Ep43_Trauma
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Adam Gragg: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Decide Your Legacy podcast. I am Adam Gragg, your host, and if you have not already done so, and you found this podcast helpful, please. Pull out your phone, take 15 seconds, give it a like and a review on Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Take out your phone now and do that. It helps it to grow organically, which it has been significantly.

So one of the questions I get asked consistently is how do I work through grief? How do I work through trauma that I've experienced in the past and in this episode I'm gonna give you a lot of real life client illustrations, but just remember I disguise the identifiables.

So I changed genders. I changed information. So you can't really actually identify who I'm talking about, even though you probably don't know them anyway. So. Something I've been doing for, many months now is talking about risks that I've taken recently. Well, I have been taking a lot of risks. I mean, more than I actually thought I would be.

So it's kind of interesting. The more risks you take, the more you're willing to take other risks and get rejected potentially. And sometimes, but so one thing I did is I went to Dunkin Donuts and I left there. And I got a cup of coffee and my two favorite kind of donuts, which are the old fashioned donuts.

And I got home and I realized they gave me the wrong donuts. So the next day I came back and I said, hey, would you guys give me two free, old fashioned donuts? And they had asked the manager and they gave me two free old fashions cuz they messed up and I. Anyway, I wouldn't normally have done that at least done that in the past, but it was a risk.

So I made two YouTube shorts, which we'll actually link to in this podcast, just 15 second deals. And I called my cousin who is, I was close to as a kid, but I hadn't talked to her much over the last 10, 15 years and had a great conversation with her and really connected. Well, so that was a risk too.

And I could probably give you some more, but I can't think of 'em right now, but I'll keep. Taking risks and hope you do as well. So my name's Adam Gragg, if you don't know, I'm a legacy coach, I'm a speaker podcaster mental health professional for almost 25 years. I started in 1998. My life purpose is helping others find transformational clarity so they can overcome their biggest fears, usually emotional fears, rejection, that kind of stuff.

So they can live and leave the legacy that they desire. And I talk about stuff in a way that you could describe it to your six year old and they can grasp the concepts that you are talking about. I also discuss topics that I struggle with myself. I struggle with dealing with my own grief, my own trauma as well.

And so the last episode that I did was on overcoming procrastination and some things, many people procrastinate on. Facing the grief and trauma in their lives from the past. And they may tell themselves things like it was so long ago or I'm so weak for this bothering me or people will judge me if they knew how much it impacted me now.

And I'll tell you, trauma and grief are highly connected. They involve loss loss of. Innocence loss of a person, loss of an opportunity, loss of what we thought and what we expected our lives to look like and turn out and how we expected things to turn out. And so a red flag with your friends and family, if they haven't dealt with trauma and loss, Is, they'll say things like, you know, I've worked through that or they'll never be willing to talk about it or they'll say it doesn't bother me anymore or they'll get defensive about it.

So somebody that has actually processed and worked through trauma is usually very open to discussing it in the right settings. And you can just tell it doesn't have the defensiveness and the emotional pull that it has related to other. Well people who haven't dealt with trauma and grief in the right, correct, healthy fashion.

There's major consequences to not dealing with this stuff. I'll tell you, addiction, depression, anxiety. Trauma bonds, which is a bond with somebody who, you know, is toxic and you keep going back to the same kind of toxic relationships, a disconnect with our emotions. And so we can't connect with others because we're such emotional beings and we lose that ability to connect with others is divorce, job loss, broken families, the amount of fights I've seen at the end when someone dies over wills.

Petty things like, you know, heirlooms and the family and stuff, and they, and relationships don't talk to 'em for 20 years afterwards. I mean, significant stuff and, you know, really the most significant thing though. As a consequence of not dealing with this stuff, this trauma and this loss and this and this grief is that it keeps you stuck in a rut.

You know, it keeps you stuck in a rut for some people, the rest of their stinking lives. And you don't want that to be you. You don't want actually be stuck. You [00:05:00] wanna be able to move forward because bad things do happen in our lives. And sometimes when we're young and sometimes when we're old and sometimes when we're middle age, but bad things are gonna happen, problems are gonna happen.

It's a great equalizer. What's gonna happen to you and me and all of us, and it's gonna happen really at a significant level. As you get older, is it gonna have things you gotta deal with health issues, people die, all kinds of stuff. And so Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, you may be familiar with this. She popularized the grief cycle.

And I wanna review that with you really quickly, because we're gonna discuss that a little bit in this podcast, but basically there's five stages that people go through as they deal with grief. And this is gonna make sense more and more as I discuss some of the illustrations, but the first stage is shock and denial.

