HR Ep 9 – Sometimes Shit Just Sucks!

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For more information visit HammeredRecovery.com  or e-mail me at justin@hammeredrecovery.com

A lot of what I am going to cover comes from It’s OK that you’re not OK by Megan Devine. 

  • This is not going to be a deep dive, so I encourage you all to buy and read the book (Website).
  • I also want to point out that this is a book about the loss of a loved one.
  •  I fully understand that admitting I am an alcoholic is not the same as my wife drowning in front of me, but this is a book about loss, and I have experienced loss.
    • This shitty disease took from me the person I used to be.  The same way finding out you have cancer changed your life from that point on.
      • I happen to like the person I have become, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard and I also understand that others may be having a much harder time dealing with it.
    • This book can be used for all kinds of loss, and it does it a disservice if it is type casted as a book for only those who have lost someone.
    • Not all losses are created equal.  The loss of a child is different than the loss of a grandparent the same way the loss of who you used to be is different.
  • I also want to state, that this episode is not just for you. A good part of this episode is for your friends and family.  I’ve never done this before, but if you feel it would help I would ask that you ask your friends and family to listen to this episode.  Hell, I actually feel most of my episodes would be good for anyone to listen to, but I am hoping these helps alleviate some stress for you too.

I’m going to break this episode down into 4 parts that loosely follow the book.

  • You’ve admitted you an alcoholic, now what (coming to terms)
  • Sometimes shit just sucks!
  • A message for Friends and family
  • The way forward with your tribe.

First a little bit about Megan Devine.

  • She was a counselor for over a decade
  • In 2009 she watched her partner drown just before his 30th birthday.
  • After she wanted to call all of her clients and apologize for her ignorance
  • Nothing could have prepared her, and nothing she had learned mattered.

You’ve admitted you’re an alcoholic, now what?

  • Reality of loss sets in
    • Everything is different now
    • Nothing makes sense
    • Your life was normal, but now it is anything but
    • Nothing feels real
    • Your mind cannot stop replaying events to try make sense
    • Because you feel crazy doesn’t make you crazy
    • There is only so much you can absorb at a time
    • We need to know how to live here
  • Little land mines
    • You don’t just loose the present, you lose the future you should have had
    • Trips to the grocery store
      • No wonder grief is so exhausting
      • It’s not the actual pain of loss it’s the sheer number of tiny things to be avoided or planned for.
      • The need to just not talk
  • Smart people have started to try take away your pain
    • What the outside world believes and what you know to be true can be the hardest part
    • Wondering if others are nuts or if you are too sensitive adds another layer of stress
    • There really is something not comforting in the ways people are trying to comfort you
      • People are saying the sweetest things, why does this make you angry
      • Everyone has their opinion
    • In early recovery you feel crazy, but it’s the culture that is crazy.  It’s not you it’s us
    • Our views on grief are almost all negative.  Something to be taken away.
      • There is no room for your pain to just exist
  • Maybe you feel alone
    • What does matter is that you are not alone feeling the world had failed you

Suicide

  • Surviving early grief is a massive effort
  • What to do when the pain is too much?
  • Not wanting to be alive is different than wanting to be dead
    • It’s hard to tell none grieving people that.
  • You simply don’t care
  • Need to find a way to get through these moments
    • Make a pact with another alcoholic
    • Remind yourself of the consequences – Play the tape forward
    • Anything to get through these times.
    • Please stay alive! Do it for others if you must.
    • Please reach out for help. Suicide Prevention Lifeline – 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
  • Acknowledgement is the only form of medicine that works

Sometimes Shit just sucks!

  • We have been taught it is something we need to get over
  • Greif is seen as a malady that needs to be cleaned up
  • No matter what anyone else says this sucks
  • What is lost cannot be restored
  • You are in pain, and it cannot be made better
  • There is pain you cannot be cheered out of
  • You need someone to see your pain
  • Cannot be fixed.  It can only be carried
  • Telling the truth is the only way forward. This is as bad as you think it is
  • People are responding as poorly as you think
    • Grief is something to get through as quickly as possible
  • I cannot tell you that things are going to be okay, that everything will work out.
    • This is not about fixing you
    • This is how you live inside your loss
  • We behave as if grief is something to get out of as soon as possible
    • Heal the pain, fix the pain, takeaway the pain
    • Rather than a natural response to loss
  • Greif is visceral not reasonable.  It doesn’t follow stages or timelines.

