After all the episodes we have done on this show, this is the first one where we go a little deeper on the grief process with a focus on broken heart syndrome specifically. We start with what exactly is this Broken Heart Syndrome. What are some of the causes or risk factors that could lead to it and the emotional factors someone might go as well? To wrap up the show they talk about ways to how to manage grief events to help make it through these tough, emotional times.
Tune in to see Broken Heart Syndrome Through a Therapist’s Eyes.
Listen for the following takeaways from the show:
- Show starts with what is Broken Heart Syndrome.
- What are some possible causes or risk factors of it?
- What are the emotional factors of this?
- Grieving is one possible reason for Broken Heart Syndrome.
- So then, what are some ways you can manage grief.
- What are the stages of grief that most people will go through.
- We go through a handout that gives you tasks to help you process grief.
- Grief can be experienced with any loss that is important to you.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Episode #191 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to another edition of Through aTherapist’s Eyes. This is where you get to get personal insights directly from a therapist in time in your car or time in your personal home. I am Chris Gazdik had been doing therapy since 1995 in some form or another. We are pushing up close to 200 episodes, Adam.
Cool. Adam is with us. He is over there. You are back. It’s been a minute, man. It’s been a
Adam Cloninger: while. Where you been, we’ve been doing C, worked on the kitchen a little bit. Got granite countertops put in for, they look fantastic, but
Chris Gazdik: good luck jealous of those.
Adam Cloninger: Yeah, my girlfriend helped me out with D get the walls ready and everything.
Now we just got to pick the ball color out and get it rested. It knocked out. You’re like,
Chris Gazdik: metamorphosizing your whole house with [00:01:00] your deck kitchen. When are you going to go with the floors? Which floors? All of them.
Adam Cloninger: We’ll say since all of them are replaced. When I first bought the house, that’s when the last thing on the agenda.
There’s other stuff I haven’t touched yet. It has to be replaced first. And then I’ll touch that you need any help. Let me know. Okay. This is where you see the world through the lens of a therapist, but being aware is not to deliver your therapy services in any way, help us out. And we thank you for listening.
We have become an international podcast. We really enjoy doing the show.
Chris Gazdik: I really appreciate you guys joining us, hanging out with us. Understand this show makes you make the show go. Five star reviews on Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Apple
Adam Cloninger: iTunes
Chris Gazdik: particularly allows us to receive. Worded messages.
I actually have a plant. I asked somebody specifically to give us a review this week. So match him give us a review on apple podcasts. It really helps us to spread the word. So this is the human emotional
Adam Cloninger: experience. We do [00:02:00] endeavor
Chris Gazdik: to figure this thing out together. I have an interesting topic, I think, to.
That plays off of w you weren’t here, but we did a current event with the events over there in Texas crazy stuff. Have you been tracking that story at all? No. Now I heard a
Adam Cloninger: little bit
Chris Gazdik: about it, but yeah. Tuned out a little bit for your own mental health. Maybe I’ve actually been kind of talking about that.
Like, dude, we, we need to learn how to get away from the heavy coverage that we get, you know, in today’s day, it’s
Adam Cloninger: impossible now. Yeah. It’s always things all around you, you know, it, it,
Chris Gazdik: it seems that way, but honestly, if you operate, like maybe you have, you you’ve heard of it, but you’re not all dialed into it.
I think we, we need to learn how to not be inundated and our own world creating anxiety and overwhelmed feelings. But anyway, I’ve talked about that at length. I’m not going to talk about that as much today, but from,
I thought playing off of that, I was looking at the topic today. Got a lot of content lists that I [00:03:00] go by and it came across this topic. That’s on my list for a little while. It’s actually came from a physician assistant that was doing a placement with me from the good Gardner-Webb university program over there, a little plug for Gardner-Webb preceptor for them. And she actually brought it up when I was like, Hmm, what did broken heart syndrome? I never, I haven’t, I don’t think that I’ve ever heard of it before. She had brought it up. Have you ever heard of the broken heart syndrome?
Adam Cloninger: I mean, I think everyone’s heard a broken heart, but I don’t think I’ve actually heard of broken heart syndrome. Cause it’s being found to be like a thing. So it’s a real thing.
Chris Gazdik: It’s a real thing. And so back to the thing I heard actually saw
McConaughey give his really, it was an impassioned speech. I mean like him or not like him, like the policies are not like the policies doesn’t matter. He gave a really impressive speech where he went down onto the real people that were affected by that.
[00:04:00] And so one of the people that were killed
was the teacher.
There were two teachers that were killed. Well, one of the teachers that was married then. The woman was going to do. It was part of his impassioned speech, but they, the woman did summer school and the funds that she got from summer school, one year painted the front of the house.
And then last year she did summer school painted the side of the house and this husband and wife did it together. And so this teacher was going to work summer school again, and those funds were intended to do the backside of the house. And I thought it was cool the way that they talked about that, because that was obviously a close relationship that they had working that project together and living life together.
And of course it was just married for however many years. Well, the husband died. After the wife was killed at the Valdi event. And I think [00:05:00] that it is said, if not, was it said I would propose, is it possible? He died from this broken heart syndrome, so a real thing. So that’s an interesting tie in to the current event that we’re all watching and, you know, involved with in our minds. So I thought we need to talk about that. We need to talk about what it is, how it works, you know, is this really like, you know, what’s
Adam Cloninger: the deal? Well, you know, I’ve heard of like, you know, somebody who’s married like 56 years and the wife dies and like, you know, 12 hours later, the husband dies or something like that.
So I guess that’s the same thing then
Chris Gazdik: I think so, because that, like I said, this student, it brought this to me. And when she was on her practicum, that was only like, that was this year. It was maybe as Katie. I mean, I think it was this last year or the one before her and I see two a year. So in, in our folklore, in [00:06:00] our discussions, yeah, we’ve heard of this.
We’ve heard of people, you know once, once elderly couple dies, the other one does, but why
is, is the question in there? There are some real things to check, check this out. This, this comes from the Mayo clinic. It’s a temporary heart condition that is often brought on by stressful situations and extreme emotions. That’s essentially. The broken heart syndrome is now I’m not a medical person, but they go on and describe the real specific things that go on that are different from a heart attack. So the condition can be triggered by a serious physical illness or surgery. People with broken heart syndrome may have sudden chest pain and think they’re having a heart attack.
