Addressing complex emotions surrounding Mother's Day for alienated parents. Shelby shares a poignant story about a mother dealing with the tragic loss of her child, providing insights into how such experiences can shape one’s journey through grief. The episode delves into the various thought patterns that contribute to prolonged grief disorder, such as rumination, self-blame, and avoidance. Shelby emphasizes the importance of processing grief head on and provides practical advice for self-reflection and healing. She encourages listeners to acknowledge and neutralize their emotions, giving themselves the grace to move forward. This episode is a supportive guide for navigating sensitive days like Mother's Day, filled with personal anecdotes and expert insights aimed at helping listeners find peace and direction amidst their grief

Episode Transcript 

 You are listening to The Beyond The High Road Podcast with Shelby Milford, episode number 136. Stay tuned. Hi you guys. How are we doing today?

earlier I went to Google and then of course YouTube for some inspiration. Seeing as how I was reminded, I had to be reminded earlier this week that it's Mother's Day this weekend,

it actually took me off guard. I, I never really remember when Mother's Day is, but anyway, so I went to Google. I went to YouTube and found, just happened to stumble upon this podcast with. Two moms, both doctors who were talking about grief after losing their children. for whatever reason, something told me to stay and listen through, and I'm so glad I did because this, the story I was in the grocery store earlier today and I was bawling like streams of tears rolling down my face because it was such a beautiful story.

So I'm gonna tell it to you, but I'll also link the podcast below in the show notes, If you're interested, you can go watch it yourself and hear it straight from the mom who experienced it, but she was talking about the death of her child and how it happened, and it was a tragic story.

her son, I believe was maybe freshman in high school. It was kind of unclear, but she remembered the afternoon that everything happened so well, and I know that to be true for so many of us.

We remember everything, every little detail that led up to the events. Where you were all of a sudden not living under the same roof as your kiddo, Maybe some of you still are living under the same roof, but you know what I'm talking about, like that, traumatic event that happened, that changed things.

Right? So she was talking about how, her son was really excited to go to this baseball game after school. And so. The mom was recalling the whole drive to the baseball game

And she remembers the conversation she was having with her son they were talking about some book that he wanted to read, the Lord of the Rings, and then the next thing she remembered. She was looking up at her husband after somebody hit the car. either both doctors, Husband was performing CPR on their child until the EMS or the paramedics got there. They took over long story short, as the paramedics brought them over to the truck to check them out, and that's when they told them that they were sorry that there wasn't anything more that they could do, that their son was. Had passed Mom of course was, you know, a wreck And right behind the paramedics, the truck, the husband turned to the wife and said,  do you remember the picture? And she said, of course, I remember the picture.  Well, years before that.

their son came home from school and he had this picture that he is drawn And he was showing it to his mom. and so I guess they have

more than one kid. mom said, Hey, there's only four people here. who's missing from the picture? And he said, well, me, of course. She said, what are you talking about? He said, well, you know, I'm not gonna grow up all the way.

I'm gonna be in heaven and. It scared this mom to death. And so apparently whenever he finally did forget about this, picture he drew, she threw it away because she was like, this is not going to happen. it freaked her out so much that she had reached out to a, few of her friends, and told them about what he had said to her. 

I'm not gonna grow up all the way, mom. I'll be in heaven.  And you know, of course it never left her. At the time that she heard it from him, she really, she believed him, you know,

now here they're sitting behind this paramedics truck and mom and dad are like, I, of course I remember the picture.

Even though she threw it away, and I'm sure she, I don't know if she said it or not, but I'm sure now she wishes she still had that drawing. I get it though. She was probably like, I don't want anything to do with this narrative that he just offered.

So we're gonna put it far, far away. Thank God though she did say it to some friends so that they later on could come back and say, oh my gosh, this is what he called. This is amazing. He gave a testimony to it I think she said when he was seven years old.

Anyway, she went on to talk about what a gift. This was that her son gave her so early on, like this foresight to what was to come, even though mom didn't wanna believe it,  it helped to prepare her She was able to then look back on that and think to herself, my son is up in heaven and he's not sad about it because I know when I saw him say that to me.

