The Dr. John Delony Show
Grief Expert: The Key to Overcoming Life’s Hardest Moments (With David Kessler)
Mon, 11 Nov 2024
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Chapter 1: What is grief and why is it important to address?
If you're dying, your marriage is falling apart, you're in the worst moments of your life, you want David Kessler there. It bothered me. I wanted to be, oh, you're having a party? You've got to get David Kessler there. I didn't want to be the death grief guy.
Yo, yo, what's going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. So grateful to be here with you. Listen, we're talking about your emotional health, your mental health, your relationships. And underneath all of those things is hard moments, hard seasons. Every single person I know, you included, goes through hard seasons. We go through loss.
We go through things that we want to happen that don't happen. And if you have listened to this show for any period of time, you know I've referred to this man, the great David Kessler. I have recommended his book, Finding Meaning, over and over and over and over again. I think it is the masterpiece on dealing with not only heavy things like personal loss and romantic loss, but just all loss.
Well, he's on the show today. We're having a two-part conversation. When I got going with him, dude, I took out my notepad. I started taking notes. It's one of the most incredible conversations of my lifetime. And I'm so grateful that the cameras were rolling and that you get to be a part of this amazing conversation. In this first part... We cover the gamut. I want you to sit down.
I want you to pull out a piece of paper. I want you to take some notes. I want you to digest this episode because this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for you and your loved ones and your friends and family to sit with a guy who's been there personally, a guy who's been there professionally, and a guy who has helped me immensely sitting with hurting people.
Listen to my conversation with the great David Kessler. This is the first half of the interview. Check it out. I first read this when my son was younger.
2019.
Okay, yeah. Sounds about right. So my son was, I think, Yeah, maybe nine. And I remember not having a psychology for it. And so I used to work in residence halls in universities and I would hug these dads who were dropping their daughters off and they would be sobbing and I would be rolling my eyes out of the back of my head.
And then I remember dropping my son off when he was like one at a local Tuesday, Thursday school and I just sobbed in the parking lot. And so then fast forward, now I've got an empathy for... Your time's not here yet, but that pain is real, right? These people aren't. Reading this was a heavy, I didn't have a, I didn't have an exhale for it. And I imagine eight years later.
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Chapter 2: How can we find meaning in loss?
It's data.
Okay.
Take it in, look at it. Here's the problem, especially in grief. We feel a feeling, and we have the luxury of being one of the first generations to have feelings about feelings.
Literally. Will you unpack that? Because that's really important.
I'm angry. Anger is inappropriate. Let me just unfeel it and throw it behind me. It's inappropriate to be angry. okay? I'm sad. But people have it so much worse. I mean, look at the world. Look at what happened to Janet. Look at what happened to Bill. Let me throw that behind me.
And so we keep throwing half-felt feelings behind us and just carry them with us, unfelt, trying to get our attention all the time. And One of the things that our mind says is you don't understand if you feel like, David, if I start crying, I might never stop. Yeah. I say to people, I have been with thousands of people. Everyone stopped crying. Doesn't mean we don't start again in our life.
Everyone stops crying. So feelings are data. They're information. They're knowledge about us. They're the way forward in terms of understanding our own psyche. And no feeling is a fact. And no feeling is final. Good grief, David, you're giving me all kind of... This is like, oh my gosh, you know, my spouse died. I'm going to have 40 more years of sitting at the kitchen table lonely every night.
Yeah, that's what your mind, you're lonely today, and you're right, your spouse is never going to be there again. You have to grieve that. But we don't know what your feelings really are for the next 40 years. Right. I mean, you know your future is not written. Right. But those feelings we think are written today. I'm going to be broken forever. I'm going to be sad forever.
Well, we know you feel sad and broken today. I mean, we actually don't know the future. So feelings are huge. In this, I'm just going to show you this. Let me tell you, one of the things people go, I say, what are you feeling right now? I don't know. I'm numb. I don't know. I don't know. I feel numb. People think in feelings we have, Anger, sadness, happy. That's my choice.
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