Carrying Ourselves and Others Through Grief

Jo & JJ Go Mental

There is a heaviness in the air, with plenty of opportunities to focus on emotional intelligence and mental health recently between World Suicide Prevention Day and the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Today Jo and J.J. focus on grief, both from the perspective of the griever and from the person trying to comfort others through their grief. Too many people don’t know what to say or how to comfort someone who is facing loss, leaving the griever feeling even worse than they already did. Jo and J.J. explore the right approach to carrying ourselves and others through grief. Jo also shares an experience about willfulness and effectiveness in DBT and why people really need to learn to let go of the need to be right and just accept what is. They talk about defining values, setting boundaries, and, on a lighter note, why #begrannymolly is Jo’s new life goal.

Takeaway:

[1:21] J.J. reflects on her experience of being rescued from the draining aftermath of 9/11 and how she has drawn a hard line to protect herself on the 20th anniversary. For her, this meant avoiding social media, documentaries, and deliberately filling her energy up.

[6:58] Reaching out on a personal level when someone is grieving about anything matters, but the overused phrase “I’m sorry for your loss” is probably the wrong thing to say. Jo offers a few statements that you can try instead.

[11:27] Too many people are afraid of facing death, or even talking about it. But that can lead to even greater hurt for the people that are grieving and surrounded by people who don’t know what to say because they haven’t figured out how to manage their own anxiety about death and loss.

[15:50] Side story — Jo’s 93-year-old Granny Molly was a member of the Geriatric Mafia - think three little old ladies (one registered blind, one deaf as a post and the third one with a dodgy hip) causing havoc on the bus and in the supermarket #begrannymolly.

[18:29] Everyone has to find the balance between the need to be right with the need to be effective. In DBT terms the behavior that gets in the way of being effective is called willfulness, which is just about the least offensive way to talk about stubborn, offensive, messed up behavior.

[21:03] How do you decide when to go into battle and when to walk away? Define your values, and if a situation is toxic, you have the right to walk away from it. The next step is to determine how far you need to go to get support from others, especially in work relationships between managers and employees.

[25:43] The physical reactions that you experience in tense situations can help you identify your anxiety level and decide how you should move forward. You can’t waste too much of your time worrying about what other people might be thinking about your actions.

[28:06] J.J. has found a new role model in Jo’s rock star family!

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Joanna Denton | Dr. J.J. Kelly