Ways We Have Been Taught to Deal with Grief
Have you ever been told, in the midst of loss or grief, to ‘stay busy’ or ‘give it time’? This episode explores how such childhood messages shape our perceptions of grief and loss. We’ll be unpacking these often confusing and unhelpful strategies, shining a revealing light on how they can negatively impact our adult responses to grief. Then, we’ll be discussing ways to reframe these ingrained messages and come up with supportive strategies that promote healthier processing of grief.
Next, we’ll venture into some invisible backpacks of unprocessed emotions, a weight we unknowingly carry from childhood. We’ll uncover how these emotional burdens can manifest as short-term energy-relieving behaviors. Maybe you’ve noticed yourself overeating, drinking more, or shopping excessively.
As professionals in the legal field, we’ll dig deep into how our clients’ behaviors can be connected to these emotions and how we can help them navigate their grief. This episode is a heartfelt journey for anyone, lawyer or not, seeking a better understanding of grief and its complex layers.
In this episode, you will hear:
- Ways we’ve been told incorrectly during childhood to deal with grief
- Why time doesn’t heal grief; and what does?
- Invisible backpacks of childhood emotions
- Short-term energy-relieving behaviors and how lawyers can help clients process them
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Supporting Resources:
To learn more about Grief and The Grief Recovery Method visit: www.griefrecovery.com
To download the free e-book on grief, visit: https://larricklawfirm.com/grief-recovery/
Episode Credits:
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know I sent you.
Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick: Now, here’s Elizabeth. Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. I’m your host, Elizabeth Larrick, and this is Trial Lawyer Prep.
It is a podcast dedicated to travelers preparing cases better, and we are going to do a series on grief. Probably three to four episodes, and I [00:01:00] want to bring this to y’all because it came up recently. Really applicable in what we work on, which is what I work in, which is pain. Plan of personal injury. But there was a recent Texas Supreme court decision in a wrongful death case that specifically came up over non economic damages that the jury put in the verdict.
There’s a very long discussion about the history of non economic damages for tort cases. Just the opinion is they took away the jury verdict and they said the lawyers didn’t tie the number rationally to the evidence. And I think there’s always a struggle when I speak with lots of lawyers about wrongful death cases.
There’s the moniker out there. What good is that money going to do? It’s not going to bring anybody back. And I think there’s a struggle there. So that’s definitely, this is a great series for folks who have wrongful death cases. But really what I want to do is [00:02:00] crack open. What we think of as grief and how it applies in more than just wrongful death cases, it applies to many ways to all kinds of litigation and how we can, as trial lawyers, understand it better, navigate it better, help our clients better.
And hopefully help ourselves better. And that’s really what brought me to talking about this is I personally was struggling with grief and I did not even know it. I had a very good friend, a mentor who spotted it instantly and she and I worked together specifically through what is called the grief recovery method.
And I was so appreciative that she said something and she spoke up, but walking through this process, walking through the method, really opened my eyes. To so many people out there who are struggling with this. And of course, thinking of our clients, [00:03:00] but I loved the way that it worked so much that I actually became certified in March so that I’m also a grief recovery method specialist.
And so a lot of what we talk about here and then our few episodes together is really going to be based on things that I learned and was taught through that certification. We’re not going to dive too deep into the work that I did because we don’t have time for that, but it’s enough to say that it really opened a door of awareness for me and relief that I just wasn’t finding anywhere else.
And I think that is a presentation that many of our clients have, maybe we have as well. And so that’s really what I want to do is to be able to pass on a little bit of this education to help you talk with clients, but also maybe even help Maybe something that you’re struggling with. So what we’re going to cover in this series is really the basics.
This episode is going to cover what is grief? Like, how do we define [00:04:00] that? Our next couple episodes are going to talk about ways we’ve been taught to deal with grief, some new ways that we can talk about grief. about it. And then ultimately, what is the grief recovery method? If you are interested in that, that’ll be a brief episode, but in all the show notes for this series, there’ll be a link to the grief recovery method website, which has wonderful resources, as well as a link to my website that also has A little bit of resources, but a free ebook as well, if you are curious, or if you know somebody, or if you have a client who is struggling with a loss, those are great resources for them to go.
