When Your Grief is Activated

Some days a scent in a store aisle, a word in a meeting, a song on the radio—and your chest tightens, your thoughts race, and a memory barges in uninvited.

 We call it activation, and it can make ordinary moments feel impossible. I’m talking through what activation is, and how to meet it with a plan that actually works.

We start with the nervous system and why breath, touch, and orientation can interrupt the alarm. I share simple, discreet tools you can use anywhere: a longer exhale, a hand on your heart, a quiet phrase like I am safe. I encourage you to prepare for these times by checking out last week’s episodes where we went into more detail of ways to release the grief we hold in our bodies. Know yourself and have a few ways in your tool chest for when activation happens. For it will. 

Then we get honest about the social side. People can’t read our history. A shirt color or a plant on a desk might be a landmine for one person and nothing to another. Instead of demanding a bubble-wrapped world, we prepare a small safety plan, prime your system before known stressors, and have an exit or pause strategy for when it hits.

You’ll hear a candid example from grief educator training that shows how wildly different activation points can be, and why compassion and practicality must go hand in hand. 

If you are longing for grounded, realistic support you can carry into work, family gatherings, or the grocery store, this conversation offers gentle guidance and actionable steps to help you feel steadier, even when the world doesn’t change.

If this helped, follow the show, share it with someone who might need it today, and leave a short review so more grieving hearts can find these tools.

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Chapters

• 1:22 Holding Space For Grief
• 1:58 When Triggers Activate The Body
• 3:56 On EggshelLs And Expectations
• 7:33 Prepare Your Personal Safety Plan
• 8:31 Closing Support And Encouragement

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:41

Hello and welcome back to the Caring Death Dealer. Thank you for joining me today. If you are grieving right now, I want you to know that I'm holding space for you. I see you. No matter what type of loss you are dealing with, whatever the change that has come into your life, this is your safe place to come and know that you're seen, that I'm holding space for you. Now, if you've been listening to my episodes, you know that we have been talking about how grief can settle into our bodies. We went through what that looked like, and I also gave you some tools within your body, and then also outside of your body that you can use at any moment, at any time, to just help relieve the stress, the anxiety, the grief that you're holding in your body. So now I want to move on to another area that really matters. And it's a little bit touchy. It's something that we can't ever escape. We have to adjust to it. We have to know ourselves enough. We need to figure out what we do when these circumstances come up. Now, out of respect for those of you who have loved ones that were killed in a shooting, I'm only going to say this once so that we understand what I mean when I say activate, that certain smells or sounds or circumstances, situations, they are going to trigger you. They are going to activate you. Now it would be wonderful if we could have a perfect world where nothing activated us, but we know that's not going to happen. And so I just want to encourage you and I want to just really encourage you to find what you need to help you when you are activated. And it can be some of those things that we just talked about last week when it comes to holding that grief within you. It could be the breathing, you know, taking time away, taking time for yourself. But if you're in a conversation, if you're in a moment where something activates you, what can you do? You need to learn what you can do. And it may be working on your mind, on your thoughts, and moving from that activation. It may be stopping and just breathing in and just releasing everything, releasing the grief and the pain. It may just be a simple breathing in with your hand on your heart, just to, even if you do it quietly in your head because you're in, you know, you're in a room with people or you're in a conversation, you can just say, in your in your own head, you can put your hand on your heart, and in your own head, you can say, I'm safe. Because there are going to be words, there are going to be smells. Like I said, there's so many things that will activate you. Now, as an example, I just want to share with you that when I was taking my class to become certified as a grief educator and guide, one of our class uh periods, the instructor shared how even amongst our group, our class, he would get texts and he would get emails after class, or sometimes it sounded like maybe even during class, but where people would tell him, Oh, oh, you wore a polo shirt. Well, that activates my grief. Oh, that plant on your desk, that activates my grief. And so he went through, you know, like maybe it was the color blue, maybe he said a certain word. He even mentioned when he went on a or to a conference and was speaking, that someone said, You got you can't use this word, you know. And his point was that to our class was that you know what, we can't always avoid as much as we want to, as much as we do not want to hurt. I don't ever want to hurt any of you in anything that I say on here. But we also can't walk on eggshells, we can't expect others to walk on eggshells or just to always be conscious of our pain, because they can't be, and so you need to find ways to get through those moments of activation, to endure them, and like I said, a lot of the the breathing, the hand on the heart, that you're safe because there is no way for us to safeguard each other as much as we want to. One word for you might activate you, and a different word that's fine for you activates me, and vice versa. So as much as we want to, we can't avoid wearing a certain color, wearing a certain perfume, playing a song on the radio or in our playlist. And most of the time, people aren't aware that that will activate you. They don't realize that that's a sensitive situation, a sensitive smell, or a sensitive word. So I just wanted to encourage you to be proactive and really think through what does settle yourself, your body. And once again, I encourage you to go back to my previous episodes where we discuss ways that you can work with your body to just settle a little bit, just to feel safe, just to release, and use these during those times when those things that are your activation points, use them. Because as much as we would like to have a safe world, or even provide a safe world, or a safe podcast for you to come to, I know that there are times when I may say something. I mean, at least fortunately, there's no smells, you know, there's no background picture or item that might activate you. But there still could be words or a story. And so what are you gonna do to settle yourself, to calm yourself? Just want you to think about it and prepare. Because n I certainly and most people in your circle don't want to activate you, don't want to bring anything back in memory that it just comes really hard and you struggle. But it's gonna happen, so prepare. This is the Caring Death Dealer, and I am here for you.