Takeaways & Reflection | When Dysfunction Meets Dysfunction
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY
What happens when you get a group of people together with unprocessed grief?
The same thing that happens, likely every day of your life – in unprocessed grief, dysfunction meets dysfunction; baggage meets baggage.
We are a society of grievers. Every human being has either lost a loved one, dream, relationship, home, job/career, a pet, or themselves. Amidst these losses, are other relationships in life where others have experienced losses, too.
In our dysfunction of not addressing these losses (which are likely numerous and cumulatively negative), we are met with the undelivered communications and undealt with emotions that cause a dysfunction stew.
Dysfunction meets dysfunction.
What do you do when you find yourself in situational dysfunction?
What can you do?
In today’s episode, I explore this and more…
RESOURCES:
- Ep 86 | Moussa Mikhail
- Grief Recovery
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We All Bring Our Baggage
Hey, it’s another takeaways and reflections episode. This is your host Victoria. And this is Episode 87, where I will share some takeaways from Episode 86. With Moussa Mikhail, and today, I really want to dig into the idea of patients, and particularly patients in post traumatic growth. One of the things that Moussa and I talked a lot about, or one of the themes of his share on the podcast last week was about how he spent two years in a submarine. Which I mean, it’s one thing to be in kind of isolation by yourself but then to be in isolation. Well, it’s not like let’s say prison isolation in a cell with just you yourself and you right? But in no communication with people, but isolation in a way like you’re under water, you’re in the ocean, like there’s, you don’t see sunlight and I can’t imagine what it’s like to not see sunlight every day. Now I know some people live in really cloudy, rainy climates, that does not appeal to me either. But just the idea of being in a confined space with others. And not just anybody, right? I mean, these are people that he maybe knew, maybe not well, maybe he knew some of them well. But in any case, when you get a group of people together in one space, it’s everybody bringing their luggage with them. And I don’t mean like literal luggage, I mean, metaphorical luggage or baggage, right? So we all bring our baggage to our environments. And that includes a submarine, that includes an outing with family, that includes Christmas dinner with extended family, right? We all bring our baggage everywhere we go. We can drop it, we can leave it in the past, but most of us don’t. It follows us like I’m trying to think of an analogy, but I can’t at this moment, but it’s ever present. And even if you think you’ve buried it, even if you think you’ve dealt with it, there are some remnants of grief there, I guarantee you that still exist if you are a human being on this planet.
Grief is Like a Ball and Chain
And unless you’re like a monk, or you’re Buddha, you will be triggered by other people, something someone says, or does, or bring up for you something that needs to be healed, that needs to be kind of unpacked or worked through. And this is language, that’s really kind of buzzwords right now, and until I find some other words, that sound better, I’m going to use those but you get the idea. Grief is like a ball and chain, right? It’s it’s always going to be with us. But we can evolve and we can change with it. But we always still have some level of sadness around a relationship that we had expectations for that we wish would have been different better or more about things that we have done or didn’t do with our lives, goals and dreams and aspirations that weren’t met. You get the idea. So those feelings, unaddressed. We bring them to all of our experiences. And I don’t feel that anything lost in experiences.
There’s No Such Thing as Failure
Like even if you perceive something as a failure, whether it be a relationship or a career, or anything new that you’ve tried, or even a conversation that you wanted to have and had but it didn’t go well. There’s no such thing as failure. You can walk away with more clarity, even if it didn’t go well, right? You can have a difficult conversation with someone and walk away with the clarity of knowing, let’s say you don’t even go into the conversation with the intent to change that person’s mind you just want them to see your perspective, you just want them to hear you. And you can still walk away after all of that. But with clarity of the fact that people will be how they will be, like they are who they are, everyone is at their own place in their healing. And I think if we can accept that, and understand that, and embrace it too just focus on working through our stuff, you can only really understand someone and hear their perspective to the level that you are open to receiving it. And so if you are somewhat closed off to new ideas, or the opinions of others, or to your own potential or your own inner knowing, you’re not very in tune with your own intuition, I really don’t think you’re going to be open to hearing the perspective of others. But you can walk away with that clarity and knowing that from those conversations was difficult conversations that at the time may make you feel like you didn’t get anywhere. But I have learned that in those times, right? When you have these realizations that I can’t change them, it’s not my job to change them, they are who they are, they’re not going to see things, how I see them, and that’s okay, but then doing what I need to do. Or you can do what you need to do to either put yourself in a different environment, or be the person that you would like them to be for you, right? Be that for yourself,
Don’t Have the Expectation to Change the Person
I don’t know if this is making a whole lot of sense, what I’m trying to really say is that we have no control on how what we say is received. And I mean, there is a way that you can say it without having to say it to their face. And that’s Grief Recovery. And I’ve talked about it many times on this podcast. But when you have to have those conversations, even in groups of dysfunction, don’t have the expectation to change the person, right? You can’t have that expectation, because they’re bringing their stuff, they’re bringing their baggage to that conversation as well. And so the best you can do is find the words and articulate in the best way you can how you feel, and that is your truth. That is the truth, like stick to the facts of how you feel because no one can argue that and then make the changes the necessary changes that you need to make for that situation. But what if you are in a group scenario, like a submarine underwater, or one time you were a child, maybe in that scenario, you will find a way to cope. And it can either be healthy coping, or it can be unhealthy coping, depending on your access. You know, it might be more difficult in a submarine to access alcohol, I’m not even sure or some other advice. But if you’re a child, you might resort to video games or social media, depending on your age, or fighting, or just angry outbursts, or you might actually go inward, you might actually become very shy and introverted, and not really be open to not even being able to look people in the eye, very timid and fearful of the world. And so it can manifest this inability to escape can manifest in many ways for us too when we are carrying our baggage. And our dysfunction with us into these environments, or the outward environment is the dysfunction. But if we have this dysfunction within us, and it’s in our environment, well that’s like a double whammy, where you kind of end up with this dysfunction stew. It’s just a hodgepodge of all of the feelings and the emotions and the experiences and the unaddressed communications, that make up really the energy of who we are, the energy of what we present other people the energy that we project to our environment. And so what happens with grief, especially when it first hits us that first time and maybe the second after the third and the fourth time, because it’s cumulative.