Stages

  • Stuck in Grief
    • People think you are stuck unless they think you are happy
    • People think this should last a couple of months at most
    • Considered a disorder if it last longer than 6 mos.
    • Medicalizing grief is crazy and does no good
    • Most are taught the 5 stages of grief.
      • As if there is only one way to grieve
      • But the stages don’t fit
        • Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance
      • You need to move forward through them in order and quickly or you are doing them wrong
        • Greif is not linear, and this was not the intention of these stages.
        • They were meant to normalize what someone may feel
        • They were not meant to create a cage.
        • Cannot force an order on pain
        • Cannot make grief tidy or predictable
        • There is no pattern, there are no stages!
        • It is an individual experience

Butterflies, Rainbow’s, and the culture of transformation

  • Things always work out for the best
  • Movies are always movies of transformation.  We demand a happy ending
  • We believe in fairytales
  • Bad things happen, but we come out better for them
  • Gloss over the shitty part
  • If you don’t transform and find something beautiful you have failed.  And you must do it quickly.
  • We don’t want to hear some things cannot be fixed
  • Some things we just learn to live with
  • We need to redefine the ending
  • The new heroes ending
    • Looked for stories of pain and loss
    • What she found was how to fix it.  How to get out of pain
    • We have no stories of how to live in it
    • We don’t need stories of how to get out of it, rather how to live in it.
    • Greif happens
    • Pain is not always redeemed
    • Being brave is staying present, waking to each day, standing at the abyss, and not turning away.  Letting pain take up as much space as it needs
  • By allowing your pain to exist you change it somehow.
  • Allowing you pain to breath helps
  • There isn’t anything you need to do with you pain, it simply is.  Let it exist
    • That is so different than trying to get yourself out of it.
    • Bearing witness won’t fix anything and it changes everything
    • Whisper yes instead of trying to scream no
    • Care for yourself the best you can
    • Mostly, may you to your sad self… be kind
  • Assumptions… Everyone has them
    • People will make all sorts of assumptions
    • Trying to solve problems we don’t actually have
    • So often we are told by people outside of our experience, what that experience is like for us.
    • What it means, what it feels like, what it should feel like
      • Then offer support based on their views
    • Tempting to write everyone off.  No one gets it
  • You can’t solve grief, but you don’t need to suffer
  • Knowing the difference between pain and suffering
  • Reducing suffering while honoring pain is the core of this book
  • Deciding who warrants care and effort
    • Deciding who warrants your time and energy and who to ignore
    • If you can’t find the time and energy to inform… let me.  Use this podcast
    • We can educate them together

For friends and family

It’s not your fault you don’t know what to do

  • I’m not afraid to say what millions of grieving people are thinking
    • You are not helping… if you are trying to fix this
  • If someone truly want to help you they have to be willing to hear what doesn’t help
    • Willing to feel the discomfort
    • Open to feed back
    • Otherwise, you are not interested in helping, rather being seen as helpful
  • Friends and family are most useful when they help us to carry our pain, and not trying to fix something that isn’t broken.
  • Just because grief cannot be fixed doesn’t mean there isn’t something for your support team to do.
    • you can make this better, even if you cannot make it right.
  • Those that try to help often end up hurting
    • Grief is not a problem to be solved. It is an experience to be carried.
    • It isn’t an illness to be cured
    • Looking for companionship not correction is the way forward
  • Shifting from grief as a problem to solve to an experience needing support
    • Start by just saying I’m hear
      • Trying to help can make it worse
    • The problem is we have been taught the wrong way to help
    • Rehumanize grief, knowing it is a natural process
    • Tend to pain without solving it
    • Grief is a natural response to loss
    • Acknowledgement is everything
  • We feel judged shamed and corrected in our grief
    • Encouraged to get over it
  • Why words of comfort feel so bad
    • It’s incredibly had to watch someone in pain.
    • You’ll feel better someday, it won’t always feel this bad, better days are ahead
    • They will tell you about their losses as if everyone’s pain is the same
    • As if anyone else’s pain makes your feel better
    • From close friends to casual acquaintances everyone tries to make it better
    • But instead of feeling better man feel shamed shunned and dismissed
    • Those trying to help feel unappreciated, unwanted
    • No one gets what they want

