September 18, 2023 • 47 mins
Did anyone teach you that understanding your grief is the key to being (or becoming) a healthy human being? Probably not.
In this expansive episode, Megan speaks with world-renowned author and physician Gabor Maté about the role of trauma and grief in our personal lives and in society at large. Dr. Gabor Maté on grief, this week on It’s OK that You’re Not OK, the podcast.
In this episode we cover:
- What is “personal agency” and why does losing personal agency create disease?
- Why calling grief a disorder has social, relational and political ramifications
- How do elephants grieve? Is it really so different from humans?
- Women as the emotional shock absorbers for the rest of the world
- Why we often ignore other peoples’ pain to make ourselves comfortable
- Does taking pain seriously make you more hopeful?
- Dr. Gabor Maté’s conversation with Prince Harry (!)
Follow our show on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok @refugeingrief and @itsokpod on TikTok. Visit refugeingrief.com for resources & courses
About the guest:
Dr. Gabor Maté is a renowned speaker and author, with expertise in trauma, stress, addiction, and child development. He’s the NYT best-selling author of The Myth of Normal, the award-winning In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, and many other books. Find him at drgabormate.com
About Megan:
Psychotherapist Megan Devine is one of today’s leading experts on grief, from life-altering losses to the everyday grief that we don’t call grief. The best-selling book on grief in over a decade, Megan’s It’s Ok that You’re Not OK, is a global phenomenon that has been translated into more than 25 languages. Her animations and explainers have garnered over 75 million views and are used in training programs around the world. Find her @refugeingrief
Additional resources:
Check out Megan’s best-selling books - It’s OK That You're Not OK and How to Carry What Can’t Be Fixed
Books and research mentioned in this episode
- The Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté
- Scattered Minds by Gabor Maté
- The Wisdom of Trauma - documentary exploring Gabor Maté’s work to understand the connection between illness, addiction, trauma, and society.
- Jaak Panksepp researched connections between human emotion processing and other mammals
- Hold Onto Your Kids by Gordon Neufeld & Gabor Maté
- Research on early trauma in elephants
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Loss of agency shows up all the time. It also
means going to a doctor and unthinkingly and without investigation,
accepting their point of view on your condition. I didn't
say none. Listen to it. For God's sakes. Listen to it,
but don't give up your agency.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
This is It's Okay that You're Not Okay, the show
that explores how not okay we are and why that
is okay to talk about. I'm your host, Megan Divine.
This week It's Okay that You're Not Okay. Renowned speaker
and best selling author, doctor Gabor Matte joins me to
talk about the long term costs of denying grief or
any emotion, and why elephants might just be better than humans.
(00:43):
Settle in Everybody, This fascinating conversation with one of the
world's leading experts on trauma and addiction and stress coming
right up after this first break. Before we get started,
one quick note. While we cover a lot of emotional
(01:05):
relational territory in our time here together, this show is
not a substitute for skilled support with a licensed mental
health provider or for professional supervision related to your work.
Hey friends, I'm so excited to share this episode with you.
In his latest book, The Myth of Normal, doctor Gabermatte
(01:25):
says that being shamed or pressured into pretending things don't
hurt comes with a long term cost, both personally and collectively.
He says, quote so much heartbreak, addiction, disease, violence, and
suffering spools out from the endless daily act of denying
that what hurts doesn't hurt. So you can see why
(01:47):
I love his work. This is the same stuff that
I've been writing about and speaking about for over a decade,
and it turns out that pretending things are okay when
they are not is doing far more harm than good.
Doctor Gabor Matte is a renowned speaker expert in trauma, stress, addiction,
and child development, and he's the New York Times bestselling
(02:09):
author of the new book The Myth of Normal, plus
the award winning in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, and
like a million other books, all of which will be
linked in the show notes. We cover a lot of
territory in this episode, and even though I had a
meticulously crafted outline for us to follow, well for me
to follow, we didn't follow any of it. Instead, we
(02:32):
talked about inherited grief, what happens when we deny our
emotions and how those emotions find other ways to speak
in our personal lives, in our communities. We talked about
the differences between humans and other species with these special
shout out to elephants, and in a fascinating conversation about
the fetishization of resilience. That's a hard thing to say,
(02:54):
the fetishization of resilience. We learn how politics and politicians
are in fluen by grief. It's this like macro micro
inner world, outer world conversation that threads a lot of
powerful things together. Now, there are two things that you'll
hear Us mentioned that might need a little bit of
a backstory. So one you'll hear Gaber reference the DSM,
(03:17):
which is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. It's basically the
catalog of mental health conditions or disorders used by the
mental health industry to define and diagnose mental health conditions.
If you want to hear more about the DSM and
my thoughts about it, check out the episode on prolonged
Grief disorder in the podcast archives and we'll link it
in the show notes. Two. The second thing you'll hear
(03:40):
Gabor mention is his upcoming interview with Prince Harry. That's right,
right after Gabor and I finished our conversation, he was
heading directly into a call with Prince Harry to discuss
his mother's death and all the ways that his grief
has evolved and changed over time. You know, no big deal,
(04:01):
just Gabor and Prince Harry chatting about grief. But first
we had our conversation. There are so many gems here. Friends,
I can't wait to hear what you carry with you
from this conversation with doctor Gabor Matte.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Thanks for having me, I'll say you very frankly. We've
had your book in the house for a while. My
wife really loves it. Her mother died a few years ago.
I know of your work, but I've been to visity
to read the book itself. My wife really talks of
you your book very highly.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Oh, thank you. Thank her for me. I appreciate. I
appreciate that. Yeah, I feel like, you know, reading through
a lot of your work getting ready for our conversation.
We have a lot of overlaps in the ways that
we come to the world and the ways that we
think about not just grief, but inherited emotional styles and
the impact that that's had on the world.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, So I want to talk a little bit about
your book, but your most recent book, but not yet
because we're at a I really like to start is
a little bit earlier in your timeline, if that's okay
with you. I want to follow a thread from Scattered Minds.
So in Scatter Minds you were writing about your family's
experience of the Holocaust, and you wrote, as a Jewish
(05:14):
infant under Nazi occupation, I was raised by a mother
who was grief stricken at the death of her parents
at Auschwitz. My mother was anxiety, written because she didn't
know if her husband was dead or alive, and we
were under threat of deportation and violence ourselves. Now you've
written about that family experience from a lot of different perspectives,
(05:34):
attention deficit disorder, behavioral coping skills. And we were just
talking about Prince Harry and the inheritance of grief well
before his mom died. So what strikes me as a
thread running through so much of your collected works is
both lived and inherited grief.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Yes, and how it's processed or isn't. Yeah, great neuroscientists
who I quote in a couple of my books no
Longer Alive, talk about Grief. He died of cancer a
few years ago. His name was yak Jaak PANKSEPPNK s
c PP, and he described the human emotional system as
(06:17):
being very similar to the emotional system of other mammals
with whom we share certain brain circuits for play, for example,
or for caring, or for anger, and also for grief.
Grief isn't some kind of arbitrary response. It's actually wired
into our brains. There's a reason for it, and the
(06:37):
reason is loss is a part of life, so that
even before the big losses of somebody dying, a neighborhood
child might not want to play with you when you're
four years old, your dog may die, Grandpa may not
be available on a Sunday to be with you, and
you have to be able to process that loss. It's
(06:57):
many of the dysfunctions that have a experience to have
witness in my patients is really our inability or a
lack of support to process grief and to come to
terms with the loss.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yeah, it's that lack of support and lack of acknowledgment.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
That's right. So that's why grief is such a sometimes
spoken sometimes unspoken theme through my work. Because I deal
with physical illness or what we call mental illness, or
addictions or what of coping mechanisms, dysfunctions, there's always an
unprocessed grief underneath it. If I could come to terms
with the loss, I wouldn't have to keep running away
(07:33):
from the grief that I don't want to feel.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
I think that some people can interpret what you're talking
about there as like acceptance, right. If I can just
accept what happened to me, then it wouldn't bother me.
But that's not what you're saying.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
No. Acceptance can be rather superficial. I can say I
accept something, and intellectually I might, but that doesn't mean
I've emotionally wroked it through. That doesn't mean that I
really grieved it. There's a friendom mine in a psychology
as very a stude man with whom I wrote a
book really based on his work. It's called hold On
to Your Kids, and it's it's a parenting book. Gordon
(08:08):
Uffield is his name, And Gordon said to me, once
we shall be saved in an ocean of tears. This
is when we actually work through the loss and really
grieve it and cry about it, not because we accept
the intellectually but actually feel the pain of it. Allows
us to feel the pain of it and really cry
about it, that's when the healing actually happens.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Yeah, really being seen in it. And that's that's one
of my favorite themes in all of your work is
that it's not about we do these things so that
nothing bugs us anymore, or you know this this really
transactional emotional formula.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Not that nothing bugs anymore, that we can handle it
when it bugs us, We can handle it functionally rather
than escaping, denying, or acting it out.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
There's a something that you wrote where you said, we
have the circuitry for grief inside our brains. It needs
to be allowed to do its thing.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah. Well that's what yeah, bank Step was talking about.
