#67 How to Effectively Process Grief And Pain

Rachel Denning (00:01.198)
Hey, my friends, good morning. It is another wonderful day of life. And man, I'm so excited, so excited to be here with you. I hope you guys know that. I hope you know how and can feel how much I genuinely love you and think about you, care about you. You're on my mind a lot and in my heart. And I just count this time, whenever I'm doing these, I'm...

counting this time as time with you. I really wish we could be in person, but you're all over the globe. Rachel and I, we're planning on doing more and more events. We're just gonna start creating retreats. Of course we have our trips, and you can join us on that, because they're just life changing, and we just get to connect and create this bond and these awesome, awesome memories together. So we have our trips, but we're gonna start doing retreats too, retreats for couples and families.

It's because we love, we absolutely love getting together with our people. Right? And we got to have this tribe, all of us, we all need our tribes of people that we just love and have freedom to be ourselves and get inspiration, encouragement. I love it. And speaking of trips, man, whoa, yeah. Thailand is coming up over, it's a couples trip over Valentine's.

and we're getting some slots filled up. There's still a few left. So if you want to have a life changing, marriage changing, family changing trip to Thailand, sign up my friends, get in there, reserve your spot and come with us. It's going to be unbelievable. Unbelievable. And then in the spring we have a US history trip and outdoor adventure trip and

I gotta tell you more about that. That here, I got an object lesson friends. It's gonna be awesome. And then we have our Guatemala trip, of course. And then, man, so exciting, you guys, so exciting. I love it. Okay, so just in the last couple of weeks.

Rachel Denning (02:20.27)
This is, well, it's more and more common now. The more people I speak to, the more people I connect with, it's more common. This is in the last couple weeks.

I've talked to somebody who lost a child.

and the pain and the hurt and the grief and I've met with people who've been through a divorce are going through a divorce or are actually contemplating getting a divorce.

I've talked to people who recently had a breakup of someone they've been dating, a serious girlfriend or boyfriend. I've talked to people who I've met with and worked with people who are dealing with extreme disappointment and pain because of a severe addiction.

You know in one case alcoholism that just had such a negative and painful effect on marriage and children and self of course. I met with people who have contemplated or attempted suicide. So much pain and so much hurt and with people who

Rachel Denning (03:49.646)
have made gigantic mistakes and just are having this incredible battle with forgiveness and overcoming disappointment and disapproval and hurt and struggling to love themselves.

And so I actually had a request from one of you to do a, do a podcast on how to handle grief and pain, how to process it, what to do with it. And because, well, this is going to be, we're going to dive into this, right? Because it needs to be processed. It needs to be worked through. Now, like, let me say this super clearly, please, please hear this and everything I say.

and like giving you strategies and techniques and principles for moving on, don't you ever think that it's not okay to like feel the pain and to feel the grief. And for some of you, like if you lose a child, right, there's no moving on. There's no getting over it.

Right? Well, hold on, let me rephrase that. You can still move forward, but there's no getting over it. It's not like, okay, it's done. I don't grieve the loss of my child anymore. It's still there. Right? And we're not asking you to forget. And we're not asking you to let go of it or pretend that it didn't happen. So in this journey...

Like I'm not asking you to forget about it.

Rachel Denning (05:39.053)
Except in some instances. See, this is tough. It's tough because I'm speaking to this huge audience, right? And I know there's so many different kinds of grief and pain and frustration and hurt. And there are some of them that we just need to move on and let that go. And it's gone. It's a thing of the past. We've learned from it and we move forward and we just let it go. It's not a way we carry anymore. Some things are the things that we never let go.

but we can still learn with time and with principles and strategies and processing, it can become lighter. And in some instances, check this out, this is pretty profound, in some instances, our griefs and our pains can become wings that carry us.

and help us soar and fly and they can become sources of power and light for ourselves and especially for others. Wow. So let me back up. Excuse me. I've, I've had my, my share of pain and grief.

from...

Disappointments from things others did to me or neglected to do that negatively affected my life. Pain of disappointment, pain of making stupid mistakes, the pains of insecurities and fears. The pain. So my parents got divorced young and then stepdads came and went. And so I saw some, some family dynamics that were painful and.

