Jennifer Levin
Hi everyone and welcome to Untethered: Healing the pain from a sudden death. I am Dr. Jennifer Levin, and I specialize in traumatic death and helping individuals through the struggles, pain, trauma, and chaos of an unexpected death. In today’s podcast I interview Michelle Post a grief therapist who also specializes in traumatic loss. How she got started in the field, the influence of Dr. William Worden tasks of grieving in her work and she shares her personal experiences with sudden and anticipated death and how they have impacted personally and professionally.
Michelle, welcome. I am so delighted to have you here with us today. So let me start off by asking you, How did you get into the field of grief therapy?
Michelle Post
Thank you, first of all, Jen for having me. And it's so nice to see you, even though our audience won't see our faces. So yeah, I think early in my career, It must have been 2000, I was working in a chronic pain clinic with cancer, heart disease, and a lot of workers comp injury patients. And part of my treatment plan at that time was doing a grief and loss timeline intervention. Assuming that when you can't work, or you have some sort of disability going on, you have losses. But what was really weird is I started to anecdotally see this strong connection with grief and loss at an early age, childhood, teenage years, young adult that had totally gone unaddressed and unprocessed for my clients whose bodies were now no longer healing, you know, 10, 20, 30, 50 years later. And honestly, I was debating about whether I really wanted to do chronic pain work for ever. Or if I wanted to move in another direction. And there was this one story of one of my clients that pretty much moved me to tears and inspired my shift in direction. She was a woman in her 60s, retired early from teaching to do a chronic back issue. And she in her grief and loss timeline, I noticed that at age five, which would have been like around late 1940s, or 1950s, something like that, her dad had died. So I asked her about it. And she said, Well, he had an allergic reaction to medication. And when the emergency medical people arrived, he must have been trying to distract me or something. Because he said, you know, sweetheart, will you play that song on the piano that you're learning? And all I could think to say was Dad, I can't I'm scared. And then they're putting him on the stretcher and kind of wheeling him out of the house. And he asked again, honey, will you play that song on the piano? And she said, I can't Dad I'm scared, like it was too many people. And she's shy. And they took him away in the ambulance, and he died on the way to the hospital. And then she takes this long kind of pregnant pause and slows down and she says, Sometimes I wonder if I had just played that song on the piano, would he relax and maybe his blood wouldn't have pumped through his heart so fast? And maybe he could have made it to the hospital in time for treatment? And maybe it's my fault. Maybe I killed my dad. Okay. Yeah. Wow, I gulped, right, because I'm like, young and wet behind the ears brand new in the field. And the only thing I could think to ask was, who else have you shared this with before? And here's the other gasp. She says no one. Like no one said anything to me. I was just a little kid. The photos came down off the walls. No one took me to a funeral. My mom had a nervous breakdown, my siblings were older and distant. And basically, the only place I could get attention was at school. And so I did really well in school, and then became a teacher. And just as a reminder, this is a woman in her 60s still carrying on this story. And I'm the first person she's told in like 55, 60 years. And so it was then that I decided I really wanted to work with people, be it parents or families or young adults, and work closer to the time when the death happens, in hopes that might prevent their body from wreaking havoc on them later, from unprocessed grief and trauma. And basically, it just inspired my whole shift in my career.
Jennifer Levin
That's an amazing story.
Michelle Post
I know. It's just, it's still sometimes like I can always tell the story without crying. I did it today. But sometimes sometimes I just go right back to that young therapist that was blown away by this woman trusting me with her story. And sometimes that's how it happens. Even today, I'll get someone in who's like 30 years from the time of death in my private practice. It's not always that I see them right away. But someone has noticed that there's a barrier in their life and suggested therapy, you know, and, and that's really powerful work even doing the work long range. Because again, I hope that that mind body connection can be repaired.
Jennifer Levin
Absolutely. Yeah. I know that most of your work right now is with sudden and unexpected That loss. Tell us about the type of clients you work with, and the approach that you take when you work with clients who have experienced a sudden death.