He was so well adjusted about it. He said, it's so matter of factly, it's me. I'm not gonna grow up all the way. I'm gonna be up in heaven. Mom. It was not a problem for him. And so that helped her with her grief because now she knows that he knew.  And it was just amazing she was able to have a, a clue early on where so many of us don't have that . You and I what we've gone through and maybe the way that your kids are acting right now, it just doesn't seem possible that they would've ever picked this for themselves. You know, I don't know if you know what I believe, and I know I've talked about it a few times, that before we even enter our mother's wounds as like little seedlings, I believe.

our souls, each of us chose , the exact route that we were gonna take in life. We already chose the hardships way beforehand. We knew what we were getting into before we even came out of our mom's body, And so knowing that, and then hearing the story from this mom talking about this little boy who knew exactly what was gonna happen.

I think if all of us had those little hints and, Reassurances along the way. I don't think it would give our particular walks the meaning that it needs to take on, most of the time we see them at afterwards anyway. Like, oh yeah, I could see now. so clearly, I can see the signs, but why didn't I see them back then?  You weren't meant to see them back then. the challenges that you faced and the way that you faced them, just like me too, that was supposed to happen for your growth.

If you would've had any more information or been tipped off in one way or the other before it happened, it may not have contributed to the best outcome for you,  you know, but just knowing and trusting and that there are stories out there like this ladies and her son, Andy. Who , knew exactly how his life was going to end up things may seem awful right now, but trusting that the path won't stay awful.

I don't know. It's just, , provides, for lack of a better word, a sense of hope and direction and Encouragement, I guess, to persevere even when life seems meaningless and scary and hard and, you don't know where to go and what to do next. Keep moving. trust that there is, whether you know what the next step is or not. Just make a step and more be revealed, And so today what I wanna talk about is

How you can support yourself the best way possible through Mother's Day, father's Day, any of the other holidays sensitive ish days for you? Sometimes those aren't the big holidays for me, like Mother's Day was, I mean, I, I loved Mother's Day and especially now that I don't have her home with me, mother's Day magnifies that, you know?

Um, but Mother's Day was never really about. Me anyway. I don't know if I've told this to you guys before or not, but when my daughter and I, she was maybe two, and we were all gonna meet for Mother's day one time. This is after me and her father split up, you know?

And I was living in this townhouse and she and I used to sleep together,. She was always in bed with me and I loved it. She's such a great snuggler. , so we woke up that morning Mother's Day morning on Sunday, we were getting ready to go to brunch, but we were still laying in bed and I said, honey pie, we're gonna go and have brunch today because it's Mother's Day.

And she said, mother's Day. She was like, appalled. And she goes, it's my day. And the way she said it, she was just so funny about it. And it's true. Every day was her day. You know? And that's okay. Um, that's what made Mother's Day so special. Right. But, um, for me anyway, is just the joy of, of being able to, to mom her, you know?

And that is sad. It is. It's, it's, it's sad that, that I, that I don't have those opportunities that I once did, and I know that you guys know that. So allowing for your grief to, to sit beside you and sometimes to even take over is okay. You know, being alienated parents.

We, our group of people tend to- it makes sense that we would -complicate our grief with a lot of suffering, which in turn will halt. The grieving process that anybody goes through when they feel the, you know, have the loss of a loved one. our thoughts, our self-induced, suffering oriented thoughts can cause us though to stay in a prolonged form of our grief, which what it really is. Prolonged grief disorder is a pattern of thoughts and behaviors maladaptive thoughts and behaviors that we have adopted due to. The grief that we weren't able to feel or aren't able to feel in the moment. Right. The overload of emotions and also due to probably the blame and the, the abuse it's such a complicated situation where we, we have this grief but much of us is in the

stress response due to the nature of how the, our kids were taken from us and what have you. And so what happens is we adapt these coping mechanisms and behaviors and thought patterns that end up keeping us feeling more distant from our own selves and our grief, like our own grief, which is protective .

