From Heartbreak to Healing: How to Overcome Grief and Find Joy with Aypril Porter

Have you ever wondered about the unspoken losses we endure throughout our lives? It's time to lift the curtain on these subtle yet significant instances of grief that color our experiences. Join me and my friend, Aypril Porter, as we traverse through the maze of living losses that are often left untended - be it a relationship's end, stepping into retirement, or shifting to new roles.

Aypril brings to the table her profound insights on the necessity of conscious grieving. She illuminates our minds on how each individual’s grief journey is a private dance, unique and uninfluenced by societal benchmarks. Have you ever caught yourself rebounding into a new relationship after an unpleasant one? Tune in as Aypril and I delve deep into the repercussions of such connections and the compounded grief that may follow. We also spotlight the unspoken secondary losses that we endure and their impact on our lives.

In the closing segment of our enlightening exchange, we share some soothing strategies to assist those around us bearing the weight of a living loss. Aypril enlightens us on the powerful role of EFT tapping in grief therapy. We also reflect on the healing power of unity in grief and express the importance of seeking gratitude in loss. We wrap up by focusing on granting ourselves the freedom to mourn the loss of relationships, regardless of the reasons for their dissolution. So don't miss out on this heartfelt episode, and remember to share and review if it resonates with you.

Ways to connect with Aypril:

Website:  https://www.ayprilporter.com
Books: Parenting The Child You Have: Re-Imagining The Parent-Child Relationship Through The Lens of Human Design and accompanying Workbook

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Corissa is a Somatic Trauma-Informed Relationship Coach™ & Narcissistic Abuse Specialist ™ who empowers women after they’ve endured narcissist trauma to rediscover who they are, reclaim their power and find the clarity and courage to move forward and live a life they love. Corissa is also a recovering people-pleaser and codependent who has endured way too many narcissistic relationships to count! She coaches not only from her knowledge and training but also from the wisdom she has gained from her own healing journey.

Book a FREE 30-minute Confidential Clarity Call HERE.

Ways to connect with Corissa:

Podcast Website
Website: www.corissastepp.com
Community: StrongHER
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

Welcome to the Stepping Into Meaningful Relationships podcast. I'm your host, carissa Stepp. I'm a relationship and human design coach, and this podcast is designed to help you create a stronger connection to yourself so you can transform the relationships around you, whether that be with your partner, a friend, a parent, a child or your business. We'll be looking at relationships through the lens of human design, and my guests and I will bring you the tools, tips and tricks to create deeply meaningful connections with others. But first let's start with you. The most important relationship you have is the one with yourself. Thank you for tuning in. Now let's get to today's episode. Hey, everyone, welcome back to another episode.

Speaker 1: 0:56

We have my friend, april Porter joining us today, and I am so excited to have this conversation with her. If you remember, she was on one of our previous episodes back around. I think it was episode eight, where we talked about parenting your child through the lens of human design. And today we're going to actually have a slightly different focus of our conversation, because April has become an ICF certified life and grief coach. She's also a need a proficient death doula and, as you know, a quantum human design specialist and an author, and she's also a functional nutritional therapy practitioner. So today, what we're going to be talking about through the lens of grief is how do we start to process living losses? And when we talk about living losses, april, I would love for you to kind of give the definition of what that means. But we're going to talk about that and how it relates to our relationships. So, april, what is a living loss?

Speaker 2: 1:53

Well, thanks for having me back. First of all and second, we talk about loss and we think grief and we think death, and there's so many more losses that we experience in life. Every day we have a loss of something, and so all of these little losses that happen in our days we can consider living losses. We are continuing to live. It's not like somebody in our life has died necessarily, but there's a loss of something. So it can be the ending of a relationship, it can be the ending of a job, the retirement.

Speaker 2: 2:28

People retire and they think, oh, life is going to be so great when I retire and it's going to be wonderful, but then there's this loss of identity. So there's so many of these little losses that we are encountering every day, and I think that we don't often take the time to grieve them consciously. We are grieving them on some level and it comes out as other emotions, like anger or frustration or resentment, and so I think that when we turn our attention toward them and we grieve them consciously, we can move through them a lot easier.

