Podcast Memorable Quotes: 

Jill Ann Anderson

• "Grief doesn't go away—it softens."
• "We’ve sanitized death so much that people no longer know how to grieve."
• "You are not broken. You are grieving."
• "Grief needs to be witnessed. Not fixed."
• "I’m just the guide. The transformation happens in the client."
• "You don’t have to suffer in grief—but you do have to feel it."
• "Boundaries aren’t about keeping others out. They’re about expanding the capacity of the self."
• "We want to shrink when we’re in pain. But the goal is to expand."

Mike O’Connell

• "You can outrun the speed of hurt, but it just sits there waiting for you."
• "If you spill fruit punch on a white carpet, you see the damage. But when you don’t grieve, the damage is invisible."
• "Grief did push-ups for 70 years, just waiting to come out."
• "I thought I didn’t need to grieve. But years later, I ended up in treatment."
• "We all have the tools—we just need someone to help us organize them."
  

Transcript Disclaimer:

Our episodes of the Good Grief Podcast include a transcript of the episode’s audio for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, if you’d like to scan the material, or have low bandwidth. The text is the output of AI-based transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors and should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Pete Waggoner (Host): [00:00:00] It is time for another exciting edition of Good Grief, as we have a good one today. As Jill Ann Anderson's gonna join us. She's a grief therapist. She works a lot with you, Michael O'Connell. As we are going to take a look at mourning the meaning in really holding space and. How you go through this and you're gonna be our roadmap.

Jill, great to have you here. 

Therapist Jill : Thank you. It's wonderful to be here. 

Pete Waggoner (Host): Michael, a topic that you chose what was the derivative for this? What made you go down this path? For this one? 

Mike O'Connell: I would say because everybody, and I mean, everybody could go through some form of counseling 

And I think everyone needs to process their grief. 'cause if you don't. It's not a good thing. And that's a personal note.

Pete Waggoner (Host): So we've got a lot within this to go through. And let's just start with your background a little bit. Can you tell us a little bit about what drew you into grief counseling and what your journey's been like?

Therapist Jill : Sure. I was drawn into grief therapy out of my own personal experience. I had my [00:01:00] husband passed away in 2018 unexpectedly, and then nine months later my dad passed away. So 2018 was a very painful and difficult year for me, and as a therapist, I was looking for. Somebody to work with me and I struggled to find help and it just came from a place of, holy cow, I'm a therapist and I can't find a therapist.

And so it really, it didn't start out. Well that way in terms of me starting to become and get trained to be a grief therapist, but that really is the inception of it, is that I was experiencing such profound loss and pain and I didn't have an outlet or anybody to really help. And understand where I was coming from.

Pete Waggoner (Host): So what was the next steps? Did you find something or did you have to self therapy that? 

Therapist Jill : Well, I [00:02:00] used O'Connell's resource and she helped and then I ended up just maneuvering through it myself and I don't recommend that but because I am a therapist, I knew some of the steps that I needed to go through.

And I did some of all, I made a lot of mistakes and so I think some of those mistakes have really helped me in my own grief practice with my clients. 

Pete Waggoner (Host): So how long after that whole process did you decide, you know, what maybe I should start gearing toward this.

Therapist Jill : year number three. 

Pete Waggoner (Host): So what, 2021.

Therapist Jill : Yep. 

Pete Waggoner (Host): Okay. And how has that been for you so far? 

Therapist Jill : It's been transformational and that's what I say about grief therapy is grief is painful. It can be very traumatic as Mike knows, and yet it can be extremely transformational. But it requires you to work with somebody who can kind of lead you along in that journey.

I, I liken it to my dad was a [00:03:00] big hunter and there's a place up north called the rice beds. And boy, oh boy, if you don't have a compass to go in that place, you go in and it's just this deep woods. Now a seasoned hunter will find landmarks and go, oh, this is, oh, we're at the spring, right? And then walk a little, oh, we're at the oak tree with the thing on it.