So we have these circuits in our brain. One of
the essential developmental needs of children, as I point out
in my book The myth and Normal, is the capacity
to experience all their emotions. Not the capacity they have,
the capacity, their freedom to experience all their emotions and
have those emotions validated and heard, listened accepted by the environment.
(09:32):
Just to say that nurturing environment, the parents and the
other adults in our lives, and that includes grief. We're
endowed with these emotional circuitsy for love, for example, but
that doesn't mean we're going to feel love all the time,
or even be able to feel it at all in
the case of some people, because like all instincts, we're
all evolutionary determined the emotional dynamics. They need their right
(09:55):
environment for their full unfoldment and development. So just because
of brain is are wired for it, it doesn't mean
we'll experience it in a healthy way. That depends on
the kind of receiving and holding that we experience in
our formative years. So it being there as a potential
as a brain circuit, you know, to give you maybe
(10:17):
a trivial example, a bird instinctually is programmed to fly,
but unless they're given their latitude to do so, they won't.
You know, if you kept the baby bird in the
cage and they never see adult birds flying, that bird
won't fly, right. That instinct needs the environment to evoke it.
In the same with grief faction.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Yeah, we need to see examples to live into.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
We need to see the examples, but even deeper than that,
we have to be able to experience it and have
that experience validated and accepted.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Yeah, it's tricky, right, because we've got such a grief
illiterate and emotionally illiterate culture going back hundreds of years.
So where do we start to find that validation that
we need for ourselves and offer that validation to our kids,
to our friends, to our community. Like, if we don't
(11:14):
have that pattern to emulate, like, where do we start
with that?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Well, like, there's so many other things that we've become
alienated from. We have to understand and appreciate and come
to terms of what we've lost. Now you talk about grieving,
there's greeting traditions all over the world. I mean, there's
the Irish keening, you know, there's the Mexican Day of
the Dead, but they actually were picnics by the grave
side of the dead ones. There's the Jewish Shiva where
(11:44):
people gather and jokes and drink coffee, you know well,
and also talk respectfully and appreciatively about the disease. So
we haven't entirely lost touch with these traditions, but they
become more and more the exception, because we've been so
future becomes so future, and that it's all about what
we can get from the future.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
I feel like a lot of those traditions have been
sort of consumed by the transactional get over it thing,
like once you've finished Shiva, you shouldn't be sad anymore.
If you understand that death is part of life, then
you shouldn't still be sad that your child died six
(12:25):
months later. You know, like, there's if we get the
rituals of end of life correct, then grief shouldn't be
something that you still experience. And I just feel like
we've done such a disservice to some beautiful traditions by
making them an endpoint instead of a beginning.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Well, the traditions aren't meant to obviate or put an
end to grief. They're meant to ritualize it and validate
it and to provide some support for the for the
grieving ones. But that doesn't mean it's over. I don't
know any parent who's ever lost a child who's never
going to be sad about it. How is that even possible?
(13:00):
I mean not to trivialize it, but I used that
this beautiful malamute dog who died. God really blew that one.
When when they when when they made them. The life
of dogs so much shorter than life of human beings,
you know. So I still give over that with that
beautiful malamet, you know, And that was decades ago. Not
(13:22):
that we go on things sad about it all the time.
But when I look at his photograph or think about
it and there's a poignant grief lag pain in my heart,
you know. So that doesn't mean I go on depressed
around about it, but it's there. Why shouldn't it be there?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Right? Why shouldn't it be there? And I think that
that is the the part that we're missing so much,
is that the normalcy of a poignant connection that you
carry with you, right, I mean the normalcy of lifelong
connection to those we love, yeah yeah, And that that
(14:00):
orientation to the human condition is normal, that there is
nothing wrong with our ways of feeling in this world.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Well, you've probably seen the latest emendations to the DSM,
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychaitic Association.
Now they got some pathology related to grief. M H.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Boy, have I had thoughts about that?
Speaker 1 (14:34):
You know? Somebody wants to sort of parody of the DSM,
And they said that in the final analysis, every human
activity except the practice of psychiatry is pathological.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Absolutely, right. I mean we've we've already, we've already moved
in that direction. And I can look at I can
look at the history of the DSM and take a
little bit of hope in that, like homosexuality is no
longer considered a pathological condition, like yay us, but sticking
prolonged grief disorder in there. You know, there's there's just
so much like, oh, we need it so that we
(15:06):
can get care covered under this corrupt system, Like that
actually doesn't work either. But that's really like this demonizing
and pathologizing of the human experience, which is something yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah, if people only only understood that in this insurance
driven non health system, the DSM can be used to
get coverage for treatment, but it has no other value,
and it's a totally arbitrary value. And well, it has
a certain value. It describes things, yeah, it's shorthand, but
(15:42):
it doesn't explain anything, you know, So you refer to
my book on ADHD, which is a condition I've been
diagnosed with. But look how circular tautological it is. Gob
or has difficulty paying attention and has got poor impulse
control and doesn't like sitting still. Why is that that's
because he's got ADHD. How do we know he's got
(16:05):
ADHD because he's got difficulty sitting still and difficulty paying
attention and his poor impulse control. Why does he have
poor impulse control? Because you know, you can go through
the whole list of security diagnosis and play the same
circular game. So they describe things, and that may be helpful.
Sometimes they explain nothing. They say nothing about the human experience.
(16:27):
So in calling grief a disorder, well, you've described somebody
who's got long grief and maybe is more entrenched in
that grief than is good for them. But to call
that a disorder is to ignore the fact that maybe
that person is alone and they haven't had the support,
maybe they've had this cheer up, get over it kind
(16:47):
of mentality trust upon them. In other words, it's not
a disorder and a person. It's a relationship to the
culture that they live in. So why are we diagnosing
the individual with this disorder?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
I love that looking at the diagnosis SPECIFICALLYNGED for prolonged
grief disorder, not as a diagnosis of the individual, but
as a diagnosis of the relationship to the community exactly. Yeah,
that's amazing language for that, because it really is a
community issue, right. We know that being seen and acknowledged
(17:22):
and supported, tangibly supported, emotionally supported, scene witnessed inside difficult
experiences is one of the things that helps somebody continue
to live their life in a way that has beauty
and meaning and support and all of the good outcomes
that we want for somebody. And we know that lack
(17:43):
of support, being shamed or otherised or not supported and
not validated has those quote unquote negative outcomes of perseveration
or whatever.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Honest, I'm very much mistaken elephants grieving community. They shared
the Greek circuit that we had. Yeah, no elephant, I imagine,
tells another one. Get over it already, right.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Buck up, packad arm, we got things to do. Like,
that's just not a thing that happens. Elephants are just
the coolest, coolest and most fascinating creatures, and I feel
like we can look to them for so many mirrors
for the human experience. I remember reading gosh over a
decade ago about elephants who had witnessed their mothers or
(18:28):
their aunties or female relations being killed at the hands
of poachers then became these like roving gangs of violent
young males, and that back at the time I believe
this was in Kenya, not entirely sure, but that there
was an organization basically doing trauma work with young male
(18:49):
elephants to rehit like that was phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Is there Professor emerita at not Today University in psychology,
her name is Darcy Narvaz, and she's done a lot
of work on indigenous peoples and tribal cultures and all
that we've lost and so on. But she's written a
book called The evaulved Nest and she's coming out in
a couple of months, and the chapters on elephants and
(19:16):
other mammals and how they relate emotionally to each other,
and including her on grief. That book is so exciting.
When a baby elephant is born, you know what happens.
This is at the other end of the spectrum from grief.
The Parturian elephant when she goes into labor, she's surrounded
by the other female elephants. When the baby plops to
the ground, they all stroke them with their trunks. Not
(19:41):
only do they grieve community, they also celebrate life. Community.
This is elephants.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Elephants are rad There's so much in there about not
fixing right, like letting things be as they are. And
we can look at ourselves and we can look at elephants,
and we can look at other mammals, other creatures and say,
here's what happens when validation doesn't happen, when community doesn't happen,
(20:13):
when there are breaches in relationship, like, this is where
we get violence, This is where we get addiction, This
is where we get all of these things that are
social and communal illnesses. Right, it's not the grief, it's
not the pain, it's not the birth that's the problem.
It's the rift in the relationship and the community.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Well, the example I often give is, let's say a
three year old is enjoying an ice cream cone and
then the ice cream falls into the dust. Nikid, did
you really upset? Now? There's three ways you could handle it.