Speaker 1: 2:58

I love that, and I hadn't really thought about retirement being like a living loss. So thank you for giving that as an example, because it's something else to ponder and think about. And when you mentioned that, the first thing that came to mind was well, what about even parents whose children are going off to college?

Speaker 2: 3:13

Yes, absolutely, or even a first time parent. You just lost the identity of this identity that you probably just found in the last 10 or 20 years. We go from being a child in our family home and then we go out and we figure out who we are, and then we become a parent and there's a whole other loss of identity that happens as we morph into this new parent person.

Speaker 1: 3:38

Yeah, I know I definitely experienced that. I found it really, really hard to let go of what I thought was like my personal identity and then becoming my children's mother. It just felt like I was losing a part of myself and I never thought about it as a loss and I don't know that I've ever really fully processed it. Now that I think about it, now that you're bringing it up, and so I would love to talk to you about how do you support clients through a grieving process with a living loss. Does the grieving process of a living loss feel and look similar to the grieving process of a death? It?

Speaker 2: 4:14

does. I mean, grief is grief and we can't really categorize it as one is worse than the other. Necessarily. It may be subjectively for you one is worse than the other, but we can't compare our grief to somebody else's grief. So I may experience a death of a family member and it can be hard, but I can get through it okay. I've made peace with that, I've grieved the process of it somehow and I can be okay with that, even though I miss that person greatly. And then somebody else may go into retirement, like we were talking about, and grieve that profoundly and that can be so much more of a big impact on their overall life. So we can't really compare grief stories.

Speaker 2: 5:02

You know, like everybody's grief is subjective and I think that how we move through it is very individual.

Speaker 2: 5:07

We have these like what we've known as, like these stages of grief right, like anger and resentment and acceptance and all of these things, but it doesn't really matter and actually those Elizabeth Kubler-Ross is the one who is the person who wrote about the stages of grief and those were actually meant to be for the person who is dying, the stages that the person who is dying goes through, not the person who is grieving the person who died.

Speaker 2: 5:37

So our process on the outside is very different. It's very much kind of a roller coaster, you know, and we can experience joy and sadness and anger and frustration, and there's no rhyme or reason to it. But our society puts expectations on us that it should look a certain way, and that's where we start turning that in on ourselves and go, oh, I'm doing this wrong, oh, I shouldn't still be sad. You know the idea that, like, even with a death, after the funeral, a lot of times people are like, oh, you're not back to normal yet, like no, this just happened and this is a big loss, you know. So I think it's so subjective, again, right, like every person's experience is different.

Speaker 1: 6:22

Yeah, I remember, after my father passed, actually I had been dating somebody and it had been probably only maybe like a month or two after he passed and I was really, really struggling, like I think that I was undiagnosed, like depressed, and I remember talking to him on the phone and he essentially said to me what you just said, which was when are you going to get over this? Because I'm tired of listening to it and I was like, excuse me, like my whole world just got turned upside down. Of course, I'm not over it yet. This was somebody that was a part of my whole life from the time I was born. Like it was an upheaval and it felt very dismissive.

Speaker 1: 7:06

And so you know, I know with a lot of my clients. They get out of toxic relationships and they have similar experiences where friends and family are asking them questions like well, you need to stop talking about this relationship that you got out of. It's time to move on. When are you going to start dating? It's time to meet someone new. You just need to meet someone new and then you'll be fine.

Speaker 1: 7:31

And obviously, as someone who's coaching in this space, it's very frustrating, because I know that they need the time to grieve that relationship and even if, you know, sometimes we are and this can apply to a death of someone who's passed, who maybe was sick, we can consciously reconcile in our minds why it was a good thing for this person, right? Maybe, if they were sick, it's well, now they're out of pain, now they're no longer suffering. And likewise with this toxic relationship, it's like, okay, well, this relationship ended and I'm better off for it, and it's healthier for me to not be subjected to this toxicity and this terrible dynamic that I was a part of for so long, and maybe people do feel like a weight has been lifted off their shoulders as a result. But on the flip side, a lot of times we don't recognize that we need to take the time to process the ending of something that had been significant in our lives.

