The licensed therapist shares about the well-meaning but misguided “cult of positivity” after tragedies, emotional dissonance, grief support, having difficult conversations and how she dealt with the sudden death of her partner 10 years ago.
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Episode Transcript:
Welcome to Episode 426 with my guest, Megan DeVine. Today's episode is sponsored by SquareSpace. Turn your great idea into a reality with SquareSpace. SquareSpace makes it easier than ever to launch your passion project, whether you're showcasing your work or selling products of any kind. With beautiful templates and the ability to customize just about anything, you can easily make a web site yourself. And, if you get stuck, SquareSpace's 24/7 award-winning customer support is there to help. So head to squarespace.com/mental for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use the offer code "mental" to save 10 percent off your first purchase of a web site or domain.
[00:00:42] My name is Paul Gilmartin. This is the Mental Illness Happy Hour: a place for honesty about all the battles in our heads, from medically-diagnosed conditions, past traumas and sexual dysfunction, to everyday compulsive, negative thinking. This show's not meant to be a substitute for professional mental counseling. I'm not a therapist. It's not a doctor's office. It's more like a waiting room that doesn’t suck. The web site for this show is mentalpod.com. Mentalpod, also the handle you can follow, uh, me or the show at on, uh, social media. Also, check out the forum on our web site. There's some great things in there. Sometimes, I'll get an email from somebody, um, asking a question about a certain issue, uh, that I have no experience, uh, with. And I'll, uh, I'll direct 'em to the forum to, to find, find some people who have had similar experiences. It's a really, really great, supportive, uh, environment. Oh, also, I always forget to, to do this, but, uh, you know, I always need fi-, financial help for the podcast, and I know there're people out there that can't afford to, to donate or support the podcast. But one way you can support it is to subscribe. So, if you truly, TRULY, value this podcast, pause right now and hit "subscribe." It would mean a lot to me.
[00:02:05] I want to, uh, kick off with a struggle in a sentence survey filled out by a woman who calls herself, uh, "Pepper." And about her anxiety, she writes, "It's like being in a room with 300 record players, all playing the same song at once, and you're desperately trying to hear the words, but they're not in sync. And you're actually just trying to watch some fucking Netflix and eat your fucking brownie, but you're not doing enough with your life. You don't matter enough. Nothing you do is worthy. Your friends only tolerate you because they feel bad for you. And you should do the dishes because you're a horrible person. Also, will someone fucking turn the music off?" (Chuckles) Snapshot from her life: "Sitting in a bathroom stall at work, casually trying to tell myself that I'm not having a panic attack, as I muffle my own sobs with toilet paper, while I slip in and out of consciousness and my fingers force themselves into the raptor claw position they love so much in these moments. All the while, knowing that there's people just down the hallway who love and would make it better if I just let them, but I'm too terrified to let anyone see the massive fucking mess that I am, because once they see it, they'll leave forever and I'll be alone." That was … SO … beautiful and … just so beautifully awful … and relatable. And I can't imagine how many people heard that and laughed out loud and shook their heads and said, "Oh my god. Me, too."
[00:03:35] Also, a struggle in a sentence filled out by—And if you’ve never taken the surveys, that's another way you can help the show. On our web site, there's about, uh, a dozen different surveys that you can take. And it's completely anonymous; we don’t even, uh, track your IP address. So, you can share anything, and people do. People share some really, really heavy things in these, uh, in these surveys. This is filled out by a guy who calls himself "Anxiety Hangover." And, uh, he writes about his depression: "Chronic depression feels like a nagging friend who keeps telling you you're not good enough, except they never leave." (Laughs) About his anxiety: "I feel like I need to ask everyone I care about if there are mad at me." About his codependency: "If she is thinking about me as much as I feel like I should be thinking about her, then it must mean we love each other." (Laughs) Snapshot from his life: "Today, I spent most of my time at work thinking about my partner. Everything from 'I think she's talking to her ex again,' to 'I hope she's feeling okay right now.' Most of these thoughts are my manufactured from my own insecurities. As I run through these thoughts I try to keep them from snowballing and turning into full-on, predetermined fights we 'will' have in the future. I put the 'will' in quotation marks because they never even really end up happening. I'm getting better at realizing this, and all I can really do is take things day by day." Thank you so much for that. So, so spot on about the … just the fucking hamster wheel of fears and self-doubt and insecurities around relationships with other people and ourselves, and it's … One thing, like all of those spiral loops have in common is they're centered in self. Even though we're thinking about somebody else, we're thinking about how they affect us. When we truly are thinking of somebody else, we're thinking about it without anything in return. We're thinking about a situation. You know, we're thinking about, "Well, I wonder if I can do something nice for them, because I love them, not because I want them to do something nice for me or I'm afraid they're gonna leave." And it's such a different, different feeling.
