The Grief Curve: MovingThrough Loss and Grief at Work

September 1, 2024

TRANSCRIPT

Alright. So how do we move through loss and grief at work?

Yeah. That's it's a it's an important thing to recognize is that certain things that happen at work can become shocking change or loss.

This could be anything from, you know, a manager leaving or I mean, it could be literally a death of a coworker. It could be a loss of a, of a position. You're demoted or even promoted can cause a certain amount of loss, right, because you lose your team.

If it's a bigger thing like a merger, an acquisition, a closure of a of a company or something like that, that's even, I would say, more intense, and it is a loss. I think it's people kind of think, oh, it's just a job. But it's not just a job, and we identify with our with our profession. We identify with our teams and our jobs.

But the thing that could affect us even more when there's a change is that we're living into a future.

So you and I don't even think about it, but we're living into a future, particularly if we're in a company, if we have a job, if we have a job title, if we have if we're on a team and we're inside of a project, anything like that, it's sort of there's a certain feeling of certainty that occurs to us. And when there's a change.

So like I said, it could be even organizational change.

That future is being disrupted or, like, blown up.

Right. Even if it was just you know, some people identify with their job more than others or or more connected to a brand or something. But even if it's just, I will have a job one year from now as the future you're living into, that like, even that.

Exactly. Even if but I would say even if you're not maybe one hundred percent happy.

Yeah.

There's a certain future you're of certainty that you're living into. And when a change happens, that certainty is it it it just sort of disrupts us. Right? It's like, now what future am I living into?

And human beings aren't very comfortable with uncertainty, with not knowing. We like to know. We like to think we know what's gonna happen Mhmm. You know, in the future.

So if you've ever gone through a divorce or a death or some you know, something that you didn't make the decision. Somebody else made the decision.

Most of us have experienced a time in our lives when something was we were used to something and there was a change.

I had shared with you. I I ended a friendship. I made that decision that I went through all of this while making that decision and then had to be with the grief of it after, like, wow. And I did this. I did this. And I still am going through all of it.

Yeah. Because it's I think you're you're making such a good point because even when it's necessary, it's needed. It's the best thing for you to end something. You can go through some sort of grief. Why don't we pull up the for there's a two slides out of it, at least two I'd like to show, but one is the anticipatory grief. Because another thing people can start to experience is anticipating something is gonna end.

So this can even happen to someone whose child is gonna go away to college. You know, there can be a feeling of there's I'm anticipating some sort of grief, and I'm starting to create this new uncertainty for myself. And, usually, we start to replace that future certainty with a negative future. Maybe at a very unconscious level, we start to think about all the worst, you know, the, oh my I'm gonna be an empty nester, or I won't be able to find a job. So we're almost exacerbating the reaction because when that future is uncertain or it's or it's certainly going away, we then can fill it in with things that make us even sadder, angrier, more fearful, and things like that because we're we're anticipating it. So that's something to really be aware of is what's happening with my mind.

Am I making stuff up? This is the grief curve. It it comes from the work of Elizabeth Kubler Ross, and it was done by some people at Pepperdine University in California to visualize help us visualize what's what is happening to us. I've found this so useful because I think, like you, sometimes, even when I make the change, I make the decision to make the change, I still am gonna go through this.

Mhmm. So knowing this can be very helpful because if we look at the top changes announced or changes declared, however you wanna think about that, I've decided or somebody else decided. The curve, it's at first, it's going down. Right?

It's like, I gotta go down before I can go back up.

Initially, there is some sort of denial or resistance.

This can't be happening. This isn't true. Somebody made this up.

They'll come back to me. They're really not gonna leave. They'll find a cure. It's not gonna happen this time. There's all sorts of things our mind does when we hear that initial kinda something's gonna change. I read somewhere recently that it's actually the denial part is important to just give us a little time.

Because we're really trying to absorb something that we don't understand. Right? It's it's like, why why is this happening to me? Why is this happening now? Have you ever gone into denial?

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, even recently got a text and thought, maybe I'm misreading this. Wait.

