Podcast: How Do You Move Past Grief?

Inside Mental Health Podcast Guest and Host Bio

Amy Morin is a psychotherapist, mental strength trainer, and the award-winning host of the “Mentally Stronger with Therapist Amy Morin” podcast.

She’s an international bestselling author. Her books, including “13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do” and “13 Things Mentally Strong Women Don’t Do,” have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 1 million copies.

The Guardian dubbed her “the self-help guru of the moment.” Forbes calls her a “thought leadership star” and People says her book is one of the top 20 must-read books of all time.

Her TEDx talk, The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong, is one of the most viewed talks of all time with more than 23 million views.

She lives on a sailboat in the Florida Keys.

Our host, Gabe Howard, is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, “Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations,” available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author.

Gabe makes his home in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. He lives with his supportive wife, Kendall, and a Miniature Schnauzer dog that he never wanted, but now can’t imagine life without.

To book Gabe for your next event or learn more about him, please visit gabehoward.com.

Episode Transcript

Producer’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: You’re listening to Inside Mental Health: A Psych Central Podcast where experts share experiences and the latest thinking on mental health and psychology. Here’s your host, Gabe Howard.

Gabe Howard: Welcome to the podcast, everyone. I’m your host Gabe Howard and calling in today we have Amy Morin. Amy is a psychotherapist, author, and host of the Mentally Stronger podcast. And fun fact Amy lives on a sailboat in the Florida Keys. Amy, welcome to the podcast.

Amy Morin, LCSW: Thank you so much, Gabe. I’m happy to be here.

Gabe Howard: Well, thank you so much for taking the time today to discuss grief. Because grief, in my mind, is a lot like Stonehenge, because everyone has heard of Stonehenge and everyone believes that they know what Stonehenge is. And then one day they find themselves standing in front of it, and suddenly it’s nothing like what they thought. And you can substitute anything that you want here. Graceland, Elvis’s house, or the Grand Canyon, or hell, even New York City. But just just something that we as a society just really feel that we understand. But yet when we experience it, it’s completely different. And I think that the average person believes they know what grief is and they know how to manage it, and that it’s not going to be a problem for them. And then one day they lose someone they love, and then suddenly they realize how unprepared they are. Amy, do you find that the majority of people just don’t understand grief until they’ve experienced it? And is it even possible to understand grief without that firsthand experience?

Amy Morin, LCSW: Oh, those are all good points that you make. And I absolutely agree that for a lot of people, we think, yes, there’s sadness that comes with loss and that’s to be expected, but we don’t really talk about how it goes above and beyond sadness, all the other emotions that come with it. And it’s a bizarre thing because we’ll all experience it at one point or another. Yet I feel like we’re all ill equipped and unprepared, and even as a therapist, I have to say, until I went through my own journey, I don’t think I really realized, like the depths of despair and all of the other emotions and the roller coaster that comes with it. And the other weird thing is, so many people, our friends and family don’t know what to do with grief, so they often try to cheer you up or make you feel better because they don’t really understand that grief is the process by which we heal. So you have to go through all of those emotions and you have to experience all of those things, because if you don’t, you don’t heal on the other side.

Gabe Howard: You’ve written a series of books on being mentally strong, Amy, and of course, you host the Mentally Stronger podcast. I wanted to ask, what is your number one tip for staying mentally strong when dealing with grief?

Amy Morin, LCSW: I think one of the most important things we can do is to avoid wallowing in self-pity, and that you can allow yourself to be sad without crossing over into self-pity. So the example would be being sad is thinking, gosh, I really love this person. My life is tough now, but self-pity is when we start to exaggerate how bad our lives are, and we underestimate our ability to cope. And we think that I can’t handle this. This is so bad that my life will never be good again. And when we start to convince ourselves of that, that life could never possibly be okay again, we dig in our heels and we often make it so. So instead of saying, okay, I’m going to work on building a new sense of normal. If you’re wallowing in self-pity, you might just think, no, everything’s terrible, awful, and it’s going to stay this way forever. And I think that’s the the danger. And I’ve been there. I’ve had those moments where I think this isn’t fair. What next? How could I possibly have a good life again? But the more that I allowed myself to think that, the less likely I was to to work through my grief and said I was just staying in a in a place of pain. So I think it’s important to separate those two things is to know, all right, it’s absolutely healthy to allow yourself to be sad. But what’s not healthy is when you start convincing yourself and other people around you that your life is so bad that you can’t possibly enjoy even a moment of life ever again. That’s when you start to stay stuck.