Right. He knows it. He's been walking it. And if we don't have that guide with us. We can get lost in it. And that's what happened to my dad. Yeah, he literally got lost in the rice beds. But that was a story of itself. But I just, that memory just brings back so much in terms of what the grief process and healing is it's so much better when you can have a person that will point out and help you see the markers.

See this places that you're going like, oh, yep, [00:04:00] this is ex, yep, you're at this place. Great. Let's process this. And then you walk a little bit more and see the next landmark or space that you have for yourself, and to have somebody be there with you to just listen, encourage, and be open. That just is transformational for the client.

Pete Waggoner (Host): What a great analogy. And what I always hear about this is nothing that's very, like rigid. It doesn't really know a timeframe and it doesn't really know a specific formula particularly. Is that fair to say? Hence, the need for the guide. 

Therapist Jill : Well, right. That's why I always tell my clients, my grief clients, well on all of my clients is it's a privilege for me to walk alongside you.

I'm the guide, but the transformation occurs in the client because each story, each grief journey [00:05:00] is theirs and it's not like anybody else's. Mine was different. I can talk to other widowers, I can talk to other people who have lost their fathers, and we all have different stories. We all have different things that have helped us have that transformation.

So I just am there to almost, what I liken it too is I'm more of an educator. I'm an educator for the client to go, you know what, if you're feeling that way, it's completely okay. It's okay. Yeah. Because family and friends might go, you shouldn't be feeling that way are you gonna move on?

Pete Waggoner (Host): Do you feel as though sometimes when you when you suggest that you get different reactions where they don't know how to take that information when you say it's okay? 

Therapist Jill : No it's so,

Pete Waggoner (Host): it's, I mean, people are good with that. 

Therapist Jill : Absolutely. They get in my office and when they hear those words.

They ju it's like you can just physically see them. Really [00:06:00] just go, oh, thank you. I feel so much better already, even in the depths of the pain of grief. To be able to have someone share and witness your grief is how the transformation process begins. 

Pete Waggoner (Host): That must be powerful for you. 

Therapist Jill : It is. What's hard about that though, and what I think.

I wanna make sure to note in the podcast for everybody listening is, when was the last time you saw a funeral hearse? 

Pete Waggoner (Host): Probably two to three months ago. 

Therapist Jill : Okay. 

Pete Waggoner (Host): But I used to see him every day 

Therapist Jill : used to 

Pete Waggoner (Host): Keyword. 

Therapist Jill : Keyword.

Mike O'Connell: Yeah. 

Therapist Jill : Mike. 

Mike O'Connell: Well, I drove one, but, you know, but I'm curious to see where this point's going.

'cause I like where you're going. I think so. 

Therapist Jill : We are sanitizing death. In our culture and in our society, and it is, we made it ugly. Yes. Well, we're making it nothing. We're making it go away. We're making it try to be [00:07:00] invisible. And so we have to understand that death is just as much a part of us as life.

We celebrate babies being born. We anticipate this birth. We can see this process the same as death. We're we age, you know, in some cases of course there's, you know, sudden death, traumatic death, et cetera, unexpected. But we know that we all are going to die someday. But we have literally sanitized that from our culture and it's causing people, from my experience, this is just my experience.

It's causing people. To become less resilient when they actually do experience a death. 

Pete Waggoner (Host): It would be amazing, Michael is, if we could go back to maybe our first or second podcast we did years ago and we [00:08:00] were talking about this very topic. The word sanitizing. Death is amazing. That's perfect. But you had brought up about how a lot of people have gotten away from that and not actually physically dealing, visually dealing with it.

And how and for me, like, I guess I'd never really thought about it. It. And I do think about that now and I thought, when you said that, and then to hear how it all plays together is interesting. So when you said that, and when you look at that maybe five, six years ago, and you look at it today, do you feel like the sanitization of this has, if that's the word it, if that's, has that increased?

Oh my Lord. Yes. I mean, over like five, six years, 

Mike O'Connell: it's increased over five, six weeks. Yeah. Oh, really? It's just, it's getting momentum because people don't want to feel, and I always liken it to, and I've told you this story, maybe not you, Jill, but if I had a cup of fruit punch on white carpet, you see the damage.