So you'll hear things where people, they just don't want to admit that it happened or they just, you know, are numb. So after someone dies, sometimes people just seem numb and we were wondering why. They aren't emotional. They're not crying at the funeral. And well, really they're in denial and it may not be that they're denying that it actually happened, but they're living in an emotional state where they're sort of denying the impact that this had on their lives.

The second stage is anger. It could be anger at God anger at themselves. It could be anger that that person died. It could be anger at the doctors. It didn't save them. It could be, you know, anger anger at that actually port act at the person who actually died, cuz maybe you felt like they should have gotten treatment sooner or they should have taken better care of themselves or anything.

But the third stage is bargaining and that's really the most confusing stage, but it's really, I like to describe it as that back and forth in your mind. I could've done this differently. I should've done this. What if I would've talked to them? What if I would've dealt with this? How, if I would've changed this part of my life, I wouldn't have had this loss. It's this bargaining and this turmoil that goes on inside.

The fourth stage is sadness and depression, which you gotta feel it to heal it. And you go through this sadness and deep sense of loss, which, you know, related to my marriage, I didn't go through that until years and years later. And it was rough, you know, when I went through it and it wasn't something that I really even was expecting, but it was some of the deepest sadness I've experienced in my life.

And the last stage is acceptance. And when we're at the stage of acceptance, you know, we're moving forward with our lives are no longer stuck. And everybody, I truly believe has to go through some form of this process and it may not look exactly. It may not be. You know, it may not be the exact same kind of descriptors that I'm describing, but it is a process.

So we're talking about a process of healing. And so if you found my information helpful, please subscribe to my e-newsletter, you'll get a link to shatterproof yourself. It's a me, it's a 27 item, mental health stress checklist. And you can look at this and say, Hey, I'm doing this. I gotta change this. It's gonna be inspiring to you.

You can give it to your. Give it to your family. You can use it consistently over and over again. So let's go ahead and jump into the topic. I'll tell you, I see it. So often the consequences and the damage of not dealing with stuff from your past. And I'm gonna give you some tips, things, tips that are gonna help you deal with this.

Junk that you may be putting off. And first one is feel your feelings. Don't be afraid to feel your feelings. It's not you. It's something that is actually external to you. You can feel great sadness. And sometimes clients will tell me, you know, I don't wanna talk about it cause I'm just gonna break down and I'm gonna get so emotional about it.

And that may be exactly what you actually need to do because you need to heal from this. You need to talk and you discuss it. Had a client recently. She lost her husband and it was sort of abruptly and. Her husband has a younger brother and she is not willing to actually have any interaction with that younger brother who she loves, who she feels very fondly about because her other, her younger, the younger brother sounds like her husband on the phone and she thinks she's gonna just break down.

And I told her, I said, well, if you break down, you break down. Maybe you preface the conversation with, I might break down on this conversation and then you. You take a breather 20 minutes, call back later or call back the next day, but you gotta feel those emotions. You gotta feel it to heal that.

I have another client, he lost, he lost his brother in a car accident, you know, and he's told me on a, a number of occasions, you know, I've worked through that. I've dealt with it. It's not really an issue right now. And then I asked a question recently in a session, in a coaching session, you know, about that situation. And he broke down and it got very emotion.

And I said, Hey, you know, you really haven't dealt with this, you know? And he agreed at that point. And one of the things he brought up is that the memories of his parents' reaction, finding out that his brother had died in a car accident was just so overwhelming to him. And I asked him more and got him to talk about it.

And it was healthy for him and he agrees it's healthy for him, but, you know, losing his sibling is significant. I mean, he lost his brother, his only brother, I mean, very significant kind of thing. And so when people don't want to feel their feelings and they push him aside and they use addiction and they use.

Anxiety and fear and they avoid and hide. I like to call that emotional constipation, you know, we're healthy and we have emotional intelligence when we're not constipated, we're able to let it out and be okay with being sad, with being afraid with being, with being hurt, you know, with being scared with being [00:10:00] excited, we, we are actually dealing with our emotions and that's the term I've used for many, many years with people.

Makes great sense. You know, we, we need, we need a laxative, you know, we need to get it out. So the second thing to deal with trauma and loss and grief is to understand the impact that it's had on your life and be willing to say, Hey, this impacted me significantly. And sometimes you can get that through a timeline of events, you do a timeline of your life and all the things that are good and bad and how you felt at the time and what you learned at the time and what you experienced.