Speaker 2: 8:36

Yeah, absolutely, and I think the difference that you're talking about is the logical, analytical side of our brain that says this was the right decision, but then the emotional side of us still has to catch up and process that, and that's the space that we need and we have to talk about it. Most people have to talk about it and like with a depth. The same thing can happen with a relationship. The ending happens and you need to process it, you need to talk about it, you need to understand it, you need to wrap your mind around it and come to acceptance with the emotions that you have, because even if you were the one to end that relationship, there can still be grief, and I think that that is one thing that people don't understand.

Speaker 2: 9:19

It's like this was a bad relationship. You are better off outside of this relationship. You can move on and find a new relationship that will be healthier, but you still had a bond with that person. There was still something that you saw in that person that brought you together, and I don't think that anyone person is ever just one thing, so we can't say that is a bad person and they are entirely bad. There were elements that drew you to them and we can honor those elements and recognize that this was not the right relationship for me. This was not a healthy relationship and I'm sad that I lost the part of this person that I was so connected to.

Speaker 1: 9:59

Yeah, because there's history, there's memories, there's good times and, yeah, there's bad times too, but it's all part of it and hopefully you know, when we're in a relationship, my hope is that we learn something from that relationship. So there are gifts, even if your inner relationship is not healthy, because you've likely discovered something about yourself that you didn't know before and you had to kind of go through that experience in order to understand what that was, and so you know. It's hard to just say it's done, it's over, let me wipe my hands clean and walk away and now I'm fine and I'm ready to move on.

Speaker 1: 10:39

What I often find is that women, when they haven't processed this grief of the relationship ending, they look for the next distraction and get themselves into another relationship and end up repeating a lot of the patterns of behavior that they had exhibited or experienced in their previous relationship. So what are some tools and tips we can give people to help them move through this grieving process? And obviously, for everyone it's going to be at a different rate, right? Because we're all different, our nervous systems are different, the way we process emotions is different, but what are some of the things that we can begin to do to help us heal and recover and grieve the ending of a relationship or a living loss.

Speaker 2: 11:29

Yeah, well, like you said, it's different for every person, so depending on where you're at, but I think that one of the biggest things is to recognize the both and right, like we were just talking about. This was not right for me, and I appreciate this other aspect of it. And so separating that into both things can exist at the same time, and understanding that not having to polarize it like it's either good or it's bad, you know, really allows us to be in that space and open up to what our feelings actually are. And then, I think, also taking stock of what are the secondary losses. So secondary losses are the things that are effects of the initial loss.

Speaker 2: 12:13

So in a relationship, we often lose friends, we lose community, we lose family. You know, we have bonded with that person's family a lot of times, and now we don't have that in our lives. We lose our home, sometimes we lose so much in our environment that we have to acknowledge those things too, and so sometimes, even just sitting down and writing out a list of like these are all of the things that I lost. Oh my gosh, I understand why I feel so bad right now. It's not just this relationship that maybe wasn't good, but all of these other things as well.

Speaker 1: 12:48

Yeah, that's such an important point.

Speaker 2: 12:51

And I will say, even in a relationship where the people both respect one another and they just recognize like this is not a relationship that's working for us. We're not getting out of it what we want. We respect each other, but this is not working for us. There's something different out there for us that is more aligned. There's still grief in that too. So not judging the grief, not judging if it's appropriate, not judging if it's warranted, because what you feel is what you feel.

Speaker 1: 13:24

Yeah, I just imagine like one of the other feelings that maybe people might feel, which we didn't mention, which could also be guilt. Yes, and I know that even when someone that we love passes, we can sometimes have that survivor guilt as well, depending on the circumstances, of course. So that's an interesting thing to kind of I don't know, just popped in my head. I was like, wow, I think I need to mention this because I don't know that many people associate guilt necessarily with grief or the grieving process.

Speaker 2: 13:56

Yeah, guilt is a big one that's associated with it, because we always think like, well, if I just done this, then this other thing wouldn't have happened. Or if I weren't here's another one if I weren't selfish, I wouldn't want something more. Right Now I feel guilty that I'm being selfish because it's about me and me not getting what I want. If I'm leaving a relationship, maybe that's good, like it's good, right, like there's nothing bad about it. It's just not aligned. So there's a lot of ways that grief can show, or guilt can show up in grief. And I'm curious for you, like what are those areas that you see?