Rachel Denning (07:32.077)
I was out on my own and of course experienced a lot of hurt, people betraying me, trying to... And man, the loneliness, I've told you this before, the loneliness is the worst. man, what can be worse than loneliness? Like just deep, deep loneliness. And so I was in the loneliness and the pain. I wanted relationships so badly. I wanted friendships.

And of course you open up your heart a little bit and you try to have a friendship. And then if something goes wrong, you know, if whether it's in dating or in friendships, you know, you try to open up, you try to trust and then somebody betrays you or they move away or you just, you're no longer in a relationship. that hurt. man, it hurts.

And sometimes, especially if they betray a trust, you feel like, man, can I love anymore? Can I even do that? And you feel like closing up your heart, and it's easy to become numb and guarded. And I built up these walls around my heart, and I thought I was protecting myself, but really what happened was I isolated myself.

And so at some point, my friends, we have to learn how to process, all these emotions in a healthy way. And again, I'm going to repeat this and please, please, please take this away from like, we should have a big, broad, wholesome spectrum of emotions. I am not suggesting at all that we should only have one emotion. Like we should just be happy and joyful and that's it all the time. Right. I'm not.

A healthy individual has a full range of emotions. There are times when we should feel the pain. Like painful things should be painful, right? There's times we should feel grief, we should feel anger, we should feel sadness. You know, we want a full range of emotion, but we don't want to get stuck or trapped or buried under the emotions.

Rachel Denning (09:52.717)
that are generally on the negative or the painful side. Because can you imagine a life and a lifetime under the weight of grief or bitterness or pain? It takes its toll and for a time we should feel it and just sit with it. It's okay.

but to stay there would be crushing. And most of us have never been taught how to process it and how to settle it and settle those accounts or that it's even possible. And so I meet people all the time who are carrying this heavy, heavy load of painful emotions. And what happens there is it starts to build up and we're going to go with several metaphors here.

But it starts to build some, it starts to get some blockage. Okay, so one kind of metaphor is it starts to block things up and you start to feel clogged. And we start piling that down and we're pushing it down kind of in our, in our souls and our guts. And, and then one after another, one after another starts to pile up. My friends, it starts, it starts to weigh you down.

and it starts to block the flow of other good emotions.

or even sometimes the possibility of feeling them fully because it can make us numb and it can make us really sensitive. And I see in when I'm coaching clients and meeting with people around the world, I see this again and again and again. And I felt it with myself that as those pile up, it leads to hypersensitivity to particularly to that issue.

Rachel Denning (11:54.765)
We become crazy sensitive. One way I like to see it or describe it is like we have these open nerve endings. And if you can imagine an exposed nerve ending, like if you've ever had a really painful tooth, right? With cold or hot temperatures or breathing, you know, you breathe in air. And if you've ever had a tooth like that where a little nerve endings exposed, the pain, woo! Like it's like that, but have all these nerve endings and...

And the most random things can just flick that little nerve ending and hit it. Right. And, and we ended up exploding or imploding, right. It's fight or flight mode here. We implode inside and we crash or we explode often on other people.

And so a poor child or friend or whoever neighbor, you know, accidentally says something or bring something up or it just triggers you. Boom. And it creates more pain now. Pain for yourself, pain for others. These nerve endings are out there and they just can get stepped on and hurt and pinched and flicked and my goodness. And then it leads to vices. Recently met with a great person who...

experienced some pain as a youth being mocked and made fun of and feeling really dumb, feeling insecure, feeling undervalued and lots of grief or pain that never got processed. And so then into their 40s, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, on and on, I mean people in their 60s and 70s still holding on this grief.

And if it doesn't get processed, the pain starts to weigh you down. And so you start looking for ways to buffer ways to assuage the pain. Sorry, guys. One of my daily alarms went off and then erupted it. So you start to assuage the pain, right?

Rachel Denning (14:03.725)
And that's often through addictions. We can turn to TV, we can turn to pornography, we can turn to alcoholism, to drugs, to behaviors, the complaining, exploding on people, venting on people, blaming.