But when you don't grieve, you don't see the damage. [00:09:00] And I'll use me as an example, and Jill knows my story. You guys know my story, but. Dan's murder. I never processed it. I never took a day off, and so 23 years later I'm going to treatment because I never processed it and it affected me greatly. It affects your relationships, it affects your life in every way.

You can outrun the speed of hurt, and it just sits there weights for you. The body keeps the score of that book 

Therapist Jill : correct.

Well, here's the other part of the sanitization of it is that in terms of today we're focusing on death as grief. Right. A way to experience grief, but Mike mentioned something really important is that we don't, as a culture, society don't know how to feel, and that our emotions have never been something that's changing a little bit as psychotherapy advances, to have a place to sit down and actually [00:10:00] express emotion and understand the impact that they have.

In your life, both body, mind, and spirit. And so we have grief that you can experience with a loss of a pet, right? A lot of kids, that'll be their first experience of grief is when they lose a pet. So grief for me as a practitioner is all about loss. Because I can see somebody for, I've seen patients for loss of pets.

I've seen patients for the loss of a job. I've seen patients for loss of marriage. I've seen patients for you know, a variety of losses, miscarriage and all of those have a bunch of emotions swimming inside of the person that they've. Experienced, but we don't, as a culture, acknowledge those losses.

So when we think about grief, we go, well, what the heck is grief? [00:11:00] Like, how would you explain grief?

Pete Waggoner (Host): I so layman. Ready? Yeah. Yeah. No. I would describe it as I would say a, if this is me, a fierce loss. You know, you may lose your phone or whatever, but I mean, like, something that's personal and that really cuts to the core of you that you can't really replace and you have to kind of get through to moving out to the other side.

And I, that's, to me, what grief would be. It's interesting, you know, I, there, I think everybody handles it a little bit differently and sometimes. I don't know. Like, I wonder, like when I do these podcasts, I don't wanna turn this into a me situation, but for half second, like sometimes I don't even know if I'm cold or what's wrong with me because my mom dies and I was, I've really at peace and [00:12:00] I.

I don't physically miss her because I connect with her spiritually

did I grieve? I don't know. And so then I think like, am I, there's something wrong with me? That's a, that's an example. 

Mike O'Connell: Beautiful. But then again, had there been other parts of your life, that have maybe suffered or not been what you want, but you're not equating the two.

Does that make sense? True. What I'm saying is like, let's say relationships, but you don't go back and say. Ah, geez, I can't do this or that because I, my mom, I never agreed. Yeah, 

Pete Waggoner (Host): I mean, that's crazy. That's the 

Mike O'Connell: intangible part that I was talking about with the fruit punch. You can't see, well, here's 

Pete Waggoner (Host): an example to your point.

I would say 21 parents get divorced. That had an a profound impact on all four of us kids, for instance. We grieved it and we had no idea what we were doing. And I'd say our lives all went off in different directions with negatives for all of us.

Therapist Jill : So what that means is that each of you made meaning of the experience. So that [00:13:00] is part of the grieving process, but we typically don't make meaning until about year seven. Most people don't even enter into or participate in a grief group or therapy until year number five. That's what the statistics show us.

Pete Waggoner (Host): What if I waited 18? 

Therapist Jill : I have a client today that is a senior citizen. And is just now beginning to grieve the childhood loss of his father. And his parents' divorce and so it can happen at any time. That's the beautiful thing about it, is just do it. You're not gonna feel like you want to.

But again, this senior citizen, way back when he was a child, we didn't have the advancements in psychology that we have today. So we were, he was swimming in a culture of Northern Europeans. What [00:14:00] happens when somebody asks you, how you doing?

Oh, I'm fine. I'm fine. Great. 

Pete Waggoner (Host): Right? Sure you are. Yeah. Right, right.

Therapist Jill : Yep. So you've just made meaning out of your mother's passing in a different way for you Now, if you were to come into my room with me, I would dive a little bit deeper into allowing some of the loss. The emotions associated with the loss of your mother, despite the meaning that you've given to her life, which is so important to make sure that you understand that there still is stuff swimming and it's not a bad thing.

