Grief, Shame & the Parts That Protect Us – with Tara Minshall

What if the criticism, conflict, shutdown, overthinking, or emotional reactivity in your relationship is actually protecting something much deeper?

In this powerful episode of Self Led Love, Bahia sits down with IFS practitioner and grief recovery specialist Tara Minshall for a raw and deeply moving conversation about grief, shame, protectors, attachment wounds, and emotional healing in relationships.

Together, they explore:

•  how unresolved grief shapes our relationships 
•  why protectors work so hard to avoid emotional pain 
•  the connection between shame and grief 
•  nervous system responses in partnership 
•  rupture & repair 
•  emotional honesty and self-leadership 
•  the hidden cost of swallowing our truth 

Tara vulnerably shares about her “dragon” and “shark” protector parts, grief beneath criticism and overfunctioning, and how grief recovery work transformed her marriage, parenting, and inner world.

This episode is for anyone who has ever wondered:

•  Why do I react so strongly in conflict? 
•  Why do I shut down or attack when I feel unseen? 
•  Why does intimacy feel so activating? 
•  Why do old wounds keep showing up in love? 

In This Episode:

•  Internal Family Systems (IFS) & grief work 
•  Protectors, shame, and emotional triggers 
•  The “critic” and “figure it out” parts 
•  Grief beneath relationship conflict 
•  Speaking FOR parts instead of FROM parts 
•  Emotional completeness & nervous system safety 
•  Repairing relationships without self-abandonment 
•  Learning to stay connected during activation 

Memorable Quotes

“It’s not freedom FROM grief. It’s freedom WITH grief.”
“The moment you stop speaking your truth, your authentic self leaves the relationship.”
“Protectors believe if they can quiet the agony of grief, then that’s nourishment. But it’s not.”

____________________
Get in touch with Tara:
website : https://wholeheartedjourneysllc.com/
Grief Recovery Method: https://www.griefrecoverymethod.com/grms/tara-minshall
Mustard Seed of Hope: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61554820315645

✨ Follow on IG: @bahiamiller

🌈 Free resources + more from Bahia:
Bahia’s Unblending Meditation: https://bahiamiller.com/unblend
The Self-Led Love Checklist: https://bahiamiller.com/checklist
www.bahiamiller.com

🔮 For couples who are committed to growth and ready to build real emotional intelligence together using IFS — the Self Led Love Lab waitlist is open: https://bahiamiller.com/waitlist

Want to go deeper into the work?
🎧 For our podcast community:
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https://bahiamiller.com/repair-workshop

*Self-Led Love Podcast Disclaimer*

Self-Led Love is a space for reflection, education, and relational growth. The content shared here is offered for educational and informational purposes only, and reflects my lived experience and professional perspective as an Internal Family Systems–informed relationship coach.

Any stories shared on the podcast are either my own, anonymized, or composite examples drawn from real experiences. Identifying details have been changed to protect privacy and confidentiality.

This podcast is not a substitute for therapy, medical care, legal advice, or mental health treatment. While many listeners may find resonance, insight, or support through this...

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Self-Led Love with me, your host, Bahia Miller. Together, using the powerful framework of Internal Family Systems, we will take on the spiritual and also human curriculum of becoming radically responsible for our parts and how they show up and grow up in intimate partnership. I'm so glad you're here. Let's dive in. Welcome back, everyone, to Self-Led Love. Today we have a treat for you. My dear friend and colleague, Tara Minchal. We did our level one training together many years ago, maybe five years ago now, and have stayed in touch and stayed close over the years, just as our work has developed, we both work with couples. We both became moms during the same season of life. And I'm just really excited to see what comes through in our conversation today. We always go to really interesting places together. So thank you for being here, Tara. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah. And so when I first reached out to Tara and said, I think I I gotta have you on the show because Tara actually has her own show and version. What is yours called again, Tara?

SPEAKER_03 1:19

So I do the mustard seed of hope, whatever is deep and near in someone's heart for them to plant that seed or just allow it out into the universe. And whoever picks it up and plants it, I trust that.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

I love that so much. And I get so much out of the mustard seed of hope conversations that you've put out into the world. And I feel like maybe today it's your turn to offer us a mustard seed of hope. Right. And I'm so curious what that will be. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:47