Rachel Denning (14:27.437)
just being angry, being irritable. We actually can get in these behavior patterns, being depressed, just going through life, just numb, numb, like numbing, right? And being down. And it's interesting. We, we, I see this all the time with all these different, these different patterns. And, and it's not like, it's not your fault. Again, we've not been taught or processed, taught how to process, to think about this and are given the tools and resources to do it. But

I want to share this because if it doesn't get processed, if we don't move through this in a healthy way, then it sticks with us for so long. And it's like we're carrying this gigantic weight around with us going through life. And here's, here's where I wanted to tell you about my last trip. I told you guys I ended up with like a poison ivy, a poison sumac or whatever. It's been a couple of weeks and this nasty thing, I've been to the doctor, I've been like steroid creams, taking antihistamines.

This thing is a beast. I got it so bad. So both my forearms are just covered in red blotches and it makes the skin all sensitive and it makes it like if you scratch it all opens up and cuts and bleeds and it like it wakes me up almost every night now. Just extreme itching itching that you just want to like tear your arms off. Man it's terrible. And I wanted to share that because I'm like how how

How is this like what we're talking about? Right. You've got this this irritation that's there and it's it's interrupting every part of my life. Like my ability to focus. It's pulling me away to give it attention. I have to go to the doctor. I have to go get this medication. I have to put the medication on four times a day. I'm rubbing all of my arms and the pain is just distracting my thoughts and distracting my feelings and emotion distracting my engagement. I'm trying to engage in in a conversation with my family or.

I'm trying to work and my arm is just itching. And I thought this morning, I thought, it's perfect. It's just like this. When we have grief that hasn't been processed, that we haven't worked through, it's like having this terrible itch, that one little spot on your body. And it's just always there. And you're trying so hard to focus and you're trying not to think about it. You're trying to be present.

Rachel Denning (16:50.413)
with somebody else or something else and the itch is just there. And you're trying to ignore it and you're trying to forget about it and it's just there and it's driving you crazy.

Right. And so the healing process of grief is something that's so special and so important. And time does help, but I've heard people say, you know, time has a way of healing it. But time alone will help some things, but it won't help everything. And so I want to, I want to give you some strategies.

and tools, your resources to really take through it. And mostly it's just a mindset. And here's the mindset. I just want you to think about it this way. If you'll think about it this way, often that's the first step. And it's a big step to think about it like, okay, it's okay to feel grief. It's okay to feel the pain. That's okay. But then to start processing it and start feeling that healing power in your life. Right?

And some things, like I said, some things you'll want to just completely heal from and let go and move on. And there'll be other things, I think, losing someone you love. It's not something you move on from. It's not something you get over. But you can still move forward to a very healthy place. I've met and worked with, talked to people who've lost loved ones and...

They can get to a place where they still love them. They still miss them so much, but they get to a really healthy place and they cherish the memory of that person. And so I want to give you a few strategies today and really have that mindset of like, let's process these things. Don't just bury them. Don't ignore them. Don't put them in the closet. Don't sweep them under the rug. Don't do that because they'll start to build up.

Rachel Denning (19:00.877)
and it'll create other problems. And it literally starts again, causing all kinds of other behaviors. So it'll often you might recognize this now, you might have picked up some behaviors that you didn't realize were related to not processing grief and pain. And it's it's fascinating. You got it, we got to think through that. Often people will put on lots of extra weight. And they'll get overweight, usually because they turn to

eating and emotional eating things and they'll put on weight and in fact I was talking to somebody yesterday even about it and they all this grief often from a from childhood or from youth something people were mean or something tragic happened and so they turned to eating and they put on weight and they feel like they feel like the weight is kind of protecting them from their pain and so they they pull on weight or they

They start clogging up their lives with all kinds of stuff and things and they can get into like hoarding stuff. And our lives just get clogged up and cluttered and disorganized and just overflowing with stuff. Like literal stuff or relationship stuff or emotional stuff or mental stuff. And so any negative experiences that aren't processed,

lead to thoughts, which lead to feelings, which then lead to these challenging things. And it's just, it's fascinating what can happen because it takes up a lot of energy and we don't want compounded constant negative energy in our lives. Does that make sense? Then we start holding onto grudges to regret, to hurts, mistakes, failures.

and all the thought and emotion, it does consume energy and it generates energy. And so we've got to learn how to settle, settle the accounts, so to speak. I like to see it like that. Settle those accounts, close those files, be done with it. Like let go of the things we're holding onto. Have you ever held onto something? I know I did for years. Like I've got a hold of it and I'm holding onto it so tight that it's just exhausting me and it's burdening me. It's preventing me from being present from.