So this has also been called stress cardiomyopathy. I can’t pronounce this one. Well, tech a Subo cardiomyopathy, or it must be atypical. That’s gotta be a typo apex. [00:07:00]
Adam Cloninger: Ballooning syndrome, a P I C a L. We need my girlfriend here right now. We do where’s she at Julia, we need, we need some professional help on this terms.
Chris Gazdik: Technical help, Julie email us and get on his Facebook live. So this, this, it literally feels evidently like a heart attack. It’s it’s issues with your heart pumping. That is really pretty much effected by this. And so with a heart, well, I think I have it later on, but I remember it was fascinating because they talked about like what heart attack.
You have real blockages, but people will die from a cardiac event feeling as though they’re having a heart attack, but there’s no blockages. And we can test that. We could look at that,
Adam Cloninger: like an event that causes a disruption in your body.
Chris Gazdik: It’s fascinating.
Adam Cloninger: Right? It’s pretty wild.
Chris Gazdik: It’s fascinating where, I mean, we talk about the, the, the, the physiological realities that we have in our body are odd to the mental health [00:08:00] and the emotional factors. I mean, we’re finding out just more and more how linked they are, and I’m fascinated by that because there’s the chicken and the egg type thing that happens. I think there, sometimes I really have to practice outside of my scope, like talk about through a therapist eyes. It’s frustrating because I, I’m not a medical doctor. I don’t have a lot of medical expertise, but I really will find that I have to practice out of my scope because there are unexplained medical realities that I see with my clients that we talk about. And we figure out the mental stress and strains, and some of the idiosyncrasies that are in their life and their medical condition gets better, man. It’s is kind of crazy. T to think that, that, that happens that way. I mean, can emotions cause a heart attack? Apparently. So apparently, so, so let me see, what else did I get about this? So an excellent exam. Oh yeah. I talked about the [00:09:00] Uvalde person. So here’s, here’s some interesting risk factors that come with this. And Adam, I know you’re not a medical professional, right. And you’re not a therapist
Adam Cloninger: either, but I’m curious, like when I play one on TV know,
Chris Gazdik: as you went to the holiday Inn yesterday,
I’m curious how this plays in your mind as you hear some of this. Because to me, this blows my mind a little bit, even being a therapist that really our feelings and emotions can be that impactful. Right. But they do
Adam Cloninger: identify some risk factors. So a mental health slash
Chris Gazdik: physical health connection is really exemplified. I feel like about through this. I wonder, is this all about hormones? As my own thought,
Adam Cloninger: but there is a suspicion
Chris Gazdik: that I’m creating from this because of I’ve talked about that on the show before, but they identify adrenaline explodes in your system and cortisol, cortisone as another stress
Adam Cloninger: hormone
Chris Gazdik: that explodes in your [00:10:00] system. And the thought is that that can actually cause restrictions. And during these extreme circumstances, wouldn’t it make sense that your body, your heart rhythms, your heart pumping your heart process is going to be greatly effected when you’re like totally distraught and in a discern state. So I wonder about our emotional systems throwing out hormones that have direct impact on the physical process.
Adam Cloninger: It sounds feasible. This sounds feasible. Yeah. I mean, so this say, we know that the physical
Chris Gazdik: and emotional events clearly proceed cardiac events. When this happens there, there’s also some mention about drug interactions as a possible effects here as well. They site severe allergic reactions. They cited asthma attacks, anxiety, medications actually medications for [00:11:00] anxiety, nasal decongestants, and of course illicit drugs.
So all of those are also risk factors that go into this. So the way I kind of see this, as you got to get a little bit of a hodgepodge of things going on, maybe some of these risk factors, a major event in your life, coupled with, you know you know, major mental health preceding realities and I’m, and I’m coming to that in a little bit.
Other possible risk factors, they kind of say there’s more women than men that affects the. I actually completely doubt that how’s
Adam Cloninger: this getting right-sized I’m laying why? Well, I mean, I’m thinking that, well, man, for example, there are a lot of times I don’t go to a doctor anyway. Right. So maybe there’s women are being more diagnosed with it than men.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. So yeah, because you wouldn’t. Yeah, that’s true. I think that’s true too. I think I was taking the angle. I don’t know why we still carry this stupid myth and belief that, you know, women are more emotional to men. And [00:12:00] I, you know, I think we’ve kind of talked about that on the show many times over, I think we’re all equally emotional all the time.
We just demonstrated the show. It, you know, in different ways and to different levels. So that’s the angle I was taken, but they also cite low blood pressure, irregular heartbeats, heart failure, and potential blood clots that you already have issues with. So it just
seems to me that. If you’ve already got a little bit of cardiac kind of reality, and then you go through really, really horrifying reality.
I mean, look, I’ve made the statement before. I feel like when people go through the loss of a loved one, you know, when a, when a close fiance or dating partner, even, even in high school, certainly a marriage partner ends. I anecdotally experienced that as being at your worst emotional state, right? [00:13:00] Your most, de-compensated your most dysregulated with emotion.
Like you are a mess more so than most anything else I’ve kind of found, you know, in life for the most part,
Adam Cloninger: when you were mentioned about the hormones, I was thinking about, it’s going to sound silly. I was thinking about a car. Okay. Okay. So this is a car guy, so just hear me out. Okay. Let’s see you have a car and it’s wore out.
It needs all chains and everything else got conditions. Pre-existing conditions. We’ll put it like that and you decide you’re going to race with it.
Chris Gazdik: You’re going to race. You’re going to race.
Adam Cloninger: Okay. That makes sense. So what’s the chance to ask since I’m with your chances of having some kind of catastrophic problem with your car, when your car is not in the best shape, it could be
Chris Gazdik: absolutely same way. And a lot of people take old cars, fix them up, you know, do whatever you, you, you, you have pre-existing conditions and things that already are kind of at play in addition [00:14:00] to a really intense, I mean, you know, rates and man, you’re going to rPM it up. You’re going to, you’re going to jam it. You’re going to, yeah.
You want to put some nitro in it or whatever you are asking for for trouble. So. I think it’s a perfect metaphor. I think it’s a perfect analogy. Let’s go a little further with this, like, think about this now. Let’s go. So let’s go in depth on some of the emotional factors. This was my own brainstorming. Okay. That makes this broken heart syndrome kind of stick out as, as a little bit more of a reality to me.