And it probably served us at a period of time, but. Now, if you have spent a good period of time feeling maybe like life doesn't have any meaning or you feel like you're at a dead end and you don't really know how to reintegrate yourself back into life or don't know what you want to do with yourself, or how you could ever be happy again or you know, like that, , then it's really helpful to look at your thought patterns.

And so on. The reason I'm bringing this up today is because on a day where we think that the world is off celebrating their loved ones, and we are not, of course, it's gonna magnify what's going on for you, you know, and it can feel entirely isolating and alienating in a situation where you're already like.

Physically and emotionally alienated from your own children, like your own blood. So I know, I feel like I'm stating the obvious, but when we're in that pattern, we don't think of it that way. 'cause it's become a habit. And so habits coming from our subconscious mind most of the time we don't even notice what we're doing. How we're doing it. And so, I wanna give you some examples. I wrote down some examples of   📍 thought distortions, that can contribute to complicated grief or prolonged grief disorder.  Okay.

 Rumination

One of the thought patterns is rumination, and you hear me talk about this a lot when we are ruminating and feeling preoccupied by  what we could have done differently. How we should have known, how we should have seen the signs. What do we think they were thinking about back then? They must have felt blah, blah, blah, and I wasn't there for them and all of that stuff.  📍

Trying to solve for the unsolvable because it already happened or didn't happen  It increases the amount of guilt that you take on, ? And it prevents your. process of acceptance. anytime we're ruminating, it's okay that you do it. And it happens in all kinds of grief, maybe I was talking about this last week with you guys. I was, I was talking about it somewhere that it is so natural to, to look back and wanna like, man, if I just would've known, if I just would've seen it a little earlier, if I just would've blah, blah, blah.

Right? Or if never would've happened this way if I didn't go drive that day whatever, it is a natural part of grief, but when you notice that you have been stuck maybe it's a year, two, three years later, and you still your mind still by default goes right back to that same thought loop.

It's because your habit system has developed it and it did it protectively back in the day because that was like keeping you distant from your grief, felt safe back when it first happened to not, . Feel the intense sadness because back then maybe it was too, too much.

You were dealing with your stress response, your fight or flight. you're being threatened, you're all the things are happening. But really underneath there's this devastation, sadness that's there. And so in order to. Bring you out a fight or flight or take care of what you need to take care of for survival, then sadness gets pushed down.

Rumination keeps us preoccupied. It did serve a purpose for you in the beginning, but now. Maybe if it's become a, a pattern for you, it's like being on a, you know, a merry-go-round and you just can't get off the damn merry-go-round here we go again. Here we go again. Right back through the same situation, scenarios, it's happening. I know this happens with a lot of you it's almost like watching like a, slow. Motion accident happening inside of you.

Or like, it's the same thing when you get angry and you watch yourself get angry and you're like, I better not say this. I better not say this. And you say it anyway because in that moment with anger, it's a little bit different, but you're telling yourself you can't control it. But really you can. It's still, a programmed response reaction.

That you've learned. And the same thing here with the rumination, right?,

Denial 

Another way that we complicate our situations is staying in denial. , Disbelief of what has happened thus far.  I did this in, and I know I've explained it where I. Didn't wanna look at what was coming up. I just wanted to deal with it when I got there, because I thought if I sit and have to look at like upcoming hearings or the things that I knew that I needed to do, and I kept avoiding and shoving down, I not, wasn't necessarily in full denial about them, I was more in denial about the role that I did play.

I wanted to live in Lala Land. I. And so I would numb myself or just ignore, ignore. And that in my mind helped me to deal with what that really did instead was complicate and compound all the issues. Right? last week I shared that with you.

but sometimes we can be in denial. I know a lot of parents that are in denial about. The state of the relationship. They tell themselves, and I know this is a sensitive issue because most parents don't feel that they can handle it if they think that their children may actually believe what the other parent is saying, or whoever's yelling other kids from them is saying about them.

Now, I know that I al always share and I stand by this, that.  What they are thinking and believing is not our task.  At the same time, if you are ignoring or like in denial about what might be the reality for now, if you're holding onto some story in your head and like you're diluting yourself in order in your mind to get by, like.