So um today I'm gonna just jump in if that's okay. Yes, please, on grief. Because as I've gone in my journey, I've done, oh my gosh, I'm like a long-term therapy human. I've been in therapy consistently for over 20 years. Maybe the longest gap, three to six months, but otherwise consistent, lots of different modalities, lots of different therapists. And 13, I can remember I had a friend who sent me a YouTube video of Berna Brown speaking about shame. And so when she spoke, it really spoke in my soul because it's like, oh my God, you're putting words to this thing that I have. And so I really went on a shame journey. But then as I'm on this journey, I kept feeling this internal like vortex happening. Like there is a group, like a gravital pull inside around this deep thing that my system doesn't ever want me to get to. And it's scary. And so what I started to really, as time's gone on, especially since 2003, really getting into relationship with this shame and then realizing there's something deeper here that shame's just not hitting on. And what I realize it's grief. And so about the time I found IFS, I hit on, oh my gosh, our systems really come down to what do you do with shame and what do you do with grief? And I realized with grief, it is what makes up my internal, whether you call it an abyss, a black hole, it's this deep darkness inside that my protective system is terrifying. It will do almost anything to get away from it. They will throw everything at it to go away, to try it. And as I got into relationship with it, I really have realized like this thing is so deep. It is huge. And I have parts of me absolutely terrified for me to even acknowledge grief in the because no matter what you do, you're in grief. Our brain's just really great at not acknowledging it. So I started to go on a grief journey, and on this way, and I love whether it's universe, God, choose it. I don't care how you choose it. I love when people get put in your path who you never anticipated. And for me, I was PA ing for a level one, and there was this uh woman who grief was her thing. And I was like, oh great. And she started to talk about this other method that was different than IFS. And I, as soon as I got into IFS, I'm one of those people who I've been at diehard. Like all the other modalities, yeah, they they helped a little, but they they haven't helped. And I've got more um spaciousness in my system from IFS. Like I didn't give from other therapy modalities. Now, what I will say, did those other modalities help? Probably. I do believe it's all part of the greater whole on the gifts that those modalities brought, but it was IFS that really got me more of that expansion. Expansion. So I talked to this woman and she talks about the grief recovery. I was like, this sounds a bogus. I have some of the biggest skeptics on it. So big that it took me nine months to actually do the training after I met her. And so I researched it. I was like, yep, this is crap. Kept coming around, but I kept hitting up against grief and how grief shows up and how terrified our protectors and some of our biggest protectors in my system, I have two really strong protectors that lead the front for me. And it is my critic and then my figuring it out, the need to know. And so these two, I call them my one-two because I'm gonna hit it with my the critic's always gonna be there first. Then here comes the figuring out. And in a relationship, like in my marriage, this those two leading, they have done some of the biggest relational damage in my marriage because when they lead, they don't they're not concerned about my husband or the impact. They don't care. They're like, that's his problem. I'm here for you. And so even there, there's grief right there. The grief that I have, these protectors who my god, I love them. So grateful they're here, and yet I have so much sadness that they have to be here, that they learned to be here. And so, so much of grief, I started to realize, okay, here's this grief, okay, here's this thing that gets triggered a lot by shame. That's when I notice parts start to get really close to like the pull. That gravital pull is when shame happens. It almost like slingshots them towards it. And then it's almost like my protectors have to put the thrusters on to pull it back away because what they don't want is to get lodged into here. Because what they I realize this, so I want to give you all a visual. I don't know if you've watched Interstellar a while.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

A while ago.

SPEAKER_03 7:28

A while ago, okay. So towards I I re-watched just this section. It's about at the like two-hour and 20-ish minutes, maybe 21, 22, not quite sure the actual like pinpoint, but I'll get you in the ballpark. He gets pulled into that black hole and he's in it, and then he arrives in memories, and it's in that the fibers, and there's and it's all of the little girl's room just layered upon each other. And when he realizes it, there's a scene where he has it's anguish, it's agony, there's desperation and frantic. And in that scene, it was like, oh my gosh, this is why my protectors don't want this because they can feel the vibration of that coming up from the hole, and it terrifies him. And what is playing out in that scene is his daughter's, it's his little girl's room playing out over and over. And so for me, it's like, oh, that's what's happening here. I have this little one, and I learned this in the grief recovery. They had the re the um source on this fact. I don't have the source, I think they said it was a Canadian source. So a postpartum brain. Totally valid. Sometimes I pull things and I'm like, eh, I don't know if that's 100% accurate. So once again, I'll get you close. Let's take it. We'll take it with a grain of salt. Yeah. You'll need some curiosity to get you to the actual source. They believe, or what they taught, was 75% of our belief systems are instilled by three years old. Five percent. So if you think about that, when the kiddos actually start to get language, so much of that then is the somatic, doesn't have words. And so what I started to realize with grief is okay, my protectors sense and they feel that little one, her desperation, her agony, and it vibrates up. And then they work really hard not to get sucked into it. And recently, after I worked through the grief recovery method, and I knew exactly who I wanted to work, because it was the one relationship that no therapy had ever been able to move the needle on. And it's actually the relationship that my critics, its voice, is this voice. So it's from my father. So my critic shows up with my dad's energy, his voice, his words, his sharpness. And so it's like, okay, I have the critic and I have this just agony, right? I can feel it, it's in the pit of the stomach. That's where I carry all mine. It's really low, it's deep. And I was like, okay, I know I want to work his my relationship with my dad. And so I worked the relationship, and it was just, I was so fortunate because the guy who actually was my partner resembled my father. Perfect. Perfect. He resembled him. And I worked the process, and the amount of spaciousness I had after it was insane. And so if my grief was like here, it went to here. Notice I didn't get rid of it. It's that I got more capacity and spaciousness with it. And then I noticed how it started to impact other relationships. I had more depth for other relationships that were hard. No therapy model had ever, ever done this for me, including IFS. Well, let me say, IFS can be extremely slow. Some people can work it faster.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:07

But in my experience, protectors don't allow for the speed. That's just been my experience.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, thank you so much for just bringing us into your own world, your own system, what's on your heart and alive in your work. This piece around grief and how the journey to shame, like the journey with shame, led there. And I'm like, is shame a shame a grief protector? Um, I have, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:33

I actually believe it is. I believe it's one of your biggest ones. When I bring this up with like really brilliant brains who they're writing the books, they all hem around it. Because I brought it up in trainings. I say things on grief and so quickly they all go away. And so it's been interesting to see people's response on grief. I will say Jenny Fiebig, because she's very big into the emotional childhood neglect. And shame is a huge one in that. And as she and I have been speaking, I keep bringing in the grief aspect of okay, if shame is under like this big thing, and she has a big visual, and shame's this big blue part or protector, and then all these other ones. And she names the black hole. And I'm like, well, if that's holding it, then underneath it would have to be the grief because all of them are terrified of that sea of grief.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Why is that grief so scary?

