Takeaways & Reflections | Spiritually Challenged: Releasing Anger & the Story
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
There are two camps of grievers; those who talk about their grief and share their stories and those who keep their grief and stories hidden.
Regardless of the camp, you find yourself in, there is one common denominator that is often present with most, if not all, grievers – anger.
There is a caveat to sharing your story, though. As we look for meaning in our experiences, including those that cause us grief, we can find ourselves repeating the story without ever getting into how the experience made us feel.
Depending on the grief experience, we may disassociate ourselves from those experiences, never feeling the feelings, and recite what happened when speaking our stories to others as if it were a recipe card. Repeating only the story does nothing to help us move forward in our lives — to move beyond the story.
Anger adds to the feeling of powerlessness over something that cannot be changed or undone. It can impact our spirituality, too. And, if we pay attention to when anger shows up for us, it informs us where our attention to the pain needs to be.
Over time, anger resulting from grief can chip away at our souls, our spirituality, and the essence of who we are. However, through Kim, Scott, and Christian’s stories, we learn how sitting in the emotional pain (and the anger) can be the fuel and the catalyst for change and growth.
If you are struggling with your grief, listen to this episode and then take a moment to reflect on your spirituality, anger, and the story you have lived.
What has your grief (and anger) been trying to tell you?
________
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A Little Update About My Son
I do just want to give a little update as to what’s been happening in my neck of the woods. If you’ve been listening for a while, you know that my son had an accident back in November of 2021. And it’s still an ongoing process, he’s still somewhat healing I was I say somewhat because technically, his pancreas is still necrotizing, which really means it’s dying. But in the process of the pancreas dying, he experiences vomiting from time to time still. And so we’re just watching it, and he will be having another CT or MRI coming up here in a few months. And so we will see where things stand at that time. So I just wanted to thank you for any good wishes that you’ve sent his way. And I will continue to keep you updated on that front.
Launching Another Program This Year
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The Imprint of Fear and Feeling Unwanted To Finding My Voice
Going back to Kimberly Bell’s episode, one of the things that I jotted down as I was that if we believe our stories and our experiences are so unique, that no one could possibly understand, we are setting ourselves up for more suffering and disappointment.
And what I mean by that is anyone truly going to understand what you’ve been through? Absolutely not. Because you are in your own story, you have lived that story, you have lived that experience, and no one else has. And so if we focus on that aspect of no one knowing what it was like because they weren’t there, that is true.
But at the same time, if that is our reason for not sharing with others, if that is what we are using as a way to shut ourselves down from connecting with others, or if we’re using that thought process or that belief, of say, belief, if we’re using that belief, and really believing that is to be true, then we are only becoming more disconnected from those around us. And we are only isolating ourselves more in our grief.
And I say this several times, throughout other podcasts or in my writings that we can get so stuck on the story that we will repeat our story of what happened, this happened to me, and then this happened. And then that happened. And then this happened as if we were almost just reciting a recipe or reading something someone else gave us. And it’s this.
And I think we do that because we’ve assigned certain meanings to what happened. And our minds just want to understand it, our minds want to logically understand what happened. And so this process of repeating the story, really only keeps us in the story. If we feel like we have to share the story with anyone who will listen, any chance we get, there’s a clue there, that there’s probably something unresolved. There is a difference between speaking your story to inspire, to connect, to help someone else maybe connect the dots of their story, or to highlight a turning point.
But if it’s reciting just what happened, this happened. And that happened, and this happened. And that happened. What good is that doing? Anybody, you relive it in your body? If you haven’t processed that story. If you haven’t fully processed the story, every time you repeat it, you’re living it in your body. Again, as you’re speaking your story you might feel might have a flashback, or you might have a feeling in your body, your heart rate might go up your blood pressure might increase you. You might have these physical responses to what you are speaking out loud. And how is that serving you? How is that helping you move forward?
And this is what we can see oftentimes in support groups, especially in-person support groups, which could be online to where there is no outlined action
or purpose for the group. If it’s just this open sharing of the story. You might leave feeling worse about yourself. Actually. You might feel worse leaving because you are taking in that other person’s story. You’re feeling something so heavy of someone else shared.
There is no hierarchy of grief. There is no loss or experience that anyone can say is worse than this or worse than that.
There are certain losses we can’t even fathom experiencing. But there is no hierarchy of grief because we all grieve at 100% regardless of what the loss was. I just want to encourage you that to challenge that belief that no one could ever possibly understand. Because to receive compassion and empathy from another griever, or from another person who’s experienced loss, can do so much for the soul, can do so much for the griever’s heart.