Gabe Howard: I think on one hand, Amy, no one wants to be stuck. Everybody wants to let go of that grief and just move on and be happy again. But I got to kind of tell you, on the other hand, for for me, when I think of my grandfather, I’m sort of happy that a year and a half later, I’m still so broken up over his death because it proves that he meant so much to me and that the impact is still there. I feel like if I was over losing him, then it would just feel like a betrayal to his memory. Do a lot of people feel this way? How long should we expect grief to last?

Amy Morin, LCSW: Yeah. And it’s a tricky situation because the answer is it depends. But the problem is, is that sometimes people take that to mean that how much I love somebody should be also then related to how long I grieve. So I see a lot of people and I experience this in my own life, where you want to make sure that you’re grieving long enough and hard enough, because if you don’t, then it means you didn’t love the person enough. So it becomes really tricky where people feel like, oh, I have to show everybody that I’m still sad a year later because I really loved my my parent, or because I was so close to this person that it still hurts. So if I laugh or smile, then somehow that will mean that I didn’t love them enough. But I think it mostly comes in waves that we can’t be super sad and in deep anguish for for so long because our bodies kind of want to get out of that sometimes. So a lot of people will say, and I experienced it in my own life, that some days were better than others, some moments are better than others, but it still comes in in waves, sometimes for years, where maybe you walk into the grocery store and you see somebody that reminds you of your loved one, or a holiday rolls around where it becomes more apparent that the person isn’t here. Or one of those big events in life where somebody has a baby or somebody gets married and your loved one isn’t there. So there’s all of these different times in life where grief kind of comes and goes. I don’t feel like we’re ever really done with grief. It’s not like there’s a specific timeline, and then you wake up one day and say, hey, I’m done, this is over with. I’ve healed now. And then and then we’re done and life moves on and we don’t ever feel grief again. Grief is is much messier and more complicated than that.

Gabe Howard: Truer words were never spoken. Grief is very messy and very complicated. Now, Amy, obviously you have a lot of professional experience as a therapist, but you also have a personal experience with grief. Would you be willing to share your story with our listeners?

Amy Morin, LCSW: Sure when I was 23. It was really early on in my career as a therapist. My mother passed away and she was only 51. She had been healthy, but she had a brain aneurysm, so she appeared fine one minute. In fact, I had just spoken to her on the phone shortly before she passed away, and that did a number on me in terms of I was close to my mom, but also I then had to see my dad. They had been married since they were 18 and 19, so to see my dad alone and all of these things came up for me about like, now what? You know, how do I how do I get through the world without a mom? I had envisioned, you know, my mom being there for lots of events in my life. And so I was grieving that. But I was sad for my dad as well, sad for my sister. And so many things came up. And then it was the three year anniversary of the day that my mom died. Three years to the day my 26 year old husband died of a heart attack. Obviously at 26, you’re not supposed to have a heart attack. And I never imagined that I’d wake up one day and suddenly I’m widowed and I don’t have my mom. But that was where I was. And I’m supposed to be a therapist who helps other people deal with their problems. And even to this day, I don’t really have a good description of what life was like in my 20s other than to just say it was a really dark place.

Amy Morin, LCSW: It’s not something I would ever want to revisit, and it was just painful and horrible and awful. And it took a few years to kind of figure out, okay, how do I get my life back on track? What’s my new sense of normal going to look like? And I had got a new house, a new job, and I got remarried and life was starting to look kind of good again. And that’s when my father in law was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And I just remember thinking like, oh, finally life gets better. And now the other shoe drops and here we go again. And I just, I felt like I had spent so many years grieving. I didn’t want to grieve anymore, but wasn’t really like I had a choice. And within, I guess, a couple of weeks of my father in law’s diagnosis, he passed away as well. And so I spent like a solid decade of my life just feeling like I was losing the people closest to me and figuring out, how do you how do you go through that, and how do you come out on the other side? And now how do I live moving forward in a way where I don’t just wait for, you know, the next person to to disappear out of my life? So it’s been quite the process for, for many years of figuring out how do you cope with with grief and loss.