Speaker 1: 14:37

Yeah, I would definitely say that there can be a lot of guilt, and the guilt is usually what keeps people in those relationships for longer than they probably should be, and typically it's when children are involved. There's the guilt that I'm going to break up. You know, there's a lot of conditioning around, like what a happy family looks like or what a happy home looks like, and so there's a lot of guilt of I don't want to have my children come from a broken home, right? Or I feel like I'm being selfish to your point for choosing to get out of this relationship and the impact it will have on my children or on my family, and so there's definitely a lot of that.

Speaker 1: 15:19

And so a lot of people try to justify that by jumping into another relationship right away to prove.

Speaker 1: 15:25

It's almost like they're trying to prove that they can number one, get something that's healthy and find someone else that's, you know, going to fill the holes or fix the problems or be a better replacement, in some ways, for the toxic partner that they were with, and to prove to everyone else that they were justified in that decision, which is an interesting thing, because I don't know that that's very conscious.

Speaker 1: 15:51

It's more of a subconscious kind of motivation, underlying motivation, and so it's interesting. So you see that a lot, and then typically what will happen is that relationship that they may have jumped into right after getting out of a relationship that they didn't process or grieve, it all hits them like a ton of bricks. When that relationship then ends right, the conciliatory relationship or the rebound relationship ends it becomes a grieving process of not just that rebound relationship but it becomes a compounded grieving process, because now they have to also process the loss of that primary or toxic relationship that they were in beforehand. And I will say that I personally can attest to the fact that I used to trapeze from relationship to relationship before I got married, and I don't know that I ever processed the ending of those relationships and then when it finally caught up to me, it did feel very overwhelming.

Speaker 2: 16:57

Yeah, and taking that time to grieve, whatever that looks like for you, maybe it's a week, maybe it's a year, maybe it's three years, there's no set time on it. But I think that when we do that work to turn inward and say what am I feeling? That is true for me and kind of shout out the world, our family, our friends that are saying just move on, just get over it. When we can sit with those feelings, we can actually move through them a lot faster. And then we don't take that baggage of whatever happened in that last relationship necessarily into the next one yeah, there's probably some of that that still comes in, right, but because there's always new opportunities to learn and grow. But I think that we lessen a lot of that that we bring in and we repeat the same patterns.

Speaker 1: 17:49

Yes. So now with the secondary losses, I'm just wondering if you can talk to that piece a little bit more, Because I feel like sometimes maybe you tell me you would know better than I do, but I kind of feel like we might be more aware of those losses because they feel a little bit more. I don't want to say tangible, but it's almost like if you're losing friends or you're losing your home right, those are things that are kind of out of your control, so you can sort of either rationalize, deal with or process maybe the secondary losses first or eat more easily than the primary. I don't even know I'm not sure if I'm asking my question correctly, but it just feels like there's almost like forced to face the secondary losses first before you can process.

Speaker 2: 18:43

Yeah, and I don't know that it's necessarily true that you are forced to deal with them, because I think a lot of times people just move on right, like, oh, I need to find a new place to live, oh, I'm not, I don't get to be with these people anymore, and they're upset about it, but they don't really grieve it.

Speaker 2: 19:02

It's more like frustration, anger, you know, and it kind of stops there a lot of times and then it's like I want you to choose me or this other person, and so then that puts the friends in a weird position of like now I have to choose, which creates other issues within all the relationships. So I think that you know, with the secondary losses, it's still moving through that same process, but I think it's first we have to recognize what they are and I think that there's so much of it that's unconscious because we don't see it as a loss, like something to grieve in our society. We see it as a consequence of our actions. Right, like well, you chose this, so now this is the consequence you don't get to have these friends or you don't get to live in this house, so you made your choice. Right, like that's kind of the message that's given, but that's not really fair.

Speaker 1: 20:00

Yeah, that seems really unsupportive.

