Following up on understanding the stages of grief in the last episode, Paul explores the guilt people often experience during the grieving process. on the 86th episode of The Paul Cardall Podcast. Paul says it's important to learn how to deal with grief healthily to begin the healing process. He talks about 8 ways to cope with guilt and grief.
8 Ways to Cope with Guilt & Grief
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ABOUT EPISODE 86
8 Ways to Cope With Guilt & Grief
There is no right or wrong way to grieve. People experience grief uniquely, and normalizing that guilt is often a component of grief is important. Self-reflection is a normal reaction to the death of a loved one, but these self-messages of “I should have done this differently” are not helpful. It is important to learn how to deal with grief healthily to begin the healing process. Fortunately, there are actions you can take to come to terms with your guilt.
Here are eight tips for how to cope with guilt and grief:
1. Journaling
Journaling is a powerful tool when experiencing grief. Putting your thoughts and memories to paper is a great way to clarify and self-reflect on your feelings and thoughts. It also helps to decrease the intensity of these emotions. Journaling also helps to chart your grief process by reviewing journal entries over time. Journaling can initially feel awkward if you have never tried it before and you are not certain about how to begin, so grief journaling prompts are a great tool to use to help get started.
2. Prioritize Self-Care
It is common to forget about self-care when people are in the midst of grief.
This is especially true when guilt is experienced as a part of the grief process. Just getting out of bed can feel like a challenge. People forget to eat, exercise and can self-isolate. Guilt is a burden, and the message that comes with it is, “I don’t deserve to treat myself well.” Self-care includes taking care of your physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. You cannot begin to heal and work through grief until you engage in self-care behaviors.
Mental Self-Care Examples:
3. Channel Your Guilt Into Something Positive
It doesn’t really matter if your guilt is rational or irrational. It is important to channel
guilt in productive ways to begin to alleviate it. For example, if you have lost
someone to suicide, work with suicide prevention programs. It will help give you insights about yourself, and learning from others that have had shared experiences can be enormously helpful. It also can offer some comfort in doing something that honors the memory of the person who has died.
4. Acknowledge Your Feelings of Guilt
You need to be able to give yourself permission to feel whatever comes with the loss of a loved one. If guilt is one of those feelings, explore its roots and what it is really about. Are you being fair to yourself? Is your guilt based on reality, or is something else causing it? You are human, and remember that guilt often arises with grief. Show yourself compassion and learn how to forgive yourself as you explore your guilt and its source.
Consider trying some of these strategies.
5. Join a Grief Support Group
Grief support groups can be a wonderful way to learn how to cope with grief and guilt. It helps to hear that other people are experiencing similar thoughts and feelings. It is also a place where you can get support from others who have been through a loss. Grief support groups are places of support, education, and resources. You can find them online or locally by checking with local mental health centers, hospitals, or organizations associated with the cause of the death of a loved one.
6. Find Positive Thoughts
Thought stopping is the practice of shifting your focus from the guilty thoughts you are having to more positive thoughts. This technique can be taught through behavior modification which involves reshaping negative thoughts into positive thoughts producing healthier behavioral patterns. It involves training yourself using different skills to stop thinking about thoughts that can be harmful to you.
7. Share Your Feelings With Others
If you have trusted close friends and family, you can talk with them and make opportunities to talk with them about what you are feeling. It is important not to keep your guilt feelings bottled up. It also can be helpful to talk with people who know the person who has died. Their insights may help ground your memories and feelings into a more realistic perspective.
8. Consider Reaching Out to a Therapist
Grief and guilt can be an enormous burden. They can evolve into depression. When this occurs, it may be difficult to manage and cope with grief without outside mental health professionals intervening. Healing cannot begin unless these issues are addressed. A therapist can help to unpack why someone is experiencing guilt surrounding their grief and process the emotions so they begin to ease.
Signs you may need private therapy
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ABOUT OUR HOST
Paul Cardall, an acclaimed Dove Award-winning musician, composer, and producer, is renowned for his music that acts as a conduit to tranquility and spiritual introspection. Boasting over 3 billion lifetime streams, 11 No. 1 Billboard albums, and recognition as one of the world's premier pianists by Steinway & Sons, Paul's diverse repertoire spans Classical, Christian, and New Age genres. His extraordinary journey includes overcoming health challenges, notably being born with half a heart and undergoing a life-saving heart transplant in 2009.