Have Patience in Grief
And as cumulatively negative, we start to get to this point where eventually, we get sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I don’t know if that’s you today as you’re listening to this, I think in all of the conversations I’ve had with grievers through this podcast, we all have this point, this tipping point in our grief, where we do have this for some people it might feel like a moment for others it might feel like this gradual progression or evolution of the grief itself, which was more like the case for me. But in any case, I remember being very impatient with myself and patient with my grief. I just wanted to be over it already. It had already been over 30 years. Like, why can’t I just get over this? This is the messages of society always tells us I had people close to me telling me that it’s been over 30 years, why aren’t you over it? Yeah, just get over it. It’s so much easier said than done, when it wasn’t your experience. And it’s so harmful to say that to people, but what you could say, is have patience with yourself. And what you could say to yourself is I have patience, for my grief, I’m giving myself patience in my grief, because it does naturally evolve. And we do come to a point, we look for those resources. And we become open to the help and we become open to the support. And then things start flooding in, in our environment. And we start hearing maybe about Grief Recovery, we start hearing about Reiki or we start hearing about certain book, or this mentor, or this class, or this support group, or what have you little by little, these things start to come into our environment. But we have to be open to hearing those nudges and feeling those nudges and then acting on them.
You Can’t Unknown What You Know
And so in order to get out of this dysfunction within ourselves, actually, I’ll say it this way, to get out of the dysfunction of our environments, we truly can start with the dysfunction within ourselves. Because with that will come the clarity and the self confidence really with it, with your emotions and your ability to regulate yourself emotionally to get yourself out of those environments, you will have the courage, you will find the courage to get yourself out of those environments. Or if you have no choice but to be in that environment, such as in a submarine underwater, you will develop healthy coping skills and things do things that serve your higher self, and bring you inner peace. And so the message today really is in post traumatic growth, which is another buzzword but it is true. I think there is this awareness, when we have gone through a really difficult challenging grief experience at you’re afraid of things changing, you might be afraid of the awareness you have and you can’t unknow what you know. And so when you learn these things, when you learn what needs to change, when when you learn why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling and have an awareness of what you can do about it, you can’t unknow that. So then you almost have to do something about it.
Time Doesn’t Heal All Wounds
And so that’s the post traumatic growth, I think that people speak to and that it can be scary to not know what that healing will look like. What will that mean, it might mean you’re cutting off relationships, it might mean you’re losing certain habits or actually like alcohol, let’s say you’re working to rid yourself of the relationship to alcohol, that’s a relationship. And that’s also a habit, right? If it’s part of your life, it’s like you’re losing a part of yourself in a way. And so it’s working through all of those changes and accepting the unknown, of how that may feel. But with support, with guidance, with more tools and knowledge in your toolbox for how to cope and how to deal and how to process you can get through these difficult things and with patience in your post traumatic growth, with patience with yourself. That’s a key ingredient to healing. I wish I could say it happens overnight. But any Griever that’s listening to this knows that’s not true. I personally know that’s not true. Thank you for tuning in today. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
P.S Time doesn’t heal all wounds. It is the action that we take in time that really matters. And we just need to be patient with ourselves in that time, and with the actions that we choose to take understanding that every choice has a consequence. And in action also has a consequence. If you want to listen to more episodes like this you can visit my website theunleashedheart.com or if you want to be connected with me you can visit me on social media like Facebook or Instagram.