There are lots of ebooks out there that they have at the grief recovery website as well. So with that being said, let’s jump in to what is grief. And when you look it up on the internet and you go to Merriam Webster’s, it says that basically it’s a distress caused by bereavement. [00:05:00] Distress from death, basically.
And I think that’s where we all kind of, okay, somebody passes away, there’s going to be some grief. Okay, we’re all good with that. But I think that’s a real huge limitation on what grief really is. And it’s a much better approach if we open it up, we know that grief is an emotion. We know that it’s feelings and it is the normal and natural reaction to change or loss of any kind, right?
any kind. And grief has also been described as conflicting feelings caused by the end of or change in a familiar pattern of behavior. So that is a huge definition that’s much Bigger than just the feelings that you get after a death. And that’s what we really want to do is really kind of open this up to a larger definition.
And of [00:06:00] course, it’s like we talked about, it’s emotional and it’s not a pathological condition or a personality disorder. As we get further into the discussion, my hope is that we’ll all realize, Oh, it’s all around us. And it’s something that sometimes it comes at a big level and sometimes it’s just a little level and just really depends on what it is.
And the best example that I have is we’ve all experienced loss of what life was before the pandemic. Everybody experienced loss. Tons of loss, like loss of graduations and weddings and births and deaths. Plus going out in public in a normal way without a mask on. There was a huge change and it was a hundred percent out of all of our control.
Right. So it’s not anything that we had in our control, but we all experienced some kind of conflicting feelings, emotional feelings when it came to [00:07:00] dealing with the pandemic and the loss of life as we knew it, as we had been living it. And that’s probably one of the best big examples that we’ve got, but we’re going to talk more specifically about other examples as well.
And what we’re going to do is just make sure that we have as many open definitions as we can to kind of gather everything up. And another definition that is offered through the grief recovery method is the feeling of reaching out for someone who’s always been there for you. Only to find that when you need them one more time, they’re not there, or said in the opposite, reaching out for someone who’s never been there for you, only to find that when you need them one more time, they’re still not there.
That longing, that loss, that conflicting feelings. And so, Bye for now. Let’s talk a little about conflicting feelings, because I think if you’ve ever had a loved one or a close friend that had a terminal illness, there’s a tremendous sadness, but yet there’s also feelings of [00:08:00] relief, right? There’s a conflict there, and You don’t know whether which way you’re supposed to feel, but most of the time what we end up doing is just stuffing down those feelings.
And we’re going to talk about the ways that we do that in the next episode. But again, just sticking with our definition here and looking at really placing grief in a place where it’s individual, it’s very unique to each person because it’s very dependent on the change or the loss. And the uniqueness of the relationship.
And so each person and the relationship they have are different, which means how we deal with each loss will be different as well. So there’s no real formula that I can give you or discuss when it comes to client grief. and what you can expect. Of course, there are definitely going to be broad categories and they’re going to be things that we can look for.
And I can definitely share what my experience was, but instead I also [00:09:00] encourage you just to view each client’s grief as unique and individual. And I think where this can come in as a curiosity or rather I get sometimes a negative feedback from people when I work with clients and they’ll, there’ll be a loss.
There’ll be a wrongful death. And each family member involved is processing things very differently. And again, it’s based on that unique relationship with the person who passed away, but then there’s, there’s, there’s, there’s, there’s, definitely some negative feelings between the family members. They don’t ever go to the grave site.
So they didn’t really love them, or they didn’t do X, Y, Z. They’re not really sad about everything. They don’t need as much money. I need more money without getting the money part involved. But you see how, when we have a loss, everyone’s reaction, everyone’s emotional feelings about it can be very different.
And then that causes friction of itself because we have out there that we’re supposed to be reacting in these, It’s very specific ways and we all do it the same [00:10:00] way, which is just not true. So another way to think about grief is, hey, what causes grief? The loss or my reaction to the loss? And it’s actually both.
