Episode 180: Thriving Through and Beyond Grief as a Highly Sensitive Person with Krista O'Reilly-Davi-Digui

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We will all grieve at some point - not only because grief comes in many forms (not only from the death of a loved one) but also because death is a natural part of being human. Yet we live in a grief and trauma illiterate society which often isolates and harms those doing their best to keep their head above water and find their way forward through and beyond painful life experiences. 

All trauma involves grief / not all grief involves trauma. As an HSP, our experience of grief (including traumatic grief) can be even more intense, and in some cases complicated, than for others. It can feel scary, we might feel like we're 'doing it wrong,' and internal and external judgment often adds a whole new layer of pain or grief to what we're navigating. In this session, 

Krista will share some truths/practices that can help HSPs bring compassion to their grief experience, find a sense of safety in the midst of the storm, and thrive forward through and beyond pain and grief. 

MEET OUR GUEST HOST

Krista O'Reilly-Davi-Digui is a highly sensitive human, life partner of 30 years, and proud and affirming mom of 3 including her highly sensitive son who died by suicide in 2019. She’s also a writer and Joyful Living Educator, and lives on Treaty 6 Territory in central Alberta, Canada. Through story, grief and trauma-informed education, and brave community, Krista’s words and work empower midlife women to befriend their True Selves and (re)claim freedom, health and joy. If you would like to know more about Krista and her work, please visit: Befriend Your True Self | Walk in Freedom, Health + JOY | A Life In Progress

The HSP Podcast was created by Julie Bjelland, LMFT, a renowned HSP Psychotherapist and a visionary leader in the field of high sensitivity. As the founder of the Sensitive Empowerment movement, she is passionately committed to raising awareness about the extraordinary value inherent in sensitivity. Recognizing the vital importance of education and support, Julie is dedicated to equipping HSPs with the necessary tools to reduce their susceptibility to mental and physical health challenges. Her extensive array of resources stands as a heartfelt endeavor to provide this essential support. Learn more at ⁠JulieBjelland.com⁠.

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Transcript

00:00:03.300 Welcome. I'm Krista O'Reilly-Davi-Digui and I work as a writer, holistic mind-body coach, and joyful living educator with Midlife Women. I'm very happy to be here with you. We are recording live in the sensitive empowerment community, and it is a welcoming space for sensitive souls like myself. You can learn more and join us at sensitivecommunity.com.

00:00:29.400 Today's topic is thriving through and beyond grief as an HSP. It is a big topic, and you know in a limited amount of time, I've decided to hone in or narrow my focus on or down to grief arising from loss of a loved one. You can add questions in the chat or save them for the end.

00:00:57.960 Once we end the recording, we will have a chance to connect and share experiences or ask questions. And if you are listening to the recording, I'll make sure that I'm popping in several times over the next few weeks and just watching for your questions or comments as well.

00:01:20.940 So to begin, this feels important to me to say that although I offer my work from a grief and trauma-informed perspective, I'm mostly coming here to join you as a mother and a human with experience of grief or my own relationship with grief.

00:01:44.580 And it feels really important to me because theory is one thing, and it can be useful, and lived experience is a whole other ball game. So my parents died fairly young, 10 and 20 years ago. I've lost many other close family members. And this month, four years ago, my highly sensitive son died by suicide at 23 years old.

00:02:15.840 So my relationship with grief and my understanding and experience of grief and trauma and how to not only survive, but continue living fully and even thriving forward has radically changed over the past four years.

00:02:39.120 We live in a largely grief illiterate and grief phobic world, which is really odd considering you know grief is like the number or the only thing that we know for sure is a certainty in our life. But it's something that we avoid. We avoid talking about it. It's uncomfortable. We also live in a very kind of disembodied culture.

00:03:07.200 And that can often mean that we're very out of touch with physical sensations and our emotional experience and often afraid of what's happening in our bodies. And also what do I want to say? I lost my train of thought. I'll just jump ahead.

00:03:31.020 So I believe that grief is sacred, and the work of grief is incredibly important. We can't bypass it. And if we try to do so, the work will be prolonged.

00:03:58.380 If we don't do the work or allow grief to do its work in us, we're kind of keeping a lot of emotion and memory stored in the body or stuck in the body, and it will find a way to be heard one way or another.

