Part 2: Dealing with Life's Inevitable Losses (Episode 11)

Brent and Janis continue their four-part series on grief. They discuss how to process the emotion accompanying loss by looking at anger, a normal yet challenging emotion in dealing with any type of loss.

Transcript:

[Brent]: Hello, friends. Welcome back to Life & Love Nuggets. We're so glad you're joining us again. We're in the middle of this series dealing with grief and loss or talking about how to deal with life's inevitable losses, and as we've been talking, we recognize when we talk about the word grief, we usually think about somebody died and certainly that is what a lot of people are experiencing. But in our experience, most of the losses that people are dealing are the loss of an ideal or the loss of a dream. That job I wish I was gonna get I didn't get or the economy is going through a difficult place and we just don't have the disposable income that I wish we had or my child's not doing as well in school or somebody went through a divorce or had a friend reject them in some ways and we all go through grief then when we go through these losses. It's inevitable that we're going to experience this. The scripture even says in this life we will have trouble, but we do believe that there's a way through these and so, we've been looking at some of the emotions and some of the experiences that all of us are probably going to deal with.

[Brent]: This next one we're going to look at is the feeling and the emotion of anger; it's a pretty difficult one for us to know what to do with. But let's listen in and find some ways on how we can move through our grief, in a way that that helps us become more and more whole and stronger and stronger in the journey and so, you talked about anger, so that's a big part of grief and it is one of the most difficult parts of grief, because we've been kind of taught directly or indirectly, we shouldn't be angry and particularly in our faith culture, oh my gosh, that you're not supposed to be angry, you're supposed to--

[Janis]: Stop it.

[Brent]: Stop it, you know? You're supposed that's a bad thing, it's a bad feeling and so, you should be full of faith and belief and never be angry and-- Which is just harmful in essence and so, anger has-- You know, even the scripture says “in your anger, do not sin”. Another version says “when you are angry”, assuming we're going to be angry, “do not sin”. I think there's a couple ways we sin. I think one is we sin against ourself by repressing it, “I'm just not-- I can't feel this feeling, this is bad, so I'm going to just keep pushing it down”. That actually harms us, that will eat us up inside.

[Brent]: And then the way the other way we sin, is we let it just boil over and we lash out at somebody else and go for the jugular. Well, that sin is against them, that's harmful to them. So, what in the world do we do with it? First of all, we say that that anger has what we call a kind of a shotgun effect to it. I know you've never shot a shotgun; I don't think. Have you?

[Janis]: I have shot a shotgun.

[Brent]: You have shot a shotgun?

[Janis]: Yes, my father taught me how to shoot a shotgun.

[Brent]: Oh my god.

[Janis]: When we were-- For a brief period of time we were living in the country.

[Janis]: He wanted to make sure I knew how to protect myself, so I have.

[Janis]: And once was enough, I'll never do it again, you know? I know--

[Brent]: You’re pretty little, you--

[Janis]: It was done.

[Brent]: Blow you off your feet.

[Janis]: Yeah, [Unintelligible] did. Uh huh.

[Brent]: And so, well, in our time together, I didn't think you'd ever shot a shotgun.

[Brent]: But a shotgun shell depending on the gauge of it, you know, is not very big, but it's got a bunch of little pellets that are just kind of packed in. Well, if you shoot that, if it hits a target 20 paces away, well, the pattern of those little pellets will just scatter. That's kind of how anger is. I tell people if you had a loved one that was killed in a car accident by a drunk driver, oh my gosh, you'd be very angry at the drunk driver.

[Brent]: But you'd also be angry at possibly the ambulance for “why in the world did you take so long to get there?”. Some of you work in the medical community and you know that they may be angry at the doctors and nurses in ICU for “why didn't you do something!? Why aren't you doing something more to save my loved one!?”. Might be angry at the loved one for “why'd you go run errands late at night in the rain?”. They might be angry at themselves for “I wish I told him I loved him one last time”. Maybe angry at God for “why'd you let this happen to such a good person!? There's a whole bunch of bad people in the world that this should have happened to”.

[Brent]: And so, it can just scatter. So, I tell people “Don’t be surprised that you're just not more irritable than normal with the drivers in front of you going to work or your kids or your spouse or co-workers or whatever”.