Said another way, what ruins the picnic? The rain or my attitude about the rain? And it would be both. Again, always trying to put things into a perspective of being unique, individual, but a normal. natural reaction to a change or loss of any kind. How does that really apply for us as lawyers? We are knowledge workers, right?
We are, we fill our brains up and then basically people come to us to solve problems that involve a legal system, right? Our knowledge. And that really puts us in our headspace a lot, right? We are in our headspace where you’re intellectually feeling frequently, often. That’s how we solve almost all of our problems as a lawyer.
And this instead, grief, is the heart thing, right? It’s a total emotion thing. And so what we have to do is remember that When we’re dealing with folks who are in this heart space, [00:11:00] replying with them intellectually doesn’t necessarily help the heart space. It just brings you back up to your head. For example, many times when folks say, Oh, I’m here for a loss.
My husband passed away. Oh, I lost my mom last year. That’s an intellectual fact. Not so emotional. Okay, so you’re saying, okay, I’ve had a loss as well. So, okay, we’re on the same page, but we’re not. And that’s kind of part of understanding grief. It’s like you’re not on the same page and you might not ever be able to understand how they feel.
However, opening up for them to be able to talk about feelings is one of the ways we’re going to talk about navigating it. But more importantly, when it comes to lawyers, lawsuits cannot help a person become emotionally complete after a law. So, lawsuits do very good things. 100 percent agree with that. I obviously wouldn’t be in the profession that I am, but it doesn’t make somebody emotionally complete.
And my very sad example is, I helped an [00:12:00] individual who unfortunately lost his 12 year old son. In an apartment fire, and the apartment didn’t have fire alarms, didn’t have all kinds of things, and just a terrible, two other children died as well. And this father had to be deposed, so we helped him get ready.
And ultimately there was a settlement that was very, it was large. Very large, more than he could have spent in his lifetime. And on the second year, on the two year death anniversary of his son, he went to the graveside and committed suicide. That money didn’t make him emotionally complete. And we have to sometimes remember that we’re fighting for this lawsuit.
We’re being an advocate, but there’s a huge emotional component here that we need to make sure that we recognize. Obviously we talk about pieces of a lawsuit. That’s where the damages come in. But really we just want to look at coming back down to that person and talking to our [00:13:00] clients one on one and respecting those feelings and giving space for them.
So the other part is, We as lawyers, we’re not really well equipped to deal with grief because. As a society, we aren’t either, right? Like I told you, Merriam Webster’s like their number one definition has distress caused by death. That’s it, right? Super limited. So there’s a lot of things that we’ve been told and socialized about grief that we kind of want to look at and undo.
And so that’s kind of what I talk about now are just some misunderstandings that we have about grief. And most of these things, Or because we just take a very intellectual approach, meaning, Oh, you had a loss. Oh, I’ve had a loss. Okay, we’re on the same page. When we could be vastly different. Because those relationships were vastly different.
So it’s always important to check in on the feelings part of things. But let’s talk a little bit about misunderstandings. And of course that first one that we’ve been talking about quite a bit, which is [00:14:00] grief only happens when a person dies. That’s just not true. Grief happens, like we talked about, with a change or loss.
of familiar behavior. Death comes as an example first, but other tangible losses that cause grief are divorces, losing your job, incarceration, moves, graduations, illnesses, violence, abuse, Loss of your pet. All of these things are losses that will cause grief and depending on your relationship with that loss, it could be a very large grief event for you.
Losing your job, losing your financial stability is huge for a lot of people because most of us are in families and we all depend on each other. So those are definitely types of changes that cause grief, but also we can experience grief from intangible losses. Right? So think loss of trust, loss of safety, loss of [00:15:00] security, loss of your dreams, of hope, of respect, of faith.
And this is kind of where this opens up for us as lawyers, places where people are experiencing grief. from the situation that brought them to you as far as the lawsuit. For example, a business divorce, a business dispute case, right? They’ve lost trust in their partner. They may have lost the ability to trust anybody else in business with a personal injury case.