[00:06:01] I have a, a struggle in a sentence. You know, my depression kicked in last week, and it's much better now. But, um … the, when my depression is bad, it feels like the world outside my front door is just one, dark, loud, narrow hallway lined with cactus. And it never feels like that once I'm out and about. It, it feel like a long, dark hallway lined with sandpaper. (Laughs)
[00:06:39] "Regina Flange" … writes about, uh, loss, the sudden loss of a loved one. "I was a completed, 1,000-piece puzzle. But now, I've been flipped over, and all of my pieces are scattered everywhere." Well, this is the episode for you, if you are listening. Because this, this episode is about a lot. It's about grief. It's about loss. It's about the cult of positivity, in terms of how people react. Positivity is a great thing, but there’re times when you can't put a positive spin on shit. And, it really can hurt the feelings of the person who’s grieving and make them feel, uh, even more distance. And, um … yeah.
[00:07:29] This is a struggle in a sentence filled out by a guy who calls himself "Ash Ketchum." About his love addiction, he writes, "I only have self-worth when men give sexual attention. I don't even need sex, just a compliment or sexting." About his codependency: "Too afraid to have fun by myself, so I end up doing nothing." (Laughs) Oh, boy, do I get that one. So many options, you know. Got an hour free; what do I do? Do I play guitar? Do I woodwork? You know, do I play a game? No! I can't make a decision. I don't know what the perfect decision is, so I'm gonna nap. (Laughs) Snapshot from his life: "I feel like a spy, or like I'm playing an old PC adventure game. When I try to find the right, random collection words that are innocuous enough to text my unavailable obsession that won't alert his wife to anything, but will let him know I'm horny and available. The last 15 texts didn’t work, and up until the day after Christmas when his wife was out, we hadn’t hooked up for two years. But I know if I keep throwing in prompts, I can get the reaction I want." You know, as I was reading this, I was, I was thinking … It sounds like you want a connection, but also distance. You know, when we’re attracted to people who are unavailable, um, in some way or another they're either distant or they're in another relationship. It really is, is … There's moments of it that are exciting, when we are able to get what we want. But they're short-lived, and mostly it's a lifetime of loneliness, manipulation, obsession, disappointment. And at the heart of it, to me, is that we're afraid to risk being seen, because we're afraid we're gonna be judged or overwhelmed. But if we don’t risk our authentic selves, being seen, we don’t get to experience the, the joy and the safety of intimacy. And we fool ourselves into thinking that the solution to our happiness is in someone else accepting us or us finding the right person. But it's not. It's in growing into our authentic selves. And … once we do that—and I've experienced this—it feels so good that we lose interest in people who don’t value us. Thank you for sharing that.
[00:10:01] This was filled out by "I Am In A Med …", "Inamedmyanxietybertram." When people write the, a, a long name and there's no spaces in between, it's sometimes, it's hard, uh, it's hard to crack the code. And about her depression, she writes, "Anhedonia, like there's a lid on what I'm capable of feeling." Oh my god! Do I fucking know what the feels like. A snapshot from her life: "That time when I was in LA for my sister's graduation and my appendix decided to secede from the union and get all gangrenous. We all just assumed the extreme abdominal pain was just my anxiety." Well, thank god you didn't, uh, you didn't die. Thank you for that.
[00:10:53] This is a struggle in a sentence filled out by (laughs) a woman who calls herself—she's a teenager—uh, and she calls herself "Eww! Butter." About her depression: "Severe clinical depression feels like a plug that's attached to your head, where all of the color leaves your life drip by meaningless drip." Oh, that's so good! About her anxiety: "A two-second car accident spread out into hours, days, weeks, and months." God, these are so good. About her bulimia: "Bulimia feels like a horrible friend that treats me horribly, but one that I'm infatuated by and completely in love with." About anorexia: "It makes me feel clean." Snapshot from her life: "In high school, I felt so depressed and just worthless that I would sometimes act out sexually by giving my guy friends blowjobs." You know, I've heard, um, uh, young women share before, uh, many times, actually, that they didn’t wanna have sex with a guy, but they wanted that guy to like them, and so they gave them sex. And I don't personally know of any men that liked a woman more because they had sex when they didn’t want to. In my opinion, them liking you has to be there first, if … if the sex is going to be a positive experience for, for both of you. And, that's just my take.
