Welcome to she persisted I'm your host Sadie Saxton a 19 year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She persisted is the Teen Mental Health podcast made for teenagers by a team in each episode. I'll bring you authentic accessible and relatable conversations about every aspect of mental Wellness. You can expect evidence-based, Tina, proof resources, coping skills, including lots of DBT,
insights and education. In each piece of content, you consume, she persisted It offers you a safe space to feel validated and understood in your struggle. While encouraging you to take ownership of your journey and build your life worth living. So, let's dive in this week on she persisted, here's my advice, grief sucks and it sucks big time. Lean into the Sun as much as you can lean into it. What do I mean by that?
If today you're feeling really sad just like knowledge that you're feeling sad, feel the emotion, sometimes I tell grievers, Just put your hand over your heart and see if you can tell what emotion that is. I miss him and then just say man, I really miss him and try to hold on to that emotion of missing him for as long as you can before, your mind changes, the subject. Hello. Hello. And welcome to she persisted
today. We were talking about a very important and relevant topic because it is the holidays and grief is something that can come up for a lot of people especially around the holiday season as you participate in Traditions. Spend time with family members and friends. If you have lost a loved one, it can be a really difficult time to navigate emotions that come up and your mental health can struggle.
As a result, today's guest is Sharon rube Walker, she's a grief specialist as many of you guys know, grief is a subject that most people are not comfortable with but it's really unique in that. It's one of the few things that will affect every single person at some point in their life. And so, Sharon is on the podcast today to talk about why we don't teach grieving skills at a young age, we talked about navigating Grief as a teenager and what specific coping skills teens can
use. If they are grieving we talked about Sharon's own experiences, we talked about how to support someone grieving, what you can do, what is helpful, what's not helpful? And really just a all-encompassing conversation about how to navigate grief yourself or support, someone that is experiencing that I learned so much in this episode. I know that you will as well, huge thank you to Sharon for coming on the show and being so vulnerable and diving into a topic that we haven't covered
before but is so so important. Orton because like I mentioned grief is something that everyone will experience. So with that, let's dive in. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. Sharon, I'm so excited to have you on. She persisted how exciting this is, gonna be so cool. I've been waiting to do this interview. I'm so excited and I'm so happy to have you here. I have never done an episode on Grief before, but it's something that so many teens ulis.
I'm so excited to have an expert perspective to give all the best tips and navigating it yourself and supporting someone. Yeah, and This is why I was excited to be here is because we're not talking about this enough and we're definitely not talking about it for our young people, right? And here's the other thing, we don't call it grief. That's the problem. All the things that hurt are
hard and make us feel broken. We're not calling a grief and that's why people think grief only goes with death. Yeah. What are some other labels that people use for grief as an emotion or an experience other than actually labeling it It so break up over romantic relationship, right? How about? And I'm going to try to think of some things for this age group. But yeah, really like in a guy and then him going for your girlfriend. That's a grievance could be right. Yeah, yeah, right.
And so having him go for your girlfriend or, you know, having friends, we go, a lot of, this is girlfriends, we in there, we're supporting each other, but then all of a sudden, we turn turn on that friend. That's a grievance. Parents agree that experience is anything that your heart feels that hurts. Anything that hurts. Your heart is a grieving experience. We, unfortunately, we only use it with death, but being bullied in school is a grieving experience.
When I was a senior in high school, I told the story quite often. Now I'm told that on a podcast. My boyfriend that I was in love with him, but I was going to marry for the rest of my life. Got another girl pregnant. Oh my talking about a grieving experience, I think About that here. I was totally in love. He's my first love. I loved him immensely, I believe he loved me. Also. I just think we got, you know, we things happen.
We got confused and then he started hanging out with this other girl and then she got pregnant. I had to keep going to school and keep seeing her get bigger and bigger. So that was a grieving experience. So anything that causes pain in our heart is a grave and experience. So let me just list a few abortion, break up a romantic
relationship. Having someone in your family, go to jail adoption if your parents were to adopt and bring in someone new, that's a greeting experience, having your pet died, your bike, getting stolen, your computer breaking, all of those are grieving experiences. Yeah, I think it's really helpful to have the ability to describe it and pinpoint, what you're feeling.