SPEAKER_03 12:35

Why is it so terrifying? I have my own version. Yeah, tell me. I have a hunch. If you go back to the visual of Interstellar and you see the fibers, when I watched that, I was like, oh my gosh, what if all the emotional incompleteness that we carry actually makes up those fibers? And that's what makes it so scary. Because so often, at least when I'm working with clients, I'll say, Can you catch the thread? I started to realize saying catch the thread is a gentle, soft way of saying, can you catch that grief? The thread of grief. Because once I have clients hook on to it, they'll go, I can't go further. And then I'll name it. Is it because this dark, like, is it looming? What is it? We'll we'll start to get curious. And I have yet to have a client say no to it. And it's like, there it is. All these modalities work really hard to get you into a relationship, how to cope, how to do, how to expand your capacity, your window of tolerance. And grief really uses, I really believe it's somatic. I believe it uses your skin. I believe it uses these other sensory, because when you're a kiddo, that's all you had. My goodness. And so I actually I actually believe grief can even start in the womb. And that's something I loved that grief recovery calls out is you gotta think the first moment that we have creep is when we're born. Because what was will never be again.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

You're coming in strong today, woman. You have been on a voyage since I've last seen you. The depth of the human heart and soma and yeah, psyche, like this is a big, big conversation and awareness that you're inviting people to touch the threads of. And like, why is it so important that we name it, that we notice it, that we connect to those threads? What's the cost of not doing that?

SPEAKER_03 14:40

Of yeah, I believe the cost, and they're actually coming around to this. And it's it's really interesting, and I forget whose training I was in, who called this out that women have more autoimmune diseases than men. And I believe, of course, I'm not a scientist, folks. I'm not in the season of my life to get a research team or to become a researcher. So this is just my instinct. My instinct says it's because women don't have the spaciousness to express their emotions. And I saw this a lot when I worked corporate world, because I did 10 years as um, I worked in the DOT as a contracting officer. And so I saw this a lot. When a woman would be emotional about something, she would be called out about her emotions. But if a man showed the exact same emotions, he was deemed passionate. Isn't it good to see someone have passion around here? Man. Well, Debbie just had passion, and you just told her she was too much. Right. But Dan over here just flipped a lid and did it in a way that was toxic and scary, and we're calling that passionate.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:59

There's a difference in safety and spaciousness. And I didn't use the word privilege for a reason because I do believe now that privilege is used so much as a weapon that it's almost, I mean, as soon as a man hears the word male privilege, privilege, the conversation's over. His back's against the wall. My God, he doesn't have much room to go unless the person having the conversation has a lot of self and can allow for that spaciousness, but I have yet to really see that. So I'm not one to use privilege because I want the spaciousness for the conversation. Now, some people parts may get fired up about that. That's fine. You get to choose how you interact in this world. I'm not gonna tell you you're wrong. Do what's right for your heart. But for mine, I don't want to use the term male privilege because I want space for men to grow, not for them to be kept down.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

So there's that's there's like my mind is going in two different directions. There's like a whole other conversation about like males and like male emotion and male privilege and male grief, and then also this piece around like women having space to grieve, space to have their emotions. And I don't know if this, you know, is if we want to get into a gender conversation here as I'm listening to you. I'm also kind of like reflecting on the moments where I've experienced the most grief and felt safe the safety of for me. I'll just share just a little bit because who knows where it'll take us. But you know, yeah, I and I've shared about this on here before that I got sober when I was 25 and I spent, you know, a long stint in the rooms of 12 step, and I didn't know I was grieving. I didn't know that's what showing up as a mess and letting it be okay, and like starting to unhook from the shame of the like I'm bad to like, oh my god, my heart is actually just broken. Like, I didn't know that was what was happening until you know I had a language for this later. And the 12-steps rooms, and then the other space is in medicine ceremonies. And I haven't like, you know, I've done a a handful of these, but um the grief that clan medicine has taken me to, it feels like what you're talking about. That like somatic, like there aren't even words, but the pain is just this like wailing and the fear of like I'm gonna get lost in this, there's no bottom.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 18:26

Yeah. Yeah, because that it really gives you a glimpse of what it was like when you were a kiddo, of what that was like to not be able to influence change. And I know as being in a marriage, the moment I enter into that space of not being able to influence change, I time travel so fast. I already know this. I'm in a time travel because I feel like that little girl who's not being seen. And then it's the why don't you see me? And then here comes my critic, right? I gotta, and my husband was here, he'd be like, God, does she ever? I have a really fierce, I call it my dragon. I will literally look at my husband and go, My dragon has taken flight. I'm giving you the warning. We gotta calm this down, we gotta do a relational, we have to do something because my dragon is here to scorch the earth. Right. Right fed up of that, not having a voice, not being valued, not being seen. My dragon loves me so much and gets how valuable I am that it will do anything to ensure that I am seen. I didn't have that as a little girl.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

But does that work?

SPEAKER_03 19:43

No, no, oh my God. Sometimes I tell people, sometimes my dragon is like a great white shark. And so I can tell when they switch. So I got a shark in me that will go after my husband. My husband will go turtle, he turtles. And he just does what sea turtles do, and they'll just share a bull tight, and that shark's gonna come over top of their shell and just shake them, shake them, shake them, shake them. Yeah. And I know when my dragon switched into my shark, and now I'm just shaking my husband relentlessly, wanting him to come out because I can feel how insular he went and how insular threatens this little girl. Because now she's alone and there's no one here. And now she lands, guess what? Grief. There's the grief of that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

And so grief recovery. I'm not familiar with this modality or anything, but like, so you land in that grief, right? These moments, and I thank you for your openness and honesty about the realness of being in partnership. Even you mentioned before we hit record, like 24 years with your partner, 17 years married, right? Like with 20 years of therapy, like self-aware practitioner, right? And you you got a white shark. And when he goes turtle, the grief. And like, where do we go from there? Like, right? I find myself sometimes wondering, like, okay, I can like I can go to the grief, right? That's taken me a long time to get there. Yeah. Is it best to just sit there and feel it?