00:04:20.040 Two things just generally relevant to a conversation around grief that I have needed to know and that I think can help other highly sensitive humans do this work. One, it really is this hard. Now, every experience of grief is different, and I have no desire to speak over your experience.

00:04:46.920 So my experience of loss with my parents was really difficult and you know just was nothing like the death and trying to live again after the loss of my child. So you know all of our experiences are different and valid, but something I've really needed to hear and have affirmed is it really is this hard.

00:05:15.660 And you're not doing it wrong if it's so, so, so hard, even though other people want you to get over it or be better, yeah, it really can be this hard. And hard doesn't mean bad or wrong. And that is something that is another kind of societal message that we get, like if something's messy, if something is painful, it must be wrong.

00:05:49.140 And the reality is being human in a messy world involves pain. It involves stretching and struggle and growth. And a lot of that comes through discomfort. And the second thing that I wish I had known is that early grief lasts two to three years.

00:06:18.420 So acute grief are those first weeks and months following the loss. But early grief can last up to two years. And if there's trauma involved as with suicide loss, it is very normal that those first three years of loss are still early grief. Again, you know we need to know this because the world will tell us otherwise.

00:06:51.000 It took me three years to climb up out of survival into thriving again. And that doesn't mean that the thriving again feels easy. After that, that first two to three years, we enter the season of mature grief. All right.

00:07:16.260 So having said that, I would like to share some truths and practices to help you as a highly sensitive human bring compassion to your grief experience, find a felt sense of safety in the storm, and thrive forward through and beyond deep grief. So move at the speed of safety.

00:07:49.260 It's an expression that I learned from one of my instructors. We get to heal at the speed of safety or move at the speed of safety. And in my work, I often repeat over and over and over safety first. The reason is that we cannot grow, heal, or learn if our nervous system doesn't feel safe.

00:08:17.700 And after grief and traumatic loss, life feels chaotic or unmoored, uncertain, and we have usually or often lost that felt sense of safety. So we do need to figure out how to restore that. One of the primary ways that we create safety for ourselves is through compassion.

00:08:43.800 No amount of bullying, judging, shaming, criticizing can help you move faster through your experience. So if you take away nothing else from this, I would hope that you walk away remembering that self-compassion is one of the kindest and wisest things you can offer yourself ever.

00:09:11.400 And not only in grief, but ever. And I'm going to speak to this a little bit more later, we can't do this alone, and we need an empathetic witness. We need other people or even one other person to just be a witness with us and for us in our grief. Not only resisting grief, but resisting pain, resisting the reality of our lives while very normal.

00:09:48.480 And there is zero shame or judgment in this at all. But it's important enough that I want to mention it. Resistance can make things worse or prolong the pain. And this is a tricky thing. And we're also going to talk about paradox a little bit later. There is a very natural grappling and wrestling that can come up when we have lost somebody that we love and our world has changed.

00:10:22.860 And again, you can't rush that. And there is no judgment. And you don't have to try to make yourself get to a place of surrender or acceptance. But often what happens very naturally and messily and lots of heartache and hard work is that we do this work and we get to a place of greater peace or acceptance. Use the language that serves you in this season of life as we just kind of come face-to-face with the new reality of our lives.

00:10:58.140 And I'm going to talk about this in just a moment. As an HSP, we tend to feel things really intensely. And a lot of us will have again, this is going to vary according to the type of loss you are navigating. But you know maybe you think back about your previous experiences or if you're in it right now, you can bring compassion to your experience if you're noticing something like this.

00:11:26.640 As HSPs, because we feel things so intensely and that can be emotions and that can also be physical sensations, we might have experiences of panic, being flooded with anxiety, other physical sensations like going numb or cold or pressure in the chest, whatever that is for you.

00:11:56.520 And it can feel really scary. So what happens is often our brain tells us there's danger. You know Maybe we're feeling these physical sensations and emotions, and our brain interprets that as danger. And we become fearful of that experience in our bodies. And that kind of fear loop can almost keep us stuck.

00:12:26.580 So learning how to find safety even in the panic, even in the intense discomfort, even in the anxiety will be one thing that can help you as you go. And I don't have time to talk about the how of that, but I'll plant that seed. And then that's something that you can investigate or explore for yourself. So we need a lot of rest and spaciousness to heal and grieve.