Fear, grief, extreme anger, surprise. These are some of the things that th th th these, these folks at Johns Hopkins kind of highlighted, but I went further with that. What about other really complicated life circumstances?
Now, please, by the way, this is, this is almost theoretical hypothetical on my part. Brainstorming. [00:15:00] But I think that if, if, if like I’d love to have a neurologist in a room and a medical cardiac doctor and like a nurse Julie to see like, you know, what would they all think about this? Because my piece is the mental health piece and these things that I thought about listed, man,
they’re like really involved depth, the things that you might not screen out, resentments that are unresolved. So think about that. If you have a, a loved one that you’ve been married to for a long time or things have been kind of going on in your life together and you, you just haven’t really worked things out. And you have a strong state of resentments that might be there
Adam Cloninger: and then
Chris Gazdik: boom, they die all of a sudden, what does that leave you with? I mean, that just create some churning. Like now I’ve got to be grieving and dealing with loss. And I never really got to say that some of the things I wanted to say, or, or the opposite, [00:16:00] I know they resented me. There was, there was, there was problems that were there. We’re not going to, it’s not going to come out of the room.
You nobody in the public’s going to know that, but that creates a churning, comes to mind. Right. I get powerful, stuck. Chronic. What do you do with,
Adam Cloninger: well, I guess it depends on the person. I guess in some cases somebody would get better and some of some people will get even worse. How would you say better?
Well, I mean, you have like say you have a relationship and you have a lot of resentment you pass away. Yeah. Now you have all that resentment toward them. Some people would handle it. There don’t have to worry about it anymore. And some people will be alike. I never got to tell that person how miserable they made my life.
Yeah. You just depends on how that, how that, I’m glad you
Chris Gazdik: said it that way. I think you’re right. People will deal with that in some ways, some, some points it’s going to be the end of the road and I don’t have to worry about it anymore. Other people [00:17:00] need to, or miss the opportunity to express. And this isn’t a loving relationship. So this is, this is almost like guilt. Like I feel like they resented me and I never, I’m totally in love. And now we can’t deal with this or, you know, yeah. I have a resentment and we could have been in a better position because I really wanted things. I don’t think it’s oh, they were miserable. I was miserable.
And now it’s
Adam Cloninger: depends on what the relationship was. It does.
Chris Gazdik: I think this can be a potential, like seriously, it needs to be studied risk factor. Another one let’s look at how about past trama. You know, we talk about trauma brain and we know that trauma responses are ingrained. So we’ve talked about the limbic system and trauma realities and people’s lives.
Well, it stands to me that that would be an involved, emotional risk factor in this horrible state that you’ve already been in. This is traumatic, you know, Uvalde, or,
Adam Cloninger: you know, [00:18:00] my, my wife was killed at a bank robbery event, or even just a
Chris Gazdik: really bad car accident, like that’s trauma. Right? So
Adam Cloninger: we’re looking at risk factors.
I think you have to look at the past traumatic realities that a person has had to see like, wow. You know, we need to really make sure you’re okay because you have past trauma and now you just went through this and you’re telling me you have heart attack symptoms.
Chris Gazdik: That to me is a risk factor. Right? How about extreme anger?
Okay. Well when somebody dies, this is kind of more about like, yeah, you made my life miserable. Or I was really like had a lot of anger states. Well, now you
Adam Cloninger: think
Chris Gazdik: of broken heart syndrome as being, I’m super sad now I’m, you know, widower or widow and, you know, but I would submit, there’s also a factor of like extreme anger that now you’ve left me [00:19:00] alone with these kids as well.
You’ve died. And I think that level of totally unresolved talk about adrenaline rush, talk about, you know, cortisol that just gets way over produced. I think that’s a pretty interesting risk factor when it comes to potentially your spouse dies. And now we’re concerned about you with your cardiac reality.
Marital problems left unaddressed. I think that’s kind of been inferred in some of this stuff. But now, now you can’t
Adam Cloninger: do anything about it. You can’t really resolve this. You
Chris Gazdik: can’t really understand this and you, you know, John Hopkins, what did they list? They listed guilt, fear, extreme anger. Surprise.
How about extreme confusion? Like if you had things that were going on that you never really figured out, and now this happens and all the system you get into a swirl. I mean, I’m telling you, now you can add, you can’t talk about it. Nothing now. I mean, you can’t talk about it with the person because they’ve died, but [00:20:00] who are you supposed to talk about it with? It’s living because you don’t want to, do you want to write, you don’t want to, you want to protect their image or protect their, their memory. I mean, you’re split, you know, it’s a mess I’m telling you. I think people get into a messy state fierce. Intense fear. I have had people that I’ve talked to in therapy that enter into like a panic state of like, what am I supposed to do now as a single parent? How do I operate in life now? You know, I have a person I’m, I’m talking to now, that’s right in the middle of that. And, and it’s like, it gets real, real, real fast. That’s a quote know it gets real, real, real fast. Can that be on a pillow? He’s like smirking at me. That’s not going to work. Evidently
Adam Cloninger: he’s going to stitch it up tonight.
It stitch it up and crochet. And I’m talking about on the merge
Chris Gazdik: list with our our, our pillows and mugs and this type of thing. But it does, it gets real, real, like real fast when [00:21:00] things suddenly happen. And then you might not be real rational when you start thinking about what, what is my budget going to be? How, how am I going to manage this income? That’s lost, particularly if you know, the spouse was the bread winner. You think that people don’t get panicked about that. I’m gonna tell you they do. And now you throw that into
the broken heart syndrome. Again, all of these are like my list and thoughts about like total risk factors. Can I live alone? I don’t know that I can live this way. That’s the, you know, I’ve lived with this person for 55 years. I think that’s the cultural thing, you know, that we talked about. Plus
Adam Cloninger: total mass up thinking about all these things, confusion, multiples
Chris Gazdik: at once. I didn’t even think about that. You’re right. These are risk factors,
right? You already have 1, 2, 3 of these things kind of popping at the same time that some big loss happens. Oh my gosh. Totally. I think you’re right. Untapped grief. We’re going to talk a little bit more about grief here in the next segment. [00:22:00] Well, we’ll, we’ll talk about that in, in, in a little bit more in depth, I’m going to leave that alone for now and then confusion, you know, how to maintain current life for, so for those that I’m responsible for, I’m panicked.