I think all of those experiences bring up so many emotions, but being able to label that as grief brings a lot of clarity and then also sense of Peace because you're like, okay, I know I can ask for how to deal with this. Or I know how to deal with this when you're like, I'm angry, I'm confused, I'm upset, I'm sad, I'm guilty, all of these different things. It can be really difficult to process through those emotions because you even know what
you're experiencing 100%. Imagine if in kindergarten we taught kids grief, where would we be? You know, you and I be as women adults, right? If I had to learn grief at a very young age, Not even great if I had learned processing. Emotions processing emotions, right? So I'm going to kindergarten, I
get bullied a run to my teacher. She uses it as a teaching opportunity for the whole entire classroom, instead of just saying and then remember you for the rest of your life and then you're on a podcast and you start talking about it. So if we did that, What a difference and how much more prepared we would be. If we talk in, I'm going to put quotes up here. Emotions that hurt that made me sad. And that here's the deal.
We have to be allowed to say it, but the person hearing it has to be able to receive it and not comment on it or try to fix it. Yeah. And I think even the pivotal piece of learning how to validate and be there for someone else's emotions and then having a better skill set of how to cope with those yourself or two things that are so missing from our current education system.
And as you get into middle school and high school and your teenage years and you have all these really intense emotions and you don't know how to deal with them. I think it would do wonders for the rates of mental illness and mental health challenges, that so many teens are experiencing. I agree with you, 100%. And so, this is the example that I get. If you can imagine a big giant Heart, Right? A big little red heart, two big eyes. And two big ears just hanging
off the end. That's all you need to be is a heart with ears. You know what's missing the mouth? You don't need to say anything whenever your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your cousin or anybody comes up to you and just start sharing, just listen. Listen to what they're saying, don't offer advice, don't try to fix it. That's what we try to do. We want to give them. Then there's plenty of fish in the sea. You'll find another girl, lets go out right now and start. Drinking.
Let's go do this. Let's go do that. And the truth is Grievers, just need to talk. I need to talk. They need to hear their brain. Say the thing out loud? Yeah. So in addition to talking through it, what skills are helpful to have in your toolbox when you are grieving and experience or relationship or whatever it is that it's bringing up that emotion. So I teach also about a brain dump literally just getting a piece of paper and a pen.
Or pain and just writing everything out and hear me out on this. It doesn't have to be a paragraph or this is how I'm feeling or put a bunch of emotion words. I don't like my math class. I don't like having to pay for my insurance. This is hard. Really just writing it out as a grateful that ourselves person. Like your situation. Yeah. The boyfriend writing my really long letter being like, this is so terrible. How could you do this? You don't have to say, could you
do like getting don't send it? So therapy. The other thing is having that one or two people in our back pocket that we can talk to write that are really there for us to talk and that they are the person that's the heart with the years and they just listened to us and we can just do the brain. Dump out loud and saying the thing out loud. The other thing is, if we don't have those one or two people, then being able to ask for help, I know a lot of the college
campuses. There's support groups that you can go to their support groups. A lot, we can find Online and meet up groups, literally, people are dying to talk. I heard today, the reason that Tick Tock is becoming so popular is because people feel like they belong to something, right? This one lady was on Tick, Tock live and they were just breaking
out one of the videos. She said she was on for six hours because people kept joining in joining the joining because people want to feel like they belong to something and feel heard. Yeah, we want to feel heard. It's so true. So one other thing I want to add with that, just a real. Quick tip is to talk in emotions. Say those emotions, even if they hurt, even if you feel, like if I say this, someone's gonna be uncomfortable. You, there's five, simple
emotions, you can use mad sad. Glad afraid you're embarrassed. Those five simple emotions helped in every situation. When is it time to ask for support and kind of maybe realize, Is it something isn't going as well as it could? I mean, they're, of course, all these emotions arise.