SPEAKER_03 21:24

Or is there something else that's healthy? Yeah. So what I have found with this method is actually naming the unname, unspoken emotion. For a long time, I there wasn't space for, and here's the thing with my parents. I my I love my parents, they're not bad parents. My parents became parents at 18, and I think my dad was 20. They had four kids in four and a half years, folks. Oh my god. They got it done. But they also got it done w at their they're making the least money they ever made. They're the least resource they've ever been. Yeah. And so there was a lot of things that were unintentionally missed. And so I named that because there wasn't a lot of space for emotions, because there wasn't a lot of capacity because they were running at such a high level, like cylinders of not having like I grew up hearing this phrase my whole life, and my parents still use it robbing Peter to pay Paul. I heard that phrase my whole life. And they're just like we knew there was a lacking. So to have needs, to have wants, to have dreams, to have hopes, there wasn't the space for it.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:41

And that's what I love about the grief recovery is it actually has you name that. Even if the person has died, you're still in a relationship with them. And that ability to speak about grief and to name it. And so that's what I noticed. Like, okay, what would it be like to live more emotionally complete? Well, one, I got to get really great at rupture and repair, which I'm decent at. I'm great, I'm pretty good at rupture and repair. If I know the person is available for it, where I shut down, right? I'll have a part that will evaluate the human and go, you're just not there. You're probably never gonna be there. And so what I'll do then is I'll work the grief recovery with the the relationship because I write a letter to them that never gets read to them.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:31

It's all of my unmet needs and dreams and hopes of the relationship. If I read that to them, I would just be criticizing them. Right. And that's not loving.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Right.

SPEAKER_03 23:44

And so that's what I love about this method is it teaches you how to do this. And I love it because when I was in it, it was a four-day. I sat there like a snot. I'm gonna tell you that, right? What do you mean? Yes. I sat there like, this is stupid. This is a waste of my money. This, why did I listen to so and so? This is just a total waste. We started to do it, and I was like, dumb, right? My critic was here, my skeptic was here, and they were just all over the program. We started to write out the sentences, and I was like, ugh, there might be something to this because they have you hand, it's hand because they believe that the hands connected to the heart. Yeah. So to write it out, and I'm like, okay, and there's a lot of repetition. And then I got to the completion letter. And I I wrote it out. And I'll read you the last paragraph of my completion letter. Yeah. This one's not covered in coffee. I make the joke, it's either gonna have milk all over it or coffee. So there you go. Tis the season. Tis the season. You know, I just want to read the end of this because I you get to make up the ending. They have you start the beginning all the same, then you write out your lines. But for me, you know, I this is what I wrote. I have to let go of the trauma, the pain, the questioning my worth so I can revision my life from a place of abundance and to move forward. I can't wait for you any longer. As I revision, I will hope that you can experience this as well. May you get to breathe and lean into your wholeness one day. I love you and I miss you. And then you say goodbye in their name. And even right now, like I have the goosebumps, because there's just something so beautiful about that process because you get to name all the unmet emotions, all the pain, everything in those threads making up your black abyss or your void or however it shows up in your system. And in the beginning of this, I said it was here, didn't make it go away. It took it to here. It's almost like a valve, a release valve, of pressure, of grief. And then when your system has that spaciousness, what I realize is I have more capacity for love. I have more understanding. I now can sit and think about like, what is it like to be my husband? Like, what are the things that are weighing on his soul? What are the things that still linger in my dad's soul that hurts him? And I'm not doing it from a fixing place or uh their pain matters more than mine. I do it with everyone who's close in my life. I now go, what's the unresolved grief that they're carrying that's driving this behavior? I never had that before. Some of that, though, it's very IFS, right? There's more self-leadership, right? It's that capacity, it's the depth, it's not needing them to be different. I don't need them to be different so that I'm more lovable.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

Yeah. There's so much completion. Like complete, like it's maybe the experience will never be complete, but like I'm allowing myself, right? You're allowing yourself to really just feel the loss, feel the heartbreak, and also keep living and let that be true and let that be there and not wanting it to be different, or the shame of making myself wrong for it not going a certain way. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:26

Or the shame of I'm gonna do all these things. I'm gonna overfunction so that I'm worthy. I believe that's one of the things that really make us sick. I'm gonna do all these things so that I'm more lovable or I have value. But what I've realized in that is all I'm doing is pushing myself. I'm not listening to my body. I'm not listening to my brain because my brain has that predictive analysis going on of okay, how do I keep you safe and how do I decrease uncertainty, right? How do I increase safety? How do I decrease uncertainty? So I'm not even overriding that. I have a part that overrides that even because I've already nixed what I'm feeling in the body. The brain's coming up and saying, hey, you got to slow down, you got to do this, you and what do I do? I keep pushing, I keep going. And then who does that impact? Well, my God, it impacts the people closest to me. Right now, in the season, I become a crap mom when I do that. I lose sight of my kiddos because it's no longer about them. And then I get annoyed that they have a need. And right there I catch it. Oh my God, you have a need, and I just shamed you for it. And what I do is this is more of my three-year-old. I pick him up, we go heart to heart, and I'm holding him, and I go, buddy, there is nothing wrong with you. That need is okay. Mommy is just so exhausted because I'm trying to do all these things. Yeah, and that's not fair to you. You are so lovable. And then I kiss him. And as a three-year-old, what are you? He he doesn't say thank you, mommy, for catching that and making you guys he done do that. It's usually on to whatever the next need is. Where's my truck? Yeah. I need a snack. Right. Yeah, I need a snack in my dyno in my truck, right? And I've lost all of them. Right. But it's doing that even, I can feel the impact it has now on that void inside because it shrinks it just a little bit. And for me, my goal is for this lots of people, and I don't know if this is from the therapy world of like unwell model, like you have to get to healing. For me, I don't ever anticipate not having this, and every little thing is a drop of healing. But I'm not a person who's like, I need to get healed because I have found that really hinders people.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

Yeah. So grief is not something. So you're saying grief is not something that needs to be healed, but every kind of reparative experience that connects us to our heart is good. Yeah, it increases our capacity, our ability to love, to feel, to acknowledge the experience, to show up for other people.