I’m not a good enough parent. I’m not a good enough, you know, caretaker my elderly parents, or we were caring for her parents and then they died. So I have to jump in and, and manage that. How do I deal with
Adam Cloninger: these relationships? Like, I can’t deal with this right now and everything.
Chris Gazdik: This is involved and, and you’re supposed to be just grieving your loss.
This is a lot to handle. I can only imagine what people would feel like again, when something loses you’re already in your heaviest decompensated state, plus these risk factors. I think you can understand a little bit more if I’m drawing this out, does this make sense? Like, what are you hearing with this? This sounds to me, and the more I even talk about it, you know, very, very real, very, very possible
Adam Cloninger: risk factor. Like you said, Just pile it on different stuff on [00:23:00] there.
Chris Gazdik: Have you ever thought of this when you heard of, well, you never really heard of empty or broken heart syndrome in the first place? Well, I mean,
Adam Cloninger: I think, I think we’ve all kind of thought this before.
I mean, it’s, it’s been kind of ingrained in our whole culture. You’re watching a movie or something and something happens and somebody has a heart attack or something happens, a woman faints or whatever. There’s always these things where something traumatic happens and it causes something. So I don’t think it’s, I don’t think it sounds far-fetched at all.
I
Chris Gazdik: think it’s a bit of the new medical reality that never has really been addressed before. This is totally random, but it’s interesting. I was listening to a podcast about SIDS, sudden infant death. We have no idea what causes that we have no idea really in understanding of. Medically out all, I heard them talking about it in the nineties. You remember when babies were, it was suggested, you know, back time stomach time, rather take all the things out of the crib. Those were attempts to [00:24:00] minimize sudden infant death and evidently that
Adam Cloninger: decreased and sending his crib death are different. Probably same
Chris Gazdik: thing, probably probably the same thing.
It decreased the numbers, but the numbers since then have remained exactly the same and what they deduced is, Hey, you know what? This hasn’t this hasn’t changed sudden infant death syndrome. That was suffocating infants that had died. It’s totally different thing than sits. So they took that component out and we still don’t explain
SIDS would just Kurt to me that I wonder if some of this can be related to SIDS when babies go through this emotion. Turmoil for whatever reason it might, it might be. We know that babies do die. We’ve talked about before, when we talked about emotion focused therapy and attachment problems, you don’t have, you know, emotional support. We, you don’t have emotional nurturing enough care and love you’re [00:25:00] neglected. Babies will die.
That’s amazing. So I’m actually realizing, as I’m talking about this, I wonder if this is a part of the SIDS issue that has not been able to be figured out, like, dude, I want to, I want to call those guys up those professionals and have that conversation because I think that’s real. I think that’s potentially true. That’s like I said, real.
Adam Cloninger: You’re going to schedule a doctor appointment. Just tell you to talk to them about this stuff. Aren’t you cardiac
Chris Gazdik: people look out, man. I’m coming to you think so. So this is, this is a, it’s just an interesting thing that I think has been a bit of a mystery that I wanted to talk about. And that’s, you know, I’m, I’m not, that’s about what I know and understand about it. And a lot of it was, you know, from the articles that I was kind of looking up the rest of this, I think we’re going to talk about grief, but I thought this was interesting. So any therapists out there listening or people in the field, I’m going to make a re sort of I want to recognize like, [00:26:00] wow, I don’t think our mental health field is on the touchstones with this at all.
Meaning I haven’t heard any kind of conferences about this. I don’t hear many therapists talking about. I don’t know that the field of psychology has done a lot of research on this. I think this is really, really, very much new ground that I would love to hear. I mean, if your therapists that are out there listening to this, I would really ask you to, to, to, to call in or email in, or put some on the, the, the comments that we have here on the live, because this is a medical field driven thing.
I feel like even the term, I think doctors and pediatricians and the researchers that are looking into, you know, what happened with this heart condition, the, those specialists are leading the charge on this mental health profession. I don’t think has much at all. I, I could be stoned to death by my own [00:27:00] colleagues, but it surprises me because I think that we need psychology fields to be studying this.
This is this is a big opportunity to, to, to bridge gaps between our whole two fields. That’s what I got. I got a lot more on grief, but that’s what I got. What are you hearing? I’m just curious. What’s your, what’s your thinking if this is kind of all new or not? Yeah, I
Adam Cloninger: don’t, I mean, I don’t think it’s new to me.
It sounds totally reasonable. I mentioned them in the go of like the, you, you saw movies and stuff and shows where it was kind of like accepted when somebody had a stressful event or whatever, that they may have a heart attack or, you know, calm down, you’re going to have a heart attack or, you know, something like that or calm down, you’re going to have a stroke or whatever.
I, it just makes sense to me. So yeah, it kinda makes sense that, you know, if, if there’s, if there’s other things that can be disruptive, I mean, we don’t understand all the things that our human body does. So, I mean, it makes sense. I don’t, I don’t think as far fetched or anything. I don’t want to say it’s an it’s totally new.
It may [00:28:00] not be completely understood the point where it should be.
Chris Gazdik: Yes, it’s interesting because when the physician assistant brought it up to me in it being a syndrome or a real thing that people research and that we know about, I thought about it in a, in a clinical way in my mind. But it’s cool to hear you say that because prior to that, yeah, I thought about it in much the same way, I guess, you know, it’s talked about, it’s mentioned with some of those comments that you just made, but I hadn’t really thought about it clinically through my therapy eyes.
I’ve just thought about it through, you know, Chris’s eyes, Chris’s experience. Cause you’re right. Like, oh my God, be careful. You’re going to have a heart attack, like chill out. I’ve literally heard people say that it funerals and stuff, now that I’m thinking about it. But now we have research about it. We have like re literally legit science. That’s demonstrating this kind of stuff. So, yeah. Okay, cool. So let’s, let’s switch gears. Let’s talk a lot about grief and loss. You know, we, haven’t done a whole show on grief and loss. I Googled it and I was [00:29:00] surprised. And I think I’ve said this a couple of times, because we’ve talked about grief on the show and this, this episode here is going to be probably the closest that we get to it. So we probably need to pay, pay attention to that, Neil, and maybe even make it a part of the title in some way. It occurs to me because grief and loss has come up in a few of the topics, but we haven’t really talked as much about the grieving process. So Adam, you’ve gone through losses. How do you grieve? What have you heard about the grieving process? You’ve heard movies. It’s a process. It’s not an event. There was a particular movie that was like making so fun of that. I thought it was funny but it is a process. It isn’t and event. How do you grieve? What do you do when you’ve gone through losses? If you would be willing to share?
