It's OK That You're Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand

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INTRODUCTION The way we deal with grief in our culture is broken. I thought I knew quite a bit about grief. After all, I’d been a psychotherapist in private practice for nearly a decade. I worked with hundreds of people—from those wrestling with substance addiction and patterns of homelessness to private practice clients facing decades-old abuse, trauma, and grief. I’d worked in sexual violence education and advocacy, helping people navigate some of the most horrific experiences of their lives. I studied the cutting edge of emotional literacy and resilience. I cared deeply and felt that I was doing important, valuable work. And then, on a beautiful, ordinary summer day in 2009, I watched my partner drown. Matt was strong, fit, and healthy. He was just three months away from his fortieth birthday. With his abilities and experience, there was no reason he should have drowned. It was random, unexpected, and it tore my world apart. After Matt died, I wanted to call every one of my clients and apologize for my ignorance. Though I’d been skilled in deep emotional work, Matt’s death revealed an entirely different world. None of what I knew applied to loss of that magnitude. With all my experience and training, if anyone could be prepared to deal with that kind of loss, it should’ve been me. But nothing could have prepared me for that. None of what I’d learned mattered. And I wasn’t alone. In the first years after Matt’s death, I slowly discovered a community of grieving people. Writers, activists, professors, social workers, and scientists in our professional worlds, our small band of young widows and parents grieving the loss of young children came together in our shared experience of pain. But it wasn’t just loss that we shared. Every one of us had felt judged, shamed, and corrected in our grief. We shared stories of being encouraged to “get over it,” put the past The San Francisco AIDS Foundation and UCSF house a lot of queer history related to the AIDS epidemic. Megan Devine, LPC, is an author, speaker, and grief consultant who advocates for emotional change on a cultural level. Her book, It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand, is considered required reading by grievers and professionals alike. Together with her team, she facilitates a growing catalog of courses, events, and trainings to help grieving people, and those who wish to support them, learn the skills they need to carry pain that cannot be fixed. For more, visit refugeingrief.com. Join me for a thoughtful conversation with Megan Devine: best-selling author, psychotherapist, and grief advocate. With over 20 years in the field - and deep personal experience of grief - she is the go-to authority for grievers, supporters, and industry professionals. Her pioneering work provides a professional, inclusive, and realistic approach to grief, one that goes beyond pathology-based, reductive models. If you’re currently feeling the deep pain of loss or are looking for ways to support someone who is, this episode is for you. Counterscript is communicated later in life in which Berne (1972 p. 489) defines as: “A possible life plan based on parental precepts.”

The natural child state contains all the basic, raw emotions that we feel: anger, fear, sadness, fun, affection, love. These in turn produce basic behaviours; eg tantrums, rebellion, tears, hugs, laughter. This week on It’s OK, we cover love, sex, marriage, divorce, grief, shame, assumptions (both internal and external), and personal agency - it’s QUITE the conversation. In season three, episode zero, we cover the name change (FKA: Here After with Megan Devine), explore the worlds we create when we decide to talk about difficult things, and get a little preview of this season’s guests.Why everyone has an opinion about how soon is too soon to date, have sex, or otherwise live your life after someone dies We're re-releasing some of our favorite episodes from the first 3 seasons of It’s OK that You’re Not OK. Challenging conventional wisdom on grief, a pioneering therapist offers a new resource for those experiencing loss In It’s OK That You’re Not OK, Megan Devine offers a profound new approach to both the experience of grief and the way we try to help others who have endured tragedy. Having experienced grief from both sides—as both a therapist and as a woman who witnessed the accidental drowning of her beloved partner—Megan writes with deep insight about the unspoken truths of loss, love, and healing. She debunks the culturally prescribed goal of returning to a normal, “happy” life, replacing it with a far healthier middle path, one that invites us to build a life alongside grief rather than seeking to overcome it. In this compelling and heartful book, you’ll learn:

