. And on that note, I wanna ask you this and I think this is why sometimes people avoid talking to them. Mm-hmm. Not only because they don't know what to say, but because then we also feel it in our own bodies. I mean, not everybody does, but I, it's, a lot of people feel it. I'm very sensitive and I feel it in my own body. Right. And because we imagine what it would be like for us to go through that, and we don't like that feeling. And so we try to avoid it. So, yeah. I agree. Well, and I think it, you are left. Such a helpless feeling too, because there's so little that a person can do because nothing you can say is gonna make it go away. Nothing you can say is gonna change it. I think the most important thing, we've talked about it, you've said it this way, is giving them space to experience what they experience and giving them grace and giving them, just love and just, you don't have to fix it. That's not the point. The point is just to care that they're going through what they're going through. I think that's key right there is we're not gonna be able to fix it. And we often are always trying to fix things. Mm-hmm. And if we fix it, then everything's gonna be okay and everything's gonna be better. But that's something that we can't fix. No, you can't. And it's part of it. And I think it's important for us to embrace it instead of trying to make it go away. I had a thought this way, and I think it applies here, either seeking to escape life or embrace life. And I think it's important for us to learn to embrace the hard stuff. It's part of living it's not good or bad, it just is. It's just, That's really good. It just is. The most important thing is just being able to allow yourself to experience it. 'cause we're not, that's to me it in a nutshell is we're not taught to experience emotions and to be able to walk our way through 'em, as opposed to just making 'em go away. I find it really interesting cause I use this analogy a lot. We have plenty of thoughts and feelings that just come and go. And the truth is, in a way, grief is the same thing. It's a thought and it's a feeling. We just aren't taught how to walk through it. Now it's a bigger swamp or whatever, for lack of better analogy to walk through than just a small thing. But it's, it is the same process. It is allowing it to pass through you as opposed to taking it on as your identity. And so if we can take that same concept and there is no time, like you said too, there's no timeframe on it. My mom and I talk about this a lot too, is when is it gonna go away? That isn't the point. It's just, do you allow yourself to experience what you're experiencing without judgment? And that's, I think that's even, that's my favorite part. 'cause we've kind of talked about this too. When we say it's good or bad, that's judgment. And it's the judgment that's the issue. It's not the feeling. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that about what you and your mom talk about, because I think that's really powerful is that you guys can talk about it. Mm-hmm. And. Acknowledge that it's never gonna go away. Right. And at any point we can stop and feel those feelings. Mm-hmm. And there's no judgment on when they come up, where they come up. It could be a scent, a smell, a vision, a thought, anything that brings Yeah. These back up. And um, absolutely. You know, we, we wanna keep people alive, even after they're gone and Right. Be able to talk about the legacy they've left behind. Right. And so I think that if we can do this in a healthy way You know, talk about it. I just love that you guys are able to communicate it. Not surprised at all. and I wanna thank you for, coming on because the reason I invited you on is not only have you helped me deal with my own grief, but it is such a huge part of what you do and your work is to. Talk about feelings as a whole and what they're doing to the body and when we mm-hmm. Push them down in our body and don't feel our feelings. Right. I personally think that's where most, if not all disease comes from, that it's, you are, you're either in some state of fight or flight, or you're in healing repair, and it's, if you stop emotions, it's, it that's a stress. You're creating tension by stopping the emotion. By not walking through it. Now it becomes an under stress undercurrent that's there all the time. And so by being able to walk through these feelings now we can heal and repair from those feelings, we move forward. It just becomes part of our story as opposed to a block or a, an anchor. Yeah. I wanna ask you a question if you're okay sharing this. Yeah. As you talk about your dad, you and your mom talk about your dad. Mm-hmm. What's a happy thought or funny thought that, that's left behind? It is funny you asked that. 