You can see it's okay, I'll get you. Another one
there is stop whining. So what I think of all
the starting children in Asia. The third one is, ah,
(20:59):
you're really sad that you as caream go up to
the gound. You really was enjoying it so much, and
now it's gone, Oh what a drag. Come here, let
me hold you. You know, now two of those methods
are going to create problems. The third one will help
the child handle grief. So it's the question of do
we have the strength to accept the emotions of another
(21:21):
that we can be with it without trying to either
bribe it or forbid it.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
I love the bribing one, right, And this is this
is such like behavioral skill building. Here is life has celebrations,
and it has difficulties and everything in between, and do
we have the skills and the networks to continue to
meet it? And the bribery one, it's interesting, like I
get that as soon as you say that, and you know,
(21:48):
I've like, oh crap, I've probably done that before where
I'm like, oh, let's just get you another one, or
it's okay, we can do another, like we can try
it again, Like there's this.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
That can come in afterwards, but first you have to
accept the feeling. And I remember reading an article of yours,
I think in the Washington Post about your experience of
the loss of your partner, and male meaning friends were
saying to you, oh, you're young, and pretty you'll find
another partner. Well, what were they saying. What they were
actually saying is I find it hard to be with
(22:20):
your grief, and I want to talk to you out
of it so I don't have to feel uncomfortable. Exactly, absolutely,
that's what they're actually saying. You found it, of course,
naturally profoundly unhelpful, and you seem to have had either
the resilience or the support or both not to be
negatively impacted by those kind of well man but really
(22:42):
stupid interventions. And the same thing happens in the addiction world,
you know, the codependent who's desperately trying to change the addict.
What they're really saying is I can't handle what I
feel when I see you behaving in a certain way,
so I'm going to try and change you so I
don't have to feel so bad inside myself. So we're
so often using others to try and regulate ourselves. We
(23:06):
try and control their experience so that we don't have
to feel about ourselves. And this shows up in childrearing
all the time, and certainly it shows up around grief
of course.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah, I mean it's that second half of the sentence, right,
it's what we really mean by what we're saying, and
it's just so it's so rude on so many levels.
And it really is about like we're trying to regulate
our own discomfort. And I think the trick here, and
trick is maybe the wrong word, but the trick here
is to slow things down and recognize your own discomfort
(23:40):
in the face of somebody else's emotions or feelings.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Yeah, to this day, in my marriage, I have great
difficulty with my wife's anxiety. No, No, not that she's
sort of an anxiety ridden person all the time, but
when the anxiety shows up, I want to kind of
regulate it and control it. No. Why is that because,
as you quoted earlier, when I was an infant, I
had a very anxious mother and that made me feel
intensely uncomfortable. So it still brings up that. Just yesterday,
(24:09):
my wife and I had a conversation, you know, around
this whole interview thing with Prince Harry that I'm on
this weekend, and there's been a lot of backwash and
feedback and public conversation around it, and I'm kind of
used to the limelight, you know, so I can take
it in my stride my wife. For her, this has
(24:30):
been rather overwhelming. And then part of the reaction is
this is too much and it's kind of an anxiety reaction.
And I found myself tense and trying to control her.
And why is that? Because I'm uncomfortable with her anxiety?
I can't what's the word you say to stay with
it or to have patience for it, to be able
(24:50):
to be with it? Is a word that you use.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Oh, I'm not sure, but one of the words I
will often use is with a stand or witness.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Yeah, well that's it. I called doing that until I
realized that I was having difficulty doing it. And then
I owned it and I said, hey, I'm noticing that
I'm having difficult I'm the one having the difficulty. But
it's taken some work to gain that kind of self awareness.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Yeah, and that's the work, right, Like the work is
to recognize not that you or someone else is like
screwing up or doing it wrong. It's that we all
have conditioning and inheritances, emotional and physical and relational inheritances
that have a long reach, and becoming aware of them
(25:37):
so that we know when those things are happening. So
that we can sort of reset our foundations in the
relationship that's happening or the interaction that's happening in front
of us, right and slowing things down to say, oh,
this is actually causing discomfort in me, Let me tend
to that so that I can either step away or
I can show up for you in the ways that
(25:57):
you deserve and the ways that you need. But I
got to take care of this in me first.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
And you know there's a lot of teaching. I don't
know if you ever had Tara Brokhan, but she does
very much about it in the same terms.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Hey, before we get back to my conversation with doctor
Gabar Matte, I want to tell you about a new
way to get answers to your questions about grief. Each month,
I host a live video call in Q and a
session for patrons. If you've ever wanted to know if
what you're feeling is normal, come ask me. If you
want to know how to have that conversation with your
(26:42):
nosey relative who keeps butting into your business with their
ideas about what your law should look like, come join us.
I'll help you create a boundary where there really needs
to be a boundary once a month, every month. If
you've ever wish you could talk to me directly and
get your questions answered, this is by far the easiest
way to do it. All of the information is at
(27:03):
patreon dot com backslash Megan Divine and you can find
the link in the show notes. I hope to see
you there every month. All right, let's get back to
my conversation with best selling author doctor Gabor Matte. I
think I can get so adamant about the ways we
do things wrong that it seems like I'm just like
(27:25):
always like, Okay, this is wrong, and this is wrong,
and this is you know, you have to do this
better relationally and all of these things. And it is
true that we get a lot of things wrong, and
it doesn't have to be so complicated to make things better.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Right, Yeah, that's right. Well, Tara talks about her method
called rain all right, which is recognized just recognize if
something is there, and then allow it to be there.
And then I'm feeling sad right now, I'm feeling anxious
right now. Then investigation, what's it's all about it? And
(28:02):
then nurturing it, taking care of it, you know, And
it's really what you're talking about as well, of just
being with something and allowing it and being curious about it.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yeah. Yeah, and it's not something I love. And what
you just described as like the personal agency in there,
and that's something that you talk about a lot in
all of your work and in your most recent book too,
is like the being able to find personal agency in
your own healing and in your own life and in
(28:32):
your own relationships.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Well, in my view, based on my medical experience and
all the research that I've covered, is that that loss
of agency is that the source of much of what
we call pathology, whether physical or mental. And people have
a hard time grasping this, sometimes only because the medical
training completely separates the mind from the body, but that
(28:59):
loss of agency she shows up in physical illness. The
mind body unity being so such a fact, it's all
one that our emotional lives effect our physiology. When we
lose agency, the capacity to respond authentically to our life
(29:21):
situations from a place of self awareness and connectedness to
all our emotions, including pain and grief. When we lose
that capacity, we lose agency. That loss of agency has
an impact on our immune systems and our hormonal apparatus,
on our cardiovascular system, on our nervous system, and often
(29:41):
healing if you actually study the literature and healing, it
has to do with the regaining of agency. Even the
word healing comes from a word for wholeness. And so
how is it that we're not whole? Were not whole
because at some point, in order to survive our early environments,
we have to suppress our connection to ourselves of agency,
(30:02):
which at that time was necessary to help us negotiate
our early environment. But that same loss of agency then
are giving up of ourselves. The loss of authenticity then
has physiological impacts lifelong that can manifest an illness of
mind and body. And the healing then becoming a whole
(30:22):
again is precisely the regaining of that agency. That's the
main theme in my most recent book.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
So what would regaining agency look like as a practice
for an individual.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Here's what it would look like on a simple level.
As I told you I'm going to Los Angeles this week,
it so happened, and you're in Los Angeles and I
arrived Wednesday evening, and I call you up and I say,
do you want to go for coffee? And you don't
feel like it because you're tired, and because you got
you know, watch television or you know.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Well, I got things to do.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Yeah, you've got things to do. You're not feeling well whatever,
But you say yes because you're afraid of displeasing me.
You're afraid of hurting my feelings. You're afraid of disappointing me.
You're a faith I won't like it. I won't like
you if you say no. So you say yes. What
doesn't know that wants to be staid? Well, that's a
loss of agency. You're not acting on behalf of yourself.
(31:23):
You're acting on behalf of what you think will please me,
so that I will accept you even as you're rejecting yourself.
So loss of agency shows up all the time. It
also means going to a doctor and unthinkingly and without investigation,
accepting their point of view on your condition. I didn't
say nonet Listen to it, for God's sake, Listen to it,
(31:45):
but don't give up your agency. You know, in a relationship.
When I talk about in the midst of normal the
chapter on women, eighty percent of autoimmune disease happens to women.
Now out immune disease happens to happen to peopleople who
suppressed their emotions, especially their healthy anger, who were always
trying to please others and take care of the emotional
(32:06):
needs of others. Now there was to given of agency
or who think that agencies expressed through absorbing the needs
and stresses of others. Now, in this culture rich gender
is program to do that. It's not a genetic thing,
it's a cultural thing. That's why women of eighty percent
(32:27):
of autoimmune disease.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
I love the phraser using the book as women as
the shock absorbers.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
That's from a headline in the New York Times, which
during COVID looked at women and the stresses they're under,
and women assumed automatically that their job was to absorb
the stresses and griefs and unhappiness of their children, their families,
and their spouses, which was caused by COVID, And women
(32:53):
felt guilty when they couldn't successfully elevate the stresses of
their spouses. So the New York Times did an article
called Society, Society shock Absorbers. I took that headline maybe
into a chapter title, because that's actually at the root
of so much chronic disease. That's what women have much
more chronic illness than menda, I believe.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Yeah, I mean there's the when you're describing agency, you know,
the way that I really hear this is like, we
don't lie to ourselves very well, right, so we're out
of alignment with what we want for ourselves. If we
had the capacity or the time or the understanding that
we need to listen for what's true for us and
then claim that truth out into the world and putting
(33:36):
yourself first, the Karen feeding of your own being ahead
of the Karen feeding of other beings. And we don't
lie to ourselves very well, which is why we go
back sort of back to where we started here with
validation and acknowledgment not just of grief but of everything
like that is the foundational element here.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Did you say that we don't lie to ourselves very well?