What not to do

  • Platitudes – Come off as dismissive
    • Everything happens for a reason…
    • You can try channel your pain…
    • Your going to be stronger for having been through this
    • Don’t start any sentence with At Least…
  • Cheerleading solves nothing
  • Makes them think no one understands
    • This isn’t a papercut
    • They didn’t need this to happen
    • Grief is not something to get through as soon as possible
    • Platitudes do not work here
  • They want so badly to make this better
  • By trying to solve you’re their pain you are not giving the support needed.  This is why cards feel so offensive.  They are trying to fix your pain rather than acknowledging this sucks!
  • Hey, me too!!!
    • Are an attempt to make you feel less alone in your grief
    • One experience of loss does not translate to another
    • We all want to talk about our pain, but right now when you are in pain is not the time
    • It feels like your loss is trying to be eclipse
    • They move the focus off of you and on to them
    • There is a time and place, but this is not it.
  • Competition of grief
    • Whose pain is worse
    • Olympics of grief
    • If you say it is not the same they get offended
    • There is a hierarchy of loss.
    • Stubbing your toe is not the same as losing your foot.
    • Making no distinction of losses does not help the griever
    • Honor all loss, life changing and moment changing
    • And then do not compare them
    • When people try to alleviate your pain by sharing their own story, know they are attempting to connect and relate, but know what it feels so crappy.  They are not connecting
  • The second half of the sentence
    • At least you had them for as long as you did
    • You can have another child or partner
    • They are in a better place
    • This will make you a better person
    • You are stronger than you think
    • Everything happens for a reason
    • He died doing something he loves
    • There is an implied second half of the sentence to all of these
    • So, stop felling so bad
    • Even though they don’t say it, you hear it.
    • Words of comfort that try to erase pain.  When you try to erase someone’s pain you don’t make it better, you just tell them it is not okay to talk about it
    • To truly feel comforted by someone you need to feel heard.  You need the reality of your loss reflected back to you, not diminished.  True comfort is acknowledgement
  • Everything happens for a reason
    • Second half of the sentence – You needed this
    • You weren’t x before this happened
    • You needed this to grow
    • As if this was the only way how
    • These imply you were not good enough before.
    • You didn’t need this in order to grow.  You already were a good and decent human
    • If you become a better person that is because of your choices.  Loss did not help
  • Judgment criticism and dismissiveness are the norm
  • As if grief is an abnormal response

How do we become a society comfortable that there is pain that cannot be fixed?  That the answer is companionship not correction?

  • There are only 2 options.  Eternally broken or completely healed. On or Off
  • There is a whole middle ground
  • What I am proposing is a 3rd option Witness
    • Neither turning away nor rushing redemption, but rather by standing there in the pain.
    • Finding the middle ground, it the way
    • A place that honors the full breadth of grief
  • Mastery vs mystery
    • Ealy Grief is where we need the most skill, compassion, and connection
    • Greif no more needs a solution than love needs a solution
    • We cannot triumph over death, loss, or grief
    • If we continue to come at them as something to be solved we will get nowhere.
    • We look at everything as a thing to be solved, fixed, cured
    • Instead of looking at it as a problem to be solved but a mystery to be honored
      • A lot of our language of support can stay the same
    • We need to let what is true be true
    • Shoving through what hurts will never get us what we want
    • Replace mastery with Mystery orientation to love
    • Bowing to the mystery of grief and love is such a different place then trying to fix it
    • Something in you can relax rather than rushing to fix it.
    • Need to allow the reality of grief to exist
    • Not cleaning it up and making it go away
    • Stand beside each other and offer companionship
  • Turn to fully face all the ways our hearts get broken
    • Full expression of what it is to love, which includes losing that we love, is given room to unfold.
    • Allow each other to speak what is true
    • Craft a world where you can say This Sucks
    • It won’t be a world with less grief, but will involve more beauty
    • Help those to carry their reality and least helpful when they try to fix what cannot be fixed
    • WE need to get more comfortable with pain
  • When we share at a AA meeting do you know how many people try fix our problems? None.
    • It’s actually one of the rules… Write more

What to do – my words

  • Treat us the way you have always treated us
  • Our disease is not contagious
  • It’s okay to acknowledge and ask sensible questions.
    • We are willing to talk.  Talking about it helps
  • We are not looking for a solution from you.  Just acknowledgement and that you are here for us if we need you
  • We understand the world didn’t change for everyone and we are okay with that, so don’t try to change the world for us.