'cause I was actually thinking about this a day or two ago and I'm going, I already mentioned that my dad had a hard time, showing emotions or showing affection. And so it's weird because one of the things that my dad would do is he'd come up behind me and kind of get a, a knuckle and he'd kind of thunk it across my head or just kind of, you know, rub it across. And I can think back on that both as a, I didn't like the pain and it's, yet, it's a fond memory, if that makes sense. Yeah. That was his way of trying to connect. That was his way of trying to express affection. It's funny 'cause I could think back with it almost with fondness. Even though I'm like, I didn't necessarily like it at the time. Yeah. It just makes me laugh now. And I'm like, that's the stuff that I think when you walk through it in a healthy way, you can look back on that stuff and it's less pain. I mean, I can look back and go, you know, if I could have my choice, I would've preferred we had a healthier connection. It's not gonna change. So how do I, you've heard me say this phrase too, the past without emotion is wisdom. How do I squeeze all the wisdom and all of the, I can see it for what it really was. Because at the time I'm like, ah, stop. I don't like that. That hurts. Now I can see it for you. Were just trying to make a connection. You didn't know how, and that's the only way you knew how. So now it doesn't hurt it. It is not painful. It's just, okay, you struggled with it. I get it. It, and it's not about me. It's about what your struggle was. And so now I don't grieve the relationship. I accept it for what it was. And okay, so let's get a little weird. One of the things that I do personally, because I think one of the things that's difficult with grief is we don't have that conversation. I talk to dead people. Yeah. For lack of better term. 'cause I think whether they actually hear whether it, that's, it doesn't really matter because I think it's a way for us personally to process through. Mm-hmm. And I verbalize out loud some of these things even after they're passed because. Even if it's imaginary, it's a way for me to work through that conversation that was never able to have before. And like I said, I think that's one of the hardest parts of grief is that we were never able to have the communication we would've wanted. And this is a way to go, okay, this is how I'm gonna do it now. And so I have found it's helped alleviate a lot of the grief feelings is to have those conversations. I love how you just said that. 'cause grief is such a heavy topic, and so I, I wanna bring some light to it too. That's why I asked you mm-hmm. About your dad. And when you said I talked to dead people, that's a good, I mean, it's, it's funny, it's weird to hear people say that, but also it's not weird to me because, I see something and I'm like, oh, thank you grandma. Like, I, you know, right. Or I say something like that out loud or Right. And, you know, in my head, because I think there's, and also if you face something that was. Uncomfortable. Like we're never gonna get those conversations back. But if we speak to them out loud, we're getting them out of our body and out of our system and Right. It does our own self, a lot of good to get it out of us. Right. And so, yeah, it, it's interesting. It's not funny that, you know, when you say that, people laugh like, I talk to dead people. Right. You talk to dead people. And I even think about this. I'm going, they're not truly dead now. I mean Right. We're gonna open up a whole can of worms with spiritual thoughts and all that. Yeah. But I'm like, even if they're just alive in your memory, then they're still alive. Yes. So you're not really talking to a dead person, if that makes sense. Yeah. Their body may be dead, but that's what I think about. My own personal belief is I know that there's something beyond just this physical body that continues on. So I'm not really talking to a dead person, I'm just talking to a transformed person is really what it comes down to. He's in a different. State than I am and we haven't figured out how to hear back yet. And if we want to keep diving weird, I think there's an intuitive aspect that we, whether it's me knowing what they would've said or whether it's actually them saying it, I think we can hear back if we open ourselves up to it. I agree with you. People might think this is getting a little weird, but you know what, grief is weird. Yeah. And, that's honestly what we talk about all the time is Right. The things that aren't talked about. Well, yeah. And the other part with it too is very few, if any, have been there and come back. So who, nobody knows what you're dealing with. Yeah. And until you actually go through it, how would you know what you're dealing with? So we're just experiencing one side of. You know, grief is our way of dealing with this side of death. We don't know what the other side looks like. Yeah, very, very true. So, yeah. Did you think this conversation would go that weird? But you know, that's not surprised, are you? No, I'm not. As I have you on here, I wanna thank you for coming on and talking about grief and just helping me make it feel more comfortable because that is what I'm doing this for. I also wanna bring laughs to it because if we can't laugh about it and get it, then we really need to work on it even more. Like it has to become out and right. Laughter is a way of getting things to come out. I think it's part of the grieving process. I'll give you another story that to me is funny. So my dad had colon cancer and so. You know, he, when he was in his last weeks, days, whatever, we would, all of