Inspired by his experiences, Paul has dedicated his life's mission to crafting healing piano music that resonates physically and emotionally. Beyond his musical accomplishments, he actively engages in philanthropy, collaborating with organizations such as The Ryan Seacrest Foundation and supporting causes like the fight against human trafficking.
His album, "Return Home," showcases 13 improvisational piano pieces, a departure from his usual compositional approach. It invites listeners on a cinematic voyage through the landscapes of his European heritage. The album, inspired by his deep connection with his wife Tina and their journey through her family's homeland in Slovenia, underscores the power of music to connect us to our past. It serves as a testament to Paul Cardall's enduring impact as an artist and empathetic soul.
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Hey, how are? You. I'm Paul Cardall. Welcome to the podcast. If you're joining us for the first time, I appreciate you checking. Without and those of you that have been listening to other episodes, I love you. And if you get a chance, please leave a review. If you're listening on Apple, there is a place to to rate it and leave a review. Spotify, Pandora, wherever you are getting this podcast. If you hear some background noise, I am in Beverly Hills at a guest House of my cousin and his wife. They've been here for a long time. He is a stuntman. And been in quite a few movies. You saw the the film on HBO about Magic Johnson. He was the Larry Bird Body double, which is, which is pretty awesome. And that, you know, his name is Landon, Landon Laub. And we come from such a massive. Family. My grandparents, my grandmother, who lived to be 100 years old, had nine children and everybody had at least three to 8. So she spent most of her life writing birthday cards and slipping in $5 here, $5 there, a tremendous sacrifice to express love to all of us. And we've had an amazing childhood growing up and remained very close. So I love Landon. I love his wife, Norma. So thank you. For letting us stay at your guest house this week during Grammy Week. Grammy is the awards show for the Recording Academy. I've been a member for quite some time. There is such a variety as you know of recording artists and many of you who have watched the Grammys have found it to be quite interesting, controversial. And then of course, you have your favorite artists who perform. There's a lot of media around this event and the record industry have their artists that they are invested in and they need their artists to stand up. A lot of times, record labels will pick artists that not only are selling well, but they attract so many people to their their shows because they are controversial. And you know, last year, Sam Smith did a performance dressed as the devil, which was very. Odd for me. And then you had Brandi Carlisle and other artists just two straight up performances singing right before us that were just as mesmerizing. So a lot of these artists need kind of a a gimmick in order to stand out. If you think of it, pop culture like, like a circus. What is it that they need to do to draw you into their tent and keep you part of their part of their their their their gig so they can continue to earn as an artist. A lot of these artists because of the record deals. Don't make too much money off the music that is streamed. They have to do concerts. They have to rely on their fans paying all those ticket fees, which is very expensive here in the United States to earn any income. I've been very I've been very blessed because of you. I haven't had to do too many performances to get people to help invest in in my career as an artist. You've been. Blessing my life for so long and just listening to the music, it was always a grassroots effort. People just sharing it. Thumbs up here on Pandora or sharing it through Spotify. But thank you so much for allowing me to do my music independently of having to go out and do concerts. All the time, like so many of these artists, my friends who rely on that for money, they they sell merchandise. To to be able to provide for their lifestyle and for their families. So I have a lot of respect for these artists. I don't agree with so much of what they present, but I agree with so many of the artists that are there, the Grammys, performing that, a lot of times in the pre ceremony. You never know about in the pre ceremony. You've got the Christian artist friends that I love and support and you don't see that on national. TV. So there's a lot going on this week. Grateful to be here for the Grammys. Last week, on episode 85, we walked through the stages, the five stages of grief, discussing the very emotions that don't necessarily go in an order. You know, there's five stages and a lot of people have thought, well, if I go. Through stage 1. Should I get to 2? 