It takes a certain amount of time to be able to go back to not even functioning normally, but returned to all of these activities and interests that you had before when you're grieving, and it's interesting because when they wrote the DSM, I don't know if it's the most recent version or the one before when they were talking about the diagnosis for depression, there was this caveat where it's like unless you've lost a loved one recently, where all these symptoms are normal unless
you've Lost a close family member friend, Etc. And it's in the book, lost connections by Johann Hari. And he talks about but there's no timeline there. It's like this is normal if you have lost a loved one but what if this has been going on for a year or two years then it's not normal. So when would you counsel a listener to maybe ask a parent or a counselor close friend for some further support almost like warning signs?
I think to be aware of if you feel like, okay, maybe this grieving process Isn't something that I can do alone. So a couple of things. Number one, the DSM-5 doesn't have the word grief in it and it hasn't until this year. Oh no, no experience happens in our heart. Yeah, there is no pill that somebody can write you. And no doctor can say, oh you're grieving, oh your boyfriend. Got a girl pregnant at your school. Let me write you a pill. There's no pill, right?
And it's almost like a catch-all. For feel. However, you want to. Let's not do anything about it. It's expected. It's the course of action here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So that that's number one. There was no. And then, recently this year I believe they added complicated grief. Which I don't believe is, I don't want to go against anybody in the medical field. They're going to think I'm crazy, but I think all grief is complicated grief. That's number one.
Number two, we get a lot of misinformation from people giving us advice and one of the bits of information They give us is oh honey, just give it time. Yeah. It'll feel better in time. We don't get better. Just give it time. Well, how much time? That's what I always say. How much time they that when that thing happened to me in my senior year of high school, I came home grieving I didn't know it was grieving tell. Now I came home every day and went to bed and put the covers
over my head and cry. I didn't feel like I had anyone to talk to my mother didn't know what to do and so at the end of one year, I was just like, okay I'm better. Guess what came back to haunt me 10 years later that experience because I never dealt with it. So is there a time limit on great? Hear me out. There's no time. That's going to heal this broken heart. It's the action steps that we take with and I'm what are the action steps listening to this
podcast? Talking to someone just talking about how I feel going to my school counselor and saying hey this is not getting any better, I'm having some crazy thoughts. I need to talk to somebody. Those are the action steps. Soooo picking up the book going in the library and finding a book on Grief or finding a book on a broken heart and reading it is an action step. So everything that you do to move you towards healing, move your heart towards, healing is
an action step. So it's the action steps within time. If I did nothing, which I did, when I broke up with my boyfriend with, I did nothing. Eventually the intensity over time is going to drop down and almost feels like it's taken care of but the truth is Is anybody can come up and just say something and we remind you of that moment and you're right back there again. Today's episode is brought to you by teen counseling.
Teen counseling is an online Therapy Program with over 14,000 licensed therapist within their Network. It is better helps branch of online therapy for teenagers. If you are struggling with grief or struggling with the overwhelming emotions that can come with floss, it might be helpful to work with a therapist or work with a mental health professional. And if you are looking for a therapist, you haven't been able to find one locally a great
option. Ian can be teen counseling because you can get talk, text and video support all from your home without dealing with weightless and referrals and the very exhausting process that can be finding a therapist. So, if you would like to check out teen counseling, you can go to teen counseling.com. She persisted, you will fill out a quick survey to answer what you're hoping to work on with it as depression, anxiety, grief relationships, trauma or
something else. And based on that, they will match you with a therapist. It meets your needs. So if you're looking for mental health support, I highly Augmenting counseling. You can go to teen counseling.com. She persisted to find a therapist today. What are your thoughts on the
seven stages of grief? Do you think that there is accuracy, there are some of them true or they all terrible, and you just see them in movies all the time and you're like, what is happening from your professionals perspective, what are your thoughts there? My thought is you can Google my tedx where I do pump the station. I love it. Okay so in 2006 a, my nephew Austin. Iran at the lake. The one thing that Erica is my sister Austin's, mom and myself.
The one thing we had in common, were the five stages of grief and so every day. Yeah, that's right. So what would happen is every day I would call her and I would say, how are you doing? And then she would give me the Stitch that she believed that she was in, right? She said she was Denial. That's the stage. Yeah. And I said, how could you be in denial? And I whispered, you know that he died, right? Almost like she had was losing her mind. How is it that?