Gabe Howard: That’s just a, it’s just a heartbreaking amount of loss for you to have experienced in such a short amount of time. And I, I have to imagine that you struggled to keep yourself together. Is it hard to know what to do when you are so grief stricken? Because I know that for a lot of people, and myself included, we end up doing odd things or resorting to self-destructive behaviors.

Amy Morin, LCSW: Definitely. When we’re in extreme pain, we’ll do just about anything to get out of pain. Whether that’s physical pain or emotional pain. And when we’re deep in the throes of it where we think, oh, I can’t stand this, I can’t deal with this any longer. Sometimes we make strange decisions, and I know I had to be aware of this, like the decision to, you know, just to wake up every day and say, what’s a healthy thing I can do? Maybe go for a walk around the block. I had zero energy. Other people, though, get impulsive when they feel like that. And you’ll see a lot of people who say, you know, after my loved one passed away, I moved to the other side of the country just to start a new life because we’re trying to escape the pain. For me, I knew that wasn’t the right thing. I wanted to stay in the house that I lived in and figure out how to sort of build a new sense of normal. But that’s really tough to do. And and it is hard. And like I said earlier, there’s a lot of our friends and family just want to cheer us up. They want to help us feel better, too. So they invite you to go to go do things to get you out of the house. And they want to crack jokes. They want you to have fun. And that’s okay too, to do those things sometimes. But we don’t want to just say that we get caught up into having fun and escaping all of the pain. You got to experience it to, to really heal from it.

Gabe Howard: I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up the criticism that people who are grief stricken get for moving on too fast, or for appearing too happy, or for making decisions too quickly. And you hear about it over and over again. You know, phrases like, well, her husband just died and she did x, y, z. Can you believe that? Oh, his wife just died and he did x, y, z. Oh, the body wasn’t even cold. And I saw them partying like rock stars and on and on and on. Is this a fair criticism from people who are observing?

Amy Morin, LCSW: Oh, you’re so right that there is a lot of judgment about how people behave after a loss. But I think it’s important to understand that people grieve differently. And somebody who maybe goes to a baseball game two days after they lost someone doesn’t mean that they’re not sad. Maybe they just need a break from the grief, and going to a baseball game for a couple of hours gives them a little sense of relief or a little sense of normalcy, even for just a few minutes, or somebody who tries dating right after they lost a partner. Maybe they’re lonely and they’re just figuring out how do you cope with these feelings because it’s so painful. I’m struggling with it. And again, it doesn’t mean that people aren’t grieving or that they aren’t sad. It’s just that they’re working through a lot of tough emotions. And we all do that in a in a different way. There’s not a prescribed timeline. There’s not a, a roadmap of you shouldn’t go to a party or you shouldn’t attend a concert for this many days after a loss. It all depends and people handle it differently. And so if we can step back and just try not to be too harsh on somebody or too judgmental about what they choose to do when they’re going through grief, that can be really helpful to the other person.

Gabe Howard: Keep listening after the break when Amy answers the question, how do you move past grief?

Sponsor Break

Gabe Howard: And we’re back talking with author and podcaster Amy Morin. All right. Let’s talk about grief management techniques. Is there a number one thing that people experiencing grief can do to help move past the grief?

