Episode 01 – Bridget Jelley

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Transcript

Bryan McCartney

Today I’m joined with Bridget jelly from the effect in New Zealand. Hi, Bridget. Hi, how’s it going? Good, good. Tell us. You’re a registered psychologist, and practising psychologist in New Zealand. Tell us tell us about what you do. Okay, yes. Um, so what do I do? That’s a really good question. What does a psychologist actually do? What is this? I hate a couch.

background for our

Bryan McCartney

listeners can’t see your couch, lovely couch, by the way, right?

Bridget Jelley

But I don’t actually use the couch. So don’t worry, folks, I don’t get people on the couches. I think with psychology, there are some ideas of what people think it is. And there’s a lot more to it, then what we realise. And so it’s more to me, it’s more than just a couch. So what I do is I’m a psychologist that practices in the workplace. So I, the reason I do that is I fully believe that people, you know, we spend a lot of time at work, should have a good time at work, and should leave work the same, if not better when they arrived. So I’m all about mental health well being, learning how to be the best possible versions of yourself at work. So I focus my psychology kind of practice in that particular area at the moment, but in the past, I have done other areas of psychology as well.

Bryan McCartney

And I guess grief coming into the workplace is certainly something that as you know, workers, employees, we would certainly deal with grief isn’t exclusive to just our personal life. It is something that I’m sure touches us in a whole different range of life. So you are in a company called the effect what is tell us about the effect?

Bridget Jelley

Yeah, so I’ve owned the fit for about six years now. And we are just a group, a small group of psychologists, we come from different backgrounds, organisational, clinical health. And here we work with organisations to help improve mental health and well being of their people. So we’re all about striving, and also about having some fun at work. I think somebody that we kind of leave out sometimes it’s something I learned from you, Brian. Oh, good.

Bryan McCartney

So for our listeners, Bridget and I have worked together at a couple of different places. So we worked together at virgin, virgin blue, back in the day heavy airline, and, and then we worked for a company called centres, which is a safety psychology company here in Australia. So what did i What did I impart on you, Bridget? Yeah,

Bridget Jelley

you told me that it’s important to laugh at work, and to have fun, and when you’re laughing and having fun, even when things are difficult and intense, and all the rest of it. That’s a really good, I guess, coping mechanism to get through difficult stuff. But also life’s so short, I think was Oscar Wilde, who said, life’s far too important to take seriously? Yeah,

Bryan McCartney

absolutely. And I think like working in the funeral space, for me, that has probably really amplified that whole idea of Life is short, right? Like, yeah, it. It’s totally, totally shorter than we think. And, you know, life is it’s fleeting, and it happens really quickly.

Bridget Jelley

So while you’re here trying to do it, yeah, definitely. And

Bryan McCartney

you know, nothing better than a good old laugh and the workplace, I think, you know, we all have to have a good sense of humour to love what we do and laugh at what we do, ourselves and each other, but respectfully, of course. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So as a psychologist, what, what would you or how would you sort of describe what grief is? Hmm,

Bridget Jelley

um, I guess, from the perspective of being a human being and having been through grief, and also, I guess, also as a psychologist, those those two kind of merged for me unfortunately, I don’t ever take the psychology hat off. But I would describe it kind of like over first start. Bloody hurts. It’s, it’s painful. It is painful, missy. It’s kind of like I have heard people describe it like a boon. So you know, like a boon if you’ve ever been burnt, I have been once my flatmate dropped an iron on my arm at university by accident, it was it was by accident. I’m gonna go with this. And anyway, I hit this like iron mark on my arm for about six months and holy moly, I remember when I first happened that it was shock. I remember looking at my arm go oh my gosh, there’s a hot iron on it. And like no feeling No, nothing like numb like nothing disgusting. Oh my gosh. And then and then I think the brain cells kind of kicked in. It was screaming and straight to the freezer where I shoved my arm in the freezer. And then the pain The pain oh my gosh. And it came in like intense waves like it just burn, burn, burn, burn. And I think that’s another reason why I quite like the burn analogy is because the waves of pain when something first happens when you lose someone, the waves are close together. But over time, the waves kind of spread out a bit more. Yeah. But it’s always it’s always there, I don’t think I don’t think grief is a process that starts at a finishes z, and then it’s done. I think it’s something that you grow around and keep with you your whole life. And a lot