Rachel Denning (21:25.613)
getting into new things and better things from it's it's almost like I'm resisting the light. I'm resisting the growth. I'm resisting the happiness and joy that I could have because I'm just holding on to this thing so much. So we got to start letting things go. And there's tons of great examples in books and movies and in great stories of people's lives. So they they learn to let things go and they get strategically start letting.

the clutter and the disorganization and the overcrowding and the pain, just kind of move on. So here, there's a couple of ways that are, they're unhealthy to do this. Like I mentioned before, complaining, blaming, yelling at people, hurting people. It's interesting how often people who've been hurt, hurt others and they don't mean to, they're not malicious, but they're just in a lot of pain.

And they often lash out at other people and pass on their pain to others. It's very common. And sometimes even doing that, you feel better for a minute, but it doesn't solve it. It doesn't process it. It doesn't heal it. They pass on negative energy to others. They see other people as their outlet. They explode on others. And if you clog these up and you keep them buried down, it's almost like you create a minefield, right?

anyone comes along steps on it and blow up. So the most important thing I think that worked for me and has worked for others is to just see, see the lessons. What can you learn from this? There's something wonderful, something so healing and magical when you can look at what has happened and learn from it. And if you can see it as a lesson,

as find the value in it, even if it is a huge mistake you made or a painful experience you went through because of what somebody else did. What can you learn from it? How can you grow from it? How can you see it? And like, go with me on this one. Like we can look back. You can't change the past. None of us can even change what happened 10 minutes ago. And definitely not 10 years ago. You can't change the past, but you can change the way you see it.

Rachel Denning (23:47.597)
And so looking back and seeing it only as a detriment, only as a pain, only as something horrible that you wish didn't happen, that's not empowering. And some of you have been victims of terrible things. But even in that, and I know I'm speaking to a huge range of instances and circumstances and people, I realize that. And so that's why it's so hard to talk generally on this.

But if you can find value in the lesson, if you can find something to learn from it, something to grow for it, something that actually empowers you to move forward.

whether it's helping others with their grief, having more compassion, more empathy, or even the strength of overcoming it, of enduring it. If you can find value in that, in that lesson, then you can move forward with more power instead of dragging a negative thing with you like an anchor that's preventing you from really making progress. So here's a few things that you can do. Often crying.

Crying can be a good thing, especially for those of us who kind of just go numb and we start losing feeling, we stop losing a range of emotion. Remember that awesome scene from Night at the Museum where he gets Attila the Hun to cry. He's just screaming and yelling and then he talks to him and he's like, you've probably had a really hard childhood. People were mean to you and you were neglected and he starts to cry and get it out, right? And it's actually, I mean it's a funny scene, but it's true. Like sometimes,

The anger and the rage we have is because we've blocked and buried that pain that needs to come out as tears and show some emotion and process it. Journaling. my goodness, journaling is such a wonderful thing. Please do it. It helps you with direction, it helps you with feeling, it helps with resolution, it helps you.

Rachel Denning (25:54.541)
Get your mind around it, it helps you get clarity on articulating and capture, capture for sure lesson learned. Now some of the journaling needs to go on a piece of paper that you can tear up or burn and get rid of. Like get it out, get the ugly out, just say it, vent it, like get all of that pain out and then get rid of it. Bury it, burn it, throw it away, tear it up, stomp on it, whatever you gotta do. Like get it out and often getting it on paper and not on people.

is better. I mean, there's a time to talk to people and some of you might want to seek a coach or a mentor. And I know a lot of the coaching I do is helping people process these things. Some of you might want to see a therapist or a psychologist or psychiatrist or a counselor. And there are some people we need to talk to about it. But

Unless the person is qualified and can really help you and you know it's not going to hurt them, then be careful about sharing it. Sometimes we go and we just vomit up all of our pain on somebody else and we feel better because it's out and your poor friend or family member is just buried in your problems and they don't feel better. Now they need to go process their pain. Right? And so don't take it out on people. Take it out on paper and unless, and again,

Talking about it is fantastic, it can be very healing, but talk about it to the right people. Let go of items in your life. And sometimes that just so relieving to let go of those things and to let go of that. And it's actually like losing weight is this healing process, we're letting it go. It actually has, losing weight can actually let go of a lot of emotional weight too, and mental weight.