3-4 and five and then I'm fine. Well, those of you that have grieved, I think all of us have experienced the loss of a loved one. We these emotions come and go like ocean waves onto the beach. Sometimes that tide is higher and it hits harder. Other times the tide is low, the water is calm and the waves don't really wash up is difficult and is hard. And we also know that. As time progresses, those waves that continue to hit upon us, we become familiar with those feelings. And it's as though we've gained mental strength. And we still feel somewhat amputated. It's like, you know, that person who we love, who is gone. We still feel like they're here at times and we want them to come back. And it's like we're amputated. We would feel like it. That body part is still there, but it's not. So today I thought we dive deeper into guilt and grief. This is something I've battled with as a heart transplant recipient, having countless friends who were also on the transplant waiting list that did not get. Did not get in Oregon. They did not survive. It was very difficult for me to be able to have this miracle, to see parents of these friends of mine in grief. And so their survivors guilt. You think of the soldiers who come home from war. They were in those battles where their friends. Their colleagues passed. And so a lot of soldiers deal with this and we could simplify it into, you know, things like business. We have grief and guilt from, you know, the fact that we got a position where our friend or colleague did not get a raise or that position. So we tend to have guilt about that. And I I think that's mainly because you're a good person and you care about your. Your fellow employees, it's like in the NBA or any of these professional football teams. You want to get recruited as a college. Player and you get recruited you be you know you start your dream in the NFL. Meanwhile, all your teammates didn't get that opportunity. They go and they have their day jobs and you're living your your life stream. So there's a lot of dynamics and the type of guilt we experience. And grieve. Well, I want to go. And focus mainly on. Death and the grief we have from surviving and the emotions we experience, even if it's not so. That has the same situation as us. It could just be a family member that that passed away and here we are still alive. Before I go into this last week, I talked about my brother who passed away while I was waiting for my heart transplant. And how our family had gathered almost a year before I received the heart unaware if I would survive or any of that, and a family gathered to pray over me. And in that room where all my brothers and sisters, their spouses, my grandpa, my grandparents. And they blessed me great over me. And who would have known that by the end of the year, my brother, my brother Brian would have passed. And then later my grandfather, I survived. And so the irony in that is I had a physical problem that it was evident on an X-ray, whereas my brother suffered from some mental illness that would come and go at the most stressful moments of his life when he was working on degrees and. Finally, when he was working on his PhD. He he there was an accident that you can, you know you can. You can search this up on Google. But he passed away. You can go to the website briancardall.com learn about his passing but also the incredible things he accomplished as a scientist contributed so much. But see I. I survived at the funeral. It was devastating, he. It was. What remained of him because he he moved on his conscious, his spirit moved on, and there was his, his body, and I stood there with my oxygen tank, oxygen flowing into me, and nowhere down a medicine I was taking intravenously, and here was my brother. So I had many questions. Why am I surviving? What's the deal with that? And so I had a lot of guilt, a lot of guilt. So again, there's no right or wrong way to grieve. Everyone is different. We experience it uniquely and normalizing that Guild is often a component. Of grief is important. How to normalize it? Self reflection is a normal reaction to the death of. The loved one. But these self messages of I should have done this differently. They're not helpful. It is important to learn how to deal with grief healthfully. We want to do this in a very healthy way to begin the healing process, but a lot of us have no. Idea how to do? That, fortunately, there are actions you can take to come to terms with our guilt. So I'm going. To talk about 8-8. Steps on how to begin that process of healing. So that we feel normal, these emotions are normal. So the first one is journaling, and we're going to have an episode with Luke who Luke Fever, who is a dear friend of mine and he is an expert in journaling. He gets courses on how to effectively journal. You may have never journaled in your life. I come from a denomination. When growing up, I was LDS and. It was almost like. A commandment since the beginning that we should all journal and it's a powerful principle. Journaling is a tool. When we experience grief, it's a great resource because we're able to put our thoughts and memories to paper, which is a great way to clarify and self reflect on our feelings and thoughts. So it also helps to decrease. The intensity of the emotions that we feel, you know, journaling can help us to chart our grief process by reviewing our journal entries. You know, when we reflect back, we can go back into the journals. We can read what we are experiencing and we can kind of. Assess where we're at at that moment. You know it. And when you journal, you could initially feel awkward because you know who's going. To read this. Is this is this going to expose me? Is this going to make me feel so, so raw and somebody judge me? You know, if you've never tried it before and you're not certain about how to begin, you know, reef prompts that tool to happen. And you know, keep it in a in a special place if you don't want anyone to read it after you're done journaling, you can rip it up. If you don't want to go back and read it, but I I suggest putting it in a private place where don't people can't find it and you can continue to pour out your feelings in a journal and we're going to get deeper into it to journaling and how it creates mental strength for all of us. With Luke on a coming. #2 prioritize