Bryan McCartney

of people have that idea of grief being a linear journey that you know, we start at this point, we go through this stage and this stage, you have Elisabeth Kubler Ross to thank for that. But I think as we evolve as a society and not certainly disproving or sort of disparaging, anything that she has done, it’s you know, framework for grief and grief counselling for quite some time. But yeah, I think we look at grief more as like a spiral. And it’s a messy spiral. Like, you know, you might be good today. Great tomorrow. Absolutely terrible the next day, you know, because yeah, yeah, it’s hard. I want to talk originally, oh, initially about the shock and the shock. What do you sort of, I guess? How do you interpret shock in terms of grief?

Bridget Jelley

How do I interpret shock? In terms of grief, I think.

Bridget Jelley

I think it’s, I guess, your brain kind of goes into the space where that fight or flight kind of response or freeze should I say, so you go right back into that part of your brain, you know, your amygdala, they call it and all the blood and oxygen supplies kind of feeding that part of the brain, which then ultimately turns off the front pilot brain, which loosely, I’m talking very loosely here, and your science is quite complicated, but we, you know, we think in rational, and all that it’s kind of turned off in your brain and your brain is all it’s doing is that amygdala is going off. So I think that’s where the shock comes from. And it’s literally different functions in your brain being activated, and chemicals and things firing out. So from a neuro neuros science type perspective, and I’m not a neuroscientist, so I just want to put that out there. That’s kind of what’s happening in your brain. And it’s why you do get this kind of deer in headlights kind of moment. And quite often, you know, when people have been delivered bad news, you know, they get a diagnosis, or, you know, someone has just passed away. Quite often the brain doesn’t really take much of that information in. Because it’s in that fight or flight or freeze response. Rock the other day, someone said to me, after someone passed away, that they actually can’t remember much of that conversation and what happened, and they now need someone to sit down and tell them what actually happened. Because in that moment, your brain just tunes off. It’s yeah. Just phenomenal that it does it. I think it’s a protection mechanism.

Bryan McCartney

Yeah, you’re and we often hear, you know, people going into shock after things like, you know, significant accident or, you know, some sort of physical injury, I think it’s really interesting to note that we understand that the brain doesn’t differentiate between physical pain and emotional pain, our pain responses, regardless of the type of pain are the same, right? So shall we would expect? What what sort of, I guess, how do people metabolise that shock in the first stages, what could they do from a psychologist perspective to process and move within,

Bridget Jelley

I think you’ve got to, you’ve got to, I think there’s no way around it. Once the brain kicks in, that system kicks in, you got to allow it to do its thing. And it’s more about the people around you what they can do. And that’s by obviously, I think it’s not about sitting there going, Okay, you need to go and eat some kale, do some yoga, you know, all that kind of stuff. It’s just literally sit with them in be be with them. And while they’re in this shock space, and making sure they’re safe, and okay, because sometimes when we get to that shock space, we can do some crazy stuff, or weird stuff, that we’re not really conscious of what we’re doing. And so I think it’s really important. It’s when you have the right people, the right support crew around you to help you through that stage. And I mean, it can be very quick. It can be very quick. I think it’s not that I meet people who have sent in the shock stage for too long. They start to progress through and go in other places.

Bryan McCartney

Where do you think people sort of spend most of their time in their grief journey?