I know my kids don't believe what they're being told. They love me and they think about me all the time. Listen, you do, you, you know, I get you and do what is going to get you by. But also we don't know what they believe and what they don't believe, unless they've told you.

And even then as we know with the pathology  being coerced. So what they're saying, what they're thinking and feeling are kind of two different things, many different things.  So the way that I like to look at it is   📍 I like to tell myself the truth about all the possibilities  so that I am not putting all my eggs in one basket and telling myself stories, diluting myself into some hopeful idea, some delusion.

About what my child is thinking or feeling in order to save me some pain by thinking that for me, my daughter hates me. You know, I could never think that because I would fall apart, I would disintegrate, whatever. Instead, I just tell myself the truth to me, what matters most is no matter what I am going to be okay, no matter what their truth is, it's okay. And that's what I, each one of these episodes always is, is that I want to help you be okay no matter what is going on outside of you. Tricking ourselves into believing something 'cause we think that we can't handle.

The opposite of that is only just prolonging any sort of pain or grief that you are probably very well equipped to handle today. Does that make sense? Okay. So like I said, just to recap that though, I think it's really important and I wanna stress that how they think or feel is not necessarily your task.

At least that's how I think about it. Like. I don't wanna assume and put all my eggs in the basket of they really love me or of any story about them. I want to instead, I. Like refocus my attention to how I am going to be okay no matter what, and that my love that I provide for myself and for them, to them, and the modeling that I do is more than enough for the both of us or however many kids you have.

If you're telling yourself that hearing them tell you some reality is going to make or break who you are, then that to me Is denial. Denial, and is also diluting yourself.

 Identity Disruption

So identity disruption is the next one. when we've been caring for our children for X amount of years.  and if you were the primary caregiver as well, we've become reliant on that role to define us,  And so our brain just develops. these expectations for the, duties and all the tasks that we carry out on a daily basis, an hourly basis. Sometimes if you're just coming out of that, your schedule's been just recently interrupted and now you're having to Learn a new way to occupy your time. While your children are not with you, we've got the degrees that we're dealing with, and then separately we have this identity crisis. Like who are we without our children?

If you were involved in extracurriculars, whether that was, you know, baseball, tee-ball, dance recitals, something at the school, brownies, what have you, then there's that extra layer of not only sharing that time with your kid and the role that you played as their mentor ish. It's the role of parent, but also there's this other like leader role that you are playing for your child, Then there's the role that we played in the community related to our kids, right? So there's this disenfranchised brief that of course is weaved into this severance from not only our role as parent, but our role as parent in the community, and then of course our friends and what have you.

So it can really complicate your whole grief process as it is. Then we will actually go make it worse. By no fault of our own or your own right, but we'll go make it worse By thinking, I don't know who I am without my child. Life is meaningless without my kid being in it.

When you're questioning your role, who you are as a person, and whether or not you can add value to the world when you're not playing that role, and if other people will see value in you and the roles that you play, it will continue to hinder and keep you feeling set apart and alienated from, anybody you wanna be connected to.

Avoidance

Okay, so avoidance is another way that we can complicate our grief, and that is, is that I was again, just talking about this last week, that you avoid reminders of your kiddos, avoid people, places, and things that might cause you to break down, and though like I said, please understand that in the beginning it makes perfect sense.

Or maybe still give yourself some grace with this when you are ready. But maybe bit by bit adding like just a little exposure therapy. do small doses of allowing. Those reminders back into your daily life, when you're ready. But avoiding the pictures, avoiding the people, places and things or, , going into the room like I did for a long time.

It prevents your own adaptation, It increases your sense of isolation. If you have to avoid. And I've talked about this in other areas, but when we feel like we have to shut down close these doors to protect our environment, we end up closing ourselves in at some point. I can't go there, that's gonna remind me too much.

Nope, I don't wanna do that because that reminds me too much. I can't hear this song. I can't watch this movie. I can't look at that color or in that cabinet because those remind me. So then all of a sudden, your world is closing in on you. Right? Which. Prevent you from processing through the very things that you're avoiding.