SPEAKER_03 30:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:24

And so because that grief, how do I want to say this? So many protectors believe their person is broken. And that's primordial shame. That there's something innately wrong with me. I'm broken, I'm not lovable. And when you have that grief in there, because there is grief even with that thought, there's grief with that belief. And what I'm finding is I actually had where I was with my protectors, and we were on the rim of this black hole, and we were looking into it, talking about it, having a conversation, and they're like, wait a second. So if I do this, like throw the strategy, it just goes down in the hole. It's not nutritional, the nutritional value's not there, and that's what protectors get. I don't want to say wrong, they're very confused about because they believe if they can quiet the agony of the grief, then that's nutritional and it's not. That just means you've thrown a pillow over it and you can no longer hear the wailing or crying of the little right.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

But yeah, yeah. Where do I even go from here? Yes. I mean, I'm just kind of struck by like the grief that exists in my own relationship with myself, right? That came from and it's all relational, right? Like all of this work is like the grief comes from the womb, the comes from the zero to three, it comes from the broken heart, right? It c and then so it's between me and me, like really, and then the grief that gets kicked up in real time, it's the same grief, right? That old me grief gets kicked up in my intimate partnership. Yes, right. And there's the opportunity to, I mean, it's a hard sell for people to say, like, oh, this relationship is here to help you, you know, transform your relationship with grief or come into a new relationship with grief. That's a hard sell. Most people just want to to fix the problems and get on with it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:38

And what they I have so many people who who have done this program now who like me, I tell them, bring your skeptic out, bring your critic out, let them shred this program. Let them, because they're going to anyway. So call them out and call them forward. And what's really vital about this program that I love is it does it in such a way. Because it's seven weeks. If you do it individually, it's seven weeks. If you do it in a group, it's eight. Okay. Okay. I actually love seeing it done in group because you get to share with your small group, you start to realize, oh my gosh, we are all so similar.

SPEAKER_00 33:22

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:23

Because in grief, most of the time, we try to grieve alone. We don't grieve together. And some of these journeys people are doing, plant journeys, they do them in groups for the most part. I've heard some people do it individually, but there's a healing aspect of being held in a group. And I see that here in grief. Because you get to realize, like, wow, you had this thing happen to you, and it was so painful. And something I love about this program is they say, be a big heart with listening ears. And I love that because when someone's talking, you don't interrupt, you don't ask them questions, and you don't validate. When they get done, you say thank you for sharing. Do you want to hug? That's what you do. You're allowed. Like I tell people, I'll never give Botox right here because I want people to know what I'm I'm feeling and thinking. Love it, love it. Yeah, I'm like, this she's a great communicator. Yes. So uh, like I say, people, let your nonverbals be there because that little kiddo inside isn't gonna hook with words. So when we validate, you're missing the one who's at the bottom, anyways. It's the nonverbal. And there's I found this saying, and I have it right here. Hold on. I usually wing it. And some people have seen this. When you put two ears together, it makes a heart. Once you see this, I'll send it to you. Once you see this picture, now whenever I see ears, I'm like, you have half of a heart. There it is. But it says when two ears are put side by side, it forms the shape of the heart. Interestingly, the word ear sits right in the middle of the word heart. The ear is the way to the heart. So if you want someone's heart, learn to listen to them. That is what this program is deeply rooted in is listening. So since I've done this, it's impacted the way I show for clients. Because I tell clients, when you see me doing this, I'm I'm telling this, you just be with them. Because there's something so beautiful when our hearts meet. It's Dan Siegel who says, We feel seen when two hearts meet. And what if the ears are the one of the fastest ways to seeing someone? And so there's that. It's really taught me how to listen differently. And I now I'm like trying to figure out, and with having little kids, right? I have a three-year-old and a seven-month-old. I would love to create a program like how to live emotionally complete. Because what I learned after doing this, I actually started to say to people, I'm disappointed. And I realized that that word disappointment is one of the fastest ways to trigger your shame and nail somebody's grief. And so it's the I tell people, like, I had with someone and I was like, I almost said, that's fine. Whatever, that's fine. Right. I was just gonna swallow it. Whatever, I'll figure it out. And that's part of that, what makes us sick, right? I swallowed it. Right. Right now it's back down on my stomach. And the message that I give myself every time I swallow my emotion is that I'm not important. My experience, your experience and being comfortable is more important than mine. And I believe this is where couples get tripped up so much. And I was trained from childhood how to stay quiet. I was also trained in my family unit, we keep men comfortable. Don't trigger them, don't say this, don't do that. Like there's so many eggshells. And so then I realized, but when I don't speak about that, when I don't name what my experience is, one, I'm throwing my own eggshell in, the relational energy field, which is unsafe for both of us. Because your nervous system's gonna pick it up with it not being said, because it's that nonverbal. That little girl or little boy inside, it's gonna pick that up fast. Because for them, almost always, not always, so I'm gonna go back to my system. For my system, my little one's constantly looking, am I lovable or am I not? Do you have space for me or am I too much? Right. And so, right here for me is really pivotal that now I just slow down and I say to my husband or to whoever's in front of me, I actually have a lot of disappointment around this. This really hurts me. I was expecting, and remember, expectations are planned disappointments. I was expecting you to help me. But what I'm finding out is I'm now alone and I gotta solve this myself.