Michelle Post
Yeah, so it's pretty broad in that all my practice is online now. So I don't work with the youngest youngest children anymore since the pandemic. But other than that I work with individuals or couples or families or teens or young adults to 10 years old, if they're verbal, and can handle a little more zoom, you know, I can work with them. But it's just not the best for little kids who really need some play, right? But it's all all kinds of deaths. So illness, accidents, homicide, suicide. And basically, I use my mentors J. William Worden, and he just turned 90. And he wrote a book, one of the first books in the field, grief counseling and grief therapy, which is on its fifth edition. And he has a four task model of grief and loss. So it's kind of my basic guide, along with cognitive behavioral therapy and Gestalt techniques, depending on the client and what feels comfortable to the client. But I do usually explain the four task model of grief and loss and ask people what they think about it, because many people have heard of the Kubler Ross five stages, the dabka, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, and many of my clients have come to me over the years and complained about someone saying, oh, you're in the denial phase. Oh, you're in the anger phase, you know, and it doesn't feel like a fit for them. And most of my clients will say that, in general, the forecast model seems to give them a sense of what they're going through. Yeah.
Jennifer Levin
Can you give us just an overview of the 4 tasks?
Michelle Post
So the first task is accepting the reality that the person has died, which, you know, comes and goes over the years, it's not just first few months of a death, right, you can have a good thing happen in your life and want to pick up the phone to call your loved one and realize, again, I can't call them and that can happen over the lifespan. And then there's processing the pain of the death, which is all the thoughts and feelings and emotions connected to the death of someone close. And the third is adjusting to life without that person living. And that's everything from Who am I if my only child dies? Am I still apparent? You know, am I am I still married? If my spouse died, it's all that stuff. And it's also the actual tasks, who's going to make me my lunch? She was the accountant person in our family, I don't know where all the bills are kept. I don't know how to balance the checkbook. Like it's all of those kind of task adjustments and figuring out which tasks can I learn, and which ones do I need to farm out or hire someone to help me with, and then the internal process of who am I now that this person has died, that's the third task. And then the fourth task has changed its wording over the years. But right now, it's, it's something like finding ways to remember the person who died while continuing on life's journey. So it's not a pack up the photos and never talk about them. Again, it's finding ways to incorporate your connection and your bond with them, you're continuing bond with them over the lifespan, acknowledging the meaning that they've had in your life, while still loving yourself, taking care of yourself, honoring and taking care of the other people in your life that you love continuing on with your own life. So, and it's not meant to be 1, 2, 3, 4. And you're done. They circle around. And sometimes you're processing more than one task at the same time. Or an activator can happen in your life. Like one of my clients whose dad died at age five, when she got married. Again, she was adjusting to the reality that someone else had to walk her down the aisle, she had to figure out who was going to walk her down the aisle. She had pain that she was processing around, not having her dad there for that important occasion. And then she carried a photo of him in her on her chest inside of her dress as a way to remember him on that special day. And they gave toasts to him at the reception, so it was all four tasks wrapped up in that same life event. You know, 30 years after her dad had died.
Jennifer Levin
Great I love Dr. Worden's model. So thank you for for describing that to everyone. You've also had personal experience with sudden death? Would you mind sharing that story with and the impact it's had on your career as well?
Michelle Post
Yeah. I mean, I, being a member of several communities, I've had a lot of sudden death in my life. But the one that probably had the most impact was when my uncle died. I was an undergraduate at UCLA, and he had had a psychological break, and he died by suicide. And his only child, my cousin, found him. And it pretty much rocked our whole family to the core. Many people having struggles with mental illness as a concept and feeling like you could pray it away and heavy, heavy religious family and kind of shook that all to the core. And I would say, you know, as a young undergraduate studying psychology, I didn't consciously think that it had any impact on my career. And certainly when I decided to go back to grad school and become a marriage and family therapist, I wanted to do couples work and relational work. I wasn't consciously aiming towards grief. But then once I got into grief and loss, I had a lot of ties to training people in suicide prevention, getting a lot of the training myself, working with suicide survivors, and people who were grieving a death by suicide. And I just have to say, lived experience is such a powerful teacher, even if my clients don't know that I've had a personal experience with suicide death, I think they feel felt. I think they feel that I get it without judgment. Right. So I think that's that's how my uncle, and I continue, you know, now that I have this concept of remembering and continuing on, I continue to honor my uncle, at the time of his death every year.