After seven months of someone dying, you can be in denial. So, I started to take a deep dive into these stages. I did an intense study on them, and it turns out, dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross actually wrote 13 stages for the dying person. So, when you were giving a life-altering disease, she wrote These stages for her interns one of the interns became a psychiatrist and he took five of the stages and he attached him to grief and did to us a huge disservice. So hear me out.
You can be angry when someone dies, you can be angry. When your boyfriend cheats on you, you can be in disbelief, you can even come to acceptance, you can bargain with God to, please bring them back. You absolutely can have those. And some days you may actually laugh, you may actually enjoy a bowl of ice cream, but the truth is your heart is still broken.
Your heart is still working when you're at that point where you kind of have that acceptance of and feeling heartbroken, that is just something that is coming with this experience is that were working through the experience rather than just moving on and waiting for a certain amount of time to pass, or do you think that's just something that's always there? And that always is kind of part of your emotional experience. So, four years ago, I lost my very best friend of 15 years.
Her name was also share and she used to tell everybody where sharing squared and I was like, stop saying that. But anyway now I wish he was here to stay. So I'm going to share my experience, number one, my sister. And I we don't teach closure because we sound like it's closing the door on your relationship. We teach completion.
You walk a journey with everybody, you meet in your life, even if you only meet them in your class and you just have one semester with them, you walked a journey with that person. I walked a journey with Sharon from the day that I met her until the day she left. This Earth we were best friends, we were inseparable, we talked on the phone 10 times a day. We could talk about what color drapes to hang in our living room for like three hours, right? When she left.
I needed to complete my relationship with her and come full circle. Now, there are days that I absolutely miss her. Their days that are man, I really need Sharon. I could talk to her about this. She would give me the best advice their days. I absolutely mr. But I am living my best life. And filled with love for her. I'm really filled with love for her. I will miss her until the day. I leave this earth but I'm not broken.
I can function, I go to events. I talk about her, I can look at pictures of her and I together, if you met my sister Erica, you would say the same thing about her. She talks about her boys. She shares about her boys. She's last week. She was at the pair, you know, she travels. She's living her best life. With them in her heart and she knows that she had a relationship with them but she's not broken.
I do meet people 10 20, 30 years it's as if they just had the loss because they didn't do the work. Yeah, so in those early days what is the first step for our first couple of things that you can do to either sit in that emotion, whatever those beginning parts of the work is? And it's probably definitely not diving through it or being like this. A ship is complete Next Step, but those early days when you're like, okay, I want to start to
work through this. I don't want to just avoid, but it's still really raw and real and overwhelming. What advice would you give? That's a great question. I love that question. So what we find that most Grievous do is they do, one of three things, they resist, who wants to grieve they resist. It's almost like they push back. They react. So we react by crying, sometimes
we think. By reacting by yelling and screaming and causing a big scene that cord getting out, grieving emotions, but that's just reacting. Or we avoid, we avoid altogether. Okay, I'm not going that way. Oh, I'm going to go to sleep, I don't want to think deal with this. Remember I said, I came home and put the covers over my head, so we do one of those three things. Here's my advice, grief sucks, and it sucks. Big time. Lean into the suck as much as you can lean into it.
It. What do I mean by that? If today you're feeling really sad, just acknowledge that you're feeling sad. It's just like you said, feel the emotion. Sometimes I tell Grievers, put your hand over your heart and see if you can tell what emotion that is. I miss him and then just say man I really miss him and try to hold on to that emotion of missing him for. As long as you can before your mind changes the subject, and then the next time it comes
around, try to do it again. Be And talk cry, feel comfortable crying in front of people Journal. If you have to if people are not safe, if you're around someone and they're not safe, then don't talk to them. Don't share with them if you need to sleep sleep, if you go without doing. So here are four, five, six, seven days, and you don't take a bath and brush your teeth more power to you. You will not feel like eating and that's okay, your body will not let you starve that feeling
to eat will come back. Typically, most grievers, Around the three to four months are ready to start at least talking about doing some work and they're really ready to do the work around six months. Prior to that, your body is in such disbelief, that this is even happened. You got to just let it start coming in a little bit at a time and a little bit at a time. What advice do you give for people? Not that have a warning sign
that a grief is coming. But if you have a loved one that has like a terminal illness or You are losing a friend, that's moving away, or something like that. Maybe you're like, something's not right. Is there ways to kind of not really? Prepare yourself, but I feel like those stages of grief. If you can even call them that those emotions, do sometimes show up there as well, whether it's a denial of their bargaining or the problem solving.