SPEAKER_00 38:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:06

And I'm disappointed with that.

SPEAKER_00 38:08

Right. And I love the honesty of that, the not self-abandoning, the not swallowing it, right? And I don't know if I heard you right. You said like there's it's a really great way to activate someone else's shame. Did I hear you say that? Or did I make that up in my head? Right. Because that's I'm sure that's hard, right? Like I remember in Al-Anon a while, you know, years ago that there was just the it was like the introductory concept of that was to say ouch, right? When someone, but I'm disappointed, right? That's like clear.

SPEAKER_03 38:40

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And growing up, if my mom said she was disappointed in us, all of us kids, I mean, it was the biggest shame moment for us. Like to disappoint, like, gosh. And so, and what I say to people now is I swoop back around and I say, my disappointment is mine. I still love you, I still value you, and I still cherish our relationship. And I'm disappointed. So I swoop it because I'm gonna talk now that your lovability is not on the line for me. It's very mature. It's very mature. It is, and it's and so much so, even like with my husband, because he's the one who's closest to me, right? I'm sharing life with him, I'm sharing space with him. And the moment I uh the moment I don't say something, this is I drew this out before we started. Yep. Okay, because there's so it's broken down the middle, yeah. Yep, and this side is him, right in here. This is where our battlefield of protectors will always happen, right? Because the disconnection happened here or here. And so now here's the battlefield. Or the dance, it's the waltz. But that for me is the moment that it starts, and so now I'm learning to start speaking about what broke on my side. So my protectors don't have to work so hard. So now my protectors can trust me more that I got them. Because when my protectors were around that black abyss with me, and the realization of, oh my gosh, all of our strategies is never gonna land as nutritional for this. What do we do? And I looked at them like I could feel them, and I'm a more visual, so like I can actually see my parts. I asked them, Will you let me lead? Let's give that a shot. This is what I'm gonna guarantee. We're gonna get hurt. I can already tell you that. We're gonna have misses. But if you allow me to be there first, it's gonna be helpful. And I have protectors that are like, yo, you're never gonna be there first. Like, okay, I'll take that. And so it's I now say to my husband, and I say this to couples, allow for your protectors to show up in their battlefield and then be with them because that's what's really needed. Yeah. Allow, can you have the capacity for this emotional thing that I haven't got to speak for yet? Will you allow the space for me to get there so I can speak for it? And so I want to, yeah, go ahead. Don't disappear from me yet.

unknown 41:18

Right?

SPEAKER_03 41:18

My husband turtles. Don't turtle yet. Give me time to catch up. It won't take long.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

The moment you pull away, you're hitting that little girl. Yeah. And so that's that's an ask to really ask our partner to, you know, collaborate with us in that dance on the battlefield to slow down and do that U-turn to like what's happening here? How can we work with this? But I'm getting stuck on your this, I'm like, I'm with you. And I always love the way you articulate your parts and you see your parts and you speak about like it's so like a storybook for me. And I'm like imagining your parts on the edge of this crater, like a volcano, right? Like to fall in. And I'm like, okay, so are you saying that instead of just letting the parts be on the outside of the volcano, that you're letting them like, or you're allowing yourself to go in, to jump into the abyss to free fall and figure out what is this grief? And so then I can come back out and articulate it. Is that kind of what you're saying, or is it different than that?

SPEAKER_03 42:23

There's some of that that's happening right now where I'm at. It's the helping, it's really mentoring them on allowing me to be there. But it's a mentorship right now, it's a self-depart mentorship. And what because when I can get to the little girl and see her and visualize her, and for visual sake, I brought this for you all. So that's me at like 18 months. Yeah. And so obviously, I mean, thank thank you, AI.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

I was gonna say, is that your mother? No, it can't be because it looks exactly like you. Okay, this is a I love the AIS.

SPEAKER_03 43:02

Yeah. And so I have this picture up when I work with clients because I say, Will you let me take care of her? Let me try. Let me try to be with her differently. Because when she does the agony or the sorrow, like heart's pain is sorrow. Like when that sorrow is present, they get frantic. The protectors, because now they're throwing everything at that hole. Like, my God, I don't know what we're gonna do, all of it. And it's never closed the hole, it's never shrunk the hole. And so for them, what's also really hard when you do grief work, the top never really shrinks, is what I'm noticing. It's the underneath and the bottom. And that's hard for protectors because they want to see the threat close. Right. And the threat hasn't, at least in my system, hasn't showed up that way.

SPEAKER_00 43:58

Right, right. When we were talking About having this conversation, you were talking, you had mentioned the cost of things that don't get said or things that aren't expressed in relationship. Yeah. And so maybe, you know, is that is that the grief? Is that right? It also really stuck out to me saying, you know, where I feel like I don't have power to change things, right? These the power struggle of partnership as grown-ups, right? It's like, I want this. Well, I want it to be this way, right? We want different things. And just naming how activating that can be for our little ones, right? And to be with the grief of like, I don't have power here, or this doesn't feel good to me. Like this feels, I don't know, like a re like a little mini revelation here. And then yeah, how we maybe swallow it or don't say it or tell me.