Adam Cloninger: Well, some people might want to talk to somebody about it. Some people might not want to talk about it at all. Some people may want to do things different. I don’t know. I mean, everybody does deals with grief a different way.
Chris Gazdik: What are some of the things that you think people do to manage grief?
Adam Cloninger: Distractions
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:00] definitely comes to mind.
Adam Cloninger: Yeah. Do something different, a distractor, mine get your mind off of it. Even it might be just something, maybe not even different, something you haven’t done in a while. We talked about video games a long time ago, you know? Yeah. It’s been a long time to play video games time.
Do it again. Well,
you know, it’s funny. Yeah. Which you haven’t, by the way
I was going, I knew that’s
Chris Gazdik: where I was going. No, I was I going to say, I had a thought and it left me oh, that’s what it was. Yeah. It, the, the cornerstone of mental health comes up again. Right? Self care, fun, relaxing, enjoyable activities that aren’t self destructive in any way.
And then aren’t work-related tasks throwing yourself into work. Cause people will do that to grieve. Right. They’ll just go work themselves to death. We do do the self destructive things. We, you know, anyone ever drank grief away before you think? Sure. You know, absolutely. So self care though, distracting techniques. I mean, that’s the cornerstone for a reason.
I’m going to say something. I’m sure you’ve heard this before. And I want to see [00:31:00] if you can, how many of the four that you can get? You’ve heard of the four stages of grieving, right? Brief in stages, the four stages of grief, never heard of that. And maybe, maybe, any idea what they might be is Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. Process with grieving.
Adam Cloninger: And I would think acceptance would be one the last one probably. Yeah. Dealing with grief. Well coming to terms with the desk, kind of the same thing of as accepance.
Chris Gazdik: Yep. That’s one Neil,
Adam Cloninger: he’s whispering, he’s saying denial and
Chris Gazdik: out denial. That’s the first one. There’s denial. There’s bargaining. And then there’s acceptance. What’s the first one, you know, anger maybe, right? Yeah. I think you might be
Adam Cloninger: right.
Chris Gazdik: I mean, bargaining the idea here is that you go through a process of grieving it’s Elizabeth Kubler. Ross is actually the, the originator of this and the thought is that [00:32:00] you, you go through the stages. And we can mark out these stages with what somebody is experiencing and it’s a good model. It, it makes sense.
And you can see people doing this. I’ve got something better that we want to go to, but to answer your question, you, you do, I think Neil’s right. You start out, are you right? He’s got the money.
neil: Yeah. It starts with denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. That’s more than seven, but this one listed as five. And so I, like I said, I’ve heard denial, anger bargaining, or to me, I think I heard like rationalizing or trying to process it. And then you finally get to acceptance.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Yeah. Well, so we got them in the wrong order and they may have actually added to it. They probably added, I I’m pretty sure that Elizabeth Kubler started off with four, but nevertheless, you go through just anger state. And then you’ll go through a denial stage like this, this didn’t really happen. I, I, I’m just reading return to your normal life. [00:33:00] It’s like, oh my gosh. You know, and then you go into the bargaining where it’s kinda like, you know, a lot of times prayer, right? Like, Lord, if you just can, can, this can be different life.
Doesn’t have to be this way. Then I’ll never curse again or whatever, you know, you, you kind of negotiate your way through, like, I’m not really going to be a single parent, you know any number of, sort of negotiating things that you think of in your own head that it’s all about. Like this just didn’t really happen. I’m pissed off. It didn’t really happen. I’m denying it didn’t really happen. I’m bargaining around. This really happened. And then you, you get to a place of a stage where it’s acceptance. Like, you know how people say it, like it hits you. Man. I, I, you know, I knew she’d been, she’s died for like three weeks.
I’ve kind of gone back to my world. I’ve been back to work and then boom. It just, it hit me like a ton of bricks. And that’s when you really get into like a painful reality of like, okay, this, this is really [00:34:00] real. This is acceptance. And, and you move on kind of through life. I had just had somebody in therapist dealing with a pretty heavy grief experience right now.
And he just hit the acceptance part really after he, he went back to his hometown to go through the process of the celebration of life. They’ve done the other things and she’s passed away, but he it’s just it’s. So it’s like a, you know, an overwhelming rush of emotion. So those are the stages of grief.
Some of that sounded familiar a little bit.
Adam Cloninger: You tripped out by that. Well, I just, I don’t get it, but okay.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. It’s it’s, it’s there. You. It’s just not real. When you go through the terrible loss of a mother whom you’re really close to. And of course, as we’re talking about a spouse with broken heart, so we really want to understand the grieving process, and we really want to understand what the heck do you do to cope with this [00:35:00] stuff?
There’s lots of questions. And evidently with the broken heart syndrome, the risks are high. Like this is important.
So if you’re first of all, listening to this and you’ve gone through some sort of loss recently little pause here in the middle for hope like you can get through this process. You can deal with this, take a deep breath.
You will gain stability and groundedness again. Life will never be the same. You can develop, you know, that new normal, as we say, to kind of get through to a peaceful place of, of existence after this huge loss. So that’s the mid point sort of, or three quarters points sort of breathe, you know? I got a totally different way of looking at grieving sound interesting.
Just say yes. Yep. Excited about it.
Adam Cloninger: Yes, I am. Come on, man. I’m ready to hear about it.
Chris Gazdik: I use this actually is one of the few handouts that I pull out of my, my, my drawers. Cause I don’t use handouts and [00:36:00] sheets very much. We probably ought to scan this and put it on our, on our website so that you can have this because this is a totally different way of experiencing grief and loss and how to go about it.
So here’s the backstory with this. I actually went to a conference that was a substance abuse conference. And it was for chronic relapsing, right. So people that are in recovery and they relapse again and they get sober again and then they relapse again and then they get sober again and they relapse again, well, somebody, some smart dude or gal along the way, figured out like, oh,
well that sounds like grief and loss. Like they haven’t let go of their relationship with drugs and alcohol and they have to grieve that. And so if you don’t grieve it, you can’t let go of it. And that’s why you relapse makes sense. And so they actually developed this different process and they did this in [00:37:00] their rehab facility, like over and over and over again, and found great success with.
