#YNF EP15 - The Grieving Process & Your Mental Health

In this episode, Brittany shares her experience with how death and loss have affected her mental health and gives tips and encouragement for how to deal with the grieving process. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the year, not finished podcast. My name is Brittany Franklin and I am the host of this podcast. And I am excited to bring another episode to you. Season two, as a reminder, your not finished is a podcast that integrates mental health and the Christian faith. So I look forward to showing you all how faith and science express the importance of having a healthy mind, sharing my experiences and providing helpful tips for maintaining positive mental health. For those of you who have been listening since last year, thank you so much for your continued support. And for those who are just tuning in, I hope today's topic will keep you listening today. I'm gonna be talking about death and grief and how they affect your mental health and our times, unfortunately, and inevitably part of our mental health journey. As always before I start, I wanna say if these topics cause you mental or emotional distress, please refrain from listening or listen with caution. So with COVID 19, the war and unrest in Ukraine and the news of many deaths recently, I have been thinking so much about death and grief lately, to be honest, I think I've been driven by the thought of things being temporary and uncertain in this life since experiencing a couple of huge transitional events in 2018, I've been reflecting and I believe I briefly mentioned this on a prior episode, but I've been reflecting and I realized that June 6th, 2000 and June 6th, two, I was, and 18 are the days that have shaped my life and actions the most without a doubt to the point where I'm not sure how to move past those dates after my grandma's death in 2000, for example, I literally, can't not say I love you to someone, even if there is anger or an argument, I also tend to over apologize and make sure everything is spoken before the day is over after mom's death in 2018, I said, I would never be a caregiver again or operate in that role. I don't know anybody other than my mom who realizes how painful it is to have an inexpressibly deep bond of that kind with someone just to end watching them die. Those two events are different because on one hand, it's experiencing someone being suddenly and unexpectedly gone, which was my grandmother. And on the other hand, it's watching someone else slowly die over a couple of days time, which was my aunt and those things happening on the exact same day, 18 years apart then a week after my aunt passed, I lost a very close friendship. I've also talked about this a little bit in prior episodes about how painful that was for me, but to be honest, because that friendship loss happened so close to my aunt's death. I was preoccupied with grieving the death of my aunt. And I'm not sure I fully processed the end of that friendship, even though it's been almost four years, actually, I know I haven't because that person recently sent me a random text message and it threw me off for a couple of days. I'm still thrown off to be honest, because I know I will be thinking about June, 2018 for a while, by the way, if you have a significant falling out with a friend and you're feeling the itch to reach out to the mirrors later, don't do that without acknowledgement of the fallout or act like nothing happened. At least don't do that to me because I'm 2 35 years old to engage with that. Seriously. I know age doesn't mean maturity, but seriously don't do that to anyone because that's not okay. And it reveals a lack of self-awareness respect for others, emotional maturity, there needs to be a meaningful conversation or none at all. Anyway, these events have influenced the way that I think about life. I live from a foundation of everything being temporary to the point of sometimes being slow to pursue future endeavors or not fully being intent know about fulfilling goals. And it affects the way I spend money and the way I interact in my relationships with people, just like the example I gave about always letting people know I love them because I know based on my faith and just by looking at the state of our world that tomorrow is I promised. And I don't know if me saying that to a friend or loved one today will be the last time. So I just have to make sure that they know because although my grandmother knew I didn't get a chance to tell the last time I saw her, what's even crazier about this is upon reflecting even further. I'm not sure if this them is from fear or acceptance or a little from column a and a little from column B, but this is definitely something I'll be asking my therapist next Thursday. As you can tell, by listening to all of that death has had a significant impact on my mental health. And it's kind of in the inevitable that it does for most, if not all people, since that's such a difficult transition. So I wanna talk about some of the effects of death and grieving on mental health and give a few tips on how to process. I wanna reference a study conducted by Dr. Catherine keys and her colleagues on the connection between unexpected death and pediatric disorders, which you can find at the psychiatry online website in the article. They say that unexpected death of a loved one is most frequently sided as the most severe, potentially traumatic experience in someone's life. Even among individuals with a high burden of lifetime stressful events, unexpected death is associated with heightened vulnerability for onset of virtually