So what advice would you give it hasn't happened yet? So you're not even able to process those emotions. But you know that you're going to be dealing with grief and the upcoming months years. Etc. So a few years ago my father passed away of cancer and I remember standing at his bed, trying to get my body to feel what I was going to feel right? Yes, I was standing there and I was like, you can't, it won't do it, it just won't do it.
But one of the things we can do because you can you won't be able to feel the emotions yet, but We can grieve in real time, and what do I mean by that? Have the conversations have the conversations? There's five of us went to our dad's bed and we had a really great conversation with him and I said to him, thank you so much for being on this journey with me and thank you for taking care of me. And thank you for loving me. And I want you to know I love you. And I'm so honored that we got
to do this together. Those were my exact words and he put his finger up and he said, you be good because we weren't a family that says, I love You and I love that story and it's still so precious in my heart that was grieving. And real time, most of the time what happens is what is broken in our hearts. All the things we never got a chance to say, right? So put go back to when I was a senior in high school. I never got the chance to tell him you jerk. How could you do this to me?
Like, I never got a chance to say that or tell her how I felt about her instead, I killed it in and took it with me for 20 years with my dad. I was able to share with him, so one I would say grieve in real time as much as possible. Talk to the person have a conversation, tell him the things that you need him to know. He or she the things you need to know talk with others around you for sure. Right things out write an O,
give him the note. If you can't say the thing a person try to write it out and there's no way to prepare for what's going to happen but be open to the fact of what's going to happen and knowing it's going to happen. I've loved that if listeners are trying to support someone, that is navigating this. I feel like the quintessential thing is, you give someone the casserole or some flowers. Is that helpful, is that what being on the receiving end?
You're like, this is so great. That I have all these flowers but house or this casserole was actually really helpful in your experience. What was helpful, what would you advise listeners to do? If they want to support someone?
They're going to be that open. Listening ear without giving advice if someone comes to them, but is there That makes it a little bit easier and just let people know that, like, I'm here if you need it, and it's okay, if you don't, but kind of making sure that people know that you're in their corner. So number one, the griever doesn't want the casserole. They don't want the casserole. They're like, I don't want this dead casserole. I'd rather have the freezer.
What am I supposed to? I don't think I want to have my friend back, but here's the deal. The casserole is not just for the griever. It's for all the people that are coming to love up on the Green Room. So I'm just talking about in general. The Grievers, not going to want it because they don't want that. That think they don't want you coming their house with stuff. Here's what I bring when I show up at a Grievers house mean if I get the call really early I
bring a case of water. I bring a pad of paper and a pencil and these all sound so crazy. But I'll tell you why I bring a case of water especially if I'm there, right? When I found out that someone I may have lost someone or a tragedy has happened.
Because now all the casseroles are coming and those people are coming and the people who are having the grievant experience, maybe they don't have water at their house, but a case of water sitting on the counter, it's like, at least we can offer you some water, right that do that the pad of paper and the pencil is because the phone is going to start ringing off the hook, not to serve the house phone, but everyone's cell phone. What's going on? What's Happening?
And the griever might be in the room crying and grieving. Is there can now take a note and that and that pad can be there for anyone who's there. Anyone who comes by to bring a casserole. Mrs. Smith came by, and brought a chicken casserole. And now the griever knows who brought what? That's why I'm bringing those
three things. The other thing that I do is I might hang out for two or three days just to see what they need, I may bring a casserole myself, I just there helping pick up their house, the funeral may happen or that car accident may be over. Whatever it maybe baby over two or three weeks after that is when you need to go back. Because hear me out, we have a loss, everyone shows up, they do everything they're supposed to do and then they are gone.
And guess what? It becomes crickets for the Graver right down the special days. Write down their loved ones, birthday text him on that special day. Text them on Halloween Tech. Someone Groundhog's Day. We don't know what they're feeling. So reach. To them and love up to them all the way through. That's so important and I really liked what you said about the water because I remember my grandmother was recovering from.