Pete Waggoner (Host): Right? On 

Therapist Jill : most people, that's what stops them is

i'm in so much pain. And what does our society tell us about pain? Remember we've sanitized these, well, 

Pete Waggoner (Host): We get ibuprofen or we get a, we covered up, we mask it. Correct? Correct. 

Therapist Jill : But this is why I say it's important to address the sanitization 'cause it require the sanitization of [00:15:00] our culture in death is in loss. Just suck it up buttercup and move on. 

Pete Waggoner (Host): You gotta 

Mike O'Connell: work, you gotta do your stuff. Right. A couple weeks ago we had, I had a 94-year-old that was Prearranging.

Okay. Yeah. And we went down the list, family and then proceeded and she gave me a list and then she goes, and then we're good. I knew what that meant. What did that mean? And so I said, say it. But we're okay. I'm like, just say it. And she, tears started coming and she said, I had a stillborn back 70 years ago.

Really? And then the tears really started coming. Jill talked about giving them the space to say it, to feel it. Back then you didn't do that. It was just like, Hey, you can have another move on. And so 70 years later, she's still, that grief is still sitting there waiting, doing pushups, waiting for an out.

How do you think she felt after she got that out? I think there was some relief, but also some we don't want to feel, so, [00:16:00] and then what do we say? You know, like, well, I wasn't gonna do this today. Oh geez, I hear that. But if you think of it, we are taught that when we are babies.

Because when we're crying, what does a parent do? So we all start off very young with saying, don't show your emotion. And then depending on your upbringing, it grows. Or maybe you're told not to show your emotions. Like, well, I'll give you a reason to cry. And so now these are adults that don't know how to express themselves.

And they don't know what adversity is or loss is. And they implode. 

Pete Waggoner (Host): So how do you deal with that?

Therapist Jill : Well, again, I'm gonna go back to the analogy of going through the, for through the woods and the rice beds, right? I'm just the guide, right? So I need to create safety and trust, and it is the client's journey. And I just get to ask really good questions, is the best way I can explain it. And I know based [00:17:00] on their responses, when to kind of challenge them a little bit. And I will, Mike. Mike is used a great example of childhood because our childhood wounds. Do show up in our grief whether you like it or not. I don't like it. So what? Yeah. Yeah. What it requires is, the analogy that I use is if I have somebody sitting there and they just go, oh, I say, it's okay for you to feel the pain, first of all, I give them permission to just feel the analogy that I use.

Is very traditional, so I will admit that, but it really hits home for most clients is moms in the kitchen cooking dinner. Okay? And a child's innate need for connection and safety is something that's biological. They don't know what's happening. Their conscious mind isn't developed, so they're simply acting out of bi [00:18:00] biology.

So they might be in the other room playing. And this innate need, and I like to call it yearning because it's the best word I know for this depth of connection and love and safety, affirmation of the self. And so the child will come up to mom in the kitchen and wrap their arms around her legs. Right? Or hang on her. And mom will go, what are you doing? Get, go. Play with your brother. Go out to your sister. Go play with your toys. Shake 'em off. Go watch tv. I can't, you see I'm cooking. Well, the child is just acting biological out of this deep yearning for connection. For validation, for acknowledgement.

Fascinating. That I'm okay. And if the mother says and it doesn't just happen in one, but that's a great example because if it's happening here, it's happening in other ways. And so it's go. And what the child needs is, oh, my baby has [00:19:00] three, four, however old. I call it a bid for connection.

The yearning for connection. Mom needs to bend down, pick up the child, go, hi honey, what's going on? How are you? Mom's cooking dinner. Look at what I'm doing. It's just connecting. 

Pete Waggoner (Host): My mom did that. 

Therapist Jill : Yeah, 

Pete Waggoner (Host): I remember there's pictures. 

Therapist Jill : Beautiful. 

Pete Waggoner (Host): Yeah. But when they don't, what does that teach you? Well, so, but then I did that not worthy.

Correct. You're not worthy. But then I did that because she taught me that.