Sometimes it's a timeline of all the bad events. So I can think of a guy that he was a. He was a doctor in the military and he was involved in a lot of combat situations and saw a whole bunch of bad things and has actually blocked a lot of those things out of his memory. And I've encouraged him to make a timeline.

You know, what did you see go back to the details? How did you feel? How did it impact you? You know, what were responses from other people? So you go back and you do that through journaling. You do that through admitting that you've had this great loss in your life, you can even do it through letter writing.

So one client. Lost his mom at a young age and he's young and he resisted consistently to actually write, I encouraged him to write a letter, a goodbye letter, not like a permanent goodbye, cuz I don't believe there's ever really a permanent goodbye. And then my faith drives that. But. A goodbye letter for this lifetime to his mom.

And he resisted and resisted and one day and came back and shocked me. He had written like four pages, you know, and he said that was the first time he had actually cried about the loss of his mom. Since she died. She died over two years ago. But it started to get at those emotions. It started to show him what a loss, this actually is for him.

And he has to feel that and deal with it and then move forward. And he could start seeing some hope as well in the process of engaging this. And the third thing is, talk about it. You gotta talk to safe people about this stuff. I'll tell you, you know, I get the question, well, why did they, why are they dealing with grief so well, and I'm not, you know, and a lot of times that's from combat veterans or people that have lost loved ones.

Well, my, you know, a lot of my friends have lost parents and they're just not, it doesn't seem to bother them the way it bothers me. Well, I'll tell you the reason for that is you may not know this, but they are most likely. Engaging some different outlets in their life to discuss that thing that has hurt them or discuss the loss that they've experienced.

Some outlets where they're safely expressing how it's impacted them. I know personally for my mom, I mean, my mom was born with a birthmark on her face on her nose and, and, and you know, of red. Birthmark and, you know, I know she was teased as a kid. She would tell us growing up. Yeah. People call me Rudolph and that kind of stuff.

But it wasn't until this last year that my mom actually admitted to me that that really had a significant impact on her life. And she started to talk to me a little bit, just a little bit about it. I still wanna talk to her more. She's a beautiful woman. You know, you look at pictures of her. She's a beautiful woman.

I mean, hey, she produced me, right? No, just kidding. But she is a beau, she's a beautiful woman and she is just starting now in her seventies to process through some trauma because when you're a little kid in a Catholic school where you can't wear makeup and you can't wear makeup in middle school and you have this birthmark on your face, that's significant kind of traumatic thing.

I mean, It makes you a target to bad people. And my mom's a very sensitive person. She's emotionally sensitive, just naturally personality, kind of God given personality. But I feel like talking about it is essential and she's starting to actually do that some and I believe it's gonna help her tremendously as she does.

The fourth thing is to. Face it, you gotta face this stuff. You gotta face these negative traumatic events in your life. The tendency for people to avoid is very strong. I know for a lot of my clients, when they lose a loved one, they'll avoid the restaurants that they went to together. They'll avoid places that remind them, you know, sometimes they'll take down pictures.

Sometimes they won't clean out the room that they lived in or the bedroom, or they won't actually look at picture albums. They won't. Do things that trigger that emotion. I understand, but I'll tell you it is not gonna be healed until you face it. Avoidance is one of the primary causes of anxiety and depression in people's lives.

You have to be willing on your own time, and I'm not saying to rush it. I'm not trying to force you here, but you have to be willing to face it at some level. And I'll tell you, I have two relatives that I'm close to. I have my uncle John and my grandpa Lan. My grandpa Lan was a World War II vet. He was an officer in the Navy.

Huge impact on my life. He died when I was 16, my uncle John's still alive. I just saw him a few weeks ago. He, was also a combat veteran. He was in Vietnam. He was an officer in Vietnam. He was a, a commander of a unit I believe, with, with a lot of people and their responses to trauma as I've looked, have been kind of different.

It was probably three or four years ago. My uncle John said, yeah, you know, I think I got some PTSD and I've been dealing with this and I've been talking about it and addressing it now, my grandpa land. He was comfortable talking about the war. He would talk and describe, he didn't really like [00:15:00] Japanese people and he would make that vocal.

And I'm not condoning that. I'm not saying that was the right thing, but that was really the only negative thing that I got from him about World War II. And he was obviously, you know, a commander. He lost friends and family. And I have a hunch though that my grandpa land. Talk to a lot of his buddies from world war II and process through this stuff, because he didn't seem to be stuck there.

And my uncle John, I feel like has waited a while to actually process some of this stuff and to face some of this stuff. I mean, I could be wrong about that, but that's just my perception. My perception is often wrong, but I will tell you, I got a different vibe from my grandpa land and my uncle. And I know they both experienced some horrific stuff and they both experienced losing good, good friends, and they both experienced losing people under their command.