Let me read it again. Wait. I could just be totally making this up right now. I wasn't.

But just reading the news and being like, words. Say each word one at a time. What what is being communicated in this? And I feel like that was a momentary little denial.

When my father was dying, I wasn't living where I live now. I was where he was living and my mother was living. I I had to fly in to see him in the hospital, and we knew he was dying, but no one knew exactly when and things like that. I would get to the airport on my way to leave.

And by the time I was I I remember vividly observing this in myself. By the time I would get on the airplane, I had put the whole thing somewhere in the background. I was no longer dealing with it. I was just like, yeah.

Whatever. I just it was it was like I think it was sort of, like, here so that you can get on with life at some level.

Right.

But I thought it's still happening. Yeah. It's but in my mind, it it's as if it wasn't happening anymore.

Well, you just reminded me too that, well, my mom passed many years ago now, thirteen years ago, but I remember the day that my sister called me and said mom's in the emergency room. And I almost out loud said, no. She's not.

Yeah.

I I remember the words coming to my lips. And then my husband, at the time, my boyfriend went like, rented a Zipcar from New York so we could drive to New Jersey, and he'd, like, walked me to a place to get a sandwich. And I was floating around like a zombie, Just like, this isn't even real. Nothing's happening right now.

That's my little yeah. I feel like some people get to it, and some some people are like, la la la. I'm floating around in existence. Nothing's happening.

But it was like that all day.

I mean, I get the, like, the this whole this whole thing, they made a mistake. It's sort of like they made a mistake. I made a mistake. This can't be happening.

You could see where there's a slight there could be, if you a little bit of a danger in this, because if you go into denial with yourself, let's say, you get some bad news, and you say, it's not happening. You might may you may not be as attentive, like, you may be like you like, you're saying, it's a little bit like being a zombie. It can make you feel a little bit clouded and a cut you know, it's a kind of a weird space. That then you might notice.

So this is an interesting next kind of thing that can happen is a deal making type of a fantasy thing. It's sort of like, please don't let it be me. You know, we may we might even be thinking, well, I won't lose my job because I'm so I'm so much better than they are. Or, you know, we we may just say, oh my god.

Please don't let it be me. Let it be somebody else, or I'll do something different. I'll stop, you know, smoking so that I won't have to ever have to deal or I'll be good, or I'm gonna get all my work done on time. Or it's this funny thing as if there's something that we can do to not have it happen.

And, again, it's a fantasy. You know, I same thing. When my father was dying, I was like, I'm I'm gonna stop drinking coffee.

I mean, it did look Oh, yeah.

I did all that.

Completely unrelated to the thing. So it's a reaction to the change, to the news.

As you go through, it's like a little bit like going through this. You most likely will feel anger at some point. Anger, I remember feeling anger at the doctors, anger at the powers that be, that made the decisions, you know, around some companies that I've worked with that have made big changes or or changes that I was like, this is unnecessary type of thing.

And at that point, you can feel very much like a victim that, you know, it's happening to me, and it usually a lot of times, it is happening to you. The anger part is actually important. You wanna move through the anger. You wanna express the anger. You wanna allow yourself to feel it, I guess, I would say. You know, allow yourself to feel the anger because the anger eventually will bring you to grief.

I can attest, but I didn't get angry about my mom dying until about six months later when I was working with a therapist who suggested that I do a physical exercise to get into my anger. And I Yeah. Like, took a duvet that I had just bought that was still in the plastic bag, and I I just, like, punched it a lot. And I and I was, like, yelling things, and then I just started crying.

But this is at the end. I I think I punched for forty minutes. I just, like, beat this thing up for a really long time and realized I was angry at my mom, my dad, my whole family, god. Like, it was just like, I'm angry at everything, but it took it took a while of being in that floaty unreality and someone to nudge me. And then and then I really got to the healing because then I was, like, actually being with the grief.