And so if we come into the conversation, or to the room, or to the group, or wherever you’re going into, and you’re sharing your story, or you’re afraid to share your story, just remember that your grief is worthy of being honored and heard. But if you’re repeating the story, and it’s not moving you forward, you haven’t been moving forward, there’s something to dig into there.
Facing The Challenges in Our Life
Let’s skip the surface-level recipe card of all the crap that you’ve experienced. Let’s get deeper than that. Let’s go beyond that. How did that change you? How did that shape your life today? How is that changing you now? Talk about that stuff, the meat, and the juice, that is the experience of life, that is life. Because this stuff will constantly be popping up in and out of our lives we’ll always be experiencing loss and will always be having these experiences that shape us and challenge us. Some might be deeply wounding and others might just sting a little. But regardless, let’s go deep into these conversations we’re having or get the recipe card conversation, forget the repeat, and repeat. We’re in a boat conversation, right? Let’s talk about the deeper emotional side of grief when we’re sharing our stories. That’s where the connection is.
Anger After a Loss And The Anger Within Ourselves
Let’s go back to Scott Deluzio’s episode, he lost his brother while they were both on a deployment to Afghanistan, and he spoke a lot about his experience with anger after that loss.
Scott shares this “I put grief down and I picked up anger” I think that is so common with so many grievers and grievers of all kinds. Because you can lose a brother in that way on a deployment, but you can also be sexually assaulted or you can experience the death of a complicated relationship with a parent. And you might have a lot of anger towards that parent, and then they pass away and you still might be angry. There are a lot of things in life that can stir up anger within us. And a lot of relationships that can too. And so I think anger is one of these emotions that from a young childhood that is stuffed away, pushed down, told us badly, you can’t be angry, don’t show your anger at me type of thing.
I had a lot of misplaced anger within me. And I’ve actually seen glimpses of it every now and again, you know, if I’m working on something very intently, and I’m super hyper-focused. And then something comes to disrupt that flow or something malfunctions and doesn’t want to work, or he’ll be at software or the kid needs something, or the phone keeps ringing, or some distraction of some sort. Any kind of distraction that takes me off that hyperfocus train. Then I’ve been quick to anger. Because it’s so hard for me to get back. It’s really difficult for me to, get back on track when I’ve been derailed. I’ll say it that way when I feel like I’ve been derailed. Because I do personally know that my energy, I work in bursts. And I can knock out a lot of things in a short amount of time.
So when I’m in these productive mental bursts of energy, and things aren’t going right, then the ugly comes out. And so I’ve recently seen this, and I’ve caught myself in those moments of anger. Now granted, that’s very different anger versus grief anger. But at the same time, I can recognize that those moments of those, those anger bursts, when something isn’t going right or going my way or isn’t working or what have you. Those are far wide and in between, like those aren’t a common thing for me. Whereas when I was experiencing my anger from my grief, I was just angry all the time.
If something isn’t going right in your life and you’re angry about it, there’s your sign if there is something you are angry about, there is your sign that something needs to change. If you are not pissed about something, kudos to you. But if you are listening to the Grieving Voices Podcast it’s about grief, I guarantee you, you probably are pissed about something. So what is that anger guiding you to that you are not getting the message? You are not listening to that intuitive knowing within you. And that anger is either seething inside of you and you’re misplacing it and you’re projecting it elsewhere. Or it’s physically making you sick, there’s a clue. Look to your anger. And that’s what needs to change. And use it for fuel to do so. And your life can change.
Religion Versus Spirituality
Talking back to Christian’s episode last week, which was about religion versus spirituality. It is something that I’ve personally struggled with over the years, from childhood into well into adulthood. One thing Christian shared, and I wholeheartedly agree with this, is that spirituality is a part of us, it’s inherently a part of us. It is the essence of who we are. It is like, it is us like it is the core of our being. We are spiritual beings.
But what happens is, is grief happens and trauma happens. And it puts these layers against our spiritual selves, our inner physical selves, our emotional selves, like there are all these layers, then it’s almost like I imagined it looking like when you walk into like those mirror mazes. And you don’t know which way like you see your reflection and you think that’s the way to go. But it’s really not that, your reflections, you’re looking back at yourself but it’s an illusion. And I feel like, that’s what happens with grief and our spirituality is we can’t see the forest through the trees.
And so we may even cut ourselves off from our own spiritual essence of who we are. So then we might cut ourselves off from even God and religion, and walk away completely, which I had for several years. I wrote off God, I was angry with God. Why is there so much suffering in my life and the whole victim story I had down pat. But that was what was happening since my childhood and on, and I had never felt this connection to myself. Because so much was taken from me at such a young age that I didn’t even know my spiritual self existed. And so, it’s been a process of coming back to and rediscovering who I was.