The main goals of Transactional Analysis as a framework are to learn to analyse our relationships with one another in terms of TA and to develop our ability to engage in straight, effective communication with one another on a daily basis. The Ego State ModelMany people who have suffered a loss feel judged, dismissed, and misunderstood by a culture that wants to “solve” grief. Megan writes, “Grief no more needs a solution than love needs a solution.” Through stories, research, life tips, and creative and mindfulness-based practices, she offers a unique guide through an experience we all must face—in our personal lives, in the lives of those we love, and in the wider world. it, not covering your discomfort with a pithy “think positive” emoticon. Being brave is letting pain unfurl and take up all the space it needs. Being brave is telling that story. It’s terrifying. And it’s beautiful. Those are the stories we need. THERE’S EVEN MORE TO THE STORY … We’ve covered a lot of cultural territory in this chapter. That wider lens can help you feel more normal, and less crazy, inside your grief. It can also help you as you search for professional and personal support in your grief—identifying those who don’t necessarily adhere to the stages model or the cultural narrative of transformation is a great starting point. If you want to dive even deeper into our collective avoidance of pain and the far-reaching, and surprising, roots of grief shaming, head over to chapter 4. If it feels like too much for right now (early grief really does mess with your ability to take in information), go right to chapter 5. There, you’ll find the new vision of grief support and what living your grief well might look like.

Transactional analysis, commonly known as “TA” to its adherents, is an integrative approach to the theory of psychology and psychotherapy. It is described as integrative because it has elements of psychoanalytic, humanist and cognitive approaches. This is the state that is not ruled by emotion; it is rational and logical, working with the facts. This is the best state in which to plan, consider, decide and act. It is also the only state in which we can learn something new about ourselves. (That is why no-one ever changes their mind during an argument.) We have to be in an adult state to listen effectively to another person’s point of view; to consider new facts; to evaluate our behaviour. Modelling and copying behaviour seen and heard contributes to how we fulfil our script and according to Berne, programs or patterns are present before the age of six the majority of the time. Injunctions or stoppers according to Berne (1972 p.139) are “the most important part of the script apparatus, and varies in intensity”, and defines it as “A prohibition or negative command from a parent”. I spent the last 20 years organizing my life around hate and I want to spend the next 20 years organizing around love. The pain of the world is the pain of the world, regardless.” - Valarie Kaur

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floor, unable to eat or to sleep, unable to tolerate leaving the house for more than a few minutes at a time. I’ve been on the other side of the clinician’s couch, on the receiving end of outdated and wholly irrelevant talk of stages and the power of positive thinking. I’ve struggled with the physical aspects of grief (memory loss, cognitive changes, anxiety) and found tools that help. With a combination of my clinical skills and my own experience, I learned the difference between solving pain and tending to pain. I learned, firsthand, why trying to talk someone out of their grief is both hurtful and entirely different from helping them live with their grief. This book provides a path to rethink our relationship with grief. It encourages readers to see their grief as a natural response to death and loss, rather than an aberrant condition needing transformation. By shifting the focus from grief as a problem to be solved to an experience to be tended, we give the reader what we most want for ourselves: understanding, compassion, validation, and a way through the pain. It’s OK That You’re Not OK shows readers how to live with skill and compassion during their grief, but it isn’t just a book for people in pain: this book is about making things better for everyone. All of us are going to experience deep grief or loss at some point in our lives. All of us are going to know someone living great loss. Loss is a universal experience. In a world that tells us that grieving the death of someone you love is an illness needing treatment, this book offers a different perspective, a perspective that encourages us to reexamine our relationship with love, loss, heartbreak, and community. If we can start to understand the true nature of grief, we can have a more helpful, loving, supportive culture. We can get what we all most want: to help each other in our moments of need, to feel loved and supported no matter what horrors erupt in our lives. When we change our conversations around grief, we make things better for everyone. What we all share in common—the real reason for this book—is a desire to love better. To love ourselves in the midst The Old Gays are a social media sensation: flamboyant outfits, lip synched dance parties, and risque theatrics you might not expect of men in their 70s and 80s. The underlying message is that you just need to bear witness to their pain and don’t try to fix it.