Amy Morin, LCSW: There’s definitely some things somebody can do. But I think in the early days of grief, one of the best things is to just try to establish a schedule and incorporate a couple of healthy habits, like, I’m going to go outside and walk around the block for a few minutes, or I’m going to just make sure that I’m eating a little bit. Sometimes when people are deep into grief, it’s hard to eat that you lose your appetite. Other people eat too much. But to just be aware of that and to know that if you aren’t eating, it’s really tough to then manage your emotions. And of course, it’s tough to sleep when you’re grieving too. But if you can, try to make sure that you’re attempting to sleep and then to not panic too much when you’re struggling in early grief. To know, all right, all of these things are normal. I can’t even string a sentence together, or I’m having a really hard time and that there are aches and pains, like physical aches and pains, stomach aches and headaches. And that’s all part of the process too. So I think just accepting this is going to be a really weird time in my life. And you just put one foot in front of the other and say, how do I get through these early days of grief and give yourself some sense of a schedule? Those can all be things that get you through the earliest days of grief.

Gabe Howard: In doing research for this show. The number one question that people wanted me to ask you was, how can I stop crying? And they saw that as very much a grief management technique. Now, I’m a little curious about this one because based on what you’ve taught me so far, it’s okay to cry. But I also understand that I don’t want to cry at work. I don’t want to cry at my child’s little league game. I don’t want to cry in public. So this one’s a difficult question for me to ask because, I mean, I want to structure it a little bit this way. One is it okay to cry? But there are practical reasons that we need to manage our emotions.

Amy Morin, LCSW: Yes. And you bring up a good point because I think most people would say no, it’s absolutely okay to cry. And it is. However, as you say, there are some barriers to that. I was a therapist. I couldn’t have people walk into my therapy office as I’m like hysterically sobbing, right? Or same thing. You might go to your kid’s activities and you don’t want to just be like sitting in the audience crying the entire time. There were moments where you need to say, I’m going to pull myself together. And so absolutely, if you’re at home, let yourself cry. Sometimes people will say to me, well, I’m afraid if I start crying, I won’t stop. Well, trust me, you’re not going to cry forever. And when you allow yourself to cry at home, then I think we then are able to manage it better so that when we’re in a social situation where it’s not appropriate to start crying, we can then hold it together a little bit better. When you try to suppress it all the time, it’s going to come out when you want it to the least, which might be when you’re sitting in a meeting at work and then to have a plan in place. Like if I start to cry when I am doing something and it’s not appropriate, then I will. And fill in the blank. And as long as we have a plan, we often then feel a lot better. Your plan might be that I’m going to have a phrase that I repeat to myself, maybe like not helpful, and you just try to distract yourself with something else that you can think really that maybe is a little happier or more positive, or you give yourself a little job to do.

Amy Morin, LCSW: Like, if I start to cry, then I will plan out my grocery list in my head. Changing your thoughts can make it so that the waterworks don’t start or that they don’t keep flowing. Or maybe it’s excusing yourself for a minute and you go to the bathroom, or you’re at the little league game and you go to the car for a minute, pick up your phone and distract yourself with something. There are some distraction strategies that can at least get your mind off of those sad thoughts that are causing you to cry. And then knowing too, though, that when you’re grieving, people are often will give you some some grace too. So that if a tear strolls down your cheek when you’re sitting in a in a meeting at work, nobody’s really going to judge you as much as you think. And people aren’t going to be as harsh as you might believe that they are. So to give yourself that same grace. So don’t get too upset if you do cry when you’re standing in line at the grocery store. Like that’s okay too. And and that people are often much kinder and more compassionate than we think that they will be.

Gabe Howard: One of the things I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older is just how little people pay attention to me. When my grandfather was in hospice, I took a leave of absence so I could stay with him and my grandmother full time. And it was a it was an incredibly difficult time. And it it lasted about a month before he passed away. And, and just to take a little break every morning I would go out for a Diet Coke. Now I don’t drink coffee in the morning, I, I drink Diet Coke. So I went to the same place about the same time every morning for about a month. And of course, between my lack of sleep and the fact that my pills hadn’t kicked in yet, and of course the intensity of the situation, I would often become overwhelmed and get upset, and I would just need to get myself back under control. And I would sit in a corner all teary eyed, and I’d think to myself, oh my God, what must people think of me? I’m sitting here in this booth every morning at the same time, not talking to anybody.