Yeah. I mean, I can say that in my life, there has been multiple losses that I didn't deal with. I skipped the grief part. I think I did the anger part probably, resentment, anger, you know, how dare you, how could this possibly but I skipped the grief part because I went into action.

Right. Right.

And, you know, if you get stuck in anger, it is it's got energy to it. It can motivate you. I'll show them.

This is not fair. I'm gonna keep moving through this or whatever. So the grief and the fear, the disappointment, the loss, all of that's important to get to this idea of acceptance and no turning back. There's a, like, a feeling of emptiness. William Bridges, who wrote the book called transitions, he would call that transitions, that space in between.

The old is dying or or leaving, and there needs to be a transition for the new to to unfold.

Yeah. I think about the no going back. Like, I'm gonna stop wishing the past was different, and I'm gonna start focusing on the future that I'm living into now. So you're, like, kind of giving up that future that at the beginning, you were like, no. I can't lose that future I've been living into. You'd, like, let go of it at this point and start looking at what's next, which can feel, like, weirdly, like a betrayal against like, if you're I remember feeling like, I I shouldn't be enjoying my life. I should just stay being really sad.

Yeah.

Even though that's not what my mom would want for me, but it's like Yeah.

That's the mindset.

If you go through that too fast Yeah. Like, I tell people this when there's a a change in, like, a job thing. Like, there's a merger and acquisition, and there's an uncertainty, or there's an uncertainty in the organizational change that's going on. Some people, they have a hard time dealing with the unknown, dealing with the uncertainty of it.

If you could wait it out and also just just give some space, the new future has more time to emerge gently into your reality instead of rushing to make it happen. I have a history of rushing to make things happen. You know, I got I I have my reasons. Right? I need to have this income or I need to be in a relationship or I need this to happen now and didn't give time.

And this is this is very much Landbridge's idea in this book is that we need time. It's almost like for the ground to get some nutrition back into it before it can grow something new. And it's honoring that, which is not easy to do, especially if it's in your job, right, if it's in your company type of thing. But just to be aware of it, I think at least knowing that to get to acceptance is really moving beyond the blame, the anger, the bitterness, the sadness. It doesn't mean you don't feel some of this the the sadness, but you begin to move into more appreciation and gratitude. Like, don't force yourself. You've gotta, like, allow yourself to go through the other part.

Just another example is, like, right right after my mom passed, I adopted a new story in like, I skipped all of this stuff on the left. And I I was like, well, this is gonna be good for me because it's gonna teach me how to grow up and take care of myself. And now I'm I'm the I'm a woman now, and this is because I was, like, twenty five. You know? And I'm like, this is my moment. Here's what's happening. And I think a few people in my life gently were like, hey.

You don't have to, like, silver lining this immediately. No. I'm I worked through it. I talked to a therapist once. Like, we're good.

Yeah.

You know? Yeah.

Pulling your bootstraps up, pulling, you know, pulling yourself together, that's a good skill to have.

That's, you know, that that's a good thing to do. But when you do it unconsciously to protect yourself from feeling the pain, you may be skipping some lessons. You may be skipping some opportunities that you can only get from entering this difficult grief. It's difficult. It's painful.

So, you know, then you start to go after appreciate. You start to feel this up. It's sort of like you start to see, okay, there's a new future possible.

You may start feeling excited.

You may start feeling creative, like designing and taking more risks and fulfilling your dreams and moving, you know, forward and then making progress to overcoming you know, it's like it's like you have a different energy. There's a new possibility that's emerging.

The new and better futures, I've heard had people say, well, how could it be how do you know it's gonna be better? Right? And that you could say is a little bit of a there's a possibility that it's gonna be better. Right?

There's a pot if you if you believe that something needs to end for something else to begin, and sometimes something needs to end that you're very fond of or you're very used to. Right? But if you really looked at it, maybe it would be good for it to end, including a job that you had for a long time. While working for a particular company for a long time, maybe you settled for certain things.

And that's the other reason I tell people, don't don't move too fast because give yourself the opportunity to imagine what what do you really want next in your life. The preoccupations in the middle, those are sort of stress reactions that you may notice in yourself or other people. Like, people tend to make up the worst. Right?