And actually, when we do process that stuff, we tell ourselves it's so scary. Oh my gosh, I, I can't, I wouldn't be able to handle that.   📍 You can handle it, you know, of course, again, don't rush yourself.

 But at the same time, just know  that you can handle it. You can handle the processing of whatever emotion is behind that door. It's just the story that our protective brain, like the negative bias that all humans, falter to is providing so that you keep yourself safe so that you stay out of harm in that emotional part of your mind.  Going through the fire, as you know, rather than trying to go around is always, always going to be your shortest route and your most, rewarding. so avoidance. Yes. Prevents adaptation and increases your sense of isolation and your sense of cut offness from the world.  📍

Hopelessness 

Hopelessness, meaninglessness. This is another one. That I know so many of us, Experience this  life has no meaning without them, my life will never be good again. Now that they're gone, they're not here with me, that things will never be the same, yada, yada, yada. Which of course, whatever we say, life has no meaning without them.

Our brain is gonna go, okay, let's not find ways that life is actually very meaningful. We'll find all the ways that life has no meaning, because that's what you've already told us to do, so it'll continue to prove that true for you. Okay.

Confirmation bias. So it sustains your despair, That's same basically what I just said. And it impedes your recovery because you're stuck. Life has no meaning. There's nowhere to go from there. The let, if all of life has no meaning, then why even bother? We can't do anything. So we may as well just sit here staring at the walls.

No job, no role that you play now is gonna be ever gonna be as fulfilling as the one that you played as mom or dad. The one that you still play as mom or dad. So then your brain is gonna go, okay, there's nothing to do then. So why even father coming up with ideas, which then of course goes right back to your role, right?

Your identity disruption. All of these sort of support each other in this perfect way to keep us feeling even more stuck. Right, so if we're saying that life is meaningless without our kids, , it doesn't matter what we do. It doesn't matter, and then it'll cause us to ate and do other the things.  📍

Self Blame

Self blame, guilt. It's my fault, but they're gone. Now.  This is one that is shared across all kinds of grief, it's my fault that they're gone. I just needed to do one thing and I couldn't even do that.

What kind of mom or what kind of dad would let this happen? I just needed to keep them away from harm's way and look what I did somehow and some, most of the time you guys. I can't say for every time, but most of the time there was no way that any of us could have known that this was going to happen.

But we'll tell ourselves because we've already been being blamed from the other side for who knows how long. And maybe if you were in court, then you had their attorney, you know, being the bulldog, they were probably barking down your neck as well, saying what a terrible mother or father you were. So now, even though you didn't wanna take that on, and most of you believes that you, are, and were.

Acted as a great mother or father. You also have this other part of you. That blames yourself for what happened.  You should have known, you should have figured it out. That was your job. Why were you so, preoccupied We always want to blame ourselves because blaming ourselves, then we think that we could fix in that part of the mind.

Then if we could just fix whatever was broken within us and somehow that would fix what already happened, which it won't,  right? But anyway, that's the whole. Reasoning, I think behind it. . Self-blaming, guilt. only complicates your grief more obviously, and only causes you self-inflicted suffering.

Right? It intensifies your emotional pain. Which actually distracts you. Self-blame and guilt, especially the blame part will really distract you from whatever you actually need to be processing, like the true clean pain of grief. All of these really do, they're all just distractions from your clean pain, the real, real emotions of grief and, and cause suffering, which of course, like I was just saying, halts your, grief process,  📍

Yearning 

yearning and your desire for reunion. We all want this,  I just wanna be with them again. I just want them to know, I just want them to see what the alienating parent is doing. want them to hear the truth, to believe the truth, that they could just understand my side of things, I just want things to go back to how they were,. you know, All of those prevent you from building a life forward.  I'm not saying build a life without them moving forward, but build a life with you in mind. Keeping space for them to come when they're ready.  When you think about all the ways that things should be your whole mission is on that. That will get you tied up in probably having your kid think that you're crazy. You know, trying to just prove them all the ways and then you never actually create the life that you need or want ultimately for yourself because you've been so tied up in trying to get things back to how they were, This is one that I know so many of us do, especially on days like Mother's Day, father's Day, Christmas, birthdays, yada., you know. And all of these really, there's one more here. It's a natural part of our grief, but at the same time, if you know what's been going on for so long, I feel so passionately about, helping you guys to move through the self-inflicted suffering so that you can get to the grief part.

