Conflict and Grief: Mistakes to Avoid and Tools To Manage Waves of Emotions

In this episode of the Conflict Skills Podcast, Simon Goode explores the relationship between grief and conflict, offering practical tools for supporting those experiencing loss and navigating challenging conversations. He discusses common mistakes people make when addressing grief, ways to de-escalate emotional situations, and strategies for maintaining boundaries with empathy and clarity. Simon also emphasizes the importance of self-care for anyone supporting others through grief, sharing helpful resources for managing vicarious trauma.

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BOOK: 

'Trauma Stewardship', Laura van Dernoot Lipsky

https://traumastewardship.com/

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Grief Counseling and Conflict Management

04:48 Grief's Multifaceted Impacts

10:30 Supporting Grieving Employees

13:19 Grief: A Lasting, Evolving Presence

15:42 Encouraging Phrasing in Grief Support

20:24 Providing Certainty During Escalation

21:37 Empowering Choices and Autonomy

26:38 Navigating Grief in Leadership

28:34 "Managing Trauma and Self-Care"

Transcript

0:07

Hello and welcome back to the Conflict Skills Podcast. I'm your host, professional mediator Simon Good. I set up this podcast to provide free resources and tools for dealing with conflict. So if that sounds like the kind of thing that's useful for you, please consider pressing subscribe in the episode Today I'm going to be talking about conflict and grief. I. I'm running a series of training workshops at the moment with the Cemeteries and Crematory association of New South Wales. And it's actually a series of workshops that I run every year with them. It's one of the highlights of my training calendar, to be frank, because we always have such thoughtful discussion and they're working with families who are going through grief obviously in their day to day. So we've structured the training that I'm delivering in three different sections. First, I'm talking about accidental counsellor skills, how you can be empathetic and give some support to somebody who's going through grief, but within the boundaries, like when you're a particular role or you've got a particular focus in the kind of support that you can give. And then the second workshop was focused on managing conflict surrounding grief. And so I thought this could also be a helpful topic for other people, given the fact that we're all going to need to deal with grief at some stage and conflict is often a symptom almost that can develop as people are processing the grief experiences that they're going through. So I'm going to be talking initially about some of the factors related to grief, like what does that grief process look like for some people, Some of the common metaphors or analogies that I find helpful when I'm dealing with my own clients who are going through grief or loss. The next thing I'm going to be talking about are some of the common mistakes based on the research that people make, accidentally putting their foot in it, as it were, when it comes to grief. And then I'm going to be talking about some of the factors that we can use to de escalate, like let's say you're having a difficult conversation with someone and they ramp up and you've pushed their buttons for whatever reason and they're seeing red. I'll talk about how you can calm down the situation. And these principles would work whether the person's escalated, so to speak, in terms of anger, like they're frustrated and going into a rage or just feeling annoyed, or they might be escalated in terms of the distress, feeling very anxious or overwhelmed. And the same set of principles can Work for bringing down both of those sets of emotions. And that's often needed so that you can shift the conversation towards the future and the solution. If you're a solution focused kind of person, of course the temptation is that you can just let's go through options and come up with something that's going to work. This doesn't need to take all day. We don't need to sort of dig up old wounds, so to speak. But the person who's going through grief might have a different set of buttons that get pushed that you're not aware of. So although I don't find it helpful for preparing for events so useful when it comes to conflict, because it's so challenging to predict what the other person's going to do in response to what we say. But we can prepare for the process. And often when we're dealing with conflict and grief, the process needs to begin with de escalation. And I'm also finally going to be talking about some of the strategies and tools that you can use for assertiveness and implementing boundaries, even in the context of grief, how you can do that in a way that is less likely, at least to trigger the defensiveness and resistance that often comes about when people feel attacked or criticized or pressured, etc. So hopefully there'll be some bits and pieces in there that are useful for you. By the way, if you do find the content useful, I would be incredibly grateful if you would just take a moment to consider pressing, subscribe and giving a positive review. That just makes a massive difference for little podcasts like this, because it's a cue to the algorithm that other people might potentially find these resources for dealing with conflict and communications helpful. There's a couple of principles that I talk about regardless of the context when I'm delivering conflict resolution training or conflict management training with staff. They are the cumulative effect of stress and the way that this communication process happens. So when we're dealing