Jennifer Levin
Wow. Wow, thank you for sharing that. And I know on top of that, you also recently experienced the death of your father. And I'm curious what that was like for you to be a therapist, helping your clients grieve the death of their loved one, while you are experiencing a deep loss yourself?
Michelle Post
Yeah. It's a that's a doozy question. In all honesty, at times, it was really helpful for me as a therapist to go offline, on my own personal experiences, and feel like I was still able to be of service to other people. That was one part of me. And then at other times, it was really taxing, to balance all the stuff going on in the background with my dad dying, he was within three months of his diagnosis of cancer, he died. And we were with him the last week of his life. And I was seeing clients, because I didn't know how long he was going to live. So it was really taxing to then go between these moments of crises in my family, and then go be of service to another person and kind of compartmentalize it. And it was also in the middle of the pandemic, it was summer, fall 2021. So the hardest part as a therapist was when a client was processing through some of the same feelings, and experiences and pain that I was going through, particularly the complications of COVID. And trying to see your loved one in the hospital when maybe you were limited, or the complications when you were planning a funeral or memorial service, like, will people be able to come or not. And we had, we had both experiences. So our funeral was in Southern California. And some some of our friends and family were comfortable coming others lived in Canada couldn't get out of the country to come. And so we felt both the comfort of we were able to allow people to watch online, the funeral. So we had this sense of like local community and then people watching from afar and feeling the support. But then because of my dad's burial wishes there was an outbreak in Eastern Canada, and we moved from planning a whole other memorial service for people that couldn't leave the country and could be there to the memorial service to oh, you know, it can be inside with an officiant Oh, no, now it's got to be outside with an officiant everybody messed up to no one can come into the county if you don't already live in the county without permission from the provincial government. And so it ended up being a burial which just me, my mother and my brother and his wife, no officiant. And we all had to get provincial permission to go there and bury my dad. So we felt that pain of having this tremendous life experience without anyone else around. It was very isolating and sad. And I've had many and then we have two other uncles die in the last five months of 2021. So, you know, there were other family members that experienced what we experienced that tug and pull of having people there and not there. And it was, it was really hard to go through that, and then run home to my Airbnb and see a few clients. And then run back out and help my mother, establish her. So we had to move my mom into assisted living. Because my dad was her caretaker. So it was like all this stuff going on. And then you need to like, shut up and listen to other people tell their story. But again, I guess I just felt like, okay, even if I'm not talking about what's going on with me, I think they can feel how much I'm empathizing with them. I think they can sense that my lived experience is right there with them through what they're going through.
Jennifer Levin
That took a lot of inner strength to be able to hold space for others. Yes, and hold space for your own feelings. At the same time.
Michelle Post
I'm still recovering from that. I still have a I have a smaller practice now. And I have a lot of downtime for self care. Because it was just, it was like three things at once you were always doing in those four or five months from diagnosis to burial. Yeah,
Jennifer Levin
I'm glad you brought up the self care. Some of the very first ways that I began to interact with you was through some of your self care workshops, and you've been a proponent of self care for as long as I've known you. Yes. Talk to us about some of your own self care practices.
Michelle Post
Okay. Okay. Well, so back at the chronic pain clinic, that's where I started learning, stress management techniques and self care techniques, because it's so important for that mind body connection and healing, right. So I and I also don't believe in asking my clients to do anything that I don't do myself,
Jennifer Levin
good for you.