Therapist Jill : Well, we have correct. Now what happens and why? I said, remember how I told you made meaning out of your mother's life? So what happens when we don't get those basic needs met is we will clamor, claw, kick our way to acknowledgement and validation with our parents.

We will try anything and everything, and we, again, you have to understand this isn't in our conscious [00:20:00] awareness. We just have this deep, innate yearning for connection, love, validation, sense of belonging, et cetera. That me showing up as me is enough. So what I learned in my family is I didn't get that, but guess what I got?

I happened to be, and I don't wanna sound ego here, but I was smart, so it was easy for me to get straight A's in school. So I came home with a report card. Right. Like every quarter. It was my time there. It was. It was my time. Yeah. So I got straight A's and I'd finally get, we'd sit at the dinner table as a family.

And mom would pull out the report cards and I'd get the validation from dad who didn't really say anything. German guy. Right, right. So I finally got him going. Good job. Oh, I'm so proud of you and mom going, yeah, conferences went really good, but you know, the teachers just [00:21:00] say she's still not working up to her potential.

Pete Waggoner (Host): Is there an a plus?

Therapist Jill : I did is that only came once a quarter. So what did I do? Oh my gosh. I had to be first here in the band. I had to be best at everything. I had to, I was in everything to somehow try to get this affirmation that I am enough.

Pete Waggoner (Host): So you're driven then. I mean, so then you would be viewed.

As a driven person from the outside because of aspiring to be the best at everything for gaining that I would look at you and say, well, you are so driven, Jill. 

Therapist Jill : Yeah. 

Pete Waggoner (Host): Wow.

You were, but the, that's the reason. 

Therapist Jill : Yeah. And then it all came crashing down until I couldn't. Deal with my life again. And so it was like, Ooh, it's time for me to go on my own therapy journey. Now, that was a many years ago, but the meaning that each person gives to their childhood is as unique and an individual as [00:22:00] grief. So imagine when mom or dad passes and they were always in pursuit. So I'll use my example always in pursuit of my dad's.

Love and affection and acknowledgement and validation. It wasn't something that he got himself, so he didn't know how to give that to me. And so when he died, all the hopes and dreams, all the wishes, all the deep yearning to one day have a dad that would just go, I just love you for you never happened.

Now that is, that's the trauma. That's the tremendous pain that we can feel from our childhood woundedness when we experience grief. 

Pete Waggoner (Host): When you come to that realization. When is that? At what point is that then? How'd that make you feel?

What'd you do? 

Therapist Jill : Well, here's the deal. That's why I say every [00:23:00] person who experiences loss should come to a grief therapist, right?

Because they might not understand that's why they're feeling the way they're feeling. They're in such complete pain, and they just don't, they, they don't know what to do with themselves. So it's kind of like a it's like an unraveling of the self, so you can see all of these pieces of you and the parts that they play in you. So we can begin to put them back together in this. Beautiful, it's not perfect. It's almost like gluing together the vase. Right, and it broke and you've got all these pieces glued together, but the vase still works. It just looks different. Wow. So that's the process of this coming together, of the self.

So it's, we work with whole person, but it's what was the before? What is the present [00:24:00] moment truth, and what does. The after moving forward look like. Now that's a process, right? It takes time.

Pete Waggoner (Host): I'm thinking we're gonna take a quick break here.

And we're gonna come back 'cause this is so great. But I just wanna say if this conversation is resonating with you, anybody that's listening, chances are someone you love needs to hear too. So, whether it's a friend growing through a loss or a family member grieving, or someone who's beginning to plan ahead, share this episode, that's why we're doing this.

So you never know the piece that this might bring. And so that kind of transitions me to the next question, when did you start feeling a level of peace and what did that feel like

Therapist Jill : I don't like to say peace. 

Pete Waggoner (Host): Okay. 

Therapist Jill : The verbiage that I use is. Your grief softens. Oh. Because grief is painful [00:25:00] and it never goes away.

So this is a very important piece because I cannot even I can maybe count on two fingers. The number of people that have come in and acknowledge and understand that most people go, please just help me. Please help me feel better. Please help me get out of this.