with someone, we tend to just be focused on a singular issue. And then when we get a reaction from them, we assume that it's because of what we said or what we did. But of course, the other person's experience of stress doesn't just involve us. The stressors that are impacting them at their work. Little things like getting cut off in traffic or having an unexpected bill to pay. Difficult conversations that they've had to go through that morning before we've talked to them, these all play a part. So when we're dealing with someone, it's not like they're starting from a 0 out of 10, you're probably walking into conversations in any context at a 4 or a 5 or a 6 out of 10. So it doesn't take as much before the person hits the limit in the amount of change or the amount of bad news or the amount of stresses that they're able to deal with. And that's particularly important to consider when we're thinking about grief because the way that grief affects us is often multifaceted. There can be a physical layer for a lot of people like you feel like extremely low energy diet can suffer. We tend to drink more or look for other unhelpful like chocolate bars from the fridge or something unhelpful sources of dopamine just to help ourselves feel good in the moment. But there's so many other things to consider as well, like financial challenges, all of the logistical complications of wrapping up things when somebody has died. Thinking about arrangements for the funerals and memorials and burials and notifying other family members. There's just such a complex list of to do's that often come about as the result of grief. And the way that it affects us can really impact us at a deep level. If we think about Maslow's hierarchy, it can be right down at the where am I going to be sleeping? Or what am I going to do for the kids, Food for this evening? That kind of thing. So it makes sense then why the response that we get from someone isn't just to do with what we say. That's the reaction that they experience will be tied up in all of those other stressful factors that they're dealing with as well. And when we're communicating with people in this kind of a context, the message that is communicated ultimately is in the eye of the perceiver. Like it's not up to us whether or not the other person interprets us correctly. It's up to them. It's not up to us whether we've explained something clearly. It depends on whether they've understood what we're saying to them. It's not up to us whether I was assertive or whether I came across as aggressive. Ultimately that's a subjective decision that the other person will make. And I might not even know about it. That's the thing. So we don't want to make the mistake of assuming that someone has heard or understood us just because we've said it A lot of the time when we're dealing with grief, timing is a massive factor. And if the person's overwhelmed in that moment, they might not Just have the headspace to deal with it. So. So think about reiterating or reinforcing things, choosing the timing strategically, and really thinking about what message is the person taking on board here. There might even be things that you can do to check that. Are there any questions? How does that all sit with you? How does that resonate? I'm sure there's parts of that that are what you expected and other parts that probably come as a bit of a surprise. Would you like me to fill you in on any more of the detail there? Or probably you need a few moments to process all of that. I imagine as well, the emotions that come with grief are often a lot more complex and complicated than people think as well. Some of you might be familiar with Elizabeth Kubler Ross original stages of grief. The denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance. I think it was. There's a funny Simpsons episode where Homer eats the poison pufferfish thing from the sushi restaurant and he thinks that he's going to die and he goes through all of those stages overnight kind of thing. So I can remember very early on reading that and thinking that that might be quite a linear, staged process that people go through. But of course, the emotions that come along with grief are much, much, much more complicated than that. You might be bouncing between all of those different stages almost within the single conversation at times. And it might be that the emotions that you're experiencing actually are a combination of a number of different factors. So we don't want to assume that people are experiencing emotion in a very simple kind of way when it comes to grief. They're in the stage of depression, they're in the stage of anger. It's probably a lot more of a mixed up bag of that. And within them there's probably a whole lot of different things that they're experiencing even at any one time. And when it comes to emotions like anger, for example, you might see people expressing frustration or maybe just losing it at relatively smaller things. I often talk about anger as being a secondary emotion. And underneath the anger are other factors that might be contributing. A lot of the time it's either fear, like I'm worried about something, I'm concerned. I'm maybe even worried about other people that are involved in this. They're experiencing their own sense of loss. So I don't want to put another lump of bad news on top of what they're already dealing with. So it could be the anxious side of things that sometimes manifests as anger. But the other thing that often comes up as anger is Painful, it's feeling hurt. It might be feeling let down, or not feeling included or feeling like the other person hasn't been considerate for your feelings or they don't understand what