self-care. This is something we do not dare. This is something we do not do. We do not, you know, set time to take care of ourselves. We're so busy helping other people our responsibilities that we feel guilty to have self-care. So you know. Very common and very natural to forget to do this, or to do this specifically in the midst of grief. You know, it's it's specifically true when guilt is experienced as part of this grief process. Just getting out of bed feels like a challenge. Forget to eat. We don't want to exercise, and a lot of us in our grief self isolate. The pain we're feeling from guilt is a burden. The message that comes with it is I don't deserve to treat myself. I do not deserve this. Self-care includes taking care of your physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. You really cannot begin to heal and work through your grief until you engage in self-care behaviors. And here's some examples of mental self-care that you can do. One practice mindfulness. Practice mindfulness. Have silence. Meditate, pray. Do you do some yoga? And people recommend that all the time it's hard for me to stretch. But in those moments it's quiet. Find something you can do for mindfulness. You know. Maybe that's go fishing. I like to do that. Go on a hike. Just be still. Be quiet. Take a break, take a break. We're raising kids. We're at our jobs. They always say at work you need a break. Take a break. Well, you need to take a break for yourself. One of the things I find interesting. Is that? There is a commandment in the Bible. Thou shalt rest, and often we take that as to this is Sunday. This is the day of for us. This is when we need to be. Out serving people. But God has commanded us to rest. Because we get tired and we need to pull back and have a day, the Sabbath was made for man, not man, for not man for the Sabbath. And God wants us to take a rest. So choose a day. Choose a day. Just don't do anything in the afternoon. Just be still. Go do something for yourself. A lot of people. Watch a movie. You know, read a book, listen to music, listen to a podcast. I like that one and reflect on the things you're grateful for one. Spiritual leader Henry B. Ironing. He says before he goes to bed, he writes a list of things that he was grateful for during the day, and in those moments where he's grateful he sees God, he sees God in his life. The third thing is we want to channel our. Guilt into something positive. Of course it. Doesn't really matter if your Guild is rational or irrational. It's important to channel guilt into productive ways to begin to alleviate it. For example, if you've lost someone to suicide, work with suicide prevention programs. It will help you get insights about yourself and learning from others that have had shared experiences which can be enormously, enormously helpful can also offer some comfort in doing something that honors the memory of the person that died. When my brother passed. From the tragedy and enduring mental illness we got involved with NAMI National Alliance. Of mental illness. When I recovered from my heart transplant, I dove into seeing what I could do to help other families affected by congenital heart disease. I did a concert and all the proceeds from that concert, and it was a beautiful experience. 2500 people came sold out. We raised enough money to be able to create a scholarship at Salt Lake Community College for for anyone affected by congenital heart disease. In fact that scholarship. Every March, March 1st, March 15th, if you know somebody affected by congenital heart disease or any type of chronic illness, go on my website under the scholarship. You click on that and you can apply for that. So I want to pull your heart into something positive. And one of. The things that's great is apologizing. Apologize. Maybe there's somebody that you need to talk to because we're self examining, you know, our our lives. We're looking back at our lives because we've lost somebody and we're going. You know what happens if I die and what have I done and where am I at? And I think apologizing is a great thing. That we can try to do, you know, make amends with somebody. It helps us change our behavior. And think of something. We can do that. We've never done before to change our behavior. And the other thing is we need to accept our faults and try to move on. This is very difficult. It's been difficult for me to accept the reality and to move forward. I'm I'm an artist. I am a visionary. I reflect on the future. I reflect on the present and I reflect on the past. In order to create music through resonates with all the emotions of life. So I tend to dig back and often there's feelings of, of sadness, of things I could have. Better. And then I realize I'm human. It's just part of the deal and you try to learn from these things and move forward. So one of the other things I I think that is important is we need to acknowledge our feelings of guilt. We need to acknowledge that it exists. We need to try to eliminate negative self talk, try to eliminate beating up on ourselves. I think one of the things we can do is talk to God to help us process those negative feelings and to acknowledge for those of us that are Christian that Christ has taken on everything and at the cross was victorious over all these things. And on that third day he rose from the grave. Assuring us and assuring all those who witnessed that everything is going to work out. There's life after death and that he is the one who paid the price for all the regret, all the sins, all the grief we experience. There's a way that we can be healed when we