Speaker 2: 20:02

Yeah Well, and a lot of what we see in our society is that, like, we feel uncomfortable with grief, we feel uncomfortable when you are sad, we feel uncomfortable when you want to talk about your feelings for the 5,000th time, right, like it's okay. And we usually find a point where our friends and family go, okay, aren't you done? And so that's where reaching out to a coach or a therapist or somebody who can help you process those feelings and thoughts can be really helpful and hold that space for you so you can just feel all the things. Because a lot of times we hold back and we say, well, I don't want to put all of this on you, but I'm still trying to process it, so like it still comes out, but you don't get the full effect of processing it effectively.

Speaker 1: 20:50

Yeah, and then what I see a lot of times with my clients is they just completely shut down, they go into a free state or they look to things to numb themselves from actually feeling their emotions because, like I said, it can be very overwhelming. And so when they come to me, a lot of times we have to do a lot of work around getting them out of that free state that feels safe because it's very familiar to them. They're dissociated, and when you're dissociated it's like you're not feeling your emotions. That's what's happening. And so we have to do a lot of work with their nervous system to make them feel safe again, so that they can process the emotions, they can feel the emotions and allow them to be expressed in whatever way is most comfortable for them.

Speaker 1: 21:41

And it can be a process and it can take time, and so what I would love to just kind of say is that don't let anyone else pressure you to move through your process any sooner than you're able to, and you might be constricted by the flexibility of your nervous system to do that, because if you try to do it too fast, too soon, you're going to end up back in that freeze state.

Speaker 1: 22:07

You're going to end up back in that dissociated, not feeling, my feeling state because you have to survive, you have to get through the day, right. You kind of go back into that zombie mode of I'm just going to ignore and stuff down all of these emotions because they're too much, so that I can just get through the next hour, the next two hours, the next day and a half, whatever it might be. That's not the right way to go about this. When you're working with clients, I imagine that you're allowing them as much time as they need to talk about how they're feeling without feeling judged or feeling like they can't share and express what they are going through, and they don't have to filter it, which is beautiful. I love that you're doing this.

Speaker 2: 22:58

In fact, a grief coaching session is so different than a life coaching session. For me, it's about just holding that sacred space for you to feel and process whatever it is. There's no agenda on my end. It's not like with life coaching. It's like by the end of this session I want to be here. No, it's like what is here. That's really the key. It's like what is here. Then let's sit with it, let's feel it In your body. What does it feel like? If you're comfortable going there Not everybody is, and that's okay. I'm never going to push anybody beyond where they're comfortable going, because the client is always in control how do we just be in that? What I find is a lot of clients that I see for grief coaching.

Speaker 2: 23:47

I don't know if this is just a lack of mind to pull this out of people, but I get a lot of anger expressed. I'm like, yeah, let's get in this, let's feel it, let's move it through our bodies, because if you hold that anger in your body, what it does to your nervous system, you are stuck. That's not a healthy place to be. We can't feel safe to move through those emotions. Let's move all of this anger and this energy. That's a big part of what I see happening is that people don't feel safe to express the anger and the frustration. They stuff it, they hold it down and they say it's not polite, it's not okay, nobody wants to hear this, I'm going to be considered irrational or erratic or too emotional. They come into my session. I'm like let's get it all out here. Let's just lay it on the table and see what is here, because once we admit that we feel angry, oh man, we can move through that so much easier.

Speaker 1: 24:48

Yeah. Do you find with your clients, though, that the anger oftentimes is masking something underneath that they're too scared to look at?

Speaker 2: 24:56

It's usually like, I think, there's an element of disempowerment. We're feeling like we have no choice, we're feeling like we can't express ourselves or we're feeling like somebody else was in control of our life. It's about first acknowledging it, recognizing it, moving it and then deciding how do I take that power back? How do I bring that power back to myself? How do I cut those cords of energy that I am leaking out into these other people I've had relationships with that I'm still angry about.

Speaker 1: 25:33

Yeah, yes, I think that for the women that I deal with, there's a lot of repressed anger, for sure, 100%, because I think, especially as women, we're taught that anger is not ladylike, it's not polite, you need to be kind, you need to be the good girl, and it can feel like it's an unsafe like you said, an unsafe emotion to express.