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yeah, we don't lie to ourselves very well.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
I don't agree. No, I think we lie to ourselves
all too well, which is why there's so much illness
in this society. What we don't do it is we
don't do it successfully because the body won't let us
get away with it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
I think that. I mean, I think that's sort of
what That's what I mean. Like, we lie to ourselves
all the time. We're super deeper practiced with it as
a skill set. We're awesome at lying to ourselves. But
the impact of lying to ourselves like that that bill
comes due, right, Like, we don't lie to ourselves very
well in the sense that that has such an impact
and such a cost that it's not successful absolutely.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Well, how I would put it is, we don't align
with ourselves very well, and we lie to ourselves in
order not to align with ourselves, and that exacts and
resorbit and cost in terms of health and wellbeing. Yeah, Or,
as bessel Venderkok says in the title of his book
on trauma, the body keeps the score.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Yes, the community keeps the score too, right. I mean,
we're not just talking about individuals having issues, right, We're
talking about communities and culture. And you know, we started
out this conversation talking about the long reach of inherited
(35:19):
grief and inherited violence. And when I talk about politics
or policy in my work, I don't get backlash as
often as you might think in a sort of an
ugly internet world, but I do get some complaints, like
can you just stick to grief. And you know my
(35:40):
response is always like, I am sticking to grief.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Yeah, I know, I get the same thing. You're a doctor,
but you talk about politics. I talk about politics because
everything affects everything else. That's right, because human health is
not an individual or individualized quality. It's a reflection of
our relationship from in utero or onwards, with our parents,
with our environment, with our community, and with our whole culture.
(36:06):
Nothing is separable. So if you look at so called
political factors. There was an article in the New York
Times ten days ago another as we speak about black
women giving birth and their risk of the child dying
or them dying is higher than white women, regardless of
economic status. It's about the inflammatory literally physiologically inflammatory impacts
(36:33):
of racism. Another study three months ago in the afthematic racism.
If you look at the person, they have higher inflammatory
processes in their bodies. But put that projected on a
lifelong basis no wonder. Then if you look at the
health of populations such as Indigenous Canadians or Black Americans,
and every measure they come out worse. And it's got
(36:55):
nothing to do with genetics. It has to do with
politics and society and sociology and calledure in history. So
how can we not talk about it when it's all one?
That's the whole point.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeah, yeah, you can't separate that stuff because policies create grief.
Systems create grief, and systems and policies are created by
humans that are carrying deep trauma and a lack of
alignment and a lack of being seen. And we can't
(37:26):
talk about the need to acknowledge and honor grief and
find community and find relationship and not talk about politics,
policy and culture because they are all one cloth.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
Yeah. Well, you know, the buddhas said it twenty five
hundred years ago. He said, look at a leaf or
a rain drop. He said, look at all the conditions
that are going to make and leaf for a rein drop.
It's all interconnected. He said. Without the many, they cannot
be the one. And without the money they can they
cannot be the one. And it's true, if you look
at a leaf, you can look is an isolated object.
(38:02):
But is it The leaf is a product of photosynthesis.
It produces photosynthesis, which is to say, the processing of
light which comes from the sun, and the leaf contains
the sky. The water that fell from the sky that
then is sucked up to the roots and into the leaf.
(38:22):
The leaf contains the earth, the materials the leaf might
reflect the activity of other animals and human beings. You
can't talk about the individual leaf as an isolated, separate entity.
It contains the whole world. The same thing that's true
of everything, including us as human beings. So that's why
you can't separate anything for anything else. So it's not
(38:42):
just spiritual wisdom that we're talking about here. We're talking
about just basic science, right, We're talking facts.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Yeah, the facts, not fluff here. I mean, you keep
your eyes and your mind on so much pain and suffering, right,
and the systems and the containers and the interrelatedness of
pain and suffering, which can be a real bummer of
(39:11):
a world. Right when we look at how much damage
has been inherited and passed on and how much damage
continues to be created. I know that you're not a
downer of a person, right, Like we can take things
seriously and still find hope for things. I mean, I'm
(39:32):
I'm well, let me make a few decisions, Okay, lay
it on me.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Yeah, So, first of all, there's pain and there suffering.
They're not the same thing. You can have pain without suffering.
When there's suffering, there's always pain. But when there's pain,
there's not always suffering. It's a question of why I
relate to that pain, And very often it is the
denial of pain that creates the suffering. I had to
be trying as a kid in order to be liked,
(39:57):
and I'm trying all my life because I don't want
to feel the pain of being rejected, and therefore I
end up with the wrong people. That's going to create pain.
So it's the running away from pain that creates the
suffering very often. Number one. Number two, you say take
it seriously, I think seriously and still have hope. Well,
is there a contradiction somehow? There's no, it's not. It's
(40:19):
not that despite taking things seriously, I have hope. It's
because I take things seriously. I look at all aspects
of things so that in every difficult situation is also
a possibility. It's not that I have hope, it's I
see the genuine possibility. And I've seen lots of people
as you have. I know, being through tremendous pain, tremendous
(40:41):
suffering and find new wisdom and even new ways of
being alive through dealing or honestly, by confronting seriously that
pain and that suffering, so that the very possibly of
healing and growth reside in the suffering. And as the
(41:02):
Greek playwright Escalus wrote in one of his plays, The Agamemnon,
that the way that God has created us, we have
to suffer suffering too. Truth. I wish it wasn't like that,
but it's just all too true for a lot of us.
That for you, I'm sure, and for me and for
many other people listening, it's when they've suffered that they've
actually started to discuss or discover or investigate, well, what
(41:25):
is the source of my suffering and what can I
learn from this? So that it's not one or the other.
It's that the suffering itself contains the possibility of healing,
and very often it's what grabs us by the scruff
of our necks to truth. You know.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
Yeah, there's so many directions that I could go, but
I know that we are winding up with time and
you need to get onto your next thing. So we
will link in the show notes to all of the
places where people can find you and hear more about
you and your newest book, anything else you want folks
to know in this last minute.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
I think we've covered a lot. Thank you very much,
and I really appreciate you hosting me. There's a film
people might want to watch. It's online. It's called The
Wisdom of Trauma, which is based on my work around trauma.
You can donate. The filmmakers are raising money for their
next project and indigenous people around the world. But also
people can't afford to you. You're not obligated to donate.
(42:23):
You can put zero zero dollars in there as well.
That's up to the individual. But that film, The Wisdom
of Trauma, which you can find online, I think it
sums up my work really astutely. No thanks to me,
by the way. The thing that's the credit to the filmmakers,
But I think it'll be of interest to a lot
of your listeners.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
Excellent, and we will find that and link to that
in the show notes everybody, so stay tuned. We will
be right back with your questions to carry with you
right after this break. Each week I leave you with
some questions to carry with you until we meet again. Now,
(43:02):
Gabor had an event to get to immediately after our conversation.
That conversation with Prince Harry that I mentioned before. So one,
I didn't get to explore what hope means for him
as much as I would have liked, though he did
talk a little bit about hope there at the end.
And two, if we'd had more time, you bet that
we would have thoroughly gotten into the idea that healing
(43:25):
comes through suffering, that our learning comes through suffering. I mean,
if you just took that line of his out of context,
it would be easy to hear it as like you
needed your suffering, you needed your suffering in order to grow,
and we know it's not like that. There's something to that, though.
What Gabor was talking about at the close of our
conversation not that we need suffering or that we only
(43:46):
learn through suffering, but that there is knowledge self knowledge,
knowledge we need for our own healing and the healing
of the world inside that suffering, with coming into a
relationship with that suffering, finding ways to tell the truth
about suffering so we can uncover the pain at the
root of it and listen to what that pain has
(44:07):
to say. I mean, that's just one of many things
that I'm taking from this conversation with doctor Gabor Matte
friends from elephants to childhood, to politics to everything now.
At the end there, Gabor said something that I love.
It was so fast that you might have missed it.
(44:29):
He said, it's because I take all this seriously that
I have hope. Because I take this seriously, I have hope,
not something I'm going to explore for myself this week,
the ways that my own hope may or may not
actually come from the serious attention I give to the
(44:49):
pain of the world. That feels like interesting territory to me.
How about you? What stuck with you from this conversation.
Everyone's going to take some different from the show, but
I do hope you found something to hold on to.
If you want to tell me how today's show felt
for you, or you have thoughts on what we covered,
let me now tag me at Refuge and Grief on
(45:11):
all the social platforms or it's okay pod on TikTok
so I can hear how this conversation affected you. Can
follow the show at Refuge and Grief on all the
social platforms and it's okay pod on TikTok to see
video clips from the show and use the hashtag it's
okay pod wherever, not only so that I can find
what you're thinking and you're feeling from this show, but
(45:34):
so others can find that conversation too. None of us
are entirely okay, and it's time we start talking about
that together. Yeah, it's okay that you're not okay. You're
in good company. That's it for this week. Friends, Remember
to subscribe to the show. Leave a review for the show.