The glimpses, like recognizing, again, those glimpses of my essence that I got when I was a teenager, and I was into like astrology and palm reading and all this mystical stuff. I was into that. And I loved collecting stickers because it was a form of play in it, it was childlike to me. And I didn’t have much of a childhood. It was a traumatic childhood. I don’t even remember a lot of it. And so I loved stickers as a teenager. And so I do today, too. I play with stickers today as an adult. It’s because I’ve learned how to reconnect to those parts of myself. I’m an energy healer. I’ve learned energy and healing. The mystical stuff. The stuff we can’t explain that I was into as a teenager but hadn’t allowed myself to really lean into that part of myself.
Grief is just really the impact it has on our spiritual souls. And how that ripples into the rest of our lives and what we do and what we become and what we do for play and how we show up in the world and all these things, right? But we don’t get that from religion. I don’t feel we do. Religion didn’t give me that. Its religion is an external thing. And spirituality is within. And so religion can be a pillar of growth and evolution and a foundation to start a spiritual journey. But I really feel like they are two separate things. That you can be spiritual, and have a religion, that there are many religious people who are not spiritual. The book says this, and this, and this, and this, and that’s it, right? But they’re not connecting with it. They’re not connecting with the words, they’re not connecting with what that means in their life. They’re not connected to themselves. They’re reading these words, but they’re disconnected from themselves. Because so many believe that you just gotta pray about it. All you got to do is pray about it. We got to pray and move our feet. The shortest line in the Bible is Jesus cried, he wept. And so many of us we’ve been private, we cry in private. And that’s so isolating.
And I even talked about how in the newsletter I even talked about how religion can be used against people. And so we have to be very careful about the advice that we give to people because we may be religious, or you might be a religious person, but not everybody is. And what if that person had religion used against them as a means to control as a means to manipulate? That person is religiously scarred. And we don’t want to inflict any more pain on that person who has experienced that type of grief.
In someone who has experienced that type of grief, and if you’re one of them, and you’re listening to this, I would recommend can start doing practices that help you connect to yourself spiritually, look into spiritual practice, and start connecting to the self. And if you find religion again, great, and if you don’t, that’s okay, too. In that episode, I mentioned that the soul is in the gut, and grief is in the lungs. And grief can actually be anywhere in the body. And generally speaking, to like, as far as pain, we might feel it in the left shoulder. And biofield tuning, which is energy sound healing that I conduct either online or in person. If you have a lot going on energetically in the left shoulder. That is where grief and sadness often are.
In Chinese medicine, they say grief is in the lungs, asthma, and different lung conditions. I believe that could be true. You can’t take a deep breath right? You can’t breathe, it’s like you’re suffocating in your own grief. And that makes sense to me, and that resonates with me, too. And as a teenager, I was dealing with a lot of gut issues. My soul was literally being chipped away. Spiritually, I have chipped away. And it makes sense to me to have that my gut was just screaming at me as a teenager.
How Powerful Breathwork Is
And so through breathwork, Christian talked about how connecting to the breath. We understand this powerful resource that we have within us in the breath. And I’ve personally experienced this with a friend of mine and I mentioned it during the episode too. I learned the power of the breath and how we can channel it to create so much energy within our bodies. It’s you can’t even imagine, I can’t even bring it into words, what that experience was like for me, but my hands are just vibrating, just talking about it. I feel the vibration in my hands. So we can’t destroy energy, but we can move energy and we can also create it within ourselves. So again, if you are low energy, you’re low vibe, you’re not living life in the full vibrant way that you wish to, look at where you’re at spiritually.
He also mentioned these two hurdles, that most people that he’s worked with or over the years have to personal freedom and empowerment. And one is being the victim. The poor be this relation to this poor me relationship to life, he said. And then also a struggle with forgiveness. And, he shared to give space to others is to be human. And get off of this self-righteous ego that we so often have, when it comes to forgiveness. I could have just an episode on victimhood and forgiveness, and actually have a chapter in my book about the victim mindset because I was stuck there for so many years. And I also coincidentally, and not coincidentally, had a real challenge with forgiveness. And so both of these things are actually addressed in the grief, evidence-based grief programs that I facilitate, and what I personally experienced myself that transformed my grief.
P.S. I highly encourage you to think about what I share today. Let it settle in your heart and reflect on it. Just take a moment to journal your thoughts after listening to this episode. What are your takeaways and reflections? I would love to hear your takeaways and reflections from this takeaways and reflections episode and I encourage you and I hope you share because I would love to know your thoughts on this episode. And I hope it was helpful. And also be sure you signed up on The Unleash Letters to get updated about the new program that I am launching this November.