00:12:58.680 You know that as an HSP. You need that anyway. And you're going to need that way more if you are navigating grief. A little side note, I guess, for some of us, you know when we have experiences of grief, some people need to quit work or take time off. And for others of us, that's actually dangerous.

00:13:27.480 We need something where our focus is directed and it serves like an anchor in the storm. And after my son died, my work was one of those hopeful things that kept me above water. I could barely do any at first. And I think the first year I maybe did five hours a week, second year, maybe 15 hours a week, but it's nonetheless served as an anchor in the storm.

00:13:56.460 And if that's true for you, you take care of you and just notice where you might tend towards overwork as an avoidance tactic. So I want to come back to this sort of how we feel things so deeply. And there are a few things I want to say here. One, you may have heard this, depending on what else you've listened to in this community, you may have listened to some other people talk about the nervous system, the autonomic nervous system.

00:14:26.160 Our nervous system's job is to keep us safe and alive. That's it. Some of the ways that learns to do that are maladaptive. Some of them keep us alive in crises. And then we have to learn new patterns once we're out of crises. But your nervous system job will keep you safe and alive. And if you're here, it has done its job. And there are a few threads here that I want to mention.

00:14:56.220 So I talked about that intensity that HSPs experience. And one misconception is that if we are an empathic person, a gut-led, intuitive person, or even kind of a body-centered person, the belief is that we're really good at this.

00:15:19.980 And interestingly, what I have discovered for myself and through years of work as well is that as HSPs, because of that intensity, most of us aren't necessarily aware of how much we've developed patterns of dissociation or of numbing or in some cases, you know healthy soothing, but things to help decrease the intensity of these physical and emotional experiences.

00:15:56.100 And again, there's nothing bad or wrong with this. Sometimes it is too much. And it's not even safe to try to feel all the things at once. So as an HSP, if you are navigating grief, I would invite you to compassionately bring awareness to what is happening in your body.

00:16:30.480 What are the emotions that are dominant? And just keep in mind that there are surface emotions like anger and rage, and often underneath them lie other emotions. And these are valid, and these are valid. They're all valid. But often, anger could come up. And anger is easier and more accessible than the deep pain of loss or self-blame.

00:17:04.500 Your child dies, your spouse dies, your baby dies, and we can tip into self-blame and self-judgment because that is as painful as that is, sometimes it's easier to access or more safe than going into the reality of life without that person. So you may notice things that not everybody notices.

00:17:35.460 People don't really talk about this. Like Even though I work in these circles, anywhere outside of sort of my educational spaces, people aren't aware of these things. So my body tends to act like a canary in the coal mine and a walking textbook, a walking trauma textbook. I didn't know these things, and I needed to know them way earlier than I did. So I mentioned, you might notice sensations like numbness or coldness.

00:18:06.240 Your body may tip more easily into panic and anxiety than some people. You may notice after stress or deep grief, profound grief, and traumatic grief that your body starts shaking. It can feel really scary. Sometimes it might shake violently almost, and you might just need somebody to come and be with you or gently wrap their arms around you, not to stop the shaking just to be with you in that experience.

00:18:38.700 But I even experienced like years after a massage where I feel very safe, my body started shaking after. And because I was in a safe environment, I could just you know let my therapist know I have some space on my own and allow my body to do the work that it needed to do. And often, that is a way that our body naturally discharges stress and trauma.

00:19:10.800 But there are other ways that if you are navigating grief that kind of turns your life upside down, you may tip back into old patterns of you know drinking and disordered eating or perfectionism as a way to try to create order or safety in your world. And if you notice these patterns, you can reach out for support and be honest about them.

00:19:41.160 But again, remove the shame and judgment because my perspective is that you need to do what it takes to stay alive and stay above water, especially in those earliest stages. So that leads me into another point that you may or may not have considered as an HSP.

00:20:10.380 Hopefully, you've heard that in our mind, emotions, body, it's all connected. There's this bidirectional pathway. The state of our body impacts our moods and ability to focus and think clearly. And our mental state also impacts our physical experience. So what I have found is that somatic work, so somatic grief work, somatic trauma therapies are really effective for highly sensitive souls.