you're actually going through, that often comes about as anger as well. And when someone's angry at us, well, it often triggers our own anger. Don't talk to me like that. You don't need to be so rude. I'm only doing my best to help you, for goodness sakes. So you can be aware of that initial reaction that might come up for you as a result of their anger. You might feel the urge to bite back, to make a negative comment, to put them in their place, or at least to clarify things so that this abusive pattern doesn't continue. But I think for a lot of the people that we deal with when they're grieving, and especially if you're in a team leader or a manager's position at work and one of your staff have lost a loved one or you're an extended family member, I think a lot of the time you can just let that stuff go through to the keeper. Just let them have a vent and understand that what they're saying and what they're feeling is, isn't necessarily due to what you've just said. It's probably that complex experience that they're going through in the moment and in the build up to that moment as well. So I don't normally find those Kubler Ross stages so helpful when it comes to grief. Actually, I often find it much more helpful to normalize the fact that it's probably much more of a complex process than anybody else realizes what you're going through and the explaining it to them that grief really is a process. There's no quick way to hurry it up. It's a little bit like metabolizing our food. It just takes time and the same as metabolizing our food. A lot of the time when we try to hurry up grief. Like you hear of people showing up to work soon after grieving. I was just reading a story this morning about someone who went back to work after losing their mother three days ago and their boss asked them a question like, are you feeling better now? Or something along those lines. And you can just imagine from someone who's experiencing a very profound sense of loss, why this? Well, how would it come across? It sounds very heartless, doesn't it? Like, are you feeling better now? And the implication obviously is that I don't expect you to be displaying any more of your emotional symptoms of grief as well. So we don't want to assume that that grief process is too simple, but we also don't want to hurry it up. Sometimes it takes time, and I often find it much more helpful to ask people questions like, what do you need right now? What would you find helpful for keeping your head above water just over the next week or two? Obviously, the return to work might be quite a difficult process for you. What would be some of the factors that are helpful for giving you the support that you need? Taking time out, for example, is needed. In other words, what can we do? And what might you consider as well? There are also a number of different analogies or metaphors or way of thinking about grief that I've found helpful in the past, both for supporting my team members when I've been, you know, they've worked for, for me, or even extended family when they're going through grief, first is to normalize that sense of loss. For a lot of people, the relationship actually became a part of them. So when another person dies, it's like we lose a part of ourselves. And I think that makes sense in people's heads sometimes as to why it would be then a process of regrowing. And the different part of you that grows isn't going to be the same as the part of you that's lost. But we don't expect you to somehow be still whole. It's almost like acknowledging the fact that you really have lost a part of yourself here. Grief can feel like a part of you has died. We can normalize some of the physical experiences as well. Like you might be feeling quite lethargic at the moment. I imagine it might be quite difficult to concentrate on work at the moment. How are you going in terms of maintaining the energy levels in the afternoon? How are you finding the interactions with the clients and the discussions that you need to manage at the moment? And again, it's just this question around, what do you need? What would be helpful? What kind of support would you find useful? That kind of thing. Some people think that the expectation when it comes to grief is that the pain of grief, that sense of loss, will diminish and get smaller over time. But actually, for most people, that's not the way that it works, Especially if you've lost a parent or a child even, or a partner. A lot of people say that they never lose that pain. It doesn't go away ever. And in fact, the more accurate metaphor isn't that the pain shrinks. It's more like your life gradually expands and grows around it. And I think for some people, that gives them a sense of almost honouring the person that they've lost. And I'll talk later about some of the common mistakes, but one of the phrases that people find very unhelpful is saying to them, you need to move on or you need to get closure. And I think that goes along with the mistaken metaphor of the grief or the pain shrinking and gradually disappearing. Whereas talking to people and saying, look, it's quite normal that you're experiencing a lot of pain at the moment and it might not go away, at least in the short term, and it might not fully go away ever. What will happen, though, is that you'll find that your life gradually expands and grows around it. And I would probably say, of course, this probably doesn't feel like much consolation to you in the moment, but longer term, that's been my experience with other clients that I've worked with. So in that sense, I suppose the grief is more like a mark, like a scar that's dug on the bark of a tree, like a big oak tree that's growing