The way forward with your tribe

Grief has a way of rearranging your contact list

  • Some people fade out and disappear.
  • Some you choose to fade out on them
  • You also gain people.  People who truly understand
  • You can’t do this alone.
  • Good people will show up when they can for as long as they can
  • Not everyone will make through this
    • Not everyone should
    • There is no time for relationships that make you feel small, shamed, or unsupported
    • This is your grief
    • This is not the time for relationship repair
    • If it feels wrong you do not need to keep them as friends
    • It’s okay to let them go.  It’s not their fault.  It’s not yours.  It’s part of grief
    • Sometimes the best form of love is letting people go.

Step away from the madness

  • If someone is not getting it and you cannot cut them out of your life, it is okay to stop trying
    • Set boundaries
      • Clearly and calmly address their concern
      • Clarify your boundaries
      • Redirect the conversation (changing the topic)
        • I appreciate your interest in my life, I am going to live this the way that feels right to me, and I am not interested in discussing it.  I’m happy to talk about something else.
        • That isn’t a topic I would like to discuss.
  • Eventually people will get the message, or they will leave

should you educate them or ignore them.

  • Response has been clumsy at best and insulting, dismissive, and rude at worst
  • Friends and family want to help grieving people want to be supported, but we’re stuck. We need to talk about what is not working
  • Come back later when you are welling to be silent and listen.
  • My tragedy is not contagious.
  • Loss gets integrated, not overcome
  • Someone who has lived it
  • Hearing others experiences can help, but comparing grief doesn’t help
  • Acknowledgement is the only form of medicine that works
    • Telling the story
    • You may find you tell the story again and again
    • That is all normal
    • Talking about it helps
      • Feels both necessary and torturous
      • Looking for a way this makes sense
      • It is an emence relief telling your story without someone trying to fix it.
  • The ones I go to over and over again are the ones who do not try to solve this in anyway or fix me.
  • They don’t say things are going to get better.
  • You also gain people, people who truly understand
  • You can’ t do it alone

The tribe of after – companionship, true hope, and the way forward

  • Companionship
  • We all need a place to share what is going on.
  • AA
  • These people are the reason I survived
  • AA is the tribe of after
  • Our losses are different, but I recognize yours.

Alone together

  • You’re not alone – that is not true
  • You are alone, you alone know all the details, you alone carry the knowledge, you alone know the details, you alone know how deeply your life has changed.
    • This is true even if someone had a loss similar to yours
    • Everyone grieves
    • Your asked to downgrade your pain because others have felt it too.
    • Tribe within a tribe
    • Not meant as a solution, it is meant to introduce you to your tribe.  People who can hear your pain.
    • We hear each other, we are as comfortable with the pain as the love.  Everything is welcome in a community of loss.  We know we are alone, and we are not alone it that.  We hear each other It doesn’t fix anything, but somehow it makes it different.
    • There are things that can never get better
    • Having others recognize the depths of your pain.  It changes something.  It helps.  IT may be the only thing that does
    • Companionship inside loss
      • Dealing with it on your own can be done, but it is much easier with a like tribe
  • The Tribe of after
  • Birds of a feather flock together.  Of course, you go looking for a tribe of like-minded people
  • WE are a tribe.  The Tribe of After
  • The fellowship of other grievers remains
  • IT’s easier to find that tribe now.  AA meeting finders.  Zoom…
  • We reflected the broken world back at each other\
  • The power of acknowledgment
  • Side by side with other like-minded people not trying to fix it.
    • In AA meeting no one tried to fix it.  That is what the box of Kleenex is for.
    • WE are not hear to solve each others problems
    • No fixing, no advice giving
  • WE need each other

Companionship, acknowledgment

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