Michelle Post
So my own self care is that periodically, including right now I enter my own therapy with a practitioner that fits for me. And I also on top of that have a spiritual coach that I meet with here and there, I do a lot of free flow journaling, just with a timer. And I do massage therapy, and a lot of personal growth reading and podcasts and, and then like your regular health care treatment, and to your dentist and all that because you know, there's physical self care, right? And then I clean my house, that's also environmental self care, because I do better when my house is organized, okay. And, and then physical self care is also walking and hiking in nature. I don't live very far from the beach. So I like to do some walking on the beach, or there's beautiful hiking trails very nearby. And periodically, I don't have the most consistent meditation practice, but I do have a meditation practice and do some self hypnosis and I make sure I have plenty of time to sleep even if my body doesn't allow me to use all the time for sleep because I'm at that age where insomnia and hormones are battling with me. But I do make time for sleep. And don't find myself one of those patrons have I only you know, bragging about how I only need four hours of sleep. No. And then creativity so long time ago, I learned the power of creativity. So I do everything from painting to little do it yourself projects. Probably the most common is gardening I have a garden and I like music and just last night we went out to a concert by the beach and enjoyed some Jammie music, which is very meditative in and of itself. Kind of fun. And definitely, you know, having a good social network, my partner Brian, my friends, my family, they're a big help and a part of my social self care network. I do think being of service to others, whether it's through my actual work or someone's actual work or just volunteerism or I, you know, one of my volunteer aspects of my life is my podcast with my colleague, Scott, where we focus on coping with anxiety and stress. And I learned from him and he learns from me. And then it's also like social self care. And then I think some good old distraction techniques, which probably aren't the healthiest, like video games and TV and coffee and cheese, which might be counterproductive sometimes, but it's still true. It's part of my self care. My advice is, gotta have some.
Jennifer Levin
That's great. I love how you pointed out that self care is multi dimensional, like your environmental self care, your physical self care. I love that you talked about going to the dentist getting your medical appointments. Yes, you know, self care is not just lying by the pool and the manicure and the pedicure. It's so much more than that. And the social network, the creativity, the intellectual pursuits, and yeah, self care takes planning, it has to be intentional. You need time, I love how enriched your self care program is and you've always been a model for me in self care.
Michelle Post
Thank you, I, I honestly was just at the dentist getting a cleaning. And that is some of the most uncomfortable self care that I do. But I advocate for myself and ask for numbing gel. So the experience is better. Okay. And then as I sit there in the in the dental chair, I actually talk to my body and tell it, you know, I know this isn't the most comfortable, but I'm taking care of you and you matter to me actually talk to my body, like it's a friend. When I'm getting a massage or getting my hair done. And they're shampooing my hair, I really bring my, I call it my spacesuit. So it's imperfect. My body is so imperfect, especially at my age, but I talk to it like I would like a baby or a loving friend or something like that. And thank it you know, it's the way that I can speak it's the way that I can think it's the way I can move around my environment. And I ask it to work with me through some of my health care issues. Right, like, work with me, I'm working with you. And I think that's a part of my self care, too, is my self talk is really strong, positive self talk.
Jennifer Levin
I just love that. I think I might have to try that one. The question I always ask everybody at the end. What advice do you have for individuals who are really struggling with just intense grief and pain after a sudden and unexpected loss?
Michelle Post
I think the first thing I would say is just by listening to this podcast, I hope you realize you're not alone, that we can fool ourselves at the depths of despair. And forget that there are loving caring people in the world that want to support you. So number one, try to remember that you're not alone, don't fall prey to that distortion that you're alone. And then I would say that maybe some of the things that are causing you to feel alone are the differences in the way others around you are processing their grief because there are often male, female or age differences in the way people cope or process with grief. So if you're in community and feeling like well, they're not doing it like I am, I must be wrong, or they're doing it wrong. That is not accurate. There's no right or wrong way to grieve. There are real differences in the way people grieve and they're all okay. I think the only exception I would say to that is that we've seen that white knuckling through your grief, like you know, when you grip the steering wheel so tight that your knuckles lose their blood flow and they become white, white knuckling through your grief Oh, I'll get through it just this year just this month, or repression or avoidance about talking or writing about it or sharing your thoughts or feelings around grief is very ineffective, and often just causes a delay in grief. Yes, you need to find safe places to do it. But just repression and avoidance are not effective long term. They're not sustainable long term. So I would suggest that you make an appointment with your grief in some way. If it's not with the therapist, do it on your own. Set a 30 minute timer. Look at photos. Think of your memories, cry if you feel it coming on. Or if you just have emotions and you can't cry. That's normal too, just sit with the sadness or the worry, or the regret or the anger or the relief, just feel and observe your feelings for that time, rather than repressing them or shoving them down. And then when the timer, when the 30 minute timer goes off, take a nap or shower or splash water on your face or wash your hands, all while breathing and just kind of re grounding yourself. But that practice of 30 minutes to an hour where you're actually making time to process your grief, with or without a professional is so important.