So I’ve actually taken this and adopted it to just losses that you have. And I’ve gone through this process with many people throughout the years in, in the therapy relationship. So let me go through Spitfire and then we’ll go through them so that you can begin to understand what do you do to manage this lose?
So you don’t fall into the broken heart syndrome. Okay. So the first step, well, first of all, to these are tasks, these aren’t steps, these aren’t stages there are tasks to go through a grief and loss event and just right from the get go, I kind of like that better too. You can do them in any order.
They’re not really stages that you have to go through. And I don’t know about you, but when I have tasks, I feel empowered because I could take action and do something. It really helps me to heal and recover right there from the get go, because I’m empowered to do [00:38:00] something. So I love the idea that these are tasks to do in a grieving process rather than helplessly and disempowered.
You’re going to go through these stages, right? So these are tasks and I think that’s a cool concept, right? From the get-go so good down through you define the loss a and then B you explore the meaning and the impact of that loss. Okay. See you identify the beauty of the bond before the loss, which I think is a cool concept.
That is a part of a task that you would want to do. Do you understand the cost of ungrieved lose? And then here’s a really cool part E create a ritual to bring about and represent closure rituals are really important.
Carry out next, carry out. The ritual was significant. Others present, [00:39:00] make sense to progress towards that and then find your own unique way or pace.
I don’t know if that’s necessarily a task, but they have it listed as a task. And then the last task you move on to every day for every every day with the loss embracing the grief that you re-experienced, because you will, re-experience that loss kind of, as you go through life, this is a very different process that I think a lot of therapists may not even have heard of.
They haven’t happened to go to that conference. What do you think as you go down through, and then we’ll explain each kind of one of them as we go down through
Adam Cloninger: them? Well, I’m big on thinking of something else that in my mind, maybe Nitten didn’t to no one else, but. To me, it kind of sounds similar and y’all going to be probably snicker when I’m thinking of weight loss.
Chris Gazdik: Okay. Not as
Adam Cloninger: long as you don’t use a car again. Yeah. They’re going through another site. I’m thinking of weight loss. That’s something that a lot people have a problem with. It is
Chris Gazdik: it’s a very common
Adam Cloninger: challenge. They ups here actually what [00:40:00] you would need to do to deal with that.
Chris Gazdik: Okay. Interesting. I love what you’re saying.
I have a theory as to why that is the case, but what do you, what do you mean? What, how can we apply this to weight loss?
Adam Cloninger: Well, I’m talking about the ups and downs, ups and downs. Why do people go up and down on the, on the lose way at the game and white back? Because they do the same things they used to do.
They don’t, they don’t have a plan. They don’t make behavioral change. They don’t ha they don’t create a re a ritual to bring and represent closure. They they don’t think about the meaning or impact of what losing that weight with. I’m sitting here thinking, you know, this, this, I know you’re not talking about weight loss, but physical stuff
Chris Gazdik: here.
Well, what you have done is, is perfect for a part of a show, which this is going to be on with grief, right? People, people don’t think about. Okay. So think about this. You have [00:41:00] Uvalde mass shooting event. You have freaking 22 funeral or 19 students, and two adults at 21 funerals to go to. That’s a loss. People are going to be grieving.
It’s it’s horrible. It’s tragic. It’s a tragic loss. Okay. Well, what about a grieving loss? When you live in West Virginia, all your life, and you move out of that state for the first time and you find yourself living in North Carolina.
Adam Cloninger: It’ll be wonderful. Yeah. I was grieving the loss of my mountain near state.
Right. So when you talk about weight loss,
Chris Gazdik: I would love it. We’ll be back in West Virginia. I would love to retire in there, but alas, the better half, I don’t think that’s going to work. Think about different types of losses that you can have all sorts of losses that grief applies to. So when you talk about weight loss, you’re not [00:42:00] really grieving the loss of your weight and your body, but are you not maybe grieving the loss of the relationship that you have with food?
Adam Cloninger: That’s what I’m getting at. Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m getting at. Yeah. I love food. I do too. I
Chris Gazdik: love the it’s fun. we
Adam Cloninger: might do it here and like, I can lose weight, but man, I can gain it back to you in a heartbeat. Absolutely.
Chris Gazdik: And that is a primary issue here. Me now with this, like it’s a random, extra bonus content, but that is a primary issue in weight. Loss is not successfully dealing with your relationship with food. And the consequence is gaining, losing, gaining, losing exactly like being in recovery and then drinking again, being in recovery and drinking again, these guys, by the way. Kirtan Cohen, M a L P C created this. I want to give proper credits and some doing this on a live show.
I have it on my sheet. I kept it on there. So I, I don’t [00:43:00] know what company it was years ago that I got this, but K a R k I R T a N Cohen. You guys nailed it because, you know, with all kinds of losses that we go through, not just with substance abuse, rehab centers, weight loss centers could probably really benefit from this. And as an answer to the broken heart syndrome, this is and dealing with anything tasks that you can take. Yeah. Yeah. So let’s go down through them real quick and spend a little bit of time so that there’s a good understanding on each task. Each step in that process, the first one define the loss. Okay.
That sounds simple, right. By the way, I, in my therapy work with people, I’ve kind of given this out and given the suggestion and I’ll give to you. Just take this sheet and take the steps, write them down. If you don’t have a chance to get to the internet, to print it off and just take each task and spend a piece of paper on it, right. Just [00:44:00] write down your thoughts and go through the process. It’s well, worth your time. If you’re going through the loss of a son. Oh gosh. Right. Or any traumatic tragedy that you’ve had happened with a car wreck or, you know, losses, or it
may sound simple, but if you’re really wanting to do weight loss, as you bring up you and you might need to grieve the loss of the relationship with food, take some time and take each one of these stages, take a piece of paper to each one of them and spend some time with it. So define the loss. Does that sound simple? How do you define the loss with and we should probably get a. A loss that people go through, that’s calm and maybe get away from death and begin to go through these stages. What helped me out? Well, what would be something that we might want to model is after a loss of job?
Perfect. Good. Okay. So you’ve had this career, it’s big part of your life and you go through downsizing, which is a horrible time. People really struggle with that kind of a loss. I agree. Perfect [00:45:00] example. They’ve come to therapy, initiated therapy for those kinds of results or those kinds of events. Unemployment is terrible.