Bridget Jelley

Yeah, it’s an interesting one. We don’t know. So, I mean, you mentioned Kubler Ross, which was in the 1960s and very grateful to her for starting this process around describing grief

Bryan McCartney

and are getting a lot of discussion. I think that’s right. Yeah, yeah,

Bridget Jelley

absolutely. And we have evolved from from that from there. And we wouldn’t have if we didn’t have here to start with. So I think we’d have people spend most of their time. I don’t know if I can answer it, I think it’s very different between people. I think it’s very personal, very individual, where people as some people, they move through the process quite quickly, and are able to kind of carry on some people don’t, they’re, you know, grief has been pathologized. The DCM or for those who don’t know that, that’s a very sick book with lots of diagnoses in there, I’m sure if you read it, you’ll find something in there for yourself,

Bryan McCartney

you might need to explain the DSM a bit further. So that’s the diagnostic statistics manual as

Bridget Jelley

well as what psychiatrist and psychologist use to assess whether someone meets the criteria for certain diagnoses like no depression, or anxiety,

Bryan McCartney

specifically, from a mental health perspective, correct? Yeah.

Bridget Jelley

And sometimes, in the lack of that, like most recent edition, which is the fifth edition, they have a pathologize pathologize grief. So this is where they believe grief, the person is suffering to a point where they can’t really function well anymore, and it’s over a prolonged period of time. So some people can get stuck in there, which is why it’s you know, it’s so important to engage in, you know, grief counselling or grief therapy to help you along with it. Because sometimes we can’t seem to manage it ourselves. And it’s okay, we’re gonna human beings. But we don’t want to get into this. Yeah, we don’t want to meet the criteria, we can help it for prolonged grief disorder, which is what they they pathologize it is. Yeah, so I can’t even be original question now. Sorry.

Bryan McCartney

I think we were talking about this the place where people spend most of their time, but let’s talk a bit more about your experiences with grief.

Bridget Jelley

Okay. All right. I think my first experience was when I was 10 years old, and was my grandfather, who was very close to who passed away called Green D. And, obviously, I was 10 years old. And all I remember about it is being quite confused. And watching my parents grief, that upset me more, was watching my parents grief. And I think as a 10 year old, he process it, I think the child processes in a very different way to an adult,

Bryan McCartney

I think in a much more effective way. To be honest, I think we sort of look good, and we think kids bounce a little better than we do.

Bridget Jelley

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. I yeah, I loved him. I missed him. But I did. Yeah, I did bounce back a lot quicker than say my parents did, which is understandable. So I think, you know, when people people need to give children a bit more credit, that they have naturally got the ability to cope quite well. Yeah, funnily enough, with things. But that was my first experience, actually. And funnily enough, this is very odd. The next day after granny had passed away, and I was at his house playing, there was this cat that turned up in the front yard that I’d never seen before. So I spent most of my childhood my granddad’s place. And his cat turned up, and my 10 year old brain decided that that kid was grandi.

Bryan McCartney

Good stuff as a kid transference there.

Bridget Jelley

So that was pretty fine. Um, but yeah, and then obviously, I’ve lost all my grandparents now as an adult. And the hard one was my grandma when I was living in Australia. She was very sick. And that was one of the reasons I moved back to New Zealand. And I was very fortunate. I had very, very close relationships with my grandparents. I was very, very lucky. And I remember that been incredibly painful. Very painful, even though she was old. And you know, she lived a good life. She was nearly 95. Yeah, it still hurt like anything. And that’s where I kind of ended at that time. Funnily enough, at the time, I was a grief counsellor for children. So I worked throughout the central North Ireland and New Zealand here with children who had lost most of the time it was their parents, or one or two parents. So it was quite a tough job. I might it was quite difficult. But one thing I learned from I guess that been in that role working with children but also losing my grandma, I called him Mima, by the way, was this whole concept of continuing bonds. So this is where yes, Mima, my grandma has gone she’s no longer physically with me. And there is a loss and a change. But she doesn’t because she’s not physically he does not mean she’s I still don’t have a relationship with her. Yeah, I still have that relationship with it. So my children who are seven and nine who never meet here, also have a relationship with her. They know who Meemers we know when her birthday is on the shortest day of the year. We know that she was born in Australia that she’s, she’s a nosy. And we occasionally talk about Mima. So it means that still exists, and we still have that relationship with her. It’s just a different relationship, because she’s not physically here. And for me, that’s been a really important part of grief. And that works for me. Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan McCartney

Let’s talk more about your role with children in counselling through grief. How? Yeah, wow, that? I imagine that was pretty tough.