Speaker 2: 26:01

Yeah, I think that sometimes, when we have that much anger or frustration within us, we're afraid to open it up because it feels so big. What will happen if I let this go?

Speaker 1: 26:14

It's that idea that if I can stuff it down, I'm controlling it in some way. And if I let it all out, that uncertainty, the unknown of like well, now I'm going to be out of control, can be really scary. It's that fear of the uncertainty, the fear of the unknown, the fear of what if I lose control, then what happens?

Speaker 2: 26:37

Yeah, Well, it's kind of like holding a beach ball under the water Right, like at some point it's going to pop out of the water Like you can't hold it forever.

Speaker 1: 26:47

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 26:51

It's interesting that you mentioned beach ball, because one of the things that my mentor talks about a lot with just trauma in general, is that, or just even stress, we all have a swimming pool that is filled with beach balls and depending on how big our swimming pool is, or how big the beach balls are well, depending on how much we can actually hold what we're capable of holding within us right, how much stress can we handle, how much adversity can our nervous system take on at a given time without kind of snapping, you know, without the pool overflowing, without the balls all popping or falling onto the ground and losing control?

Speaker 1: 27:31

And so, you know, there's this idea that, like because this is something that I want to say is that if you are going through a living loss and someone else you know is going through something similar, don't compare yourself to how that other person is processing it, because they might have fewer beach balls in their swimming pool than you do, so they might have a greater capacity to handle it. But don't make yourself wrong for struggling. Don't make yourself wrong for not being quote unquote over it. Yet.

Speaker 2: 28:03

And I think the other side to this is, like with our friends and family, with these living losses. How do they support us? Like, if we are on the other side of it, if we are the one watching somebody go through this breakup, what can we do to support them? Right, we can check in on them and asking questions like how are you doing? It's such a loaded question, right, it's such a big like, oh my gosh, now I have to like figure this out to tell you and censor it so that I'm not overwhelming you with my feelings and my thoughts and all of this.

Speaker 2: 28:40

But sometimes it's just that check in of like hey, I was thinking about you and if you want to talk, I'm here. You want to grab coffee sometime, I'm available, or you know, just that offer and that recognition like I see you, I see that you're going through something and I'm here if you need me, I think is a really important piece, rather than like how are you today? Are you feeling better? You know, like then we feel like we have to mask and we have to like make it neat and tidy so it's not too much for the other person, and now we are caretaking them.

Speaker 1: 29:14

Right, right. Or we feel like we're going to be a burden if we do share too much, and then they're going to have to console us. And what if we put them in a position where they don't know the right thing to say and then we make them uncomfortable? You know, especially this is coming for me, as the recovering people, please, are always worrying about how everyone else is feeling.

Speaker 2: 29:34

And so when you reach out, just saying like you don't need to respond, but if you want to, I'm here, right, like setting that expectation, like I'm just checking on you, I'm letting you know I'm thinking of you, but you don't have to reply to me. Don't feel that pressure, like I know you're in the middle of something big.

Speaker 1: 29:50

Yeah, so is there something that we can do in terms of even like self care to support ourselves in this Cause? You know, something else that I'm thinking about is that, especially as being a recovering people please are, it can be really hard to even ask for the support when we do need it, and so the grieving process can feel very isolating in that experience where you're not able to ask for the support or seek out the support that you need. So what are the ways in which we can kind of help ourselves understand that we're not too much, that we're not a burden?

Speaker 2: 30:25

You know, I think the most normalizing thing in grief is to be around other people in grief. So there are lots of grief groups out there that you can participate in, and you're not even necessarily expected to like speak at them. Sometimes you just go to be around other people who are going through something similar or maybe something different and you get to see like, oh, this feeling that I have, somebody else feels that too, and this is a very normal process. And so I think the more we talk about it, the more we expose ourselves to the grief process and understanding that it's okay to grieve the things that we've lost, even if they aren't deaf, the more we normalize it for everybody.