(45:55):
Your reviews helped make the show easier to find for
other people, which obviously furthers our mission of getting more
people to have interesting conversations about difficult things. Also, though
your reviews are really special to me personally and I
love to read them. Want more information or support on
these topics. Look, grief is everywhere. As my dad says,
(46:17):
daily life is full of everyday grief that we don't
call grief. Learning how to talk about all that without
cliches or platitudes or simplistic, dismissive statements. That's an important
skill for everyone. Whether you're trying to support a friend
going through a hard time, or you work in the
helping professions and you talk about this stuff all the time,
get the help you need to have those conversations find trainings,
(46:40):
professional resources, and my best selling book, It's Okay that
You're Not Okay. At Megandivine dot Co. It's Okay that
You're Not Okay. The podcast is written and produced by
me Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced
by Elizabeth Fozzio. Logistical and social media support from Micah Hot,
Production and editing by Houston Tilly. Music provided by Wave
(47:03):
Crush and very quiet background noise provided by Luna gently
pawing at me to go get her some snacks
Loss of agency shows up all the time. It also
means going to a doctor and unthinkingly and without investigation,
accepting their point of view on your condition. I didn't
say none. Listen to it. For God's sakes. Listen to it,
but don't give up your agency.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
This is It's Okay that You're Not Okay, the show
that explores how not okay we are and why that
is okay to talk about. I'm your host, Megan Divine.
This week It's Okay that You're Not Okay. Renowned speaker
and best selling author, doctor Gabor Matte joins me to
talk about the long term costs of denying grief or
any emotion, and why elephants might just be better than humans.
(00:43):
Settle in Everybody, This fascinating conversation with one of the
world's leading experts on trauma and addiction and stress coming
right up after this first break. Before we get started,
one quick note. While we cover a lot of emotional
(01:05):
relational territory in our time here together, this show is
not a substitute for skilled support with a licensed mental
health provider or for professional supervision related to your work.
Hey friends, I'm so excited to share this episode with you.
In his latest book, The Myth of Normal, doctor Gabermatte
(01:25):
says that being shamed or pressured into pretending things don't
hurt comes with a long term cost, both personally and collectively.
He says, quote so much heartbreak, addiction, disease, violence, and
suffering spools out from the endless daily act of denying
that what hurts doesn't hurt. So you can see why
(01:47):
I love his work. This is the same stuff that
I've been writing about and speaking about for over a decade,
and it turns out that pretending things are okay when
they are not is doing far more harm than good.
Doctor Gabor Matte is a renowned speaker expert in trauma, stress, addiction,
and child development, and he's the New York Times bestselling
(02:09):
author of the new book The Myth of Normal, plus
the award winning in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, and
like a million other books, all of which will be
linked in the show notes. We cover a lot of
territory in this episode, and even though I had a
meticulously crafted outline for us to follow, well for me
to follow, we didn't follow any of it. Instead, we
(02:32):
talked about inherited grief, what happens when we deny our
emotions and how those emotions find other ways to speak
in our personal lives, in our communities. We talked about
the differences between humans and other species with these special
shout out to elephants, and in a fascinating conversation about
the fetishization of resilience. That's a hard thing to say,
(02:54):
the fetishization of resilience. We learn how politics and politicians
are in fluen by grief. It's this like macro micro
inner world, outer world conversation that threads a lot of
powerful things together. Now, there are two things that you'll
hear Us mentioned that might need a little bit of
a backstory. So one you'll hear Gaber reference the DSM,
(03:17):
which is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. It's basically the
catalog of mental health conditions or disorders used by the
mental health industry to define and diagnose mental health conditions.
If you want to hear more about the DSM and
my thoughts about it, check out the episode on prolonged
Grief disorder in the podcast archives and we'll link it
in the show notes. Two. The second thing you'll hear
(03:40):
Gabor mention is his upcoming interview with Prince Harry. That's right,
right after Gabor and I finished our conversation, he was
heading directly into a call with Prince Harry to discuss
his mother's death and all the ways that his grief
has evolved and changed over time. You know, no big deal,
(04:01):
just Gabor and Prince Harry chatting about grief. But first
we had our conversation. There are so many gems here. Friends,
I can't wait to hear what you carry with you
from this conversation with doctor Gabor Matte.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Thanks for having me, I'll say you very frankly. We've
had your book in the house for a while. My
wife really loves it. Her mother died a few years ago.
I know of your work, but I've been to visity
to read the book itself. My wife really talks of
you your book very highly.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Oh, thank you. Thank her for me. I appreciate. I
appreciate that. Yeah, I feel like, you know, reading through
a lot of your work getting ready for our conversation.
We have a lot of overlaps in the ways that
we come to the world and the ways that we
think about not just grief, but inherited emotional styles and
the impact that that's had on the world.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, So I want to talk a little bit about
your book, but your most recent book, but not yet
because we're at a I really like to start is
a little bit earlier in your timeline, if that's okay
with you. I want to follow a thread from Scattered Minds.
So in Scatter Minds you were writing about your family's
experience of the Holocaust, and you wrote, as a Jewish
(05:14):
infant under Nazi occupation, I was raised by a mother
who was grief stricken at the death of her parents
at Auschwitz. My mother was anxiety, written because she didn't
know if her husband was dead or alive, and we
were under threat of deportation and violence ourselves. Now you've
written about that family experience from a lot of different perspectives,
(05:34):
attention deficit disorder, behavioral coping skills. And we were just
talking about Prince Harry and the inheritance of grief well
before his mom died. So what strikes me as a
thread running through so much of your collected works is
both lived and inherited grief.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Yes, and how it's processed or isn't. Yeah, great neuroscientists
who I quote in a couple of my books no
Longer Alive, talk about Grief. He died of cancer a
few years ago. His name was yak Jaak PANKSEPPNK s
c PP, and he described the human emotional system as
(06:17):
being very similar to the emotional system of other mammals
with whom we share certain brain circuits for play, for example,
or for caring, or for anger, and also for grief.
Grief isn't some kind of arbitrary response. It's actually wired
into our brains. There's a reason for it, and the
(06:37):
reason is loss is a part of life, so that
even before the big losses of somebody dying, a neighborhood
child might not want to play with you when you're
four years old, your dog may die, Grandpa may not
be available on a Sunday to be with you, and
you have to be able to process that loss. It's
(06:57):
many of the dysfunctions that have a experience to have
witness in my patients is really our inability or a
lack of support to process grief and to come to
terms with the loss.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yeah, it's that lack of support and lack of acknowledgment.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
That's right. So that's why grief is such a sometimes
spoken sometimes unspoken theme through my work. Because I deal
with physical illness or what we call mental illness, or
addictions or what of coping mechanisms, dysfunctions, there's always an
unprocessed grief underneath it. If I could come to terms
with the loss, I wouldn't have to keep running away
(07:33):
from the grief that I don't want to feel.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
I think that some people can interpret what you're talking
about there as like acceptance, right. If I can just
accept what happened to me, then it wouldn't bother me.
But that's not what you're saying.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
No. Acceptance can be rather superficial. I can say I
accept something, and intellectually I might, but that doesn't mean
I've emotionally wroked it through. That doesn't mean that I
really grieved it. There's a friendom mine in a psychology
as very a stude man with whom I wrote a
book really based on his work. It's called hold On
to Your Kids, and it's it's a parenting book. Gordon
(08:08):
Uffield is his name, And Gordon said to me, once
we shall be saved in an ocean of tears. This
is when we actually work through the loss and really
grieve it and cry about it, not because we accept
the intellectually but actually feel the pain of it. Allows
us to feel the pain of it and really cry
about it, that's when the healing actually happens.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Yeah, really being seen in it. And that's that's one
of my favorite themes in all of your work is
that it's not about we do these things so that
nothing bugs us anymore, or you know this this really
transactional emotional formula.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Not that nothing bugs anymore, that we can handle it
when it bugs us, We can handle it functionally rather
than escaping, denying, or acting it out.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
There's a something that you wrote where you said, we
have the circuitry for grief inside our brains. It needs
to be allowed to do its thing.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah. Well that's what yeah, bank Step was talking about.
So we have these circuits in our brain. One of
the essential developmental needs of children, as I point out
in my book The myth and Normal, is the capacity
to experience all their emotions. Not the capacity they have,
the capacity, their freedom to experience all their emotions and
have those emotions validated and heard, listened accepted by the environment.
(09:32):
Just to say that nurturing environment, the parents and the
other adults in our lives, and that includes grief. We're
endowed with these emotional circuitsy for love, for example, but
that doesn't mean we're going to feel love all the time,
or even be able to feel it at all in
the case of some people, because like all instincts, we're
all evolutionary determined the emotional dynamics. They need their right
(09:55):
environment for their full unfoldment and development. So just because
of brain is are wired for it, it doesn't mean
we'll experience it in a healthy way. That depends on
the kind of receiving and holding that we experience in
our formative years. So it being there as a potential
as a brain circuit, you know, to give you maybe
(10:17):
a trivial example, a bird instinctually is programmed to fly,
but unless they're given their latitude to do so, they won't.