and you carve a little love heart in it, like sgloves, whatever. And it's not like that mark or that scar goes away as the tree grows. It still stays there, it changes shape slightly, but it's not like you fully end up losing that person that has been there. So let's think about some of the unhelpful responses that people describe when they're going through grief. And I'm drawing from some research by the Australian Psychological Society. The first unhelpful response was something like, it could be worse, someone telling you it could be worse. At least you've still got these members of your family. At least you still had that amount of time with the person. At least it was painless, at least, whatever. Like when you've lost someone and you're going through grief, someone telling you that it could be worse comes across as incredibly callous. It certainly doesn't give you the sense of empathy, like the person understands what you're going through. And in fact, I think a lot of the time it might even feel like a bit dismissive or minimizing at probably the pretty extreme emotions that you're experiencing in the moment. The second possible response that people say is not helpful is saying something like, I need to move on or I need to seek closure. People describe this as almost feeling pushed to betray the person that they'd lost. Obviously this idea of moving on, the idea is that you need to leave the other person in the past. Right. You need to seek closure. It is like saying, that's the end of that chapter in the story with this person. Whereas a lot of people find the phrase like, what would help you to move forward much more helpful. And especially if you decide to take that coaching approach, that would be the phrasing that I would lean towards, as opposed to something like, you know, you need to let it go, or whatever else it might be that might imply this sense of cutting off of the person that they've lost or. Whereas saying that in a way, there's this ongoing relationship and an ongoing way that you can remember them and honour them at the same time as continuing to move forward yourself tends to resonate a lot more with some people. The third response that people find commonly not helpful are others posting about their loss on social media. This is obviously a very personal thing, and somebody else sharing what feels like your personal story with others can feel like a pretty dangerous, deep betrayal of trust, to be frank. And I know when I'm dealing with conflict and it comes to grief, a lot of the triggers for conflict have been comments or posts that are on social media. So the obvious option would be to not do this. And if you do feel inclined to post yourself, one option I suppose could be getting permission or seeing what the other person thought about this before going ahead with it. And then the final thing that stood out in terms of the research was unsolicited advice. People telling you what to do when you didn't ask for it, people telling you what you should do when they don't fully know the experience that you're going through. This could be about other people making assumptions like, I know what you need. I lost my dad six months ago. This is probably what life's like for you, right? And that might be very different. But the worst option would be saying something like, you need to do this. You should focus on this. Why haven't you done this? Obviously, that might come across as pressure. In some situations, it might seem like criticism. The way that I'm grieving is wrong. I should be doing what you were doing back then. And unfortunately, I think when people come with this unsolicited advice, I'll tell you what you need to do. We can actually decrease the motivation for the other person doing the thing that we want. So I tend to find it much more helpful to take more of a neutral coaching approach. What would you find helpful at the moment? What are you finding is the most challenging? What are some options that would be helpful for dealing with that, at least in the short term. So let's think about some of the factors that can be helpful for de escalating. When it comes to conflict of grief. The three general principles that I've talked about for de escalation in our voice still very much apply. That's a low steady tone, lower volume and slower speed. So whenever I'm in a conversation with someone who's grieving and they start to ramp up, I really slow down. I allow pauses. I use very simple phrasing and language, recognising that the other person's prefrontal cortex won't be working at full capacity. So they won't be thinking clearly. They probably can't understand complex information at the moment. So I really need to keep things very simple. So that low tone of voice, lower volume and slower speed tends to be the go to, at least as a starting point in terms of body language. We also want to slow down. Don't use lots of gestures. Use a neutral, empathetic kind of facial expression. Nods, aha. All of those para verbals would be helpful in many situations. You might be able to just let them vent, let them have a say and don't interrupt them, at least at the initial stages of the meeting. In other situations you might need to interrupt them. And doing that as carefully and respectfully as possible would be really important. Now I talk about five particular factors when it comes to de escalation. When I do de escalation skills training, they are status, autonomy, certainty, relatedness, and fairness. So status is anything that we can do to give the other person a sense that we're prioritizing them, that we're holding them in esteem, making a deferential show, for example, like, like, why don't you choose