Speaker 1: 31:16

Yeah, I love that. I definitely feel like there's a lot of power in healing as a group. I feel like sometimes it can catalyze more healing when you're doing it with other people and you feel, even if it's unspoken, support because you have something in common and you know that these other people might understand what you're experiencing, whether they're at the beginning of their grieving journey, the middle of their grieving journey or the end. And I don't know if there's even ever an end to any kind of healing journey. To begin with, no, and grief and grief.

Speaker 2: 31:59

Grief isn't like the end of grief, is not a destination, it's just a relationship. It's another relationship that we have and that relationship changes over time, so that initial grief is so raw and so intense but over time our relationship to it can change and it lessens an intensity. It can still be there. We can still feel that loss, but it doesn't have to overwhelm us.

Speaker 1: 32:30

I love that. Now I know that you are also an EFT practitioner because you and I tapped together. And so I'm wondering if you're bringing that into your sessions as well, because obviously you and I know that when we tap on our emotions and the things that we're feeling, it allows us to release them and to process them. And I'm wondering if you're using those in your sessions, because I think that that's a unique modality that maybe you're bringing into your sessions, your grief sessions.

Speaker 2: 33:01

I do, but only when it feels really appropriate and I have permission to do it. So a lot of times we just talk. But if there's an opportunity where it's like this feels really stuck and I'm wondering if you'd want to tap on this to try and move it and we do Oftentimes it's just like a round or two of it moves so much. I think in grief it can be so overwhelming that there's so much there that if we spent an hour tapping together it would be exhausted and just overwhelmed by it. But if you can hit that point where you find the piece in that session and tap on that, so much can move and then when I see people come back in the next session they're lighter. So much has shifted and changed. Tapping doesn't erase the memory, it doesn't make it go away, but it changes our emotional charge to it. We recognize and we come into acceptance with seeing what is. I am angry that this relationship ended and when we tap on that it normalizes that feeling for us.

Speaker 1: 34:12

Yes, absolutely. I love that and it allows us to almost I think it's like get a little bit closer to the emotion in a way that feels safe, by just speaking it out loud of I am angry, or not even I am angry because you don't want to identify with your emotions. I feel angry. There's a lot of anger that's coming up and I'm not sure what to do with it. You know.

Speaker 2: 34:35

Yeah and see, even I get caught in that trap of like I am and it's such an ingrained pattern that we all have to work to shift that. Yes, absolutely. I feel angry that this happened and that is a huge mindset shift.

Speaker 1: 34:50

Yes, I think, even in our relationships, because we can tell people that they made us feel some way and that's not actually true, because no one can make you feel anything. Your emotions come from some sort of perception around, some experience that you're having and what you think it might mean about you potentially.

Speaker 2: 35:10

Yeah, it's like a defense mechanism. Like you are making me this Right, like, no, I am feeling this. And like, if I can recognize that I'm feeling this, then what does it mean? Where does it come from? Like then we can figure out what needs to shift.

Speaker 1: 35:25

Yes, absolutely 100%. So, April, is there anything else that I haven't, we haven't talked about, that you love to kind of mention and bring up and share with the listeners?

Speaker 2: 35:38

I think we covered most of it in like a broad aspect, you know, I think that just normalizing, talking about grief, and that grief isn't just death, I think that is the biggest thing. Like relationships, we have grief, whether they end on a good note or a bad note. Like there's grief there, there's a loss, and all of these losses add up when we don't consciously grieve them. We start pulling around the U-Haul full of emotional boxes that eventually will take over, right, we're going to get run over by it, and so if we consciously grieve these things, then we can lighten everything that we are carrying around and are open to so much more. So new relationships and healthy, positive relationships, changing those patterns that weren't working, you know.

Speaker 1: 36:30

Yeah, I just had an image in my head as you were speaking. When we don't allow ourselves to grieve the loss of our relationship, what we can sometimes do is close off our heart, and the way that we learn to kind of get through and survive is by finding some other distraction, away from that pain that we're concealing and that we're protecting ourselves from. And when we allow ourselves that time, that grace, that space to process those emotions and let those walls come down, we can open our heart and the type of relationships that we can attract and create can be healthy and deeply meaningful when we can open our heart fully to receiving, to feeling, to expressing everything that's come up for us. So I love how you just described all of that. I think that's really helpful.