surrender. And surrendering is one of the most effective ways to to to be positive, to know that God has your back and you know so. Acknowledge our pain exists. Eliminate that negative self talk. Find out if there's a reason we feel guilty. You know you can dive deep into. Why did this happen? What is the experience? Why do I feel guilty? And remind yourself all that you do do. That's positive. And it's not like there's a scale of, oh, I've worked so hard to earn this reward. And here's all the things I haven't done. So it just levels out. No, no, no. As a Christian for me. Surrendering and accepting Christ is that there are no scales. There is no well, I have to work to earn this reward. I have to work to earn this crown. It's surrendering and God just takes care. View and there's more peace and understanding versus this pressure to have to level up in some aspects. I don't think that's what God wanted. And it's pretty. Specific when you know when he walked for miles to meet the woman at the well who was grieving. Her life because she was miserable. She had lost many husbands and she was experiencing divorce in her current situation. She was living in adultery and Jesus walked all those miles just to tell her she was loved. She was valued and that. She had been rescued by the person standing in front of her. So again, acknowledge the pain exists. Eliminate the negative self talk. Find out if there's a reason we feel guilty. Remind yourself of all the good that you do and realize it's OK to have needs. It's OK. To want and to need things, and it's OK to communicate to your spouse. I need this or to your children. Look, I need a break. I need a break. My mom used to do this and I loved it because she would take us the fishing as children. And she'd sit in the car and she'd read and she would enjoy that book. She would just take a break and she deserved it, especially raising me. My brothers, eight kids, just a completely remarkable woman. The other thing is to establish boundaries. So often we let people in our circle, and when we do this, there's even more pressure, more guilt, because we're thinking we need to help and be friends with all these people. If they're a negative people in your life, you need to set boundaries. And it's OK to set these boundaries. You need to have your own space. And my friend Richard Paul Evans, who wrote the Christmas box, had this great analogy. You are your own Kingdom, and it's like there's a wall around it. And the only person in your Kingdom is God. And so don't let anyone. Come in in there and then the next wall around that is your spouse. What happens in between that circle? You spouse, you and God look, nobody else is supposed to come into that intimate space. And then on the other ring around it is your children to take care of them. And then another ring is your family. Go out as your friends, go out as associates and community and work. So don't let people into your space unless there's a trust and and I told my daughter the other day she goes. You know, I shared something with a friend who no longer wants to be my friend, and now she knows. And my advice was, next time, don't share anything deeply personal until that person has shared something with you and you feel there's this trust. It takes time to have solid friends where you can really release things that are super. Arrive and she was able to release that with me. And I I love that that we had this special relationship where she trusts talking to me about boys. And difficult things she's going through, and it mainly it's because I'm just present. And I'm not beating up on her or telling her what's wrong with her. I'm doing my best to trust God that he can help her better than I can trust the process. Trust the Holy Spirit to to guide her. I'm not the Holy Spirit. I'm not God. They do a better job. My job as a parent. To just be present to communicate. 8 When they're doing something wrong, just ask them. What do you think about this instead of you got to stop doing this. Blah blah blah. So it's more this thoughtful process and and. So that's helped. Me in dealing with the grief and the guilt of being. You know, a father who is divorced, who spends a lot of time. Being with them and not being with them all the time, but it we have such a tight relationship that it's helped and my kids have helped me. So we need to understand what we can control when we're having these feelings of guilt. We need to understand what we can and cannot control. The other thing is is it's really important to join a support group if you do not have one. I'm not talking about a group of people. That you go to church with. Because that's always difficult because they're neighbors and they know your business. I'm talking about a support group where? You are with strangers and you can bear your soul. And they're not going to bring it up again in your face because you may not see them ever again. But they have the same feelings and and guilt that you experience. And they're also able in that support group to. So let me read this, it says brief support groups can be a wonderful way to learn how to cope with grief and guilt. It helps to hear that other people are experiencing similar thoughts and feelings. It's also a place where you can get support from others who have been through the same thing. Even though every experience is unique, they can walk through their process and you could connect and relate as you walk through your process. So grief support groups are places of support, education and resources, and you can find them online. So type in a specific link thing, type