And they both honestly are great people. But facing it, not avoiding it is absolutely essential. And the fifth thing, and this relates to a lot of those trauma bonds that people have is create a doki list or a poop list. I'm saying this can be very helpful and I'm gonna link actually to a YouTube episode where a lady describes this in the grief process.

You gotta figure out why that relationship or why that situation I keep going back to because of my trauma. Isn't good for me. So if it's a toxic type of relationship or a toxic type of client or a toxic type of employer or employee or coworker or whatever, make your crap list, list out all the reasons why it's bad, you know, and look at.

And make that top of mind because what you focus on the most you amplify. So you want that to be something you focus on and then you're not gonna go back to that. Well, you know that empty well, that is so dry that you feel comfortable in because of trauma in your life because of grief. That's unresolved.

Those are called trauma bonds. You get over trauma bonds by looking at the truth. And dealing with the truth. So list the reasons why that relationship, that situation is bad for you. And you will stop going back to those same kind of abusive relationships, clients, spouses, dating partners, whatever. If you put it into your awareness, the sixth thing.

Which is essential is have a bigger purpose when it comes to grief. When it comes to loss, when it comes to trauma, a bigger purpose is gonna motivate you to work through this crap and to get to the other side, you gotta face it. The bigger purpose can be helping others who have gone through the same kind of situation.

You know, I find that people who have the most career satisfaction, they there's three concentric circles. Basically I show them and one of them is their personality. Personality traits. One of them is life experiences, and one of them is passions and interests and where those three circles intersect is where you're gonna find a great career fit.

So if, for example, you experienced rape, you may find great satisfaction, a career helping other people who have experienced similar trauma. A lot of therapists have gone through trauma. I've gone through my own trauma. Some that I'm still dealing with for the first time, from when I was a little kid, those things subconsciously have driven me to want to help other people.

And I have a satisfying career. I mean, it's not always felt satisfying, but recently it's felt extremely satisfying cuz I'm kind of getting unstuck and I've dealt with some of my own grief and I'm seeing my purpose in a clear fashion. But if you have this bigger purpose in mind, it's gonna help you work through the grief and get to the other side, not through denial.

Not through anger, which, you know, anger can motivate people to do help other people. That's not what I'm talking about. It's not through your sadness, but it's through your acceptance. There are bad people, bad things happen, bad situations occur. I've been through some stuff and I can help other people who have been through similar types of stuff.

You know, you could talk to your six year old about that. You could say, Hey, if they were bullied or whatever, they could help other kids in their class who have been mistreated as well. Find a bigger purpose, a life purpose. My life purpose, you know, is very highly connected to my life experiences, transformational clarity, helping people face their biggest fears in life.

And it helps me to do hard stuff, you know, easy now, hard later hard now. Easy later, I wanna do the hard stuff. Now take the risk now so I can move forward with my life. So that's what I got for you today. Six tips to dealing with trauma and grief. One, feel your feelings, two, understand the impact. Don't deny it three.

Talk about it, safe people, four, face it, five. Make that Doy list. You know, if you keep going back to that same empty, well, you know, leaves you depleted. Six find a bigger purpose. Keep that purpose in mind. I like to look at my legacy plan every day, help clients make legacy plans and it has their purpose statements.

Something they focus on early in the morning, right? When they get up, hopefully early, I guess, unless you sleep in, but they focus on their goals. They focus on that and I've had clients. Consistently tell me just that one glance at my life purpose statement every morning has transformed their life. So what insight did you gain from today?

What are [00:20:00] you gonna take away from this session today? Ask every client at the end of the session. What's your biggest takeaway? Sometimes it's their two biggest takeaways. So we change when there's, first of all, awareness. Awareness and insight, then we accept that it's a problem. And then we take action.

What action are you gonna take now, based on listening to this podcast today, tell your friends about this podcast, make a decision, apply something from today. So again, if you found this helpful click, the link, shatterproof yourself, mental health. 27 items, stress checklist. You know, you're also gonna get my life balance tips, ebook, and you're gonna get my ebook on five days to overpowering anxiety.

You don't wanna miss that. I'm gonna give you great life, transformational content. So make it your mission to courageously live the life now that you wanna be remembered for 10 years from you're gone after you're gone. How do you want family to be talking about you at Christmas and Thanksgiving 10 years after you're gone, make it your mission to live that life.

Now you decide your legacy. No one else. You decide your future. I appreciate you greatly and I'll see you next time.