Grief is inevitable. We will experience all kinds of grief, like I was just saying earlier in throughout our lifetime. It is survivable. It's doable, but sometimes people think that if I experience, if I allow myself to experience the grief now, then that means that I'm really saying goodbye to them.

Then that means that this all really did happen. I mean, I know that, you know, like painfully know that it is happening or it did happen. But when we think about processing these feelings, we wanna stave them off because that means we really need to understand that this is, isn't all just like a dream, a nightmare that we're gonna wake up from.

But I'm telling you, processing through this grief is what is going to bring you through to the other side. It's going to get you out of this hell that you're experiencing. We prolong this. Hell not knowing that we're prolonging this, hell kicking and screaming the whole time that we're in it, fighting it, because we think that by doing that, by resisting this grief that somehow it'll change the external circumstances.

Like the status of our relationship. But I haven't seen that that's ever happened because even if you process through the grief, it doesn't mean that you, you're giving up on your, voyage, your mission to reconnect with your kid.  It just means that you're experiencing grief and you're allowing yourself to feel it.

And now you have room because you're not distracted by all of the intense acute emotions of grief.  now you can. Place your attention on your mission to reunite. First of course, focusing on your own healing, And rebuilding of your own life, your own identity, So all of these things really just keep you in this holding pattern of just circling around and causing so much pain

sometimes sickness, inflammation. Hello. That's what 📍 I'm stuck with is because of the years and years of suffering I am now, today it's okay. But I today have , an inflammatory disease. Still don't have the, the diagnosis or the answer, but I'm convinced that that's what it's from.

, There's so much data to support that. Stress does cause inflammation to the point where people do develop disease, I'm not saying that to scare you or anything, I'm just saying it's a real thing. So the longer that we stay in the holding patterns, the more that we are holding inside of us, pent up in us, and it comes out by way of disease.

So the last one. On a light note, happy Mother's Day.

Emotional Numbness 

📍 And the last one is emotional numbness. there comes a point where, well, this can happen in the beginning too,  but I feel nothing at all. It, the world is whatever you feel like you're on. I, I was just talking about this last week, like you can't feel anything like lithium some people experience this on, antidepressants, depending on the kind, you know, where they're just can't cry, can't feel happy, can't feel anything, they are just

right. And that feels just like existing, if you're telling yourself that I feel nothing at all.

Your body will again, follow suit. Oh, well we already say that. We don't feel so we're gonna let nothing in. And so you continue to stay unaffected because you've put yourself in that mode out of protection earlier on.

Drugs. No drugs, right? Um, medication. No medication. It could be too that you've told yourself that you don't have the ability to feel anymore because of all the shit that's happened to you. Like so much has happened to me that I just, I don't even feel it anymore. Your brain and your body is gonna go to work and keep you in that state of like, it's like this low grade.

Like there's stuff that's like building underneath the surface. So there might be like a slight irritation at the world, but the big feelings you don't seem to, be able to go to.  So you end up essentially blocking your own sense of connection to the all the world around you.  To , even the people that you were once close to that, those relationships weren't severed or ruined, you know?

And it . Increased, of course, your feelings of isolation and the alienation. So not only are all of those patterns that I was just talking about. Not only are the symptoms, but they're also what contribute to. The persistence of your complicated grief, which in turn will turn into prolonged grief disorder.

It can turn into prolonged grief disorder. So, challenging all of these kinds of thoughts on the regular basis can really, really, really help you. And I know that I actually bring this home throughout all of the episodes, but I think when we're talking about like these days.