SPEAKER_03 44:49

Yeah, because you got to remember the predictive analysis of the brain. And I got predictive, what is it? Predictive what PPF? Predictive process framework. Yes. PPF. That's it. Um, I took a training with Sarah Bergenfield. Yeah. I want to have a God, that woman is brilliant and she moves so fast. I mean, I have so much, I it is so hard for my brain to keep up with hers. Like she's just brilliant. And she's the one who really talks about this. And right. So my brain kicks in and does a predictive analysis of safety. It is safer for me to stay quiet and to swallow because then it's less rejection. That's how my system does it. We've already been rejected. The needs are already not being met. It feels as though we don't have the power. So, how do we lessen this blow? For my system, yeah, it's uh, well, now I have to stay quiet. And I can say I've stayed quiet the majority of our marriage, and I can say that strategy hasn't helped us. Because it instantly, so going back to that picture pulls you apart. The moment you're not speaking your truth, that person's no longer in relationship with you. Your authentic self isn't there. And that's really hard because now you're living almost an illusion for both parties, and the nervous systems have picked it up. You got parts though that are gonna go, or you're gonna fight harder. There's some people who they almost they get so big and they're so desperate for their partner to get them that they end up like they're like an animal, right? At their partner, and their partner's getting backed up in the corner, and they're like, Oh, for the love of God, how do I get out of here? Right. I'm gonna placate you so I can get the heck out of this house. Yeah, I've seen that one. I know that one. Yeah. Sometimes I do that one. Sometimes I'll flee. And so it's that slowing down of gosh, what would it be like for both of us just to say the thing? What would it be like to say I had this need, I had this wish, I have this dream? And I love this question. I think this is from Glenn and Glenna Doyle. Glenn and Doyle.

SPEAKER_00 47:09

Glenn and Doyle, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:11

From her book, there was one of her questions. I think it was like, what's the truest, truest, most beautiful story you can make up about your life? Well, I do this with couples. What's the truest, most beautiful marriage you can imagine for your life? And I have both people answer that.

SPEAKER_00 47:29

Love it.

SPEAKER_03 47:30

Because right there, I'm gonna now see the playing field of grief of what they're not getting.

SPEAKER_01 47:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:37

Because almost always that letter is going to talk about all the unmet needs, hopes, and dreams. Because that little one inside more than likely has hopes, needs, and dreams around their partner who's going to love them in the way that they never received. And this is where you know you get the tormentor, right? Your spouse is your tormentor. Right.

SPEAKER_00 48:03

And do you have couples write a letter, a grief letter of like the the places in their relationship that do you have them read it to each other? We read them out loud. And how do you Yeah, I'm curious if you have ways or strategies that you prepare people to listen to that so that they don't Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:23

So if it's a volatile couple, we're not reading this out loud. Right. We're gonna do individual and I'm gonna catch it first. Right. Because what do I want? I want to catch your protectors.

SPEAKER_00 48:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:34

Let me be with them because I'm gonna have more capacity and depth than what your partner's gonna have. And so it's can you hang in this letter enough to hear what's important to your partner that they're not speaking for daily? Can you hang in there enough? And if you can't, you got to raise your hand and say, I'm activated. So now we're building the skill.

SPEAKER_01 48:55

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:57

But I'm amazed at how many people will push through that skill building so that their partner can express themselves and they hope that it's loving. But if you're not listening with your ears because your protectors have shut them down, it's no longer loving. Right. So it's it's the miss has already happened.

SPEAKER_00 49:18

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like, you know, in an exercise like that, to be able to be with your grief, to be with the pain of that, and not project it as like you need to give me these things and you need to change, right? Like to be able to speak for that pain in not a see all the ways you have failed me. Yeah. That yeah, it's really it's tough. There's some. You know, for myself. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:50

Yeah. And what I do for my husband is I just go, oh, you just hit it. What do you mean? What does that mean? So, like if he says something, like if I I say something like something vulnerable, like, uh, you know, whatever it is, and his response is either minimizing or he picks his phone up or something, I say, you just missed it. And that hurts, that's causing more pain in my system. What I was hoping for was that you would respond or connect in with me, but you just pulled out, like you just pulled away. Like what just happened there? And then he can say, Well, I felt criticized, or I felt like you want something that I can't give you. So many times I'll actually start with this wound is old, it's mine, and what you the behavior you just did nailed it. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And so couples don't realize when your partner has a reaction, you did something small, but the reaction is huge.

SPEAKER_00 50:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:53

Get curious.

SPEAKER_00 50:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:54

It lit like I tell my part, like the couples I work with, it has nothing to do with you. Can you hang in there just to hear? Because at first it's going to be toothy protector, and then it's going to be the vulnerability of this is the thing that always comes up for me.

SPEAKER_00 51:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:08

Right. And the one thing I was like, oh, I didn't do this at a part that was like, hey, you forgot to do this. You know, the grief recovery, their handbook has two definitions of grief. And it's grief is normal natural reaction to loss, and grief is the conflicting feelings caused by the end or change in a familiar pattern of behavior. Okay, read this one more time. One more time. Yep. So grief is the normal natural reaction to loss.

SPEAKER_00 51:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:32

And grief is the conflicting feelings caused by the end of or change in a familiar pattern of behavior. Right. Our protectors are behavior-based. They're going to be so attuned to the behavior of it because the grief is already hooked into it. There's already a lot on the line for us.

SPEAKER_00 51:52

It seems so we're gonna, I'm aware of the time. We're gonna wrap up here soon, but it seems like this grief, and I want I want to share with the world about the work that you're doing in these groups and all of it. And it seems like the capacity to be aware of our own grief and like slowly circle and like start to get curious about the little girl or little boy, like those pieces, right? Like that the value for doing grief work to a relational field is, I mean, really I might call it crucial. Yeah. I I mean, you know, and we get to there, we get to get to it at different points in our journey, right? Like, you know, like you said.