all commonly occurring psychiatric disorders that were assessed. This heightened incidence risk is observable from childhood through late adulthood, major depression, PTSD, and panic disorder, and is particularly concentrated in older age groups for manic episode phobias and alcohol use disorders. According to mental health, America, many people report physical symptoms that accompany grief such as stomach pain, loss of intestinal upsets, sleep disturbances and loss of energy of all of life stresses. Mourning can seriously test your natural defense systems. Existing illnesses may worsen or new conditions may develop profound. Emotional reactions may occur. And these include anxiety attacks, chronic fatigue, depression, and thoughts of suicide. An obsession with a deceased is also a common reaction to death. We see many instances of loss and how it affects people expressed in the Bible as well. Jesus weeping due to Lazarus is death in John child after 11, or we can reference second Samuel 12, which talks about David experiencing the loss of his son after he fell ill. Second, Samuel 12 verse 16 through 18 says David, therefore pleaded with God for the child and David fasted and went in and laid all night on the ground. So the elders of his hell also Rosen went to him to raise him up from the ground, but he would not, nor would he eat food with him. Then on the seventh day, it came to pass that the child died and the sermons of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead for. They said, indeed, while the child was alive, we spoke to him and he would not heat our voice. How can we tell him that out is dead? He may do some harm. So obviously from those examples, you can see the profound effect that death and loss has had on people. And I'm sure you have experienced this yourself and can resonate a few ways to process grief in a healthy way. According to recovery village.com is to first of all, remember and celebrate the life of your loved one by talking about them and honoring them. Now, I wanna acknowledge that this is not always easy to do and that ability to do so sometimes depends on the relationship or connection you had with the loved one that you lost. It may take some time for you to get to this first step because of how deeply impactful loss is, but it is important to remember and honor, and think about the good memories that you had with them, for sure. The second step they offer, which I believe might need to be the first is to acknowledge your feelings. My really good friend always reminds me literally all the time that it's okay to feel my feelings and that it's important to do. So if I don't do that, I can get stuck in a moment or a mindset and not ever heal or move forward, not acknowledging how you feel about the loss of a loved one, creates an environment for you to experience additional mental and emotional damage from the experience a third step. And the last one I'll mention for this episode is seeking out support, grief and loss are never supposed to be experienced alone and doing so could potentially lead you to self harm or cope in negative ways and not get the care that you would need while going through the process. Don't be afraid to reach out, to say friends and loved ones, seek professional counseling, or you can head over to www.griefresourcenetwork.com for hotlines. You can call or more resources. There. There are also additional steps over@recoveryvillage.com. So I'd recommend you would visit that website. Um, and also know that recovery is not just a one time process recovering from grief. Sometimes it's a lifelong process. I'm still working through my grandmother's death, even though it happened 18 years ago. And my aunt's death that happened four years ago almost it'll be four years this June. So don't put a time limit on how long it takes you to move forward from the loss of a loved one, because it is an extremely difficult thing to work through. So just give yourself of some grace and take one step forward at a time. Even if you move slowly before I close out, I wanna leave you with a scripture authored by David who again, lost his son due to sickness. He wrote in Psalm 34, war 17 and 18, the righteous cry out and the Lord hears he delivers them from all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are Christian spirit. And so I know this is ranked true for me, but God has 100% every single time comforted me in the midst of dealing with those hard emotions and the feelings of missing someone who you loved and is no longer here or really any heartbreaking experiences that I've had. He truly understands how lost feels. And so, because he understands that he's able to comfort you in the best way in order to keep the format of the podcast. I'm gonna go ahead and end it here, but if you need additional resources for mental health addiction and suicide prevention, head over to www.you, not finished.com and click the get help section. If you wanna share your story as someone with a diagnosed mental health or mood disorder or share how you're overcoming grief and you're okay with that being shared publicly or anonymously on the you're not finished website, shoot me an email to you're not finished@gmail.com. Make sure to follow me on to Twitter at Y in finished and on Instagram at Y and F cast to stay up to date on latest episodes and for more encouraging content. Also, don't forget to write. You're not finished on apple podcasts or on Facebook, if this resonates with you, or if you really enjoy the podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And I really appreciate you. Hope you have a great and finish well, bye.