00:20:45.360 There are other wonderful evidence-based therapies that are more cognitive, but memory and energy and emotion is stored in the body. And remember, I touched on how we can have some really sneaky and strong self-protective mechanisms that we're not even conscious of a lot of the time.

00:21:09.360 And what can happen is we go into talk therapy, say, or you know when we start storytelling and we disconnect from our body as we do that. And I won't say more about that. I just want to point you towards the idea that somatic therapies can be very effective in supporting us through hard life experiences.

00:21:34.980 So things like EMDR, somatic experiencing, brain spotting, sensory, motor psychotherapy, etc. I've done lots of different things, and all of them have brought in supported me in different ways. Also, you may notice that your body naturally begins to rock or stim.

00:22:07.800 I mentioned shaking. You may groan or sile sigh. And in the early months and years, depending again on the type of loss, there may also be this deep wail or rage that needs to be expressed. It's so uncomfortable, so vulnerable. And there may not be many spaces where you feel safe to give that a voice.

00:22:39.420 But I do encourage you to recognize that these are very healthy ways that your body is trying to bring you back into a place of healing and stability and safety. Even years later, you know grief may arise loud unexpectedly, and you may notice that there's this sort of groan or sigh. And again, these are incredibly beautiful and wise ways that our body knows to take care of us.

00:23:16.440 So all of that was sort of about the idea of bringing safety, kind of restoring felt sense of safety through compassion. And I want to chat now about community. And so we can't do this alone, and we need safe and brave community, but we also need to be really wise about whose voice we're listening to and who we're allowing into our inner circle and our spaces.

00:23:49.860 This includes professional people or people in professional roles and grief circles. It also includes friends and family and faith communities. Not everybody is trauma and grief informed. Most people are not, right? And there's a rising movement in the professional world where you know things are improving and access to grief-informed care is improving.

00:24:22.860 But you do need to be wise because there is a lot of harm being perpetuated, a lot of harmful beliefs, harmful practices that can end up shaming and isolating people who are already hurting. So if, for instance, you want because I do believe community matters. We need each other. And I'm a strong introvert as well.

00:24:53.040 So when I say this, it doesn't come easily to me. My instinct is always withdraw. And I've had to learn to move against that instinct to make a bid for connection, whether that's a quick text to somebody, a good friend, or a sibling, and just say, "I'm not okay right now. I am in pain." Doesn't mean I want to talk about it. It means I'm making this bid for connection, just remembering that there's a thread connecting me to other people who love me, and I am not alone in the world.

00:25:28.260 I needed a grief circle, but only a circle very specific to my type of loss. I'm not a group person necessarily, and so I'm really careful about where I am willing to engage. So you know I'm here because this feels like a safe, welcoming, beautiful community.

00:25:58.080 So I needed a suicide loss-specific space because that is an entirely different experience from other forms of loss. So just keep that in mind. You know There is a place for all sorts of groups and all sorts of counseling spaces and communities. But just know that it doesn't mean they're all right for you.

00:26:25.380 And it might feel really challenging for a while to find the spaces that are right for you. And I encourage you to not give up, to persist because it matters that much. As a highly sensitive human, there's a good chance that you would do better in an online space, online grief circle, online EMDR, more than going in person. I mean, that may not be accurate for you, but I find that that is common for those of us who are highly sensitive.

00:26:58.380 So a few other things that I want to touch on around the idea of community matters. Not every relationship survives grief. So grief and trauma can be a catalyst for tremendous growth and pruning in our lives. Sometimes it just removes our ability to deal with unhealthy things that we've tolerated in the past.

00:27:27.600 And it's just like, "Okay, we're done." And you release those relationships that maybe needed to be released years before. Some people will leave, and you may find new beautiful relationships. If you are grieving, you don't need to be fixed. You need to be witnessed. And many people in the world you know will stop you at the grocery store or wherever and say really obnoxious things to you.

00:27:58.380 And it's usually for one of two reasons. One, nobody has modeled to them a healthier way of witnessing people in their pain. And two, it's to alleviate their own discomfort. So when people offer kind of spiritual pad answers or they tell you they're in a better place or blah, blah, blah. Blah Often that's for them. They feel uncomfortable and they want to feel better.