Bridget Jelley

Yeah, it was, it was very sad. I found it quite, I found it pulled up my heart a little bit. And the reason it did is because of the nature of the losses that were tragic, just simply tragic, a lot of the time. And I proceeded struggle with it. But the kids were astounding, they were absolutely amazing, was really interesting, though, how they process it, they process it in such different ways to an adult. So you know, we wouldn’t sit there and talk about it, we would play. So you know, we’ll play games, or we would make art work and do crafts, and all that kind of thing. And they would express their feelings through the play through the creations. So we’re still honouring those that had left, we understood that they had gone. But we, again, it’s a continuing bonds kind of thing. They’re still we still have a relationship with them. It’s just a different one now.

Bryan McCartney

Yeah. It. You know, I guess one of the things that we often get asked by families that we look after as funeral directors is how do I explain to my children what’s happened, you know, for especially younger children, where the concept of death is so foreign, and it should be foreign. It shouldn’t be something that they’re exposed to just yet but Yeah, unfortunately, sometimes we don’t have an option. So as a mother yourself and as a an experienced person with children in grief, in a psychologist, what sort of advice would you give to people or to parents, specifically, who needed to have that discussion of death with a child?

Bridget Jelley

I think I’m be honest, I really don’t think we should hide or try and over protect children. Grief is a natural part of life. We all grieve, humans grieve, animals grieve, there’s a function to grieving. And like everything in life, we need to teach our children about this dying in grief. So it’s for me very important that we be honest about it. I mean, gosh, don’t go into gory details. We don’t want to traumatise them I think a lot of people worry about, but most of the time, you can talk about it in a very open way. They would rather know if you don’t tell them they’ll sense it’ll pick it up, and then they’ll, they’ll make up their own stories. So I think it’s important. That’s why you need to be honest about it, then you can control the story that they may be turned himself one, one client I had who husband was sick with cancer. And she had, I think a six year old and a three year old. And she hadn’t really told them much about their being sick. And the six year old started to misbehave at school, Sarah to not do homework be really rebellious, and things like that. Anyway, long story short, when she got some support from the Cancer Society for the for her daughter, the daughter did have a conversation with one of the therapists there. And the daughter believes she was the one that was causing her dad to be sick. Wow.

Bryan McCartney

Yes, people forget just how creative kids minds can be. And yes, you know, if they think logically as an adult, when we think about a person’s death, when we don’t know the detail, we instantly go to that worst case scenario. Yes. So for kids who are so much more creative, who are exposed to so many more different stimuli and different bits of information and that sort of stuff. You know, you can only imagine where kids brain goes when we don’t share with them authentically. And I think it’s it sometimes we can be overly philosophical with kids, especially when we come to sort of talking about heaven and angels and winged God and all of that sort of stuff, which whilst we might be, you know, trying to protect your rights, sometimes there’s an element of overprotection. How would so let’s, let’s approach a discussion. How would you have what words would you use that would be appropriate for for a child?

Bridget Jelley

I think keep it factual. Keep it simple. Probably the two things I think about. For my children, they have no one about this and dying to My grandparents but also my husband’s as well who passed away who passed away in a clump, same time. But one thing one of them that is probably something that impacted them quite a bit because they had a more of a relationship was it was it was was our dog Shiloh who you knew, because she I say this to apologise.

Bryan McCartney

I needed anyway, took your phones for our Australian listeners, though.