[Janis]: Or the mailman.

[Brent]: Or the mailman.

[Janis]: Because he just happens to be there that day.

[Brent]: Absolutely, it can just come out all over the place and so, don't be surprised at that, that's very understandable, it's very normal and yet, what do we do with it that actually moves us through anger in a healthy way, so it will be resolved? And so, first of all, we have to let ourselves feel it. You know, we've heard of the statement of what you-- “If you can't feel it, you can't heal it” and so, it's how do you let yourself feel it, but move it through you in a way that doesn't harm anybody else.

[Janis]: I think that's more challenging or most challenging for people who don’t know their feelings anyway.

[Janis]: You know, some people are very good at recognizing and expressing their feelings, but some people whether personality or environment or a combination of both, just don't recognize feelings. They're either okay or angry, maybe sad, but that's it, they don't have a broad variety of feelings and so, sometimes you in the grief process, you have to begin to acknowledge a number of different feelings.

[Brent]: Now, you're looking at me while you're saying that.

[Janis]: Just because we're doing the podcast together, that's nothing to do with you personally.

[Brent]: Okay, yes. Okay. So, you're asking for testimonial here.

[Janis]: Well, you know, if the shoe fits.

[Brent]: Yeah, and so, I was clueless going into adulthood about feelings. My dad was a colonel in the Army, wonderful man. Colonel in the Army, we had all boys. Not a whole lot of need for feelings in my family, just kind of “I don’t care how you feel, do it anyway”, you know?

[Brent]: And so, I was one of those that hit life “I'm either okay or I'm mad”. Now, anger is one of the kind of seemingly male acceptable male emotions in our culture. So, we might know those two.

[Brent]: And of course-- So, I was-- I always tell people I was like in preschool when it came to understanding emotions and I marry you and you have a PhD in understanding emotions. So, you have like 1,735 gradations in between okay and angry.

[Brent]: And so, it challenged me to begin to recognize what is it that I'm feeling and we should say that anger actually is a secondary emotion.

[Brent]: And the primary emotions could be 50 different emotions. It could be I feel hurt, I feel lost, I feel betrayed, I feel misunderstood.

[Janis]: I feel disrespected.

[Brent]: I feel disrespected.

[Janis]: Overwhelmed

[Brent]: All kinds of stuff. Unappreciated. It could be all of those and many more and so, it's a little bit like, I always kind of draw it like a chimney and a chimney is where the anger comes out.

[Brent]: But underneath that chimney could be all of these primary emotions and so, anger, feeling anger is an opportunity to go “what's behind that? Do I feel betrayed by God because we couldn't have a child?”. You know, I thought that that was one of the blessings of God in life, you know? Do I feel misunderstood by a spouse or unappreciated by a child or whatever those things are and rejected by a boss who I just got fired, you know? From or-- It could be all kinds of things and so, the opportunity of being able to let ourselves sit in the anger and feel it and identify what's going on there. It could can be very helpful actually. It was those moments that actually challenged me to learn to identify my own feelings. It helped me be able to validate and acknowledge and respect your feelings, which can be a deepening in relationships, it can take relationships to a deeper level.

[Janis]: But I also think it takes and-- We touched on it briefly, but I think it also, we have to realize that we're going to deal with grief differently.

[Janis]: And as we experienced with miscarriage, you know, it wasn't as personal to you.

[Janis]: And so, it was a different type of grief. I think siblings, you know, they could lose the same parents, but it's a different type of grief. So, it's allowing everyone to grieve in their own way.

[Brent]: Yeah, yeah, leaving space for that. So, with anger. So, what do we do with it? If it has this shotgun effect, if it has a lot of primary emotions that are underneath it, what do we do with it that are healthy ways to let ourselves feel it and move ourself through it, let it move through us? And there are two-- There are two key things that I found helpful or that are critical. The first one is validation, is we need somebody (if not a few somebodies) that can validate what we're experiencing, that they can acknowledge it and recognize the significance of it. You know, if somebody loses their job and somebody’s just like “oh, you're gonna do fine, you're going to get another one and it's going to be okay”, this is not validating, it's trying to fix it, it's trying to get you to feel better immediately. It's not helpful. The person on the receiving end of that it’s going to go “you have no idea what this feels like, I've got a family to take care of and you don't know the fear that I'm experiencing here”.