the best option for this? I mean, it's your. You've lost them. Which songs do you think they would like best? We're deferring to them. We're saying to them, you are a key player here. You can be a decision maker. We're acknowledging the fact that this issue is important to you and communicating that it's important to us as well. The next thing that we can focus on is certainty, letting the other person know what to expect. And again, this is so crucial when it comes to grief because people aren't thinking clearly. They don't have the rational brain capacity working at full steam, so to speak. So you might need to really clearly let them know the steps in this process. First you complete this form, then I'll put that into the computer, you should receive an email confirming the booking or confirming the site in the cemetery or whatever. The issue is that you're dealing with them regarding and then talking to them about what they need to do next. So it's really step by step, bite sized chunks, piece of information when we're dealing with someone who's in that very escalated state. So whatever we can do to give them certainty, even just, I'll call you this afternoon at around 2 o' clock. That lets them know what to expect and that can then feel like firm ground that they're standing on, as opposed to feeling overwhelmed by this horrible sense that they just don't know what's going on or what they need to be doing or what they need to be focusing on at the moment. Certainty can be also really helpful for saying this doesn't need to happen right now. Like there are a lot of decisions that need to be made, but it's really only these three that need to be decided in the next two days. The other four, like regarding the ongoing finances or distributing the will or something that's actually something that you can discuss and make decisions about in the next month or so. For now, probably it would be useful to really focus on decisions regarding the ceremony that's coming up. Autonomy is giving the other person a choice. So when we're dealing with someone who's going through grief, I wouldn't say, I'll get that organised. I'll do this, I'll do this. You need to come here and do this. This. I would give them the option, look, I'd be happy to do that. Would you like me to get that organized? Yes, thank you, that would be great. That gives them the sense of holding the steering wheel. They're the one that makes the decision. They're not on the roller coaster going over the scariest bit of the track. And here we go with a complete lack of control and a lack of certainty. So you might give them two options and saying, would you like to do this or this? That could be an example of autonomy. It might be confirming their choice. Like I'm presuming this is what you'd like us to do. Should I get that organized or do you think something else might work better? And really reinforcing the fact that it's up to them, it's up to you. There's a lot of flexibility here in terms of what's in the service or which songs are chosen or which readings or who comes or who does what. Like just letting them know that really they have A lot of the reins here, they have a lot of the decision making power and we might reinforce that even just to let them know that is what we'll do. But of course, if you change your mind, you can let us know at a later date. Again, it's, you're not locked into this. And in that sense we're lowering what's perceived to be at stake. We're lowering that sense of pressure, we're giving them that higher sense of control. The fourth factor is relatedness. And for me, I tend to find this very, very useful. Throughout all of the communication that I have with people who are going through grief and loss, it's saying to them, I'm not aware of what you're going through at the moment. You're probably having a whole bunch of mixed up feelings and experiences right now. And I know how challenging a stage of life this can be. I know what it can feel like to have such a heavy weight on your shoulders when you're the one that needs to make decisions and communicate to all of the extended family members. So the empathy that I'm displaying really is saying you are dealing with a really full on context at the moment. This is a really challenging spot to be. I don't assume that you're completely helpless and you're probably struggling. Like I wouldn't say something like, oh, it's probably all so hard for you at the moment. That comes across as sympathetic and it's like the poor you, you're the victim. And people don't usually find that as helpful as the empathetic response would be. Something like that sounds like a very challenging situation to be in. How are you managing it all? How are you finding it? How are you sitting at the moment in terms of the coping and the energy levels? Are there any particular bits of support that you would find useful right now? So we provide them with autonomy, we give them certainty. We might emphasize status where we can. The fourth factor in de escalation is relatedness. That's how we can empathize and give the person a sense of feeling heard and understood. And then finally we've got fairness. Particularly if you're a professional dealing with families or clients who are going through grief. There might be particular limits to the flexibility that you can offer. That fee does need to be paid before this service can begin. This issue does need to be fixed so that we can approve the process to be included within our cemetery. So if there are those boundaries, you can still provide as much flexibility as possible. You've got one week You've really got a few days to decide. You don't need to decide right now, but if I