Please help me get over this and move on seriously. And I'm like,

Mike O'Connell: oh, gimme the quick fix, really, 

Therapist Jill : because I wanna take you back. We're sanitizing. Yeah. Grief loss, death in our culture, life and our life experience, grief needs to be witnessed. Grief requires witnessing. It requires somebody sitting with you and listening and understanding, and our society because of.

Cell phones, email, social media. We see even the sanitization of our social community [00:26:00] at large disintegrating before our eyes. And so I have these people coming in of all ages that are sitting in Utter, and I'm not kidding, utter isolation. When was the last time you had somebody that you came in contact with?

Mike O'Connell: I feel that we all have the tools in our tool chest, and when you come in, you just organize the tools so somebody can do their job.

Therapist Jill : What most to go back to, you know, not being able to feel and not understand what that is. Is to recognize you're correct, Mike, but I think you got that knowledge from your own work. Most think about when you started your [00:35:00] own therapy journey. You didn't even likely know that you even had a tool chest within you.

Mike O'Connell: thought that was a tool. Yeah. 

Therapist Jill : Correct. So it becomes first creating, I use three things with a couple of standards with any therapy. Grief, therapy included is two things are the foundation of my work. The first one is I've got to help you become more aware because awareness is the, it's the start of any lasting change.

So if I can create awareness, then we can build on that and talk about knowledge and understanding. So my clients will hear me say, oh, that's new awareness. Well, what do you know about that? And what do you understand about that? And they might go, well, I don't know. I mean, I just, whoa. It's like the guy who came in and he goes, therapist Jill.

I'm here because I've been married four [00:36:00] times to the same woman, and I'm like, oh, really? Like you? Let me clarify. You literally married and remarried the same woman? No. I married four women, but they're got it. They're different. But I'm sitting here and I'm like, I just am going through another divorce, and it's the same thing over and over again.

Huh. Pattern. 

Pete Waggoner (Host): What do you think 

Therapist Jill : awareness he had? See this is he had the awareness. Sure. It took four times, doesn't matter. He now has the awareness that there is a pattern in these women in his relationships that he is, for some reason attracted to. So all we did was build on that. So my clients hear that over and over again.

The second one, which is a foundation, I think, in everybody's therapy, again, no matter what journey you're on, is we are all created to live in our truth, [00:37:00] authenticity. But what happens is from the onset, we are programmed to believe that our truth, our true authentic selves. Isn't good enough. Because our parents are programming us based on their childhood wounds, their childhood personal beliefs and belief systems, which by the way, I call BS Belief systems. Most of 'em are Bs, but we. We are called to be truth and live in our truth. When I have people come in, it's because most of the time they're struggling with the inability to just speak their truth.

It can be as simple as a husband and wife coming in for couples therapy going, okay, she wants to go to Mexican and I want Chinese tonight. And I just don't, I can't tell her that I don't want that. 'cause then she's gonna get really mad and that the whole weekend's gonna be quiet and it's [00:38:00] gonna be ugly.

So I just have to zip my lip and carry on. And now 10 years later, I have resentment. 'cause then that led to, I can't tell her this's. That's a wild word right there. I tell that I can't tell her this. And it's like the domino effect begins, right? And so it's like, oh, let's look back. Why can't you speak your truth?

So that's another foundational principle is getting. Yourself to be able to speak the truth, and that if relationships and people fall away from you because you're speaking your truth, then they weren't meant to be in your circle. 

Pete Waggoner (Host): Love it. Love. That's right on. How hard is that for people to accept? 

Therapist Jill : It's difficult.

Pete Waggoner (Host): I think so. 

Therapist Jill : Because it's a lot, well, it's like my dad, let's circle back to my dad. Even if my dad was still alive today, I have to come I likely would have to come to the acceptance that my dad [00:39:00] just couldn't give me what I needed. 

Pete Waggoner (Host): Yeah, 

Therapist Jill : that's a tough one. He just couldn't, and that's difficult.

Right. I've got a client who's, I just want my mom to call me up and invite me out for pedicures and to go out for lunch. And I told her that. I'm like, mom, why can't you be like all of my other friend's moms who just call 'em up and say, let's go shopping. Let's go do this. And she's her mother, responded and said, I'm happy to do that for you.