[Brent]: Validation is “oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. That's going to be scary” and that's maybe about it and just be with them. “I'm so sorry this is happening to you” and again, with our experiences, we had people-- Well-meaning people say the stupidest things to us, you know? The-- Again, “well, you're young” or “is good you weren't pregnant too long” or “well, you guys will have more”, you know? And-- Or you--

[Janis]: And sometimes people just say stupid things. I mean, I remember having somebody say “well, you know, women who go to graduate school are more likely to struggle with infertility”.

[Brent]: Gee…

[Janis]: Where did you come up with that!? I mean-- It was like “huh, I’m not sure where that came from”. But people say stupid things and we just need that validation.

[Janis]: I remember after our last miscarriage, we had a picnic, a church picnic the next day, in a very-- We were in a very large church and why I felt like I had to go? I have no idea. But you were already there and I decided to go and so, I was walking across the grass and an older man, very, very sweet man. An older man came up and he looked at me and he had tears in his eyes-- I'll get tears now and he just said “I'm really sorry about your baby”. That meant more to me anything anybody else had said, because I could tell he experienced my pain and he was with, me he wasn't discounting that.

[Janis]: And that really is the best thing we can say to people, is “I'm so sorry about your loss”.

[Brent]: And that's it, you know?

[Janis]: That’s it.

[Brent]: And he didn't try to fix it or give us some little encouraging statement to help us feel better, it was just “I'm so sorry”.

[Brent]: And that is “somebody gets it”.

[Brent]: That is incredibly healing and we're going to come back to that in just a second, but validation and so-- And as we'll talk in a second about safe people, you're gonna have to be pretty picky about this right now. There may be certain people you just don't want to talk to, because they're not safe right now. So, the second, I called it the two V words. The first one is Validation, the second is Ventilation. Is how do we let ourselves feel it, but move it through us so it doesn't just sit in us, and I think there are three different pathways that we've found to be helpful. Now, there's probably more than this, but these are the ones that I've had people report back to me that have been meaningful.

[Brent]: The first one is safe people, which is that gentleman, was a safe person. Safe people certainly they're confidential, so they're not going to share what you're sharing with them with somebody else. I always say that safe people are people that you can cuss and fuss with and they don't freak out on you.

[Brent]: They're-- They don't try to go “oh my gosh, you shouldn't think that about that”, you know? Or--

[Janis]: Or shoot bible bullets at you.

[Brent]: Or shoot bible bullets at you or they aren't fixing, which is one of the key-- They don't try to fix it. Because there's no fix, it's just listening, it's validating, it's being present with you, letting you cry and handing to you Kleenex without having you to get better.

[Janis]: Which often means they're not our family.

[Janis]: Especially if they have experienced the same loss or if they're in tremendous pain because of your loss of a job or something like that. One of the interesting things that I found over the years people have said to me about losing a parent and you know, most of us are going to outlive our parents. So, most of us are going to lose our parents in our life, but one of the things that I found people will say is “when I lost my dad, I really in essence lost my mom too. Because I was hurting because my dad had died, but she couldn't comfort me and she had comforted me before and now, I find that I have to put my grief aside and comfort my mom or she's changed so much because of her grief, that I don't feel like I have the same mom anymore”.

[Janis]: So, a lot of people are struggling with that right now with Covid. I mean, I've-- I don't know about you, but I've seen a number of people whose parents died in Covid or a parent died and just trying to come to terms with that, with their own grief, while acknowledging their other parents’ grief as well.

[Brent]: Yeah, yeah, and so, safe people and this also tells us what we need to be for people.