When you lose, That ability to drive on the road because you can’t expect anybody else to follow those rules Along with loss of your health as well. Then of course thinking about divorce. You’ve lost trust in your spouse in relationships All these are intangible losses. And again, they’re all grief events And so there’s a lot of ways that grief can come along to changes In familiar patterns, another huge misunderstanding about grief is that there are [00:16:00] stages.
There are universal reactions that people will go through. There are not stages. Grief that follows death and divorce or other losses should not be regarded in the terms of stages. It can really hang up people who are grieving because they’re having this expectation, Oh, when am I supposed to get mad? Oh, wait, when am I supposed to be sad?
Oh, I didn’t do that, so maybe I’m not done. The stages, is. And this research came from Elizabeth Kubler Ross. She did extensive research on people who were dying of terminal illness. So the stages are for folks who are dying with a terminal illness, not for people who are grievers after a loss. So it has caused a lot of muddling for people because we talk about that.
Oh, Hey, there are stages that people go through, but there aren’t right. So if you’re talking to people who are experiencing a loss or a death, and you’re saying there [00:17:00] are these stages that people go through, Whoa, that ignores the fact that the nature and intensity of the feelings caused by a loss relate directly to the individuality and uniqueness of the person.
Okay. So we’re going to talk a little bit about individual and unique relationship, right? Everybody’s going to have an individual and unique relationship with that loss. So those feelings are going to be different for different people. And yes, it sounds lovely. Let’s put everyone into a stage so it fits into a box that makes it much easier for us.
Of course it does. That’s intellectual, okay? You can’t think of it that way, right? But it really has to come down to individual and uniqueness of the relationship. That nature and intensity of those feelings and I really think we talk extensively about this in the certification class that it really can trip people up because they sit around waiting for these stages and they may never get there and so they get hung up on thinking, guess I’m just, [00:18:00] I haven’t gone to that stage so I’m just going to sit around and wait for me to get angry about it.
When there are definitely 100 percent ways that we can work through grief, you shouldn’t have to wait through stages. But that’s one of the big misunderstandings about grief is that there are stages to it, which basically means there are universal reactions that everybody goes through, which is just not true.
There are no absolutes in grief. There are no reactions that are so universal that even all or even most people will experience them. This is a lot of information. So let me just offer a quick recap for this episode about what is grief. First and foremost, we’re blowing the lid off that grief only happens when a person dies.
Nope. Grief is the normal, natural emotional reaction to change or loss of any kind. We’re talking about these conflicting feelings that can be caused by end or change in a familiar behavior. A good example is a move. Moving to a new place is great, but you’re leaving the old place, and there’s familiar patterns, there’s good [00:19:00] memories there, but there’s new stuff at the new place, right?
There’s some conflicting feelings, and that’s a pretty low grief event that we can talk about as an example. But basically, grief has a big definition, very wide, to cover more than just feelings that occur after a death. So that opens things up then for people and clients in our cases that they’re going to experience grief on some level that’s unique and individual to them.
When it comes to divorces, business divorces, personal injury cases, criminal cases, we have these changes. And also we’ve got these intangible losses that are hanging out there as well. Loss of trust, security, and safety to name a few. So we know that Many of our clients are struggling with grief, but don’t even know it.
I was one of those people. So as we continue our series on grief, next time we come back, we’re going to talk about some misinformation that we have to process grief that we’ve been told from very [00:20:00] little and things that we can look for in our clients. And then also we’ll come back again for another episode to talk about how to navigate.
Grief with our clients, how to help them come to a new understanding about these conflicting feelings so they can maybe navigate and have a better quality of life. If you have any questions about grief, please don’t hesitate to contact me. My email will be in the show notes, but also there are going to be some resources there to take you to the grief recovery method.
There is an ebook that’s available as well as far as a guide for loss that will be available if you’re curious. But until next time, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on your podcast platform. Thank you.