So how do you define the loss when somebody gets, you know, downsize, rift, you know, fired or has that loss of the job? What’s the definition of that? How do you
Adam Cloninger: that? And I wouldn’t think it had to be that in depth of support, as far as defining the loss, it’s just a one liner, you know what happened? What exactly is it you’re trying to deal with?
Chris Gazdik: Love it. I’m so glad you said. I understand the value. The reason why I love this being on their task list is because if you don’t spend a little bit of time and go further than just the event, your subconsciousness, your whole psychology knows that there’s a whole lot more and not realizing that absolutely creates different layers of [00:46:00] grief that you will go through in your life.
Real quick. Here’s what I mean by that is babies and kit were not babies so much, but little kids at funerals do a lot better than adults at funerals. And everyone’s always worried like, oh, should we take the kid to see, you know, grandma died or whatever it’s like, and I’m always like, oh yeah, absolutely. Because they usually handle grief a whole lot better than. Or you do you know why? Because when you go through a grief process, it takes some time. It takes a minute, weeks months maybe, but you prac that away and you put it away. But then when you go through and you experience another grief event, you experienced that loss for what that loss is. And the one you didn’t really, even subconscious totally comes up to the surface because you re-experienced the same feelings. You do that enough times by the time you’re 40 years old and you have another loss of a family member you’re grieving the first one, the second one, the third, fourth, fifth, six, you’ve got layers of grief [00:47:00] that have just totally built up.
That’s a thing. That’s why grief becomes so difficult later on. And kids oftentimes, I mean, they’re laughing and playing. They’re sad. They’re, you know, they go through all kinds of emotions, but they usually handle it a lot better. So this is the same thing with defining the lose. If you don’t define the fact that yes, you lost your job, but you also lost your ability to travel, to see your mom who lives in California.
So I’ve lost a relationship with my mom for a period of time made that up, but it’s part of what loses. I lost the dream of being able to get a car it midlife because. Lost my job at age 40, and now I can’t get the
Adam Cloninger: car that I really wanted. I lost the company, lease packages on the car that,
Chris Gazdik: yes, I lost the prestige of my position. I held value in the community. People looked up to me, so I lost my [00:48:00] image, right? So there’s other things associated to the event that is a simple death or a simple event. There’s other things wrapped around that. And you have to pay attention, explore that a little bit, because you will find all kinds of meanings, right?
If you’re somebody dies part of what, you know, if I were to die today, part of defining the losses, I, my wife would say I lose the ability to be with my husband when my kids get married 10 years from now. Okay. That’s a huge loss. That’s a part of this event. It isn’t just, somebody died. It’s, you know, I’ve lost my retirement partner, you know, I’ve lost the ability to go see Europe, sadly enough, when that husband with the Uvalde teacher, he lost the ability to finish painting the back of his house with his wife. That’s you don’t think of that as the [00:49:00] death, but it’s a part of the loss. So there’s a lot to define. Did I convince you? Yep. So a whole lot more going on there that whether we realize it or not,
our psychology knows that’s there and we’re super, super emotional about those things. So we have to identify them. So there’s a lot that goes into defining them, but we might not have a time, enough time to go through all these things, because there’s a lot of process that goes on here. Let’s, let’s move on exploring the meaning and the impact. Okay, well, so there’s a definition, but what does that mean? Right. You have to spend a little bit of time of understanding the meaning here, prestige with the job.
Loss is probably a good example. Well, this means I’m not important to my neighbors. You know, I’m not, this means that I’m not, I don’t ha I don’t hold any value anymore because I can’t do the service that I was doing in the community. That’s a meaning that you carry with that loss. Other things might come to mind, but you begin to get the idea.
Not only is [00:50:00] there a loss it’s to define the different losses, and then you have to look at like, what does this mean
Adam Cloninger: to me? It’s an awesome therapy question. It means I have to pay next time I go to the doctor’s office and don’t have insurance anymore.
Chris Gazdik: There you go. That’s it. That’s what it, that’s a consequence. It’s a meaning right there. Now, I think this one’s cool. They had it on the third one here. They had it on their list. And as a cool way of putting it, you know, now you have celebrations of life. That’s what we do in the states. I don’t know what death principles are around the world. There’s different different ways that you go about that.
But exploring the beauty of the bond before the lose is a really cool way to celebrate the, the lasting reality that that has in your life. The task here is to realize that this goes with you even in a job loss, the beauty of the bond with your position, even when it ends, that’s still forever.[00:51:00]
More moving forward a part of your life and a part of the beauty of what you had there that can be celebrated, that doesn’t get lost. It’s almost like a reversal of defining well, that’s defining what’s not lost. So I think that’s an important part of grieving that I honestly, before this, I never would’ve thought of that before. Right. Finding your own unique way. And pace is one of the last things they said on here. This is exhausting. This sounds and feels like a lot. When you really examine this piece, it’s look, it’s still a little bit at a time, take a piece of paper out and spend 20 minutes on it and then put it down and put it away. You go through this process, you know, a little bit, not all at once. So that what you’re really trying to do is relieve pressure on your heart when you’re looking at being a risk factor for, you know, the broken heart syndrome. But let’s move on. The last thing that I really want to spend a little bit of time on is creating a ritual to bring up.
And representing closure. Do you have any idea [00:52:00] how important that would be to create purposely create rituals? Does that make any psychological sense?
Adam Cloninger: Yeah. Yeah. One thing I did you know, I, I went through a divorce and my bill has gone through losses like that, but went through a divorce, hers, huge loss, it insidious.
So and sometimes the blessing, but yes, get into that side too. So, you know, but it’s still a loss. It’s a, you’re, you’re exposed to something totally different. I’m glad you said that. Because sometimes
Chris Gazdik: we have losses of things that we choose to lose. That’s positive, like alcohol when, if we’re an addict. So when you go through things that you want to have out of your life, you’re exactly right. That’s still a loss.
Adam Cloninger: But like one thing I did my ritual that I went through somebody at work had, had bought me some tea. Okay. Hot tea. All right. So I went for a while there, they had a, I think it was like a 60 pack or whatever.
Yeah. So every [00:53:00] morning for went to work, I made me some hot tea and sat down and drank it.