00:28:27.180 So they come up with an answer. As you know a mom who buried a child after you know a death by suicide, I heard all sorts of horrific things. And it was really painful. And now I'm in a place where you know there's more space between me and them.

00:28:52.800 And I can see you know in 99.9% of the cases, people are not trying to harm, but that doesn't mean they aren't harming. And so this is a conversation that needs to kind of be ongoing, and we need to be practicing together and learning together and modeling new ways of being with and for each other. As an HSP, your body and home are your safe spaces. Again, I never want to speak over you or your experience.

00:29:23.940 So you know maybe it isn't true for you. You are the expert on your own body and life. But think about that. For many of us as HSPs, our physical kind of bubble and our home are safe spaces. And we have every right to say no, to have strong boundaries, even inflexible boundaries in those early years.

00:29:54.180 We have a right to put our own needs first, even when it makes other people angry with us. So not everybody gets to come to the funeral or memorial. Not everybody gets to hug you because they want to without consent. People don't get to just show up at your door and expect a conversation because that's what they want.

00:30:18.960 You get to be the guard and protector of those safe spaces for yourself. I would even be cautious or at the very least, yeah, just awake to the impact of anybody entering those spaces if you are navigating trauma or profound grief. So you know a plumber coming in and chatting to you or whatever, the energy that people bring into your home can actually be very activating to your nervous system.

00:30:52.200 So you know just being aware of that might be helpful for you. Or maybe you know as you love somebody else navigating their own grief experience. And finally, in this area here, I just want to say that family and friends who love you may not be the best people to hold space for you depending on the loss and depending on the duration of sort of the hardest part of your grief journey.

00:31:27.540 They may not know the language. They may not know how to do the work. And when we are really hurting, especially the people really closest to us, like our partner, it can be really scary for them if we're honest about the depth of our pain. So we need other safe places. You know So a therapist, a grief circle, places that are there for that purpose as a container for truth-telling.

00:32:01.320 And then you can come back into those other relationships and you know keep moving forward together. But again, this is something that people may assume that, "Well, if they love me, they should be here for me." But it doesn't mean they can be, right? We all grieve differently. So in my home, after the loss of my son, my youngest daughter and I are highly sensitive humans, and then my older daughter and my husband are not.

00:32:34.680 The ways that we experience grief in our bodies is completely different. The ways that we heal and find our way forward are very different. And all of it is allowed. Nobody's doing it wrong. All righty. So I'm going to move into the third kind of is that true? Is it the third? Yeah.

00:33:02.520 It's the last part of you know what I really wanted to share with you. And it's around thriving forward. You know That's something that I kind of made up myself. And I've come across some people talking about grief and aid and empowering way. But for years and years and years, I hadn't found it anyway. So I didn't even know that it was possible.

00:33:31.800 You know I didn't have that language, and it's been so helpful for me that I do want to share it with you. One of the key ways that I know to thrive forward through and beyond grief is by embracing paradox.

00:33:53.940 So embracing paradox means to be able to hold two seemingly impossible or contradictory truths at once. I also call it a practice of both and. So for instance, a brave and beautiful life includes joy and pain.

00:34:24.120 I can be strong and resilient and also be hurting really badly or grieving. One doesn't cancel the other out. And again, this is one of the most powerful, impactful practices that I know, that I have lived, and that I offer other people.

00:34:53.040 We love binaries and boxes because they make us feel safer. They lower uncertainty. They're neat and tidy. But real life and human beauty and diversity doesn't fit neat and tidy into binaries and boxes. And your grief does not need to fit neat and tidy into anyone else's little box.

00:35:20.760 It can be both and. So something I've noticed you know years out, again, this month is four years since my son left the world. If I express you know my excitement about a creative project I'm working on or you know something positive, many people automatically assume, "Oh, she's all better," you know as though grief is all or nothing.

00:35:52.320 And of course, that isn't true. Or if I express pain or despair, some people interpret, and that means she's all despair. She's only hurting. You know And it's like, no, these realities live simultaneously in our bodies and our lives.

00:36:13.020 And you know it's one of the things even that you can practice thematically is noticing like when the pain feels so big, when it feels like your whole body is pain, you might notice listen inward or look and say, "Oh, but I notice that my hands are okay. My hands don't feel in pain." You might notice that actually, I thought it was my whole body, and then I realized, really, it's only like my upper you know abdomen, part of my body.