us, especially my siblings, we would go over there and we'd stay, pretty late. And we were over there one night and I, I don't know what we got to talk about, but somebody took, um, because my aunts would come over, they had to have to care for him and they had, you know, the, the medical gloves and somebody put it on, blew it up really high. And we were just laughing and having a great time. And it's funny how that ties together because I think laughter is part of grieving as well, one of my favorite things about, as you're grieving, you tend to let go a lot of the bad stuff. We tend to remember the fond things. Because those are what matter. And I think there's a healthy aspect to grief too, because it helps us see what's important. Before we end, I wanna just tell you that I think that's interesting that you brought that up because if you do get the time to spend with someone before they die, I think that is where the laughter can come in instead of like a tragic experience. Right. It's almost like a good feeling of, closure. It just makes everything feel so much at ease and almost let everybody know it's at peace. Yeah. Oh yeah. Because I have a really cool story that I, it. For me, it's kind of my closing story. 'cause you know, taking into account what I experienced with my dad, my dad's passing had one of the coolest things I've ever heard that, you know, in the last couple of days, he was basically just comatose. He wasn't responsive to anything and we were all there and we could tell he was getting close. 'cause you know, the breathing changed, the heart changed, heart rate changed and all that. And this is one thing that does bring tears to my eyes because my dad's last moment, he turned his head, he kissed my mom and he passed away. So he got to say goodbye and to the most important person to him, and I thought. Wow that. 'cause not everybody gets that. You know, you men, some people it's tragedy and they don't get that chance, but I got to see somebody say goodbye and what I would consider a really healthy way. And so that's something that I will cherish the rest of my life is seeing that, that it's, he went out in peace. I, I grieve his passing and yet I also cherish it as well. Yeah. So I think if you can embrace all the aspects of grief, that's how you, that's how you heal. And it just becomes part of your story. Thank you. That gave me chills when you shared that. Mm-hmm. What a special moment. Mm-hmm. To just be present in that. I wanna thank you for coming on. Can you tell people where they can find you at? You can find me at Doser Life Center. We have a web page, uh, doser life center.com. I'm also working on my own. That'll be Dr. Craig farney.com. I've got, some podcast episodes called Mind Shift. You can find me there. I would say I'm on Facebook, but I have like three or four accounts that got all screwed up in my personals with my business, and I'm really working to get that straightened out. But the best place to find me is, look me up on doser life center.com. And then if you want to come in for a consult and talk about it, give our office a call. I'll be more than happy to help in, in any way I can. Thank you. And I will leave those in the show notes. Yeah. And I'm gonna give a shout out to you. This girl is something special. She, has a very special heart and you don't give yourself enough credit for the difference you make. You know, though I've not experienced it personally, I know you make a huge change and, uh, a huge difference in what people in the hospital experience, but I know, without you, it would be even harder. And so I know you bring light into a very hard, dark place. And so I salute you. Thank you. I receive that. You weren't supposed to make me cry on my own podcast. That's my job. You know that? Yes. Thanks for coming on Dr. Farney. Yeah. He caught me off guard there, you guys. Honesty, that's what he does best. Um, he holds space for everybody. I just wanna thank everybody for listening to this episode and just reflecting back on what he said is just really, you know, asking yourself those questions and when you see it in someone else, like allowing them just the space they need without judgment mm-hmm. Um, is probably one of the most powerful things we can do. Absolutely. So thank you so much for sharing your information and doing what you do best. Um, filling your feelings on all levels. Thank you. I just wanna thank Dr. Craig Farney for coming on and just reflecting and giving us some great questions. I will leave all of his links in the show notes, So thank you for listening in, and I hope to love this conversation as much as I did with Dr. Farney. Thank you for tuning in to another episode. I hope today's story inspired you to embrace your own journey of growth and change. Remember, transformation isn't always easy, but it's always worth it. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review. If you found something that sparked you in this episode and may spark a friend, I encourage you to go share it with them. If you have your own story you would like to share, I would love to hear it, so please reach out to me. Until next time, friends, go have some fun and let those sparks fly.