Bridget Jelley

I digress. So you wouldn’t show up. So I was diagnosed with cancer. And so we we told the children that Sharla had been diagnosed with cancer and that she was not going to survive the cancer, she was very old. She was 13, I think from memory. And that because of that, you know, we we did have to, she was going to she was going to pass away. And what was going to happen was she was and this instance, she was going to be put to sleep. Because there was not a lot of other options. And then we were going to have a great morning with her before she went. And then we were going to bury her in the backyard. And we’re going to put an apple tree above her because she loves apples. And we can go out and hang out with her out there any anytime we like. So that real simple explanation and example. But that’s what we did with the kids and either upset they cried and things but, you know, that was pretty clear what had happened and what was going to happen in it. Sharla was no longer here with us. And there was I think a time where they would get upset. I mean, we’re seeing my son, he’ll just start crying randomly and you’d ask him what’s wrong? And he said, I just miss Shiloh. Yeah, and it’s okay. It’s okay. We all miss Charlo because life’s so quiet now that we’ve got a beagle. We’ve got two German shorthaired pointers now who are possibly

Bryan McCartney

worse? Yeah. Excellent. I’ll keep my genitals to myself.

Just close. Yeah.

Bryan McCartney

It’s interesting. You talk about the, you know that that crying thing? I think people they really have this idea that they should be stoic through death, you know? Like, it’s not okay to show or share your emotions and that sort of thing. What sort of negative effect do you think that has on people when they take on that burden of having to be strong?

Bridget Jelley

It’s just another nother thing, isn’t it? It’s just another thing. Also, you you know, we don’t want to avoid emotions. I think with grief, we want to let them in and let them be so if that means you’re gonna cry all over the place these snot everywhere then fine. Absolutely fine. Right. Yeah, exactly. Sleeves, whatever, someone else’s sleeve. Whatever works for you. Yeah, this is not a time to avoid the motions. Because if you don’t avoid it mean, if you sorry, if you do avoid, and you try and bottle up and contain and keep a nice, neat box. Eventually, those emotions will bubble up and leak out somewhere else along the line. So I’m a big fan of crying. I think everyone, you know, go for it. And you just laid it all out. You actually feel better after you hit me. I cried. It climbs like energy in motion. It’s just all the emotions kind of coming out of you.

Bryan McCartney

And chemical benefits as well for us, right? Like, you know, the right chemicals, the right hormones or the things that absolutely cause the car engine down. Like a radiating from our eyeballs.

Bridget Jelley

Yeah, exactly. So yes, I think I know people are worried about what other people will think if they get upset. But to be honest, it’s beautiful to see someone cry Oh, someone who’s passed away because it shows how much you care and love for that person. No one’s ever gonna judge this. Yeah. Yeah,

Bryan McCartney

I think as well people have this idea about grief, that grief just comes from a death of someone. I think what people forget is that grief comes into our life in a range of different ways. You know, we grieve the loss of a relationship of friendships of losing a job not getting a promotion, all of those sorts of things, through your work, specifically in the effect in dealing with workplaces and those sorts of things. How do you support grief in the workplace?

Bridget Jelley

Yeah, because grief does come into the work quite a lot in many different ways. Like you say, it’s not only about a person passing away, it’s about change, you know, a change of job, losing a job, you know, restructures losing a boss that you absolutely loved, who’s gone on to another opportunity in the recent years with the pandemic in various mandates and things like that, that have been imposed in certain workplaces. Well, over here in New Zealand, I’m not entirely sure about the rest of the world. But there’s been a sense of loss for people who have lose lost their work buddies because they no longer can work. Other organisations do to mandate. So your grief and loss can come in, in many, many ways. And I think there’s still the same kind of components of it right? There’s that loss, is it change, and then that lack of control? Yeah. Which I feel makes up essentially grief

Bryan McCartney

and lack of control. That’s such a powerful thing, right? Because it takes our routine away, it takes a whole lot of things in our brain craves retain, right, habit and root cram retain is certainly something our our brain craves wants to do that.