Chris Gazdik: I love that. It was,
Adam Cloninger: that was two months. Yeah. That’s yeah. It was two months worth. Yeah. And I, it got, but you know, I’m in bed. I’m like he don’t get up and write me not
Chris Gazdik: T. Yeah. And that was a time that you used, what were you reflecting or were you kind of, you know, just thinking, kinda
Adam Cloninger: waking up and, you know, just wanting to get up and do something.
It was a ritual ritual that I did, and I was like a week into it for a realize. And then you’re like, I’m not, you know, I’m not laying in bed. I’m going to drink my tea. I think that’s fantastic. You know, you got
Chris Gazdik: to understand. When we do things like that, you create actions, you create rituals. There’s a lot, there’s a reason why rituals have been a part of human existence since the beginning of humans time. Right? Because there’s, there’s an emotional process that when you take an action to do something, you, you end up and result in sometimes a [00:54:00] negative, but more times than not a positive emotion of letting go representing closure representing. I do something differently. Now my spouse has gone. I have tea and I have tea every morning to get through and move through.
To start the day. That’s that that’s huge. It’s really important to have those types of routine and structure and this, you know, I just, I just participated in a really powerful ritual that was created by my dear friend, Aaron Clark. He’s a friend of the show, Hey, or shout out to your brother. He was on the show episode three and he’s the person who had his 13 year old son die tragically suddenly because of an AVM.
I don’t know what for you, what ABM stands for. But for the fourth time we got together at the. Not the funeral home, the graveyard and did a balloon release. And he has done this four times now, years in a row, we also get together for is each year, each year he has done this. And
today, this year we had [00:55:00] cookies instead of cups, that’s kind of his ritual.
It is absolutely a created ritual. And then the next task is, carry it out with loved ones or friends so that you’re not alone with it, but powerful, powerful experience, listening to him, read a letter and share cookies and have balloons that we all release at the same time and just, you know, see that could almost get tearful about it.
See, you know, the balloon kind of go up in the sky, thinking that it’s, you know, going up with with Cody. Cause I was close to Cody. I knew this kid right now. It brings the emotion, you know, it, it, it, it allows you to process what it is that you’re feeling and creates a sense of closure. And in this way, he’s done it multiple times creates a sense of connection to that, which was that, which was lost telling you it’s powerful.
It’s a powerful, emotional reality. When you do these, these kinds of rituals and they could be anything. I love your tea example. [00:56:00] You know, write a letter and burn it. And you’re saying I’ve had I had a client write a
Adam Cloninger: letter and burn it in your sink, burn it, you know, I’ve never heard of
Chris Gazdik: that one.
Yeah. You burn it in your yard or whatever, you know, you’re in, in the house. But I had, I had somebody who did a ritual where they wrote things on a personal friend of mine. She was, she was going through a divorce as well. And she had a lot of energy and anger and emotions with it. And she wrote messages on China where she went to buy a cheap chinaware at some and smash it and threw it in her garage matched. It was such a release for her to do. Powerful powerful experiences. When you engage in a ritual that you, that you create now, she didn’t, she didn’t do it with anybody around, thankfully, I guess that might have been dangerous, but grief and loss, a hell of a thing. Anything else on there that I didn’t cover your own unique way of pace, moving the life beyond the law. So you’ll have to revisit stuff [00:57:00] as, as life goes through, but that’s a pretty cool way of going through a grief process. What do you, what do you think, can you imagine yourself kind of taking some time and going through some of that everybody has, I think there’s
an avoidance because when you really take that time and spend the invested energy there, dude, I don’t want to feel all these feelings.
I don’t want to go through. One of the tasks. I don’t think it’s a task, I think is a message. Understand the cost of the ungrieved loss. They have it as like task number three or whatever, you know, I described that when you go through loss and you just sort of pack it away, that’s what most people try to do.
I think we just, let me just recover. Let me just get, you know, back to balanced life. Let me just try to get back to work and you’ll do that and that, and that’s fine, but understand that what you carry [00:58:00] with you comes with you in life. You know, what phrase I hate is time heals all wounds. I just think that’s completely garbage when we say that to people and it does a bit of a disservice, it’s just, I’m a hundred percent clear in my mind.
Like you’re going to do one of two things. And it’s going to take time to do one of those two things. You’re either going to go through a process to deal with the emotions and kind of muscles, manage things and whatever, and resolve them to a place where gradually it gets easier to manage or to you’re going to compact it, suppress it and numb it out and you’ll move on life
and you’ll be okay. Time doesn’t do crap.
Adam Cloninger: Well, let’s change it. No. How can you change it? Let’s say I’m in time. All wounds will heal. Yeah. Like that amendment, maybe in time you
Chris Gazdik: can heal your wounds. I don’t know. Right? Like I like to take action. I like to feel empowered. I like [00:59:00] to try to control the things I can control, which was myself and I can control my emotions.
I can control my feelings. It’s difficult. It’s scary to do that sometimes, but I want to. Take the time and make the investment to heal what it is that I’ve lost. How about that? It sounds a little bit wordy, but yeah. Yeah, this is as close
to the grief show. I think, you know, we, we have to, maybe I need to retitle this a little bit so we can make sure that this highlights grief a little bit. I don’t know the broken heart syndrome and the grief process. We’ll probably make that as the title. Any closing thoughts, questions, Adam, I think we running up on time to get out of here. You’ve got everything covered. It looks like to
me, you know, I appreciate you listening. I know this was probably a little bit weird for you to th I feel like I did a lot of talking, but listen, if you’ve got a grief event, like I said out there I really want you to not feel alone.
That’s probably another thing to highlight, to not be isolated, not be alone, you know, to go through [01:00:00] this process with loved people around you. I know our country’s hurting in a lot of ways. A lot of people over in Ukraine around the world. I mean, my God, can you imagine the the terrible heartbreak it’s going on there?
Horror realities around the world that we’re dealing with in such difficult times coming out of the pandemic. Hopefully you understand that you got. Take some tasks that you can work with your process, you can manage your feelings so that we don’t lose people to the broken heart syndrome. Take care of yourself, grieve it’s manageable.
There is hope you will recover. Okay. The last thing I’ll say there, a sense of hopefulness is we’re developing some platform. You will hear this in the future. This will not defeat me. And he has a cold title that we’re working with. Understand and know that this will not defeat you in the tough time that you’re having take well or take care and be well, we’ll talk to you soon.[01:01:00]