I said projecting into the future the worst thing, the worst case scenario, various stress reactions from eating too much to staying up too late, substance abuse issues, driving too fast. So there can be things that we do that put ourselves at risk when we're in stress. Then people can also plan for the worst. Like, don't go forward with that decision.

I've had people tell me I'm not gonna send my kid to that really expensive college now because I don't know. So people make big decisions sometimes over in the first part of the curve when you probably really shouldn't make that many decisions when you're there. I've had people tell me that it's time to mourn.

Yeah. And it's really a weird thing when it's a work thing. I need time to mourn. I can't.

I don't have time. I gotta work. Work. Work. Right? So it's it's kinda work you know, go getting through this.

And then an illusion of control that I'm seeing right now is some people of our clients are trying to make bigger decisions on their own or micromanaging more.

Like, there's this feeling of taking over or making sure you look like you have it together. And Yeah. Yeah. There's a little bit of more of an I I I that can happen because you're fearful.

It's really a a a fear reaction to what's next. I gotta take care of myself. So this is very useful in so many aspects of life because it it speaks to our personal life and our business life. And it also is useful when you think about other people on your team because you may have gotten to acceptance earlier If there's been a big change that's affecting a lot of people, you may have gotten to acceptance, but you may have a teammate that's caught in some other thing.

Now sometimes people think they're in acceptance, but they really haven't gone through grief yet. They're kinda moving, pushing themselves forward. And then this isn't really linear. You can have accepted part of it, and then you hear some other news, and you go back into it.

I've said grief is like like in infomercials, but wait. There's more. It's just like no. I find I uncover new layers of it still, and I expect I will for the rest of my life around my mom because every new life thing that happens.

And then I'm like, oh, she's not here for this. She would love my daughter. There's just so many it's like every time something really great happens, another layer of grief is under there, or I get present to some anger about something specific that I had blocked out, something new comes up. So, yeah, there's so much.

I've one thing I've learned is never to think that there's some kind of finish line here because it, it doesn't work like that.

Especially with, yeah, with the death of loved ones. Yeah. Definitely. It's you they say you learn to live with it as part of your your experience. But it can also be a reminder of how much they contributed to you and how grateful you are. You know? But I think that continual loss, there's like you said, there's losses that that happen at different stages of of your life, your daughter's life.

Right. And and even I've talked with a lot of other coach friends of mine who have realized, I don't know, a college relationship that was bad that they never actually processed or thought about. And now all of a sudden, something triggers it. Now they're having grief about someone they dated a a long time ago. And it's like, this is so it seems strange, but it's become normalized to me at this point that we will remember stuff and and realize, oh, I actually never dealt with that. I have unintended grief around this.

Yes. So true. Yeah. And different different losses can reactivate those old losses that you never grieved.

For whatever reason, you weren't you didn't have time. You were too distracted in life and things like that. So even the loss of a job or the loss of a team that you care about, you may be surprised. You know?

I think people sometimes are surprised how sad they feel. And then, like, even in situations where you're the survivor so this happened to my sister. When a company laid off a lot of people, she was one of the people that didn't get laid off. And she had this she was experiencing a lot of loss, and on top of that, she was experiencing guilt.

Yeah. Certain they they caused survivor's guilt.

Because, you know, you're the one that didn't get laid off, but still it's still you still feel loss. Right?

Yeah. I also thought of I remember when Robin Williams died.

My husband for a week was going through this. And Yeah. He's not one to attach to various celebrities, but he's a comedian, and Robin Williams was a big deal to him.

A role model probably.

Yeah. Yeah. And I I think it's when celebrity deaths happen too, I noticed people going through things because it was attached to a part of them or they identified with that person's life, whatever it is. But current grief brings up all grief. So it's like even witnessing somebody else can stir up a whole bunch of feelings.

Yes. And when someone retires, it can be it can cause grief when you know, so many different things that that when someone leaves someone that's important to you.