Gabe Howard: I’m pretty unfriendly and I’m often in tears. Now, fast forward four months after his death, and I’m. I’m visiting my grandmother for Christmas, and I. I go to the same place one morning to get a Diet Coke, and I see the same clerk behind the counter, and I actually think I need to I need to address this with him. So I go up to him and I say, hey, I’m really sorry for making such a scene all those months ago. And I want you to know, I appreciate you being so understanding. And he looks me dead in the eyes and says, huh?

Amy Morin, LCSW: Yeah.

Gabe Howard: He wasn’t being rude. He just didn’t recognize me and honestly had no idea what I was talking about. And here I was for all those weeks, crying in a corner, thinking that everyone was staring, or that everybody was wondering, or that everybody was judging. And in reality, nobody noticed. And on one hand, that’s great. I didn’t want to make a spectacle of myself, but on the other hand, it also sort of upset me that nobody was paying attention to my grief or paying attention to what I was going through. How do people resolve that?

Amy Morin, LCSW: Yeah. And I think it is a mixture of both. Like I remember I remember crying in the grocery store, like I came across my husband’s favorite food or something, and I no longer needed to buy it. And I remember standing in the aisle sobbing and then thinking, oh my gosh, like, if my therapy clients, somebody walks by, what are they going to think? And nobody cared. I don’t think anybody noticed that I was standing in the middle of the grocery store crying. But knowing that, you know, our closest friends and family hopefully are supportive of us. And to be forgiving of people because the things they say sometimes are kind of can be kind of hurtful at times. So whether they do say, you know, oh, you should have moved on by now, or they, you know, just tell you that like, oh, it’s good you’re not crying today, that means you’re getting stronger.

Amy Morin, LCSW: I had somebody say that to me. So just knowing that people often have the best of intentions, but sometimes they don’t know what to say. And so they will try to pull you out of grief. Other people absolutely won’t notice. They’ll have no idea what’s going on. And it feels weird, too, that the rest of the world keeps moving. I don’t know if you experienced this, but like, your world stopped when your grandfather was sick, but like, you look out the window and everybody’s going about their day as if nothing has happened, because in their lives things are exactly the same. And I remember after losing both my mother and my husband, and it was like I felt like the world should stop because my world had stopped. But it was that reminder of like, okay, everybody else’s life is going on, and even the people that knew them weren’t affected the same way that I was.

Gabe Howard: You know, Amy, gallows humor, dark humor is one of those things that some people understand and some people don’t. I love dark humor, and I have managed a lot of the grief of my grandfather’s death by just making jokes. And in fact, I gave his eulogy and I wanted the opening salvo to be knock knock. And then the audience would say, who’s there? And I’d

Amy Morin, LCSW: [Laughter]

Gabe Howard: Say, not grandpa. And this, this got me. Writing the eulogy was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. So. But I kept this in my mind as I went through the process. And the reason that I bring this up is because obviously, some people hearing this are going to think, oh, that’s funny. That’s that’s that’s awesome, right? Because they like gallows humor and other people are going to hear this and think that’s incredibly disrespectful. And

Amy Morin, LCSW: Right.

Gabe Howard: Ultimately I decided not to do it because I didn’t want to be disrespectful to the people who didn’t like it. Right? I can’t control all the people in there. If I if I knew for a fact the people in the room were like me, you know, my my closest family, my mom, my uncle, etc. I absolutely would have done it. But, you know, his church friends were there and and on and on and on. And I didn’t want to risk. I know it’s funny to say, embarrassing him and that’s why I ultimately didn’t do it. But I bring all of this up because people believe that there are right and wrong ways to grieve. And I would love to say to you, what’s the right way to grieve and just have that be a takeaway? But I sort of am trying to prompt you to explain to the audience why the right way to grieve is however they choose and how it works for them, and doesn’t cause more damage. But say it in like a therapy way. That’s better.