You know, if you kept the baby bird in the
cage and they never see adult birds flying, that bird
won't fly, right. That instinct needs the environment to evoke it.
In the same with grief faction.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Yeah, we need to see examples to live into.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
We need to see the examples, but even deeper than that,
we have to be able to experience it and have
that experience validated and accepted.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Yeah, it's tricky, right, because we've got such a grief
illiterate and emotionally illiterate culture going back hundreds of years.
So where do we start to find that validation that
we need for ourselves and offer that validation to our kids,
to our friends, to our community. Like, if we don't
(11:14):
have that pattern to emulate, like, where do we start
with that?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Well, like, there's so many other things that we've become
alienated from. We have to understand and appreciate and come
to terms of what we've lost. Now you talk about grieving,
there's greeting traditions all over the world. I mean, there's
the Irish keening, you know, there's the Mexican Day of
the Dead, but they actually were picnics by the grave
side of the dead ones. There's the Jewish Shiva where
(11:44):
people gather and jokes and drink coffee, you know well,
and also talk respectfully and appreciatively about the disease. So
we haven't entirely lost touch with these traditions, but they
become more and more the exception, because we've been so
future becomes so future, and that it's all about what
we can get from the future.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
I feel like a lot of those traditions have been
sort of consumed by the transactional get over it thing,
like once you've finished Shiva, you shouldn't be sad anymore.
If you understand that death is part of life, then
you shouldn't still be sad that your child died six
(12:25):
months later. You know, like, there's if we get the
rituals of end of life correct, then grief shouldn't be
something that you still experience. And I just feel like
we've done such a disservice to some beautiful traditions by
making them an endpoint instead of a beginning.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Well, the traditions aren't meant to obviate or put an
end to grief. They're meant to ritualize it and validate
it and to provide some support for the for the
grieving ones. But that doesn't mean it's over. I don't
know any parent who's ever lost a child who's never
going to be sad about it. How is that even possible?
(13:00):
I mean not to trivialize it, but I used that
this beautiful malamute dog who died. God really blew that one.
When when they when when they made them. The life
of dogs so much shorter than life of human beings,
you know. So I still give over that with that
beautiful malamet, you know, And that was decades ago. Not
(13:22):
that we go on things sad about it all the time.
But when I look at his photograph or think about
it and there's a poignant grief lag pain in my heart,
you know. So that doesn't mean I go on depressed
around about it, but it's there. Why shouldn't it be there?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Right? Why shouldn't it be there? And I think that
that is the the part that we're missing so much,
is that the normalcy of a poignant connection that you
carry with you, right, I mean the normalcy of lifelong
connection to those we love, yeah yeah, And that that
(14:00):
orientation to the human condition is normal, that there is
nothing wrong with our ways of feeling in this world.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Well, you've probably seen the latest emendations to the DSM,
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychaitic Association.
Now they got some pathology related to grief. M H.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Boy, have I had thoughts about that?
Speaker 1 (14:34):
You know? Somebody wants to sort of parody of the DSM,
And they said that in the final analysis, every human
activity except the practice of psychiatry is pathological.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Absolutely, right. I mean we've we've already, we've already moved
in that direction. And I can look at I can
look at the history of the DSM and take a
little bit of hope in that, like homosexuality is no
longer considered a pathological condition, like yay us, but sticking
prolonged grief disorder in there. You know, there's there's just
so much like, oh, we need it so that we
(15:06):
can get care covered under this corrupt system, Like that
actually doesn't work either. But that's really like this demonizing
and pathologizing of the human experience, which is something yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah, if people only only understood that in this insurance
driven non health system, the DSM can be used to
get coverage for treatment, but it has no other value,
and it's a totally arbitrary value. And well, it has
a certain value. It describes things, yeah, it's shorthand, but
(15:42):
it doesn't explain anything, you know, So you refer to
my book on ADHD, which is a condition I've been
diagnosed with. But look how circular tautological it is. Gob
or has difficulty paying attention and has got poor impulse
control and doesn't like sitting still. Why is that that's
because he's got ADHD. How do we know he's got
(16:05):
ADHD because he's got difficulty sitting still and difficulty paying
attention and his poor impulse control. Why does he have
poor impulse control? Because you know, you can go through
the whole list of security diagnosis and play the same
circular game. So they describe things, and that may be helpful.
Sometimes they explain nothing. They say nothing about the human experience.
(16:27):
So in calling grief a disorder, well, you've described somebody
who's got long grief and maybe is more entrenched in
that grief than is good for them. But to call
that a disorder is to ignore the fact that maybe
that person is alone and they haven't had the support,
maybe they've had this cheer up, get over it kind
(16:47):
of mentality trust upon them. In other words, it's not
a disorder and a person. It's a relationship to the
culture that they live in. So why are we diagnosing
the individual with this disorder?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
I love that looking at the diagnosis SPECIFICALLYNGED for prolonged
grief disorder, not as a diagnosis of the individual, but
as a diagnosis of the relationship to the community exactly. Yeah,
that's amazing language for that, because it really is a
community issue, right. We know that being seen and acknowledged
(17:22):
and supported, tangibly supported, emotionally supported, scene witnessed inside difficult
experiences is one of the things that helps somebody continue
to live their life in a way that has beauty
and meaning and support and all of the good outcomes
that we want for somebody. And we know that lack
(17:43):
of support, being shamed or otherised or not supported and
not validated has those quote unquote negative outcomes of perseveration
or whatever.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Honest, I'm very much mistaken elephants grieving community. They shared
the Greek circuit that we had. Yeah, no elephant, I imagine,
tells another one. Get over it already, right.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Buck up, packad arm, we got things to do. Like,
that's just not a thing that happens. Elephants are just
the coolest, coolest and most fascinating creatures, and I feel
like we can look to them for so many mirrors
for the human experience. I remember reading gosh over a
decade ago about elephants who had witnessed their mothers or
(18:28):
their aunties or female relations being killed at the hands
of poachers then became these like roving gangs of violent
young males, and that back at the time I believe
this was in Kenya, not entirely sure, but that there
was an organization basically doing trauma work with young male
(18:49):
elephants to rehit like that was phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Is there Professor emerita at not Today University in psychology,
her name is Darcy Narvaz, and she's done a lot
of work on indigenous peoples and tribal cultures and all
that we've lost and so on. But she's written a
book called The evaulved Nest and she's coming out in
a couple of months, and the chapters on elephants and
(19:16):
other mammals and how they relate emotionally to each other,
and including her on grief. That book is so exciting.
When a baby elephant is born, you know what happens.
This is at the other end of the spectrum from grief.
The Parturian elephant when she goes into labor, she's surrounded
by the other female elephants. When the baby plops to
the ground, they all stroke them with their trunks. Not
(19:41):
only do they grieve community, they also celebrate life. Community.
This is elephants.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Elephants are rad There's so much in there about not
fixing right, like letting things be as they are. And
we can look at ourselves and we can look at elephants,
and we can look at other mammals, other creatures and say,
here's what happens when validation doesn't happen, when community doesn't happen,
(20:13):
when there are breaches in relationship, like, this is where
we get violence, This is where we get addiction, This
is where we get all of these things that are
social and communal illnesses. Right, it's not the grief, it's
not the pain, it's not the birth that's the problem.
It's the rift in the relationship and the community.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Well, the example I often give is, let's say a
three year old is enjoying an ice cream cone and
then the ice cream falls into the dust. Nikid, did
you really upset? Now? There's three ways you could handle it.
You can see it's okay, I'll get you. Another one
there is stop whining. So what I think of all
the starting children in Asia. The third one is, ah,
(20:59):
you're really sad that you as caream go up to
the gound. You really was enjoying it so much, and
now it's gone, Oh what a drag. Come here, let
me hold you. You know, now two of those methods
are going to create problems. The third one will help
the child handle grief. So it's the question of do
we have the strength to accept the emotions of another
(21:21):
that we can be with it without trying to either
bribe it or forbid it.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
I love the bribing one, right, And this is this
is such like behavioral skill building. Here is life has celebrations,
and it has difficulties and everything in between, and do
we have the skills and the networks to continue to
meet it? And the bribery one, it's interesting, like I
get that as soon as you say that, and you know,
(21:48):
I've like, oh crap, I've probably done that before where
I'm like, oh, let's just get you another one, or
it's okay, we can do another, like we can try
it again, Like there's this.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
That can come in afterwards, but first you have to
accept the feeling. And I remember reading an article of yours,
I think in the Washington Post about your experience of
the loss of your partner, and male meaning friends were
saying to you, oh, you're young, and pretty you'll find
another partner. Well, what were they saying. What they were
actually saying is I find it hard to be with
(22:20):
your grief, and I want to talk to you out
of it so I don't have to feel uncomfortable. Exactly, absolutely,
that's what they're actually saying. You found it, of course,
naturally profoundly unhelpful, and you seem to have had either
the resilience or the support or both not to be
negatively impacted by those kind of well man but really
(22:42):
stupid interventions. And the same thing happens in the addiction world,
you know, the codependent who's desperately trying to change the addict.