Letting go of items in your house clutter. Get rid of things that aren't bringing you joy that aren't meaningful or fulfilling. You can burn those papers and notes. You can forgive other people. Study forgiveness. Read books about forgiveness. Read books about healing. Apologizing to other people, even for small things. We start to apologize more often and ask for forgiveness. Very healing. Exercising vigorously. Good, hard workouts. That for me was huge. I would hit that punching bag. I'd go...

Rachel Denning (28:15.213)
box and man that was that was so healing for me to let go of all that and then working out really hard that physical outlet helped with the emotional and psychological. Talking sometimes just talking not to a person but just talking. I always tell people like go yell at the neighbor's cow. Just go talk to the cow. Talk to it like a dog. Whatever like just talk to the trees. Talk to the waves. Talk to the wind.

Sometimes you go out there in the middle of nowhere and just yell, and just let it out. Let all that emotion out. When was the last time you really yelled, do it. In fact, you can do it now if you're driving along listening, just scream out, let the pain out with a yell like this Viking, like get it out. And it's often, it often helps just process that and then allow.

Allow yourself to heal and tell yourself you're healing. Say, I'm healing. I'm healing. I'm moving on. I'm growing. And I'm progressing. And you'll start to feel lighter. You'll start to feel better. And have some unplanned time. Create some space in your life. Our lives are so packed. Often it's so packed with emotion and thoughts and pain. One of the things I learned from Gifts of the Sea is a wonderful book. So you can read Gifts of the Sea and you can read...

what's it called? The untethered soul. Those are great helps. But one of the lessons she said in there, what makes a musical note so beautiful is the space on either side of it. So create some space, time to think, time to be quiet, time to work without pressure, time without distractions, time to watch, time to connect, time to talk, get in nature a lot. It's very helpful and getting these things. So, yeah, hopefully that's helpful. The main thing is we gotta move on. When I let go of all that stuff,

Like it totally transformed my life. It literally transformed everything in my life by letting go of the pain and the processing. And I can say, like told genuine sincerity, I let go of those things, the big stuff that I was carrying for years, I let go of it years ago and it's still back there. I drew the line, I let go of it and it's still way back there. And it doesn't burden me, it doesn't bother me. I didn't carry it into my marriage or my children or parenting or into life or work. It's gone. And you can do that too. And...

Rachel Denning (30:37.197)
you can get there. So please have hope there is healing there's possibility if you need additional help and I can if you feel like I can help you and I would love to go to gregdenning .com and sign up for a coaching session. Let's let's talk through it. Let's give you some more specific tools and strategies and ways to really make this happen and and get some extra help if you need it. But there is hope there is healing you can let go of those things that are holding you down and the sensitivities and the pain and the hurt it can be processed.

and you can get through it and don't be afraid to feel it initially, but don't hold onto it. For most of the things, you're going to let them go and just kind of let them flow away from you and process them and get them out. And so it's not a burden you have to carry anymore. So go out and do it. My friends, it's possible. It's healthy. It's wonderful. And there is hope. There is light. There is happiness even after a great pain. So love you guys. You're the best member. Awesome is always an option. Reach out for it.

you

Rachel Denning (31:44.173)
Hey everybody, thanks so much for listening to this episode. I hope you got a lot of value out of it and found some things that you can apply to your life right away. Hey, I'm being totally sincere when I say I live to help you live your extraordinary life. So I hope you'll reach out to me if you have any questions or let me know how I can help you in any important area of your life. And in fact, you know, this, this podcast is brought to you by the school of awesome sauce monthly coaching program. Take advantage of that. Get in there. If it's the,

best way to get a breakthrough to the next level so you can level up your health, your spirituality, your emotions, your mind, your relationships, your finances, business, every part of your life. Just get in there where you have a coach and a mentor, you have a supportive community to make things happen. So jump in there, take advantage of this, try it out, get in there with us and level up your life. See you on the inside. Reach upward.