00:36:45.240 And that may sound silly to some people, but what you're doing is reminding your brain of the truth of both and. It's not all or nothing either/or. We have permission to feel all the feelings, all the emotions. None of them are bad. Rage and anger are not bad. They are just as healthy as hope and delight.

00:37:16.500 Emotions aren't good or bad. They are simply messengers, information. And again, in this world that loves neat and tidy, there's a lot of pressure to be happy all the time or only express what people consider positive emotions. But my rage needs a voice.

00:37:42.180 It deserves a voice, and I can't heal without giving it a voice. It doesn't mean I go hurt people or weaponize it. But again, it's not one or the other. Rage itself is an expression of our experience, and it needs to be released from our bodies. So all the emotions deserve a voice. I do want to set a side note.

00:38:12.600 Grief tends to bring to the surface old wounds. Anything that has been unhealed in you from the past or some things from the past will surface in your grief. It's interesting how this happens. So that would be something that it might seem like random.

00:38:41.220 And what I have found is we don't have to go looking for things. If it needs to be addressed, it'll rise to the surface. And then you can decide what now. You know So you might take that into EMDR. You might take that into your grief work or whatever. Okay. And so then I want to talk about joy and happiness and well-being. Because if you've gone through the loss of a loved one, you've probably grappled with this.

00:39:11.460 Am I allowed to feel joy when my loved one is gone? Am I wrong for wanting to thrive when they suffered? You know The answer is yes. You are allowed. Their story has come to an end and yours has not. And it's hard. And you are allowed to thrive and to live fully.

00:39:44.640 Joy is a very it's a common human emotion, and it is considered the most vulnerable human emotion. Because it is so vulnerable, we tend to avoid it, armor up against it. And if after you lose a loved one, if you even have this little flutter of happiness or well-being or joy or whatever, you might notice that you get activated.

00:40:13.800 In my case, you know I already knew this. I'd been practicing. But after my son died, I was determined to not shut down joy. And so But the moment I acknowledged it, my whole body would go into panic and dissociation. And I kept practicing because I wanted to rebuild felt sense of safety in joy as much as felt sense of safety in rage.

00:40:45.660 So in case you don't know that, though, I would like you to walk away knowing that, that you know you might find that allowing positive or sorry, positive experiences after your loved one dies is really activating in your nervous system. And that's normal, and it's okay. Be gentle with yourself. Bring compassion to your experience.

00:41:15.720 But try not to shut down the joy or the well-being. Okay. Finally, one thing that I want to offer. This is probably a good helpful thing for any person. But as an HSP, for sure, I suspect this will help you as it has for me.

00:41:39.000 And that is to create and maintain simple, portable rhythms or routines that serve as anchors in the storm. So ideally, we start building some of these into our lives, you know pre-crises, but you can start wherever you are. If you're going through significant loss, you might forget how to eat or shower, and you're going to have to start rebuilding from there, the most basic of habits.

00:42:09.840 But I have certainly found that a simple morning and evening routine, even if that's all I can hang on to, they create a sense of stability and groundedness as the rest of my life feels out of my control. So walking partners, like movement, is really good for releasing stress and pain and processing.

00:42:44.820 So you might want to find walking partners and build it into your calendar so you don't have to think about it. You may not feel like going out ever, but it's built into the calendar. Somebody will be with you. There's a fixed container. So for instance, I would walk a particular nature trail. It's 50 minutes start to finish. So there's this clear container.

00:43:11.100 Somebody was walking with me, and we would get out in any weather three times a week. And sometimes I couldn't make it because I couldn't stop bawling or whatever. But those anchoring routines, rhythms and routines were incredibly important to my healing. So just think about these little ways that you can put things on rinse and repeat. You don't have to have brain bandwidth on any given day.

00:43:42.780 They're just built in to your calendar, and they're little things that just help keep you steady. All right. I'm going to end there. I may have missed so much. Huge conversation, as I already said, but thank you for being here with me. If you would like to join this community, you can do so at sensitivecommunity.com. And to learn more about my work, I invite you to connect with me at alifeinprogress.ca.

00:44:16.980 All right. Thank you.

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