[Brent]: It's not just who we need to be, but how do-- What do people need from me? They don't need my answers, they don't need a fix-it statement, they don't need me to just get the right perfect scripture to, you know, send them, you know? So that hopefully they'll feel better tomorrow. That doesn't mean that scripture can't be shared or encouraged, but validation needs to be-- Is what needs to be led with. That “I'm with you. I'm present. You can feel whatever you need to feel. It's okay, I totally understand it and I get it and I am with you in this journey”. I believe this is one of the most healing things that can happen in our life, yet it's really hard to do. Because people, again, we live in a fix-it culture and people want us to feel better and they want us to get better quickly and they don't-- They're a bit impatient, you know? And so, I believe it's what I call “a sacramental moment”. One of the definitions of the word sacrament is where the distance between heaven and earth collapses. Where I believe that in those moments, if you find a safe person in your life and you can share openly with them and just be bleeding and cathartic. You know, that it's like God in that person is sitting there holding you going “I understand why this is so painful. I understand why this is such a feeling of being out of control. I created you as a human, you're limited. You are dependent creatures, you're not in control of everything. I know how panic this causes you to feel and I'm with you. I'm present, I'm with you now”.

[Brent]: We don't believe that that happens one time and then just we're fine, but I think every time we're able to share with somebody, a safe person and they're able to hold it, a little bit of healing happens. If we hold all this in and we don't share that, we're not getting that in essence medicine, heavenly medicine for our soul and so, now, I can't tell you how many people I say “so, do you have this kind of person?”. Now, they usually say “well, I'm in your office because I want you to be this”.

[Brent]: So, I go “well, hopefully I will be, okay, but you need somebody outside of here” and often I can't tell you how many people go “I don't know who I would talk to, I don't think I could talk to this person or this person because this person wants to try to fix me, this person--” whatever and-- Which is telling to me and so-- But I believe that God has somebody for everybody.

[Brent]: And so, I just encourage people to think about who might that be and you can actually coach a healthy person into this, where you can say “I need-- I'm finding that I need from time to time just some-- Just to throw up a bit, you know, emotionally and I need somebody can just sit with me and I'm not asking you to fix it. As a matter of fact, if you try to fix it, I'm going to probably want to smack you”. But if you can just listen, sometimes that really helps people, because it's like “oh, I don't have to fix them, I don't have to have an answer for them”

[Brent]: And that actually helps them calm down a little bit and know that just that presence is actually healing and so, I encourage people to lean towards this during times of grief and loss. Find somebody that you can just ventilate with, that you can get this out, that can just hold it.

[Janis]: And what I also encourage is if you're going to go into a situation where you have to be surrounded-- Excuse me. By unsafe people, have your safe person come as a wingman.

[Janis]: So, if you know, you know, your in-laws or/and so and so or somebody that's in my Sunday school class at church, they're going to say something that's going to be really painful probably, because they don't feel safe to me. It's not that they're bad people, but in this situation having that person go with you, to be able to cut off any difficult conversations or that you can be there, that they can comfort you and say “I know she said this, but you don't have to listen to that. It's really okay to be where you're at”. Because oftentimes when we're grieving and we go into a situation where there's numerous other people, not only do we feel vulnerable, but so many people don't know what to say that they're struggling to come up with something and that's when a lot of the stupid comments come out.

[Janis]: And they don't mean that, but if you can have somebody else there with you as that support and that encouragement and protection, it could really be helpful.

[Brent]: Absolutely. So good, so good. So, find a safe person. Try to find who you might be able to talk to and just get into the rhythm of that and be proactive about it, because people don't know what to do with you. You know, if you've lost a job and they don't really know what to say, you know, every time they get together “well, have you found another one yet?” or whatever, you know? But if you can lean towards them and just say “I'm really struggling, I just-- I still-- It's been two months, I haven't found a job yet and I'm really getting to panic and you know, my severance is about to run out” and whatever and let them be that for you.

[Janis]: And I like it that you're talking about not just death, but lost of a job.

[Janis]: Because I think one of the things that’s highly-- But that we just don't talk about enough is empty nest, the struggle that a lot of people go through with empty nest, but also the struggle people go through with retirement and we have to have people that we can talk through normal life changes that are losses and grief and if you don't have a safe person, it's-- You know, there it's so often that they will go “but you have this and this and this and this you should be happy”

[Janis]: And yeah, but there's still a loss.