in a specific thing you're looking for, like I. Need a grief support group? Or you can check locally with talking to local mental health centers. You can call a hospital or any organization associated with the cause of death of a loved one. You can go to your pastor or your. And you can ask where there's a support group and just say you don't necessarily want to participate in the the local one. Maybe there's one outside of that. Of course, if you want to do the local one, that's fine. I don't recommend it. So. So Google grief support. Groups in your area. Talk to somebody at a hospital, talk to your doctor, talk to your primary care physician or, you know, talk to a pastor or a Bishop. The other thing that is kind of difficult, but this is one thing we can do is find positive thoughts. Thought stopping thoughts stopping is the practice of shifting your focus from the guilty thoughts you're having to more positive thoughts. This technique can be thought. Of you know like. We taught this this technique. Excuse me. This technique can be taught through behavior modification, which involves reshaping the negative thoughts into positive thoughts. Producing healthier behavioral patterns. This is like exercise. It's people who exercise. Start by lifting lighter weights and eventually they get to heavier weights. Take some discipline, but we can change our behavioral pattern like if we're sleeping in. Let's set our alarm and try to get up earlier. My wife talks about circadian rhythm. Which is in the morning. You need to be consistent and when you go to bed and when you wake up and in the morning, get out and get some vitamin D for 20 minutes. Maybe you need to go on a walk. Maybe just go outside and stretch. Maybe go outside and just inhale the fresh air. And then at the end of the day, as it starts to get dark, repair yourself and prepare the environment around you. Though you may not have full control that you're going to go to bed, that this is the time to wind down. Dim the lights, get off your phone. Anything that stimulates you. Don't watch a movie that's is overstimulating. You know, if you're going to watch TV, watch something. That is very. Calm. I like little house on the Prairie and other types of shows like that family friendly palm movies instead of something that's current because a lot of the movies. Numb you. They're just so loud and there's so much flashing of lights and movement. The story may be really good. The movie may be good, but it's just doing stuff to us physically that I don't think is healthy in the evening or even early evening to do. So some things we can do to have positive thoughts is to identify areas that we need to change. Is there a a habit we're doing that we need to figure out how how to quit? Is there a routine we're doing that's just dragging us down, you know, shake it up. We need to check ourselves. We need to be open to humor. Laughter is a cure. I love comedians. My wife and I always go to the local comedy club in Nashville. It's called zanies. There's comedians. We love, comedians. We don't like comedians that we've walked out because they're so filthy. And, you know, in fact, the first time we went to zanies. Nate Bargatze was the performer and he lives there in Nashville, so he's testing new things out. I didn't know who Nate Bargatze is now. He's selling out arenas. Jimmy Fallon endorses him, loves him. There's another comedian I enjoy that I recommend is Dusty slate. He is kind of a redneck comedian, a guy from the South who grew up in a trailer, very positive, very family friendly. So Nate, Per Godsey, dusty sleigh, you know, there's comedians that you can look for that will just make you laugh. I like to look up old Victor Borga videos. Our old Dean Martin videos, and if you're winning and you have no idea who Dean Martin is, he used to do these roasts. They're pretty funny. They kind of get around with each other, but they're a lot of fun to watch. And it always brings this sense of joy to my life. To hear those types of things. And of course, like I mentioned, you got to root out the negative people in your life. You've got to surround yourself with positive people. And if you don't know anyone who's super positive or optimistic, ask God to put into your life. Positive people and just keep manifesting that to God don't manifest to to to yourself. You know, this whole idea of manifest. Acting manifest to God. Tell him. Tell tell God who is the manifesto of the universe? Who made it all happen? Who created you? Talked to God your father in heaven as his child. Tell him what you need and he'll start to fill your life over time. It's like the sunrise doesn't just hit you like a flash of lightning. People don't just come into your life the next day, but it's like a sunrise. It'll slowly come. I am a witness of this. I've developed friendships with people who really don't care what I do professionally. There's no transaction. We just like good fellowship. We have passion together in our in our understanding and belief in Jesus Christ, in music, in all these other aspects. And and they slowly came into my life when I was asking God for positive people. When I moved to Nashville, I didn't know anybody. So please. Please, father, put into my life positive people and it has been amazing to watch. The other thing is we need to practice positive self talk. Maybe this is too much information, but occasionally I'll hear my wife say something really positive to herself, you know, or she'll say to me it's going to be a great day. And I've started doing this type of thing. It's an affirmation that is really