And then she came back in and she goes, okay, therapist Jill. I did it. I talked to my mom and now it's two weeks later and I haven't heard from her. And I'm like, okay, so you now know we gotta move to, perhaps mom just doesn't have the skills based on her own life experiences to really connect with you in the capacity that you need and that 

Mike O'Connell: generational trauma.

Therapist Jill : Correct. And so then it becomes, we're not gonna get smaller [00:40:00] in our world because mom can't meet our needs. 'cause most people shrink to that. What I say is, let's work together to move towards acceptance so you can expand the capacity for life and begin to see people in a whole new way. We don't wanna make our lives smaller.

We want to expand with every adversity that comes our way. Because all it is a learning lesson and we just gotta learn it. 

Pete Waggoner (Host): So when you were doing your hands and saying the word smaller, it almost looked like two sides of a box and it made me go immediately. The smaller you make your box, the harder it is to.

I mean, that would fill up fast. 

Therapist Jill : Yeah. Well, because, you know, you know, because 

Pete Waggoner (Host): If you shrink it to that gets small, 

Therapist Jill : well, you're shrinking it. So if this client were to shrink and stay in this, the in, in this much capacity in her life, right, what she's typically doing, he or she is pointing the finger because mom can't give this [00:41:00] to me.

I then. Here's the word again, suffer. I am choosing to suffer because my mom can't do that. No. I want you to expand yourself to understand that just because mom can't do that for you doesn't mean that you aren't okay. You need to do it for yourself, or what's stopping you from calling mom? You can call mom and ask her for a pedicure 

Pete Waggoner (Host): for sure.

Therapist Jill : Right? 

Pete Waggoner (Host): Yeah. 

Therapist Jill : What. Take responsibility, open up and expand the capacity for your life. It's not, you know, some of the social media stuff, we get these, you know. You know, trending psycho psychological topics of, oh, relationships in my life are so toxic and they're gaslighting me. And they're narcissistic.

Pete Waggoner (Host): They're labeled, 

Therapist Jill : yeah. Yeah. That's our social media psychology. Right. I totally agree. 'cause what's happening is. We're shrinking the capacity for life by getting rid of toxic family members. No. The goal is if you [00:42:00] have a toxic family member is figure out why they're activating you in the first place.

So you, it's not them, it's you. Right. You're allowing yourself to get activated by this family member. Yeah. So what do you need to do to expand yourself, to know yourself more? To be able to deal with that family member? It might mean having really strong boundaries. That's okay, but the boundary is for you not to keep them out.

It's for you so you can continue to expand the capacity of the self. Most of us look at boundaries as, I gotta keep people out. Oh no. That's not what a boundary's for. It's to allow the capacity of the self.

That is what grief therapy is in the grieving, in the grieving process is, that's what I mean by the transformational process of grief, is if you allow yourself to feel the pain and just [00:43:00] let yourself come apart. 'cause you're gonna be okay. It comes back to that vase. Yeah. And that when you open yourself up to just understand this is another opportunity for me to learn more about myself and my capacity, then that's how the transformation from trauma to transformation that can occur.

That's when we get the meaning of it. 

Pete Waggoner (Host): What do you think of all this? 

Mike O'Connell: I think we just scratched the surface. Yes. So I'm wondering, would you come back and join us again? Sure. Okay. But we can talk about how the loss of a loved one impacts other parts of our lives, and whether it be your job, your marriage, parenting, different things like that.

Therapist Jill : Absolutely.

Pete Waggoner (Host): Wow, Jill? Absolutely riveting. I loved every minute of this. This was great. Thank you. You were awesome.

Pretty much nailed this one. It was really good. So be sure to check everything out at O'Connell funeral homes.com. And we'll be back with another edition of good [00:44:00] Grief,

jill, thanks for joining us. It was wonderful, 

Therapist Jill : my honor and privilege. Thank you. 

Pete Waggoner (Host): Thank you, Michael. We'll see you on the next one.

Sounds good.