don't hear from you by this date, this is what will happen. So we're giving them certainty and we're allowing some level of flexibility. That's the fairness layer. We can give you a discount if you're experiencing financial hardship. We can organize a cheaper rate if you would agree to this condition. So there's a fairness layer here. There's give and take. I'm not singling you out. I'm not saying no to you because I don't like you or you've done the wrong thing. This is a request that we're not able to approve across the board. And in fact, there's been a couple of other families that have made a similar request this week, and I've had to give them the similar response. It's not something I like to do. If I was in your position, I might very well feel the same way. But right now, this is the policy. So those are the rules that we need to work with. So I'm effectively saying the challenge for me is that there is this external set of factors, and they are not negotiable, they are not flexible. So my response to you, unfortunately, also needs to be firm. So I don't need to be harsh or aggressive or rude, but in that way, I can still be assertive and hold onto boundaries where needed. When it comes to boundaries after grief, as much clarity and as many clear expectations as possible can be very helpful. This might be choosing the timing strategically, but also choosing the structure and the way that you communicate. Like a combination of written communication with face to face. Maybe you'll offer them a chance to ask questions or express any concerns multiple times. Maybe you'll reinforce information multiple times, just repeating it to make sure that they've got it. And then where there are hard boundaries like we need to know by this date or this will happen, if you don't do this, then I'm not able to approve this. We need to clarify that in a very clear and certain way. Like maybe not including it in a massive bulk long email. A separate email outlining that point might be one of the ways that we can change structure or organizing a meeting to explain the issues with them face to face so that the person has a chance to ask any questions or express any concerns before they have to make the decision. So thinking strategically about the best structure to use for implementing boundaries and really focusing on clarifying expectations. So that's often about behavior what do they need to do and what are you going to do next? What's going to happen next that can be helpful for getting that buy in and engagement and hopefully increasing the chances of the other person doing what we need to do or accepting the fact that these boundaries are in place without triggering a whole bunch of resistance, defensiveness and that kind of thing. It's very hard though, isn't it? I think the other part of dealing with people who are going through grief is the personal impact that you often experience. You might have heard of the phrase vicarious trauma, which is where we pick up on trauma from the stories that other people are going through. And actually I feel like I might have experienced that at a few different times in my professional life when I've been a manager and a team leader and I've really cared about the people that I worked with and they were going through grief and loss, even like a staff member finding out that they won't be able to have children, for example. Like that's a different kind of grief than someone dying. But the mixed up emotions and all of the reactivity and the challenges of concentration, etc. Are very similar. And I know that at times I've borne the brunt of that to some extent. I've had images in my head that I couldn't let go of, or I've had intrusive thoughts or rumination about things that weren't helpful. So if you're dealing with people who are going through grief, whether it's family or friends, or even in a professional context, self care is something that's really important. Just pausing and thinking about the cumulative impact for yourself. What stressful factors are you experiencing? How has this altered your feeling and your thoughts? Because what we don't want to do is to wake up one day and we've lost our spark, we've lost our mojo. We're feeling really burnt out. And I think for some people that vicarious trauma and exposure to other people's stories can be one of the elements that can really contribute to that. If you feel like you're experiencing some of the negative impact from supporting people going through grief. There's a really good book I like called Trauma Stewardship. I'll put a link in the show notes and I will actually remember to do that this time. And it's just an extremely good book. It talks about practical strategies for managing that buildup of vicarious trauma, type of trauma, but also other types of trauma like relentless busyness at work or exposure to environmental disasters. And that kind of thing. So I just wanted to finish the podcast episode, I guess, talking about that, just emphasising the importance of self care and pointing to that additional resource if it would be helpful. But overall, I really do hope that going through some of those topics related to grief and dealing with conflict has been something that's useful for you, and there's been something in there that resonated. Again, if it's useful, I'd be incredibly grateful if you would leave a positive review, and if you would like some additional tools and techniques and strategies for dealing with conflict, whether that's in a professional setting or in work personal relationships, please consider pressing subscribe and hopefully we'll see you again in a future episode of the Conflict Skills Podcast. Bye for now. SA.