good. Look in the mirror and just don't look at all the imperfections. Just look at the fact that you are. You are amazing. You were created different from everyone else. There's nobody like you. God made you unique to shine amidst the vast Cosmo that he created. All right, #7, let's try to share our feelings with others. And this is where we've got to really be careful. We need to have a trusted close friend. Who has already shared something with us, so we know that we can be a little more sharing with them. I wouldn't just go and share something with somebody that doesn't really know you in terms you've known them forever. So let me backtrack. I kind of. Mix that up a little bit. So what I'm talking about is somebody that's been in your life long time that you really don't. No, they haven't really shared anything with you, so they still are. Maybe family or friends and associate a friend is somebody who doesn't want anything from you except friendship. There's no transaction. And those are the type of friends where if you build a relationship of trust over time, those are people that you can go to and share. Some of these personal feelings of guilt. You can talk with them, opportunities to talk with them about what you are feeling. I used to meet with a friend. Every couple of weeks and we called it extra small men's group. And we would just kind of walk through some of the. Things we're. Dealing with and there was nothing. To the point where it was like, well, I'm going to go tell people what you're thinking and feeling. It was just between us and it was a beautiful thing. It's expanded to even more friends, as I mentioned. So it's important. Not to keep our guilt feelings. Build up. You keep your feelings bottled up so it could be helpful to talk with people who know the person who has died. The person in your life who has died. It's helpful to talk to them, kind of, you know, run through the amazing things that you experienced with them. The grateful attitude you can have in having known that. Person and they also this person had known that person. You can just you go through the really optimistic things and just express gratitude for for knowing this person. A lot of times their insights can help. Ground your memories and feelings into a more realistic perspective. Their view of that person, their view of how you're processing, you know they're an outsider looking in a lot of times. That's really helpful. This is something my wife does very well. Is she can look on the outside in and know me well enough to say. What she thinks, and I am accepting of that because we're family. And it's just the stress that exists. And then you know the last thing is you've got to consider reaching out to a therapist. One of the biggest mistakes I've made in my life is thinking that my pastor, my my priesthood leader, is my therapist, that I can go directly to that person and that God will give them the inspiration. Know what to say and do. That's not their responsibility. They're not trained therapists. They need to direct you to a therapist, somebody who is professional, somebody that has. Worked to earn the education and have the experience to be able to help you process because they know through all the cases they've studied all the cases they deal with how to how to. Set in order things that can help you that you will understand and know. Those are things that can help you. So get a therapist. Once I got a therapist, I started to have much more understanding. I still had my faith and needed the guidance of a church leader. In terms of offering me up, the rituals and the things of the teachings that would that would help me on my spiritual path, but my mental and my, you know, physical and and spiritual strength, I needed guidance from my. Clinically licensed therapist, they can help you and you know when it when this occurs. You know, it may be difficult to. Manage and cope. With grief without without outside mental professional health. As I've said, healing cannot begin unless the issues are addressed. We need to dive deep. A therapist can help us unpack why someone is experiencing guilt surrounding their grief and process the emotions so that we can begin to. Ease up. Here's some signs where you will need a therapist and you can go online and search local therapist again, you can ask. Somebody at the hospital primary care physician can get you the social worker to find that right therapist. There's a lot. Of companies online right now that try to match you with good therapists, some of them are good and some of them are not. So I would specifically try to find somebody locally and. Just search, ask questions. Who's who's really good. And sometimes you go through one or two or three therapists, and that's OK, that's OK. So this is when. You need to consider getting a therapist. You feel anxious all the time. Feel overwhelmed with everything consistently. You're overthinking and feeling as though you're unable to switch off from your thoughts. You're feeling low. And more tearful than usual. You're crying a lot. You're getting angry more easily or struggling to regulate your emotions. You're sleeping more or less than usual. And there says. It'll say, well, you just need to pray more. You just need to dive into the word of God. You just need to go to church. More and that will. Deviate the suffering. You need to surrender to God. Well, God gives us talents and gifts. There are reasons we hire lawyers. There are reasons we hire surgeons. And there are reasons why we need to hire a therapist to walk us through this process and give us. And a listening