What they're really saying is I can't handle what I
feel when I see you behaving in a certain way,
so I'm going to try and change you so I
don't have to feel so bad inside myself. So we're
so often using others to try and regulate ourselves. We
(23:06):
try and control their experience so that we don't have
to feel about ourselves. And this shows up in childrearing
all the time, and certainly it shows up around grief
of course.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah, I mean it's that second half of the sentence, right,
it's what we really mean by what we're saying, and
it's just so it's so rude on so many levels.
And it really is about like we're trying to regulate
our own discomfort. And I think the trick here, and
trick is maybe the wrong word, but the trick here
is to slow things down and recognize your own discomfort
(23:40):
in the face of somebody else's emotions or feelings.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Yeah, to this day, in my marriage, I have great
difficulty with my wife's anxiety. No, No, not that she's
sort of an anxiety ridden person all the time, but
when the anxiety shows up, I want to kind of
regulate it and control it. No. Why is that because,
as you quoted earlier, when I was an infant, I
had a very anxious mother and that made me feel
intensely uncomfortable. So it still brings up that. Just yesterday,
(24:09):
my wife and I had a conversation, you know, around
this whole interview thing with Prince Harry that I'm on
this weekend, and there's been a lot of backwash and
feedback and public conversation around it, and I'm kind of
used to the limelight, you know, so I can take
it in my stride my wife. For her, this has
(24:30):
been rather overwhelming. And then part of the reaction is
this is too much and it's kind of an anxiety reaction.
And I found myself tense and trying to control her.
And why is that? Because I'm uncomfortable with her anxiety?
I can't what's the word you say to stay with
it or to have patience for it, to be able
(24:50):
to be with it? Is a word that you use.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Oh, I'm not sure, but one of the words I
will often use is with a stand or witness.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Yeah, well that's it. I called doing that until I
realized that I was having difficulty doing it. And then
I owned it and I said, hey, I'm noticing that
I'm having difficult I'm the one having the difficulty. But
it's taken some work to gain that kind of self awareness.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Yeah, and that's the work, right, Like the work is
to recognize not that you or someone else is like
screwing up or doing it wrong. It's that we all
have conditioning and inheritances, emotional and physical and relational inheritances
that have a long reach, and becoming aware of them
(25:37):
so that we know when those things are happening. So
that we can sort of reset our foundations in the
relationship that's happening or the interaction that's happening in front
of us, right and slowing things down to say, oh,
this is actually causing discomfort in me, Let me tend
to that so that I can either step away or
I can show up for you in the ways that
(25:57):
you deserve and the ways that you need. But I
got to take care of this in me first.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
And you know there's a lot of teaching. I don't
know if you ever had Tara Brokhan, but she does
very much about it in the same terms.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Hey, before we get back to my conversation with doctor
Gabar Matte, I want to tell you about a new
way to get answers to your questions about grief. Each month,
I host a live video call in Q and a
session for patrons. If you've ever wanted to know if
what you're feeling is normal, come ask me. If you
want to know how to have that conversation with your
(26:42):
nosey relative who keeps butting into your business with their
ideas about what your law should look like, come join us.
I'll help you create a boundary where there really needs
to be a boundary once a month, every month. If
you've ever wish you could talk to me directly and
get your questions answered, this is by far the easiest
way to do it. All of the information is at
(27:03):
patreon dot com backslash Megan Divine and you can find
the link in the show notes. I hope to see
you there every month. All right, let's get back to
my conversation with best selling author doctor Gabor Matte. I
think I can get so adamant about the ways we
do things wrong that it seems like I'm just like
(27:25):
always like, Okay, this is wrong, and this is wrong,
and this is you know, you have to do this
better relationally and all of these things. And it is
true that we get a lot of things wrong, and
it doesn't have to be so complicated to make things better.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Right, Yeah, that's right. Well, Tara talks about her method
called rain all right, which is recognized just recognize if
something is there, and then allow it to be there.
And then I'm feeling sad right now, I'm feeling anxious
right now. Then investigation, what's it's all about it? And
(28:02):
then nurturing it, taking care of it, you know, And
it's really what you're talking about as well, of just
being with something and allowing it and being curious about it.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yeah. Yeah, and it's not something I love. And what
you just described as like the personal agency in there,
and that's something that you talk about a lot in
all of your work and in your most recent book too,
is like the being able to find personal agency in
your own healing and in your own life and in
(28:32):
your own relationships.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Well, in my view, based on my medical experience and
all the research that I've covered, is that that loss
of agency is that the source of much of what
we call pathology, whether physical or mental. And people have
a hard time grasping this, sometimes only because the medical
training completely separates the mind from the body, but that
(28:59):
loss of agency she shows up in physical illness. The
mind body unity being so such a fact, it's all
one that our emotional lives effect our physiology. When we
lose agency, the capacity to respond authentically to our life
(29:21):
situations from a place of self awareness and connectedness to
all our emotions, including pain and grief. When we lose
that capacity, we lose agency. That loss of agency has
an impact on our immune systems and our hormonal apparatus,
on our cardiovascular system, on our nervous system, and often
(29:41):
healing if you actually study the literature and healing, it
has to do with the regaining of agency. Even the
word healing comes from a word for wholeness. And so
how is it that we're not whole? Were not whole
because at some point, in order to survive our early environments,
we have to suppress our connection to ourselves of agency,
(30:02):
which at that time was necessary to help us negotiate
our early environment. But that same loss of agency then
are giving up of ourselves. The loss of authenticity then
has physiological impacts lifelong that can manifest an illness of
mind and body. And the healing then becoming a whole
(30:22):
again is precisely the regaining of that agency. That's the
main theme in my most recent book.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
So what would regaining agency look like as a practice
for an individual.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Here's what it would look like on a simple level.
As I told you I'm going to Los Angeles this week,
it so happened, and you're in Los Angeles and I
arrived Wednesday evening, and I call you up and I say,
do you want to go for coffee? And you don't
feel like it because you're tired, and because you got
you know, watch television or you know.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Well, I got things to do.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Yeah, you've got things to do. You're not feeling well whatever,
But you say yes because you're afraid of displeasing me.
You're afraid of hurting my feelings. You're afraid of disappointing me.
You're a faith I won't like it. I won't like
you if you say no. So you say yes. What
doesn't know that wants to be staid? Well, that's a
loss of agency. You're not acting on behalf of yourself.
(31:23):
You're acting on behalf of what you think will please me,
so that I will accept you even as you're rejecting yourself.
So loss of agency shows up all the time. It
also means going to a doctor and unthinkingly and without investigation,
accepting their point of view on your condition. I didn't
say nonet Listen to it, for God's sake, Listen to it,
(31:45):
but don't give up your agency. You know, in a relationship.
When I talk about in the midst of normal the
chapter on women, eighty percent of autoimmune disease happens to women.
Now out immune disease happens to happen to peopleople who
suppressed their emotions, especially their healthy anger, who were always
trying to please others and take care of the emotional
(32:06):
needs of others. Now there was to given of agency
or who think that agencies expressed through absorbing the needs
and stresses of others. Now, in this culture rich gender
is program to do that. It's not a genetic thing,
it's a cultural thing. That's why women of eighty percent
(32:27):
of autoimmune disease.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
I love the phraser using the book as women as
the shock absorbers.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
That's from a headline in the New York Times, which
during COVID looked at women and the stresses they're under,
and women assumed automatically that their job was to absorb
the stresses and griefs and unhappiness of their children, their families,
and their spouses, which was caused by COVID, And women
(32:53):
felt guilty when they couldn't successfully elevate the stresses of
their spouses. So the New York Times did an article
called Society, Society shock Absorbers. I took that headline maybe
into a chapter title, because that's actually at the root
of so much chronic disease. That's what women have much
more chronic illness than menda, I believe.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Yeah, I mean there's the when you're describing agency, you know,
the way that I really hear this is like, we
don't lie to ourselves very well, right, so we're out
of alignment with what we want for ourselves. If we
had the capacity or the time or the understanding that
we need to listen for what's true for us and
then claim that truth out into the world and putting
(33:36):
yourself first, the Karen feeding of your own being ahead
of the Karen feeding of other beings. And we don't
lie to ourselves very well, which is why we go
back sort of back to where we started here with
validation and acknowledgment not just of grief but of everything
like that is the foundational element here.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Did you say that we don't lie to ourselves very well?
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yeah, we don't lie to ourselves very well.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
I don't agree. No, I think we lie to ourselves
all too well, which is why there's so much illness
in this society. What we don't do it is we
don't do it successfully because the body won't let us
get away with it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
I think that. I mean, I think that's sort of
what That's what I mean. Like, we lie to ourselves
all the time. We're super deeper practiced with it as
a skill set. We're awesome at lying to ourselves. But
the impact of lying to ourselves like that that bill
comes due, right, Like, we don't lie to ourselves very
well in the sense that that has such an impact
and such a cost that it's not successful absolutely.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Well, how I would put it is, we don't align
with ourselves very well, and we lie to ourselves in
order not to align with ourselves, and that exacts and
resorbit and cost in terms of health and wellbeing. Yeah, Or,
as bessel Venderkok says in the title of his book
on trauma, the body keeps the score.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Yes, the community keeps the score too, right. I mean,
we're not just talking about individuals having issues, right, We're
talking about communities and culture. And you know, we started
out this conversation talking about the long reach of inherited
(35:19):
grief and inherited violence. And when I talk about politics
or policy in my work, I don't get backlash as
often as you might think in a sort of an
ugly internet world, but I do get some complaints, like
can you just stick to grief. And you know my
(35:40):
response is always like, I am sticking to grief.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Yeah, I know, I get the same thing. You're a doctor,
but you talk about politics. I talk about politics because
everything affects everything else. That's right, because human health is
not an individual or individualized quality. It's a reflection of
our relationship from in utero or onwards, with our parents,
with our environment, with our community, and with our whole culture.