SPEAKER_03 52:38

Yeah, so because one of the things they have you do is you'd create a lost history graph, and you're gonna put all your losses on it from dawn of conscious memory to today. And protectors have a lot to say about that. Because they work hard for none of that to be recognized. I'm okay. I'm okay. Yeah, and then this process, like I tell people, so in this process, they call it sturbing, short-term energy relieving behaviors, IFS, we call it firefighters. Got it. Self-soothing. So yes, yeah, anticipate it, folks, and see if you can show up and put as much on that graph as you can as safely as you can. And not everything needs to be spoken. You can just say loss of trust or loss of safety event. If your system's not ready, that's and this is where I really trust people's systems. I trust how fast your protectors want to move. Don't push them. You don't need to. When they're ready, they're ready. And will they allow you to do this to get into relationship? Because this is impacting your internal energy field, it's impacting your external energy fields with people, and then all of the relational fields, right? And so it's when you get into relationship with that, the one word I always hear people use when they complete this freedom. They have way more freedom because when you go from here to here, that space is free and it's freedom.

SPEAKER_00 54:14

And it's not freedom from grief, it's just freedom with grief, freedom with more understanding, more compassion, more space.

unknown 54:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:24

It's choice.

SPEAKER_03 54:26

It is literally that pulse of I don't have to respond that way. And you no longer have that gravital pull to respond that way. And so now you have that choice of freedom of how am I going to show up? And it's the understanding when the other person, whoever you work in your model, right, whoever you pick, because you pick a person, you're not responsible for them. You cannot make them anything. Cannot make them healthier, you can't make them change, you can't make them grow. You can't make them anything. And the moment your protectors all align on that spot, you have more spaciousness in your system. Because now I look at my husband and I go, ugh, his grief. He's really working hard. His system's working so hard for him not to be swallowed up by it. And I have more capacity, like I said, I have more access to my heart than I've ever had and more capacity just to love. I have more love for more people than I've ever had in my life. People who have hurt me in some of the deepest, hardest ways. And I have more love for them. And I'm also now have more agency for myself to say, yeah, that that doesn't work for me. And what you just said was really hurtful. I'm living more authentic than I've ever lived. This is beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 55:42

This is like a systemic, like, you know, heartbreak inventory, making the unconscious conscious, like have it. This is, you know, a big piece of the foundations of personal responsibility in relationship, like caring for your own system, catching your own parts. And so these groups, just like share with people, like where can they find you? What are you, how are you stewarding this work?

SPEAKER_03 56:08

Yeah, so you can. I post them a lot on my Facebook page. I'll do a lot of my announcements. That's gonna be the easiest place to see them. Also, people reach out to me. They're like, hey, I got four friends and we want to go through this together. I've had people do that. Like, hey, I got a group, let's do this. I need three to I can't do more than eight. So it would be three to to eight. And so you can reach out to me. You could go on um the wholehearted journeys Facebook page and wait for them. You can also, if you want to do it individually, you can reach out and do it individually. What I do as the grief recovery specialist, I buy the book. So I just deduct the price from our first session together. You buy it off of Amazon or wherever you want to buy it from. And then the book will um, there's weekly homework assignments of reading. Um, I'll tell you this. When I did the program, I didn't read it and I had tremendous results. So people are like, ew, I don't have time for homework and that stuff, but it can commit to doing the graphs and and that type work. You need at least an hour to two hours a week.

SPEAKER_01 57:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:12

So if you have that, um, and you just want to see, I'm gonna say, bring your bring your uh critic, bring your skeptic part. And what I I have a hunch though, what especially people who do IFS work, there's gonna be more space for the rubber to meet the road for IFS to to really take off and go fast, is what I'm noticing.

SPEAKER_00 57:33

Right. So the IFS process will will kick up a bit once you yeah, can be with these pieces and do this witnessing, it sounds like.

unknown 57:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:43

Yeah, it when you do it and you read the letter, it really feels like unburdening.

SPEAKER_00 57:49

Love it.

SPEAKER_03 57:49

But I that's the IFS term. Yeah. So I would just say it's that relief of the system, the pressure, the the spaciousness. So I would say it's very similar.

SPEAKER_00 57:58

Well, I have so much respect for you as a practitioner and woman, and married woman and mother and all of that. And um yeah, how you are devoted to yourself and your clients, and anyone would be lucky to go on that journey with you. So I'll make sure to put your page in the show notes and check out some of Tara's recordings too. And I have two little ending questions that I've been doing with folks, unless there's any other pieces that you want to make sure you speak to. No, I'm just grateful for the time and space with you. Yeah, thank you. Me too. Truly. So, my two questions at the end that I like to ask people are do you have any favorite kind of unblending or ways that people can kind of get maybe in relationship to their grief? Is there like maybe that's the question for today is like, what's like the takeaway or the contemplation that people might start with if they wanted to?

SPEAKER_03 58:54

Yeah, so yeah. The first thing I would do, and I love doing this with couples, if you have a chess board, pull out the pieces, start to label your protectors, watch them dance with each other. Just watch once like this thing happened, you showed up, then you showed up, then you showed up, and then this, and then, and just externalize your protective system doing what it is that it does beautifully for you because they love you more than anyone on this planet does.

SPEAKER_00 59:25

I love this. The invitation to externalize the protective system. I mean, I'm like, we need like a risk board, we need like all of it. I need, yeah. Yeah, I love that. And the second question that I ask people, and I find that this is it's a personal question. So some people, you know, but the question is if you could go back in time and give any like whisper in the ear of any version of yourself one piece of relationship advice or a message, what would it be?

SPEAKER_03 59:58

What comes up to me is so you are lovable. Do not trade yourself, your needs, your want, your wishes, your dreams to keep somebody else comfortable. Their comfort is their job, not yours, beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:13

So whoever needs to hear that, there it is. Well, I'm so grateful for this time with you and to see where our the dance that you and I will do together professionally. I can't wait till we get on retreat together, some kind of healing, joyful, I don't know, leave our kids behind. Maybe it'll be 10 years from now. Who knows? Who knows? But I look forward to that dream and I thank you for being here to share with our listeners. Thank you so much, Pikiko.