It was either right after she got her Whipple surgery, or she was doing chemo for a cancer diagnosis. And she is one of those people she lives in Florida. She's one of those people. Where if someone comes over, she's like, can I get you a true? Can I make you some food? If you bring something, she'll write a. Thank you, note. If you're on the phone, she wants to talk and respond to
your message. And it was so exhausting for Her. Because she was, like, I can't not do these things, but when people come over, it's just such a burden. She didn't want it to be like a burning, but it takes so much energy. So, I love that idea of kind of taking that step out of it for that other person making things easier and letting them kind of
have that separation. And then when they feel up to it, they could go back and read thinking of if they feel like they have to do that or off with the beverage. Yeah, have to. So that's so smart. It's really crazy. How in, in those first few days, people showing the talking When all the castles are showing up and as the griever, it's overwhelming. Yeah, but yet they needed, but they don't want it. It's a mixed bag of tricks, right?
It's conflicted feelings, they have conflicted feelings, I need you here, but I don't want you here. Yeah, she said, the funniest thing was, if they brought something that was in the Tupperware and she was like, but now I have to wash the top where and bring it back to you with a thank-you note on it, why couldn't you just brought it in plastic? Because she was like, this is so much more work and it's something you would never think of a Till someone's been a position.
You're like, okay, caught it, I will bring it in a plastic bag. I got you, they have. So we had a friend, exactly, had a friend and their son, tragically died by Suicide. And that was I showed up with the bottled, water at the notepad and a pencil. And she was like, why did you bring me a notepad? I said I just brought it in case you need it. I'm going to leave it right here on the table well because of their situation.
They were getting calls from police detectives and newspapers and she called me three days later. She was like Thank you for that, notepad like everybody's been riding and they've been using it and it has helped so much and how I figure that out. Was, I brought a note pad over one austenite and we use the notepad for everything. Yeah, people are coming flying in. Oh, so. And so it's coming to LAX. They're going to be on this way. This one's come in here.
They're gonna be on this flight. So, everybody can use the note. That's so smart. If there was one thing you could say, to someone that is knee-deep in the grieving process right now, they don't see methylated. The end of the tunnel but they don't see other side of this. What would you say to them? It's going to get better. I promise you, I promise you, it will get better. You need to get some help because we don't know. We didn't come here with instruction book on how to
grieve. We didn't come here with the instruction book on how to be married, or how, to raise children either. So, why would we think we know how to grieve? Right? For me. I've had to learn how to be married. I've had to learn how to raise my children. I've also had to learn how to grieve reach out and get help from anyone that you. There are a lot of support groups. There's a big giant group called grief share.
Sometimes just being in a room with someone else, who speaks grief can make a huge difference in our life. Absolutely Reach Out, reach out to myself and Erica. You can find us at Sharon Brubaker.com were available all the time, Journal about it, for sure, recorded make video tapes of it as you're going through it. So you can remember what you're going through, but more importantly is do. Do something.
Get some sort of help whenever you feel you need and simply talking about it makes a difference, so it's like taking your heart and emptying it out when you get to share all that, even to the ugly cry, you know where snots running down your nose and you're just like, It will help it release some of the pressure. I've loved that. Thank you so, so much for sharing, so much, wisdom and insight. And this is such a valuable conversation that I know is going to help so many people.
Your website will be in the show notes, do you have any social medias that people can follow you at if they want to keep consuming your content. So I'm on Instagram and Facebook for sure. They can find me there, I will be on Tick Tock soon, I'm trying that out. So, that's probably why you say Doug? And definitely a chair Brubaker.com. And we have a book coming out called hope he'll recover and they'll be able to find that on Amazon at the end of October.
Perfect. All in this episode comes out. It will be past that date so I will put that link in the show notes. You guys can get Sharon's book. Thank you. So so much. You so much for listening to this week's episode of she persisted. If you enjoyed, make sure to share with a friend or family member.
It really helps out the podcast and if you haven't already leave a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify, you can also make sure to follow along at at she persisted podcast on both Instagram and Tik-Tok and check out all the bonus resources content and information on my website. She persisted podcast.com, thanks for supporting, keep persisting and I'll see you next week.