Amy Morin, LCSW: And you’re right. And dark humor is one one coping strategy that myself and my sister thankfully use as well. So she and I can privately use our dark humor without having to worry about offending anyone. And so I think it does require us to dig deep and figure out what are our coping strategies. How do I experiment with new ones? I did some things that probably looked out of character. I went and got a motorcycle and my motorcycle license, and that actually turned out to be a wonderful coping strategy for me. But I think people in my life thought she’s really lost it now. But knowing that there isn’t a right way or a wrong way, some people like to write in a journal. Some people read books. I found reading really difficult when I was deeply in grief. But after a little while, reading books about grief and about loss were super helpful. Some people go to support groups. Other people are like, you know, sitting around in a support group talking to strangers about my grief, sounds like it would make me worse. So I’m not going to do that. Some people go to therapy, some people don’t. Some people have friends and family they can talk to. So just knowing that you won’t know until you try. So you have to experiment with different things. Going for a walk every day was one thing that at least helped me feel like I was going to get a little more energy back. So just keep experimenting with different strategies, knowing that that part of the process is allowing yourself to feel bad, but also part of the process is creating a new sense of normal.

Amy Morin, LCSW: And I think when all said and done, I think anything we can do that helps us create a new sense of normal in life is what really helps us come out of grief and work through it, so that while maybe you want to avoid the holidays, or you want to avoid anything that reminds you of the person, sometimes you have to go through those things and say, yeah, let’s go ahead and celebrate the holidays and we’ll acknowledge that the person isn’t here. But but doing that is what then helps, after a while, the holidays without that person starts to feel normal. And sometimes people start to feel guilty about that. Like, I don’t ever want the holidays without my loved one to feel normal, but but eventually, like that can be evidence that you’re working through the pain, because now you can say, how do we honor this person without it feeling like complete dread? When we get to this, to their birthday, or to a certain holiday, or to the certain milestones in life, and anything we can do to create a sense of new normal, it’s not going to ever feel the same. You’re not ever going to like, be done with grief. But you can sort of figure out, how do I how do I live with the pain in a way that isn’t going to be so detrimental that I can’t function?

Gabe Howard: Is that guilt helpful? Is that guilt a protective factor? Should we feel guilty for moving on?

Amy Morin, LCSW: You know, it’s okay to feel guilty. I think anything that you experience is okay. Guilt can definitely be part of the process, but for some people it becomes such a problem that that they do need professional help to work through it. So somebody who says, you know, it’s my fault, I shouldn’t have let this person get in the car or I shouldn’t have said that last thing I said to the person, and they feel so guilty that they can’t, that they don’t ever want to feel happy again or they want to punish themselves. That’s when it becomes to the point that you might need to get some professional help to work through those really uncomfortable feelings.

Gabe Howard: Amy, thank you so much for being here today. But I want to wrap this all up and boil this all down to answer the question that the title asked, which is how do you move past grief?

Amy Morin, LCSW: I would say it’s about moving through grief and knowing that allowing yourself to feel all sorts of different feelings while trying to create a new sense of normal helps you, helps you work through the pain that will eventually help you heal. And when you’re healed, it doesn’t mean that you won’t ever feel sad or you won’t ever experience grief, but it just means that that you’re able to still live your life to the fullest and still find moments of joy, and that you’re still able to say that, yeah, I have a good life, and I’m optimistic about the future, despite the fact that this person isn’t in it any longer.

Gabe Howard: Amy, thank you so much for everything. Where can people find you online?

Amy Morin, LCSW: The best place is my website, which is Amy Morin, LCSW, as in Licensed Clinical Social worker dot com. AmyMorinLCSW.com

Gabe Howard: Amy, thank you so much for being here.

Amy Morin, LCSW: Thank you for having me, Gabe.

Amy Morin, LCSW: Amy, you are very welcome and I want to give a big thank you to all of our listeners.

Amy Morin, LCSW: My name is Gabe Howard, and I’m an award-winning public speaker, and I could be available for your next event. I’m also the author of the book “Mental Illness Is an Asshole and Other Observations.” You can get it on Amazon, but you can get a signed copy with free podcast swag. Or learn more about me by heading over to my website, gabehoward.com. Wherever you downloaded this episode, please follow or subscribe to the show. It is absolutely free and you don’t want to miss a thing. And hey, can you do me a favor? Recommend the show to a colleague, a family member, a friend. Hell, put it on social media, send a text message, send an email because sharing the show is how we grow. I will see everybody next Thursday on Inside Mental Health.

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