Soul Medicine...HEALING OUT LOUD
A reflective podcast where therapist, Angela McCree helps listeners understand themselves and respond to life more intentionally through nervous system awareness and regulation.
Soul Medicine...HEALING OUT LOUD
The Myth of “Strong”: Grief, Ownership, and Emotional Cost
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In this episode of Soul Medicine: Healing Out Loud, Angela explores the intersection of grief, personal ownership, and the narratives we carry about what it means to be “strong.”
For many, strength has been defined by endurance—the ability to carry pain without expression, to continue functioning without pause, and to move forward without fully processing what has been experienced.
But what is often called strength is, at times, survival.
This episode examines how unprocessed grief can live beneath that survival, and how true regulation requires not only awareness, but ownership of our internal experience.
Through thoughtful reflection and grounded insight, listeners are invited to consider:
What have I learned to carry quietly?
What have I called strength that may have been survival?
And what might it look like to respond differently?
This is not about revisiting the past for the sake of emotion.
It is about understanding what has shaped your responses—and creating the space to move with greater intention.
Because strength is not the absence of feeling.
It is the capacity to remain present with it.
Because what we call strength deserves to be understood, not just maintained.
Thank you for listening to Soul Medicine: Healing Out Loud.
A space for reflection, awareness, and intentional living.
If today's conversation resonated with you, take a moment to sit with what you've noticed.
Until next time...
Remember: Regulation Before Resolution™.
If you're ready to take the next step in your healing journey, or if you'd like to learn more about The Relationship Room™, upcoming trainings, speaking engagements, and additional resources, visit:
Until next time, take care of your nervous system...and take care of yourself.
About Soul Medicine: Healing Out Loud
Soul Medicine: Healing Out Loud is a podcast hosted by Angela McCree, M.Ed., LMFT, CTP, CSTFP, founder of The Healing Advocate™. Through thoughtful conversations and practical insights, each episode explores emotional regulation, trauma recovery, relationships, identity, leadership, and sustainable well-being. Whether you're a mental health professional, leader, caregiver, or someone on your own healing journey, you'll be invited to slow down, notice, and cultivate a more regulated life.
Greetings and welcome to Soul Medicine. Healing out loud. My name is Angela. Regulating. Welcome to episode four Grief, Ownership, and the Myth of Strong. Let's sit with our feet flat on the floor, allow the chair or the bed, or even the hammock to support every portion of your being. For four, hold for four, and then allow your exhale to be longer than your inhale. Let's begin. Inhale three two hold three two exhale. How does that feel? What did you just release? We're just noticing. No fixing. No judging. Simply noticing. Strength is often praised in the same breath that vulnerability is punished. Have you ever been in a setting where you were completely vulnerable? Maybe with loved ones. Or maybe church. You're sharing with someone. And all of a sudden, they say, Shh, can I just pray for you? With a quick laying on of hands, they throw words in the air like claiming your disease as if you walked into a corner store with five dollars in your pocket and purchased it. Or that call you make to your family to let them know that you're getting ready to go through something, and they go, Oh, oh, you're gonna be all right. Dismissal all in the name of love. So what did I learn about strength growing up? That as a black woman I had to walk in it. Be it. Never let them see you sweat. You better not cry. Dry those tears up. You don't do that here. If any of you grew up like me, you heard I didn't raise no pump. You better get your stuff together. Because if I smiled, it was wipe that stupid smile off your face. Strength. You're so strong. That's not a compliment. You're handling things so well. Still not a compliment. Who was allowed to fall apart and who wasn't? I know you've noticed as if title renders some of us inhuman. No, we're all human. Not human doings. So when did I'm fine become my default response when I noticed that if I wasn't fine, no one was interested. And if they seemed interested, it was often dismissed with some type of religious colloquialism. Or something about age. You're too young to be down and talking about depression. Who told you that? You don't have no bills to pay, no mortgage to pay. Nothing wrong with you. I don't know about you, but a lot of those things shut me down emotionally. And I became very guarded. My great grandmother. We called her Bibi. Her name, Allie Beatrice Young. She migrated from Tennessee. She was the daughter of a full-blood Native American from the Cherokee tribe and an African slave woman. We used to laugh when she would tell us that we were somehow the cousins of Tina Turner. But we showed her have pretty legs. And she said, I got something to tell you. BB passed away this morning. No tears in her eyes. No, baby, I'm sorry. Just news like nothing. My heart broke. I was never the same after that. And grief looks like a lot of different things. People look at the stages of grief as though they happen linearly, but they don't. One day you may be angry. And then you go back to being sad. And then you go to denial. And then you may go back to being sad. You may even get to the point where you think, I feel much better. And then a word that triggers a memory pulls you right back into grief because it never left. I teach my clients that grieving has no timetable. And there is no getting over. They're simply going through. Because your nervous system is a recorder. And it had recorded everything, even as far back as in the womb up until now. And so when we are grieving the loss of our best friend, of our loved one, of our house that was burned in a fire or foreclosed on a relationship that we thought was going to blossom into something beautiful, but it didn't. Right? They can't be still. And that's the medicine. Distraction. And don't get me wrong, not all distraction is negative. Right? We use distraction in somatic therapy to help regulate the nervous system, to help the thoughts stop racing. We use distraction to decrease anxiety. When does distraction become a hindrance when you're not even allowing yourself to feel society rewards composure during devastation? Sits quietly, and the newscaster talks about how calm and patient and forgiving the family was. Oh, but when that is not the case, and the true feelings are out, and the family has really been disturbed, that news report looks a little different, doesn't it? There's no rallying around truth. And it's unfortunate. When it's an inconvenience. Right. People may sit with you for a week, maybe but for a month. If anyone out there has ever grieved anything, you find out that the world does not stop when you're grieving. I'll start with integration. It allows. Unless you want to. Smiling does not mean you're not grieving. And grieving also shouldn't have you putting away your smiles. When I'm counseling with someone that is grieving and going through that process, as a therapist, I actually give them permission to feel however they feel in the moment. So if we're crying one minute and then the next minute, a funny memory comes. They're allowed through tears to chuckle. And it's okay. Most of the time, when someone says get control over your emotions, they mean suppress them because I'm uncomfortable. Someone else's comfortability is not your responsibility. And your nervous system actually thanks you for allowing it to release what it needs to in any given moment. So, how does the nervous system protect us during loss? Depending on your experiences, your nervous system may go into busyness that high-functioning grief, that productivity mask. Your nervous system may even go into shutdown where you don't want to be bothered. You don't want to be touched, you don't want to be talked to, and you don't want to talk. Your nervous system may indeed start releasing through tears and groans and sobbing that you feel like won't stop. And I always say allow that. Tears do the same thing for the nervous system that rain does for the pollen in the air. And when not allowed, that unresolved grief often shows up as irritability or exhaustion, or even that control says, I'm over it just behind me. Sovereignty says I survived it, and I'm still integrating. Not many people want to discuss loss of health. You hear things like, where is your faith? It's still here. It hasn't gone anywhere. It's trusting and believing God through this cancer, through this autoimmune disorder, through the loss of the leg for diabetes, through this diabetes. And just because you're attempting to share what the doctor has said to you does not mean you're claiming it.