Bridget Jelley

Well, we’re creatures of habits. So we was, I can’t remember who his quote was, we are the product of our habits. So our brains still, you know, a lot of stuff. And more so these days, because we’ve created such phenomenally complex, we’re complex world. And so in order to be able to survive and manage and get through the world, our brain likes to form heaps of habits. So I think you live off, basically something like 95% of your day is based off habit. Which is crazy. When you think about us me talking to you right now, there’s some of the things I’m saying might be habitual, down kind of on my subconscious that because I’ve talked about this stuff a lot. So yeah, when you know, when there’s a loss, sometimes or change that breaks us out of a habit, or make a couple of habits, which then makes it uncomfortable, it makes it hard for our brain, it’s a bit of workers bit of energy.

Bryan McCartney

And our brain will always go the path of least resistance, right? Oh, yeah, we like that easy way of doing things. I once read this article, I wish I could remember who it was by but they described grief as being the longing for a previous routine. And I think that was a really interesting way of saying it, you know, we come into this routine or habit, or we habituate in spending our life and time with someone or something, and then all of a sudden, it’s gone. And the concept was that, you know, grief itself as a process was really the longing of routine and the longing of those. That was

Bridget Jelley

Yeah, I think that ties into the element of change within grief is that we don’t only lose prep someone or something, is that change that comes around it as the losses within the loss that we also have to deal with? Yeah, yeah.

Bryan McCartney

You talked about before about thriving in the workplace. And I think, you know, thriving comes with good leadership and how to good leaders support, positive, unhealthy grief processing.

Bridget Jelley

Hmm. It’s funny, because I don’t know if many organisations think about it a whole lot. You know, when I look at it, maybe employment contracts, it might be a clause in there about grief. And you can have what, three days?

Bryan McCartney

Yeah, yeah, I think it’s three or four days of bereavement leave. Okay, but only for immediate family. Right? Because they’re the only ones that matter according to employment law. Yeah. Yeah. So I

Bridget Jelley

think, yeah, in terms of the workplace is probably, maybe it’s maybe an area that needs to be tapped into a little bit more. If you know, in terms of leadership, and how you support someone, it’s giving people that space to grieve, and how they want to for some people, they may just want to not be around anyone, and not want anyone to know, because that will trigger. So I think it’s very important as a leader, you ask your, you know, team members, if they are going through grief, what is it that would work for them? Do you want people to know, do you want us to know, do you want to be here? Or do you not want to be so don’t just go right? You’re grieving? Go and have three days off?

Bryan McCartney

Yeah, there was a cookie cutter of how we deal with grief go. Off you go.

Bridget Jelley

And make sure you have some green smoothies and go for walks and do breathing. Okay, that’s one way but I think it has to be a collaborative consultant consultative approach.

Bryan McCartney

Do you think that that difference in approach of grieving comes from our, you know, normalised gender roles of, you know, women should be more touchy feely men should be again, more stoic, strong, and just be able to get get through it and get over it?

Bridget Jelley

Yeah, I do wonder about this. And I don’t. Yeah, that’s what I think you have to ask them? And also, what do I think about that? I think it’s complicated the whole gender thing? Because there is an expectation or has been, whether it be overt or not, that men shouldn’t cry or talk to their friends about it and and all the rest of like women do. Yeah, I think it’s wrong. Everyone’s different, whether you’re male or female, and how you process it. And we shouldn’t put that pressure on blokes to suck it up. I remember hearing the other day, a father, a little boy was crying at my kids school. And the father said Stop crying. Wow, okay. Go Yeah. Was it was a girl What’d he mean? I’m making an assumption he might have told his daughter Shut up. But yeah, that’s not fair. I mean, and I don’t know the statistics in New Zealand, I’m in Australia, but here in New Zealand, the highest suicide rates are with males. Same as saying, okay, and males are less likely to get help, and less likely to talk about their feelings, which is a concern, I think it’s a concern, because the, you know, are they avoiding and bottling up when really we should let them let it out?