[Brent]: Yes, and we realize this is not-- Unfortunately, this is not easy to find sometimes for-- You know, I had a guy my age I was talking to the other day and he was like “I couldn't share this with any of my buddies, they would-- They would think less of me, they would think that I'm weak or something” and I was just so grieved over that, you know? And that he didn't have anybody in his life that could allow him to be going through incredibly difficult painful situation that he was experiencing and that he had-- He had to act okay, you know’ In front of them and partly, he said “well, this is what I'm paying you for”. [Unintelligible]

[Janis]: Keeps us on business.

[Brent]: So, okay. But, man, I wish you had this for somebody else.

[Janis]: But it’s sad. Well, I think so. Oftentimes the people who have difficulty with you opening up, it's because they're not dealing with their own emotions.

[Janis]: So, it totally comes across as “oh, well, I just don't have that problem, you know? or I trust in God”. We get wounded when people say things like that, but recognizing it comes from their own inability to deal with their emotions.

[Brent]: Yeah, and remember, this is showing us all what we need to be for others.

[Brent]: So, we might be the fix-it kind of people, you know? I want to help people and give them answers and stuff and realize that's not helpful. Now, if they say “what do you think I should do?” and whatever, then okay, we can give them some input. But just listen, just be present with people. Another outlet for anger is God and you know, I think everybody knows this “I should be able to talk to God in my life”, but I think in most of our faith training, by the time we-- When we think about talking to God, we think “I should have my act together. I should be hopeful in believing good for the future and trusting and stuff”. God doesn't expect this of us. David is just one of the best examples of this in scripture. I just-- I love his writings and the Psalms, the Psalms or the prayer book of the church and it really does show us what so many people are feeling and thinking in real life and the lamenting Psalms are one of the biggest-- There's different sections of different kinds of Psalms and it's one of the biggest groups of Psalms and David is just fussing.

[Brent]: He's just “God, where in the world are you!? Have you gone to sleep!? You're letting my enemies come and overtake me! God, go kill these people! They don't deserve to live!”. Now, I'm paraphrasing slightly, but not much.

[Brent]: Now, David was [Unintelligible] after god's own heart. It certainly wasn't because he was perfect, he made some major blenders, but I believe it was because he knew God gets us. God knows the beginning and the end of all things and we don't know exactly how all this works, but we don't know what's going to happen five minutes from now.

[Brent]: We don't know what's happening outside of our podcast room right now. He knows this makes us crazy people, that we have no-- Very little control in life and bad things can happen and we don't understand why. It makes us crazy people and so, he wants us to come to him with that. Usually we pull away from him, because we're frustrated in “why did you let this happen in my life?” and he wants us to come to him. He's the only one that can help bring peace in the midst of that and so, we encourage whatever that looks like in your life, to just lean into that. A little more bloody, a little more raw, just be genuine. Be fussy with God, is okay. He is the one that can help bring peace in the midst of our fussiness and--

[Brent]: But if we bottle it up, if we feel guilty for being upset with God or upset with people or whatever, then we are not getting-- We're not moving through this.

[Janis]: It's reminding ourselves that God is the ultimate safe person.

[Janis]: God is safe, he is loving, he cares for you, he knows what you need. Recognizing he is completely safe and he's not going to strike you with lightning just because you said you were mad or you said he was unfair or if you've questioned whether he was good or not. He's not going to strike you with lightning.

[Janis]: He loves you completely.

[Janis]: But so, often times I'll have people when they're talking about their anger with God say “is it okay for me to say that? I mean, I already had this bad thing happen, what if something else bad happens because I did this?”. No, God is safe and he is good and he would rather you have relationship with him, than to pull away from him because you're angry.

[Brent]: Yeah, absolutely and he's the one that can bring peace in the midst of the storm.

[Brent]: Another thing that David did by-- He showed us by his example is he did some writing. Now, David didn't know anybody's going to read this stuff. I mean, this is just how he lived, he wrote stuff out and so, we encourage people to do what we call “David letters”, you know? And so, if you felt rejection from a friend, that's the loss that you're dealing with or from a family member, some-- There's so many people that feel disconnected from their parents or siblings or whatever and so, our anger-- So, we're grieving the loss of family and we're angry, you know? At them.

[Brent]: Is you get a little piece of paper out. Now, I tell people if you have a nice leather-bound journal you write all your nice thoughts in, don't do it in that, okay?