Jennifer Levin
I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. So anything else you'd like to add?
Michelle Post
I don't know how much you cover this. But I think I want to highlight it since I mentioned the differences in grief. Young children grieve by playing and so grief groups for other kids often help them more than talk therapy. Or divorce and death are different. So avoid grief groups that mix divorce and death together. Most people say it's really unhelpful. Whether you're divorced or going through divorce or death it's just unhelpful. They're different kinds of loss. And then I'm a woman, you're a woman, I've learned a lot about men and grief over the years, including a neurologist taught this to me, and many of the men I work with have confirmed that men have this nothing compartment in their brain, where they go to about two to five times a day, and they think and do nothing. And it's really helpful for their coping and the exhaustion that comes with grief. But if you're in relationship with a man, and you come along, and you're like, Oh, Hi, honey, like, what? What are you thinking? And they say nothing. Like believe them. They're not grieving wrong, you know, don't harass, why are you thinking about nothing, don't harass them just if you need to talk to them. Ask them you know, when would be a good time for you to talk and let them have their nothing space? It's bizarre. As a woman whose brain never shuts off, my brain never shuts off. I haven't I have no nothing compartment, none, zero. But they often do, males often do. So it's very helpful for the sustainability of your relationships with your children, your friends, and your co workers and your partner. If you're in a, you know, different sex relationship,
Jennifer Levin
So the nothing compartment really exists.
Michelle Post
They're not trying to hide it from you. They're just literally in the shutdown nothing space, a couple of minutes, two to five times a day they go there.
Jennifer Levin
I think my son lives in there more often than not.
Michelle Post
He might. You know, the stats may have gone up.
Jennifer Levin
Very good to know. Well, we are going to put in our notes, a link to your podcast. We'll also put Dr. Wordon's book in there, and any other references that you have. And we also have a Facebook group, just for the podcast. So we'll put all of that information in both the show notes and in the Facebook group as well. And give you an opportunity to go in there and say hello, also. So it's been an absolute delight to have you with us today. I want to say thank you so much for your time and your wisdom and your expertise. It's just been a delight connecting with you over the years and I look forward to that more to come. So thank you to Michelle Post, everyone today, and we'll be signing off for now.
I have known Michelle for over 10 years and have had a chance to attend many of her self-care and grief trainings. Whenever I am in her presence, I always learn from her. I am drawn to her commitment to her work and the passion she has for her clients. Together we also share similarities in how we work with our clients using a multi-dimensional approach to self-care. Michelle has taught me so much about how to navigate grief on a personal level. She allowed herself to be transparent about her experiences while maintaining professionalism and the ability to hold space for her clients. I consider her to be a mentor, colleague, and friend and we are fortunate that she is providing services to individuals who have experienced a sudden death. If you want an opportunity to connect with Michelle please join our facebook group “Talking about the Podcast Untethered with Dr. Levin.” Michelle’s contact information is available along with information about her podcast and we have also included the citation for Dr. Worden's book. Thank you so much for joining today’s episode of Untethered Healing the Pain After a Sudden Death. For help with a sudden and unexpected loss, sign up for my free mini course, where I will teach you about the 3 Truths About Living With A Sudden and Unexpected Loss. Please visit www.fromgrieftogrowth.com to sign up.