Bryan McCartney

Yeah, I think you know, exactly similar statistics here in Australia, and I think probably around the world is that we see men 15 to 35, being the highest number of people lost to suicide every year, and sadly, here in Australia, it’s actually a number that’s increasing, whereas we were, you know, decreasing for a little while, but it’s, it seems to have gone the other way. And there’s probably a lot of things that come into play for that. But I like the idea that you talk about there of asking people, how can I support you through this? You know, I think grief is such a personal thing. And such a private thing that asked me permission to share in people’s grief is such an important thing. Because, yes, you know, a bit of respect to grief as well. And I think when we respect grief, it plays out its function as it should. Yeah,

Bridget Jelley

yeah. Yeah. Let it interfere with it in when someone comes to you, and shares with you their loss, you know, that’s, that’s an honour that they have done that. And we need to respect that in honour that even though they’re grieving, they will grieve in a way that is best for them. Trusting that they know what like that they can do it in their own way. Yeah, I think don’t push on them what you think they should do?

Bryan McCartney

It’s not a time for I think you shouldn’t do it. Yeah, it’s not that time. You know, people always have the best of intentions, right? Well, hopefully, people have the best of intentions, but it is it’s such a personal journey.

Bridget Jelley

Yeah, that’s I think the best thing you can do to support someone who’s grieving is just be there. Just it’s just literally be there with it as just that she’s sitting next to them. Or just sending them a message every day, or giving them a call or just, you know, tuning up at the house and dropping off a lasagna or whatever. You don’t have to give heaps of sophisticated advice, or drag them out and make them do stuff. It’s just just be there. It’s quite interesting. When you talk to people who are grieving. They say that’s that people’s responses are quite interesting, because some people kind of disappear. I think students that don’t know what to do. Yeah, so they just disappear. We may not be we may be a bit of a mess when we’re grieving. But it’s still nice to know that your friends and your family and your loved ones are still there if you need them. But then there are the it’s not I don’t think it’s that hard. Just be there.

Bryan McCartney

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, it’s, it’s really interesting to not buy into the timeframe idea that I feel better by now or X amount of time has passed. Why do we tend to do that, as humans? What makes us look for, you know, a goal or a timeframe and a goal?

Bridget Jelley

I guess what’s probably not helped is our is the is the pathologizing of grief. And I think they do don’t quite be there. I can’t remember what it is. I think in the DSM that the manual diagnostic menu we talked about earlier, they do actually have a timeframe. Oh, wow. Which I mean, don’t Yeah, I haven’t looked at it lately. But I remember seeing some some pieces written on that and whether we should timeframe it. Why do we have timeframes? I guess it helps us to make sense of it. We like Yeah, but again, I think there’s just no right or wrong with grief. And I don’t know if it goes away entirely. I think it’s as a Tomkin. Dr. Louis Tomkin came up with this, this metaphor that we grow around our grief. Yeah. So it’s always there. For example, if you drew a circle on your piece of paper and coloured them, that’s your grief. And people believe that over time, that circle should get smaller. But what, what really happens is that we grow around that circle. So it’s almost like if you think Majan, an avocado with a pip in the middle, the pip in the middle is the the grief. So the grief will always be there. I think you can’t expect it to go away.

Bryan McCartney

Yeah. It’s like that idea of when we talk about framing, you know about opinions of things that the more that we reframe the sort of the bigger our idea of positivity comes So potentially, I think, you know, Grief can be the same way is that as we start to reframe what grief is to us and what that experience is, how would someone sort of cooked first and foremost, you probably should explain what reframing is. And then secondly, could you talk about how we could reframe grief.