Speaker 2: 37:27

Yeah, and I think actually there's one piece that we didn't talk about now that I'm listening to you say that and that is the gratitude. Like, where can we find the gratitude for the good parts of what we had? So, not everything is loss and grief, but what were the good things to? How can you learn to appreciate that part of the experience? What did you learn from it? What did you appreciate about this person? And not just see this person as a negative influence in your life, because there was something, like we said in the beginning, that attracted you to this person or that you liked about this person. And I'm not saying you have to get there right away, but it's an important part of the process of finding the gratitude for what you received from it as well.

Speaker 1: 38:12

Yes, and I'd also kind of like to piggyback off of that and say that forgiveness needs to be a little bit a part of this journey too. Because, to your point and this is something that I've noticed even in my own life is that when we first start recognizing that we're in a relationship that we need to get out of, there can be a lot of anger and resentment like we shared, and there can be a lot of even finger pointing of it's the other person's fault, the other person's fault. And then when we get out, it feels like we have a release of that resentment in some way, because now we've ended it and we don't have to face it anymore on a daily basis. We can sometimes actually even internalize that resentment to ourselves, depending there's multiple situations into how that can happen.

Speaker 1: 38:55

But the point is is that as we further along in the grieving process and in the healing process, we can actually look back on these people that we know are not healthy for us and see them for who they are.

Speaker 1: 39:09

We can see that perhaps some of their behaviors that hurt us were coming from their own deep wounds and insecurities, and we can then learn to look at them with compassion, we can then forgive what happened. And in forgiving them, we can also forgive ourselves for our role in that relationship too, because we have to come to terms with the fact that relationships take two people and a relationship is not going to end purely because of one person's actions. It's gonna be both of you in that relationship that are responsible for getting to where you got to in that relationship and what you've created. So that forgiveness piece, that even that self-forgiveness piece, can liberate you from a lot of, I think, anger and resentment if you allow yourself to feel the gratitude and if you allow yourself to learn how to love yourself and self-accept your role in the ending of that relationship, which is hard.

Speaker 2: 40:15

Yeah, when we hold on to that anger and frustration and we don't forgive, I think that we keep that tether, that connection to that person longer and longer and it prevents us from moving forward. And I think that the forgiveness part is such a big piece, like you said.

Speaker 1: 40:39

Yeah, yes, and the forgiveness is for you, not for the other person, right? That's the thing that people forget about. They're like I don't wanna forgive him or her or whoever they did all these things and I'm like but the forgiveness is for you, it's for your peace, it's for your wellbeing.

Speaker 2: 40:57

Right. What is it costing you to hold that resentment for so long? That's exhausting, it really is. I've been on the end of holding that resentment before and it is exhausting and you find yourself being negative or bitter or just unpleasant to be around because you want so badly for that person to recognize like their role and to say that they're sorry and you might not ever get that.

Speaker 1: 41:25

No.

Speaker 2: 41:26

You know you can't control the other person, but you can control how much energy you're willing to put into a relationship that isn't even in existence anymore. Really, yes, so save that energy for yourself and use it for working on yourself and moving this energy and creating something new and better.

Speaker 1: 41:45

Yes, and I think that that is the perfect note to end on, because that was a beautiful message. April, thank you so much for coming on and having this conversation with me. Everyone, if you are looking for someone to help support you with a loss, whether it's a living loss or someone that has passed please feel free to reach out to April. We're gonna have all of her contact information in the show notes and I'd love for you to connect with her because I think she's an amazing person in general, but also she can help you through what can feel like a very overwhelming and difficult time. Thanks, april, thank you.

Speaker 1: 42:18

Until next week, everyone, be well. If you're hearing this message, that means you've listened all the way to the end, and for that I am truly grateful. If you enjoyed this episode and found it valuable, would you mind leaving us a review wherever you listen to podcasts and sharing it with others? If you'd like to connect with me for one-on-one coaching or human design reading, you can find me on my website or on social media. Also, if you have a topic you'd like me to discuss on a future episode, please DM me. Be sure to tune in next week for another episode of Stepping into Meaningful Relationships.