(36:06):
Nothing is separable. So if you look at so called
political factors. There was an article in the New York
Times ten days ago another as we speak about black
women giving birth and their risk of the child dying
or them dying is higher than white women, regardless of
economic status. It's about the inflammatory literally physiologically inflammatory impacts
(36:33):
of racism. Another study three months ago in the afthematic racism.
If you look at the person, they have higher inflammatory
processes in their bodies. But put that projected on a
lifelong basis no wonder. Then if you look at the
health of populations such as Indigenous Canadians or Black Americans,
and every measure they come out worse. And it's got
(36:55):
nothing to do with genetics. It has to do with
politics and society and sociology and calledure in history. So
how can we not talk about it when it's all one?
That's the whole point.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeah, yeah, you can't separate that stuff because policies create grief.
Systems create grief, and systems and policies are created by
humans that are carrying deep trauma and a lack of
alignment and a lack of being seen. And we can't
(37:26):
talk about the need to acknowledge and honor grief and
find community and find relationship and not talk about politics,
policy and culture because they are all one cloth.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
Yeah. Well, you know, the buddhas said it twenty five
hundred years ago. He said, look at a leaf or
a rain drop. He said, look at all the conditions
that are going to make and leaf for a rein drop.
It's all interconnected. He said. Without the many, they cannot
be the one. And without the money they can they
cannot be the one. And it's true, if you look
at a leaf, you can look is an isolated object.
(38:02):
But is it The leaf is a product of photosynthesis.
It produces photosynthesis, which is to say, the processing of
light which comes from the sun, and the leaf contains
the sky. The water that fell from the sky that
then is sucked up to the roots and into the leaf.
(38:22):
The leaf contains the earth, the materials the leaf might
reflect the activity of other animals and human beings. You
can't talk about the individual leaf as an isolated, separate entity.
It contains the whole world. The same thing that's true
of everything, including us as human beings. So that's why
you can't separate anything for anything else. So it's not
(38:42):
just spiritual wisdom that we're talking about here. We're talking
about just basic science, right, We're talking facts.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Yeah, the facts, not fluff here. I mean, you keep
your eyes and your mind on so much pain and suffering, right,
and the systems and the containers and the interrelatedness of
pain and suffering, which can be a real bummer of
(39:11):
a world. Right when we look at how much damage
has been inherited and passed on and how much damage
continues to be created. I know that you're not a
downer of a person, right, Like we can take things
seriously and still find hope for things. I mean, I'm
(39:32):
I'm well, let me make a few decisions, Okay, lay
it on me.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Yeah, So, first of all, there's pain and there suffering.
They're not the same thing. You can have pain without suffering.
When there's suffering, there's always pain. But when there's pain,
there's not always suffering. It's a question of why I
relate to that pain, And very often it is the
denial of pain that creates the suffering. I had to
be trying as a kid in order to be liked,
(39:57):
and I'm trying all my life because I don't want
to feel the pain of being rejected, and therefore I
end up with the wrong people. That's going to create pain.
So it's the running away from pain that creates the
suffering very often. Number one. Number two, you say take
it seriously, I think seriously and still have hope. Well,
is there a contradiction somehow? There's no, it's not. It's
(40:19):
not that despite taking things seriously, I have hope. It's
because I take things seriously. I look at all aspects
of things so that in every difficult situation is also
a possibility. It's not that I have hope, it's I
see the genuine possibility. And I've seen lots of people
as you have. I know, being through tremendous pain, tremendous
(40:41):
suffering and find new wisdom and even new ways of
being alive through dealing or honestly, by confronting seriously that
pain and that suffering, so that the very possibly of
healing and growth reside in the suffering. And as the
(41:02):
Greek playwright Escalus wrote in one of his plays, The Agamemnon,
that the way that God has created us, we have
to suffer suffering too. Truth. I wish it wasn't like that,
but it's just all too true for a lot of us.
That for you, I'm sure, and for me and for
many other people listening, it's when they've suffered that they've
actually started to discuss or discover or investigate, well, what
(41:25):
is the source of my suffering and what can I
learn from this? So that it's not one or the other.
It's that the suffering itself contains the possibility of healing,
and very often it's what grabs us by the scruff
of our necks to truth. You know.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
Yeah, there's so many directions that I could go, but
I know that we are winding up with time and
you need to get onto your next thing. So we
will link in the show notes to all of the
places where people can find you and hear more about
you and your newest book, anything else you want folks
to know in this last minute.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
I think we've covered a lot. Thank you very much,
and I really appreciate you hosting me. There's a film
people might want to watch. It's online. It's called The
Wisdom of Trauma, which is based on my work around trauma.
You can donate. The filmmakers are raising money for their
next project and indigenous people around the world. But also
people can't afford to you. You're not obligated to donate.
(42:23):
You can put zero zero dollars in there as well.
That's up to the individual. But that film, The Wisdom
of Trauma, which you can find online, I think it
sums up my work really astutely. No thanks to me,
by the way. The thing that's the credit to the filmmakers,
But I think it'll be of interest to a lot
of your listeners.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
Excellent, and we will find that and link to that
in the show notes everybody, so stay tuned. We will
be right back with your questions to carry with you
right after this break. Each week I leave you with
some questions to carry with you until we meet again. Now,
(43:02):
Gabor had an event to get to immediately after our conversation.
That conversation with Prince Harry that I mentioned before. So one,
I didn't get to explore what hope means for him
as much as I would have liked, though he did
talk a little bit about hope there at the end.
And two, if we'd had more time, you bet that
we would have thoroughly gotten into the idea that healing
(43:25):
comes through suffering, that our learning comes through suffering. I mean,
if you just took that line of his out of context,
it would be easy to hear it as like you
needed your suffering, you needed your suffering in order to grow,
and we know it's not like that. There's something to that, though.
What Gabor was talking about at the close of our
conversation not that we need suffering or that we only
(43:46):
learn through suffering, but that there is knowledge self knowledge,
knowledge we need for our own healing and the healing
of the world inside that suffering, with coming into a
relationship with that suffering, finding ways to tell the truth
about suffering so we can uncover the pain at the
root of it and listen to what that pain has
(44:07):
to say. I mean, that's just one of many things
that I'm taking from this conversation with doctor Gabor Matte
friends from elephants to childhood, to politics to everything now.
At the end there, Gabor said something that I love.
It was so fast that you might have missed it.
(44:29):
He said, it's because I take all this seriously that
I have hope. Because I take this seriously, I have hope,
not something I'm going to explore for myself this week,
the ways that my own hope may or may not
actually come from the serious attention I give to the
(44:49):
pain of the world. That feels like interesting territory to me.
How about you? What stuck with you from this conversation.
Everyone's going to take some different from the show, but
I do hope you found something to hold on to.
If you want to tell me how today's show felt
for you, or you have thoughts on what we covered,
let me now tag me at Refuge and Grief on
(45:11):
all the social platforms or it's okay pod on TikTok
so I can hear how this conversation affected you. Can
follow the show at Refuge and Grief on all the
social platforms and it's okay pod on TikTok to see
video clips from the show and use the hashtag it's
okay pod wherever, not only so that I can find
what you're thinking and you're feeling from this show, but
(45:34):
so others can find that conversation too. None of us
are entirely okay, and it's time we start talking about
that together. Yeah, it's okay that you're not okay. You're
in good company. That's it for this week. Friends, Remember
to subscribe to the show. Leave a review for the show.
(45:55):
Your reviews helped make the show easier to find for
other people, which obviously furthers our mission of getting more
people to have interesting conversations about difficult things. Also, though
your reviews are really special to me personally and I
love to read them. Want more information or support on
these topics. Look, grief is everywhere. As my dad says,
(46:17):
daily life is full of everyday grief that we don't
call grief. Learning how to talk about all that without
cliches or platitudes or simplistic, dismissive statements. That's an important
skill for everyone. Whether you're trying to support a friend
going through a hard time, or you work in the
helping professions and you talk about this stuff all the time,
get the help you need to have those conversations find trainings,
(46:40):
professional resources, and my best selling book, It's Okay that
You're Not Okay. At Megandivine dot Co. It's Okay that
You're Not Okay. The podcast is written and produced by
me Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced
by Elizabeth Fozzio. Logistical and social media support from Micah Hot,
Production and editing by Houston Tilly. Music provided by Wave
(47:03):
Crush and very quiet background noise provided by Luna gently
pawing at me to go get her some snacks
Host
Megan Devine
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