ear to hear what we're really feeling and then help us organize. You know, and like I said in the beginning, you want to journal your thoughts, those are things you can take them to the therapist and say these are the feelings I have. I've written them down. You can just look at this. Read this. And you know a therapist. It's an agreement between you. It's illegal for them to tell anyone your business. So again, you know when to seek professional help. There is no specific timeline for grief and the emotions that will accompany it, but there are signs to watch for that indicate we do need help from mental health professionals to overcome the guilt and the grief and grief. Therapy can help people identify emotions and sources of grief related to the loss of a loved one. Grief therapy can offer skills to help cope with and alleviate these symptoms. So again, if creep symptoms persist or get worse for six months or longer, think about pursuing A grief counselor. So a therapist that specializes in grief counseling. So seek out a therapist who specializes in that. There's an. Therapist directory I will put. This in the notes. It's a great tool for finding a therapist in your area. Alternatively, you can seek help from an online therapy platform. I talked about this. There are many that want to match you with a therapist and you just do it from your home online, and that's OK where you go to two or three different therapists and then. You know, find the person that fits for you. You can really dial in that specific person. I'm skeptical of some of these, but there are those that are more clear and specific. And just look at the ratings of other people and what they've experienced. You know, you go on Amazon to buy some. You look at the ratings and reviews, you go to a movie based on ratings and reviews. Well now on some of these online sites like better help, you can find the reviews of that therapist specifically to what you need. And what you need to process and you need help from. So like I said of some things. That you may be experienced where you absolutely need professional help. Again, depression, guilt, anger, feelings of loss, sadness, anxiety. To do daily task, you know, being able to function, you're unable to work, engage in your routine you self isolate or your relationships are beginning to be negatively negatively impacted. You can sit and just pound your spouse. With all this grief and sadness, and you can talk to them all day long, well, it just brings them down. So talk to a professional and get it out with them to help create healthy boundaries and more positive thoughts. If you're dealing with suicide, there's suicide prevention hotlines. Even if you. Don't think you're going to do it for sure, but you've been thinking about it. You need to get help immediately. You you got to talk to somebody. So these this is the guilt in association with grief that we experience. Again, you're not alone. These are feelings that everyone who has lost. Somebody experience. You don't have to be an absolutely strong person. To survive it, you can be weak and go through these things that I've talked about and become strong. God gives us our weaknesses, that we may become strong. If you're wondering why is this thing so hard for me, why can't I overcome this thing? Why do I struggle with this? We're living in a mortal world. We have the power to die from God. We have the power to live forever now, and so life will continue on after the grave. These are. This is why we're grieving. Because we know people we love have gone beyond the grave. But here during this mortal life we experience. A lot of sadness and grief and these things just make us stronger. They make us. Have more compassion for people who have gone through these emotions for the first time. When there is somebody who's died in the family, we can help our children because we've experienced before understand death and that some of the feelings that I might have. So you know again. This is something that I wanted to be able to to go through with you. It's something that I need. And music is such a powerful tool. I'm so glad God gave me this gift to be able to create music that's helped me process the grief, the loss of friends, my family, and to watch other people who suffer and pass away before. Before the. Prime, or even with their grandparent, who's lived that beautiful life, and then they just passed away in their sleep. We still grieve because there's nostalgia. We want to go back to those times where we're at their home. You know, Grandpa making us an ice cream cone. Grandma bringing out Pickles onto the table. And yes, I love Pickles. Especially what my. Grandmother would make. But you know when they're gone, they're gone. And so we have all these emotions. So again, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. Episode 85 takes you through the stages of grief. This is 86. I'm going to bring on. Luke fever to talk about journaling. It's really powerful what he's doing, and of course, go back and look at the other episodes. You can find all this stuff on my website, paulcardall.com/podcast, or just go to the website paulcardall.com, click on podcast. I've got a brand new song. Called a grief absurd about these different issues, it just is something that is very healing. To listen to. You can find that anywhere a grief observed so. Until next time you guys, I love you. Have a beautiful week and stop beating up on yourself. Find the positive because you are a child of God and he loves you. I know this without a doubt where he wouldn't have created you. Alright till next time.