[Brent]: Get a little, you know, spiral notebook out or something, put their name at the top of it and just tell them off. You just went through a divorce and you know, your spouse is being a jerk or at least doing--

[Janis]: Jerk like behavior.

[Brent]: Jerk like behavior.

[Janis]: That's what we used to tell our kids. You can't say they're a jerk, but you can't say they have jerk like behavior.

[Brent]: Yes, and just tell them off. Now, we don't-- We don't mail this to them, we don't email it to them, don't take a picture of it and send it to them.

[Brent]: Don't get into angry texting, you know? Eventually you'll burn it or you’ll shred it. There's something about just getting it out and we encourage pencil and paper with a piece of paper, without-- Not a computer. There's something about scratching this out that gets--

[Janis]: And it connects to a different part of your brain.

[Brent]: It does.

[Brent]: Just get it out, just get it out. It's between you and God, just get it out and all of these, talk-- You know, talking to a safe person, talking to God, writing this stuff out, this is like having the flu and you throw up. Sorry, kind of gross and you feel better. Now, you still have the flu. You're going to throw up, throw up three hours from now, but it's getting the poison out.

[Brent]: That's what this does, it gets the poison out. Now, this is not the ultimate resolve to anger. Ultimately forgiveness is where we release offenses. The rejection, the betrayal, the hurt, the whatever it is and in a previous podcast we talked about forgiveness and so, we're not going to go into all the detail of that and-- But I always tell people when they're going through grief, I say “I'm not going to talk to you about that right now”. Because most people jump, particularly people with faith try to jump from the pain of anger to forgiveness because “I'm supposed to do this”.

[Brent]: And they go through the motions of it and it doesn't seem to help and so, it's like “well, this must not work” or the worst part of that is “there's something terribly wrong with me that I can't let this go”. Not helpful. Now, eventually we'll get there and I tell them “We’ll talk about that eventually”. Eventually you'll get to a place if your loss is through a relationship or rejection or if somebody actually hurt, harmed you in some way. Eventually we'll get to forgiveness and we'll talk about that it's a process, it's not just a one-time thing we do, it takes time, but-- And we can be proactively doing that. But I just encourage people in the midst of when they're going through a time of loss, to just as these feelings of anger come up, just look for these ways to move it through you, to let it flow through you. Let yourself feel it, let yourself flow through and I tell people “Don’t-- This doesn't mean I want you to go home and try to work up anger so you can practice this”. It will hit you soon enough.

[Janis]: It will come, yeah.

[Brent]: It will hit you soon enough and so--

[Janis]: And I think it's important, you said it briefly, but when we write it out, it's not so we can go over it, over and over and over again. So, if I'm writing a letter to my ex, which I don't have an es. But if I'm writing that letter and getting all of that out, it's not so I can go “oh yeah, and he did this this and this”, it's so we can get rid of it. So, that's where I say shred it, burn it, do something to get rid of it, because we're just throwing up.

[Brent]: Good, yes. So, this is a significant stage of grief that people seem pretty limited in being able to process. So, we encourage you find that safe person in your life. It may just mean start praying about it, who might this be and you're going to have-- Probably have to reach out to them and say “I need this”. Practice as this is-- As this stirs in you, anger stirs and you try all three of these. Just try them and see if they don't help and you'll begin to see that that anger will begin to slowly dissipate, the intensity of it will begin to decrease, the amount of times that it will flurry, you know? Back up in your life will not happen quite as often and it'll move you through this process.

[Brent]: So, we probably should stop for this today. We've kind of given you a little bit of perspective on kind of grief and what the-- What some of this process looks like. We're going to continue this in our next podcast and we're going to talk about depression, we're going to talk about mourning and how do we actually move through ultimately, to acceptance and meaning. But for now, we encourage you to be okay with not being okay. It's you're going to experience some of these pains, it is the normal part of the human Journey, but it does not name us, it is not where we have to live and how we have to stay.

[Brent]: But there's something about moving through grief that can be one of the actually healthiest or strength-- Most strengthening things in our life, if we allow ourselves to do this in a healthy way. So, we're trusting for peace in your life and blessings as we go today.