Bridget Jelley

Yeah. So reframing is this technique. that we use in psychology comes from cognitive behaviour therapy, where in life human beings like to put frames or, or thoughts or beliefs around things, because it helps us to make sense of the world. And sometimes those frames don’t serve us or help us out very well, depending on on what our goal is in life. So reframing is the ability to change that frame, to change how you think about something. So it’s essentially like changing your mind, really. And some things we can change our minds on very quickly, and some things we can’t. And a really good example, and I thought was quite a touching example of someone I know who reframed was a friend who had lost two babies before they were born. So that, you know, losing a child before they’re born is very difficult, ambiguous grief, because you haven’t met them. And it’s this hope of what will be with this relationship that you have with this baby. And so obviously, very painful for her. And she went through quite a process. But one day, she told me how she had kind of come to peace with it. And I said, How did you do that? And she said, Well, if it wasn’t for this particular baby, who passed away, I wouldn’t have the close relationship that I now have with my husband’s parents. Whereas before, you know, it wasn’t as close. So this baby, even though it’s I only got a short time with this, the impact that it had on my life, and the meaning of brought to my life and how it improved the relationships I have in my life means everything. So I’m glad that even though it was a short time with it, baby, I still had this experience. So she managed to reframe something that was horrendously tragic, in a way that was so meaningful. And I think that’s how she came to peace with it.

Bryan McCartney

Yeah, what a fantastic sort of place to arrive at is, I know that Wow. Yeah. Especially a loss of children. I think, you know, I can’t understand that loss. I’m not a mother or father. No interest in having children. But, you know, I certainly can empathise with the parent for for what that feels like to lose. But I it’s something I struggled to understand. I have an idea of what it might be like, but I’m sure I go to a worse place, you know, worst case scenario as well. But

Bridget Jelley

yeah, yeah. So I think it’s finding the meaning around the grief, the loss, the dis, the meat of this where sometimes we can be set free. Yeah.

Bryan McCartney

Before we’re getting close to wrapping up, but before we do, I think, you know, as good leaders, as good friends, as good family members and good people, what are some things we should look for, in a person who is grieving that might alert us to the fact that they might need some more support.

Bridget Jelley

In the initial stages of grief, I’m talking about the first 24 to 48 hours, it’s perfectly acceptable for someone to be a heap on the floor in a mess, I don’t think we need to be alarmed by that. I’ve been there myself, kind of rocking in the corner. And that’s absolutely fine. It’s in as I said, at the start, Grief is a bit like, you know, waves, the waves are close together at the start. So we know we’re going to be all over the place that are missing that kind of stuff. And then the waves eventually spread out, when we need to be concerned is with this, what they call this prolonged grief. And that’s when the person is essentially not really functioning. That well. I always go to I mean, to me, you can have any kind of disorder, depression, anxiety, what have you. But if you’re functioning, then, you know, that’s good, yes, good. So it’s all about functioning, and the person can’t function. They can’t get up in the morning and go to work. They can’t maintain relationships, they start engaging in coping strategies that are not helpful like alcohol, drugs, gambling or other sort of addictions. Then to me, that’s, that’s a red flag that something that something’s not right, something hasn’t kind of been processed through enough, and that maybe we need to pay attention to it. So missing at the start, that’s fine. But if it continues over a long period of time, I don’t know someone who didn’t manage the grief for a long foot, never manage the grief. Actually, they just recently passed away. And they turned to alcohol to try and manage it. So that’s it and then lots of other things happen because of this. So that’s when we probably need to maybe Stephen can get help.

Bryan McCartney

And I guess not not be afraid to to offer that help and be there. Even if you don’t agree with the coping mechanisms that they’re turning to it’s I think one of those times where we need to be completely judgement free and not pass our own judgments or ideas on what people should and shouldn’t do. The word should. drives me insane. Should Bridgette it’s been awesome talking to you today. Thank you for being with us. And thanks to our listeners for joining and we’ll be back soon. Thanks bridge. No worries and Bye

Episode 01 – Bridget Jelley