Maybe in your mind, , the narrative is everybody else is celebrating each other. Families are together, people are honoring moms or honoring dads. I just have no place. Or maybe you, you are celebrating. Mother's Day for your own mom, but feeling like kind of mostly bitter, not as much sweet, and you resent Mother's Day or Father's Day these are the days that I think that you must, must, must really focus on you and your healing and   📍 asking yourself. what is the story that I have going on in my mind?  This is the kind of day that you could start off with a thought download, well, along with every day,

or you can do this when you're feeling irritated and you don't know why. I don't know why I'm irritated. I just am. The world sucks. I hate people. Go get yourself a piece of paper. It's better to do a pen and paper than it is to do it on a screen, but whatever. Choose it however you like.

Go, just start emptying your brain without censoring your, what's going on in your mind. Don't not write it down. I get this all the time. I explain this, I don't know how many times to my clients and also, on the podcast, but

It is so important when you're doing a thought download.   📍 The point of a thought download is to not edit, not censor, not decide not to write that down because doesn't feel good or doesn't look nice on paper. 

Don't do that. Get the ugly thoughts out and get some distance from them. They're not you. They're thoughts that occurred based on whatever's happened in your past. And I know that I talked about this a lot, but like I said, I know that this also needs to be talked about because still with my clients somebody just told me last week,  📍 I start to write and then I don't like what I'm getting ready to put down on paper.

I can't even look at the paper. So I just stop doing it or I don't write down those thoughts.  that defeats the purpose and in fact, it can actually be detrimental to your healing because the whole point of a thought download is to recognize that their thoughts, they're not you.

But now that we know and have the awareness of those things that you think. That you know. You know like, oh, I know what goes on in my brain. all the time. Well, if you knew, then you would know why you were annoyed, or why you were agitated, irritated about all the people, or why you were sad or why this, or whatever.

So we don't pay attention to what's happening inside of our brain because we think. Whatever's happening up there is normal, it's factual and it's whatever. But when you start getting awareness that's when you're like,  oh shit. I don't really like that thought.

That thought seems icky,  great. Now we know what's causing whatever's going on for you.   📍 But if we didn't put it down on paper, then you never actually would've been able to face it, acknowledge it.  Nobody else needs to see your thought downloads except for you, unless you're one of my clients, and I might sometimes ask you for them just because I need to make worksheets for you or whatever.

But other than that. You're the only person that needs to see those thought downloads. It's so important so that you don't find yourself in a situation years down the line where you're sick you can't get out of the negative patterns of thinking because you are in prolonged grief because of the habits that you created early on, thinking that you were protecting yourself from the grief.

Okay, so. That's that. whenever you do have thoughts coming up, just ask yourself. I think again, nothing that you did like all the things that I just mentioned. Rumination, disbelief, identity, destruction, avoidance, hopelessness, meaningless, self blame, guilt, yearning, desire for reunion, Or emotional numbness. None of those thought patterns are bad or wrong, or. Irregular it's okay. No matter what patterns you picked up along the way. Clearly they though were serving you at some point, and also when you become aware of those showing up for you and like the examples that I gave you, or whatever your versions of those examples are, then you can ask yourself, is this supporting?

My healing, is this supporting my walkthrough grief or is this hindering my healing, my walkthrough grief? Is this keeping me in a holding pattern or is it taking me through? like, is this helping me or is this harming me?

Am I avoiding something by continuing this pattern? Or am I walking through this with compassion and care and mindfulness? that is how you can support yourself the best, the fullest and feel like love, loved during your grief is to provide that loving atmosphere internally.

Okay. 

And so, if you are a mom listening and you're here in the United States or Canada, or actually no matter where you are in the world, and if I haven't, you haven't heard me, wish you a Happy Mother's Day this year and Happy Mother's Day,

you've got this.

I love you and dads. You're coming up around the corner. Okay? Take care.

YouTube Vid I Referenced: ⁠Navigating Grief, Mother's Day ,& Healing After Child Loss w/ Dr Marcy Larson⁠ 

.00:00 Introduction and Episode Teaser

00:13 Mother's Day Inspiration and Emotional Story

05:13 Understanding Grief and Its Impact

10:41 Coping Mechanisms and Thought Patterns

18:02 Navigating Special Days and Self-Care

33:02 Conclusion and Final Thoughts