Show Notes and Player for Episode 36A

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What’s in this podcast:

Everything You’ve Ever Wanted To Know About Grief and Loss

Times are Approximate

In this 3-part PODCAST we are talking about Grief and Loss Theory from Freud Forward

Telling the difference between the OBSESSION (unhealthy) and REVIEW & RELINQUISHMENT (healthy)

1:00-4:00 Techniques to get you out of the perseveration

5:00 The way we attach and detach has to do with early caregivers.

13:30 We’ve been doing this for ONE HUNDRED YEARS and we still don’t get it.

16:20 There are only THREE occasions we share with every other person on the face of the Earth and losing someone we love is ONE of them and we don’t talk about it.

19:30 We have to put up with so much of review and relinquishment of the movie in our head. But our emotions are what is HEALING us.

21:35 We have to get better at teaching people how to deal with loss and what grief should look like.

22:20 Back to Siggy and Karl and their exciting talk about mourning.

22:52 Freud originally believed that you had to relinquish the person COMPLETELY after they passed. He later changed to believe that we INTEGRATE the existence and relationship with the person instead of letting go completely.

24:00 Grief is a normal and natural response to loss. Even though it involves a “grave departure” from regular life, it is not a malady. Freud stated that you could grieve many other things besides the death of a loved one.

27:17 Grief is the painful, bit-by-bit letting go. It is the struggle between wanting to hold on but needing to let go. Because the work is so difficult, people are inclined to delay, inhibit or stop the grief process.

28:50 Melancholia is a stifled, unimpassioned, drowsy grief. We feel bad and then we feel angry at ourselves for feeling as bad as we really feel.

30:00 Revisiting Freud’s changed position on relinquishing versus integration. You can integrate a lost love (who is still alive) into who you are and your experience. You internalize the things you LIKED about the relationship or the person you were with.

32:00 When we do the internalization, we are able to go on with pleasant memories. When we’re still in pain, we’re not done yet.

33:20 Why grief does not happen in STAGES

34:00 When people think of “staging,” it screws them up when they repeat a phase.

34:25: Phases of Grief: Shock and Denial, Review and Relinquishment, Integration, Acceptance and Moving on. It’s much easier to DENY when it’s a breakup.

36:25: Is it unhealthy perseveration or is it necessary review? If you have questions with no answers, you have to shut it down with distractions and mantras. If you are doing the review, you have to let it happen even though it’s hard and hurts.