[00:12:29] Wanna give a shout-out to our sponsor, Policygenius. Is there anything more fun than thinking about and buying insurance? Yes. Everything is more fun than that. Even gout. (Laughs) Well, Policygenius makes it simple and easy to understand. They let you compare quotes from top insurers to find the best policy for you in just two minutes. When you apply online, the advisors at Policygenius will handle all the red tape and even negotiate your rate with the insurance company. There's no commission sales agents, no hidden fees; just helpful advice and personalized service. Policygenius also makes it easy to find the best home insurance, auto insurance, or disability insurance. They're your one-stop shop for financial protection. And I've been to their web site. It's really, really, uh, logically laid out. I was never confused or felt overwhelmed. So, if you find life insurance puzzling, head to policygenius.com. In two minutes, you can compare quotes, find the right policy, and save up to 40 percent doing it. Policygenius: the easy way to compare and buy life insurance. And, as always, the links and, uh … uh, discount codes—What do, uh, what do we call them? (Laughs) My mind just went to screensaver. The, uh, offer codes will be under the show notes for this episode.
[00:14:00] Today's episode is also sponsored by our long-time sponsor, betterhelp.com. If you’ve never tried online counseling, I'm a big fan of it. I love being able to just sit in my recliner and pour all my feelings out. If you wanna try it, go to betterhelp.com/mental. Fill out a questionnaire; they’ll match you a betterhelp.com counselor, and you can experience a free week of counseling to see if online counseling is right for you. And you need to be eight, uh, over 18. And I highly recommend it. You can also, in addition to doing, uh, video, you could do it by email, text, live chat, uh, or voice. So … check it out.
[00:14:44] Two more, two more quick surveys before we get to the interview with Megan. This one was filled out by a guy who calls himself "Adam RH." And, uh, about his anxiety, he writes, "Like an annoying app that runs in the background and drains your battery and slows you down." Snapshot from his life: "I battle bipolar disorder every day, but my wife is the sweetest, most loving and supportive person. My life feels epitomized in the line in the song by Alice in Chains: "Heaven beside you, hell within." And then this might be the best description of ADD and ADHD I've ever read, And it's SO, just BEUATIFULLY short and precise. He writes, "All horsepower, no transmission." That, that is fucking hall of fame.
[00:15:40] And speaking of hall of fame, uh, this is, to me, a hall of fame awfulsome moment filled out by a woman who calls herself "Memento Mori." And she writes, "Every year, on the anniversary of my mom's fiancé's death, I go get doughnuts. It's a little fucked up, but it feels right. I don’t have the heart to tell my mother I do this because he died by suicide. He drove to the highest overpass he could find and jumped. The last thing he told my mom was that he was going out to get doughnuts."
Intro
[00:17:16] Paul: I'm here with Megan DeVine, who's a therapist and an author. She has a, a book, uh, called, "It's OK that You're Not OK." And what is it after the colon?
Megan: "Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture that Doesn’t Understand."
Paul: I love that topic. It's one of the reasons I wanted to, to have you on. The, um, bullet points that your PR sent, uh, I thought, wow, she is right up, not only my alley, but this show's alley. And that, um—The, the first thing, let's talk about, is, uh, I can't remember how it was worded, but about the positive attitude during grief. Talk about that.
Megan: Yeah, the cult of positivity, right. So, anything goes wrong in your life, not just grief related to death, but like you're having a bad day, or your dog died, or you, you know, something went wrong. And we're really quick to encourage you to look on the bright side. "It can't be that bad." "Look for the gift inside something." "You must have really needed this, so that you can truly know who you were meant to be," right. Like how cruel that is to, um, enforce positivity when that is actually not the reality on the ground. It’s just a want to, to bypass something that hurts.
Paul: So, that's not to say if there's somebody, um, that, I dunno, has some recovery or they can organically get to that place pretty quickly, you're not saying that that is a mistake for that person. You're just saying, like, like the people that, that say to, to somebody, "You need to forgive that person—"
Megan: (Laughs) Yeah.
Paul: —that harmed you." You know—
Megan: You need to mind your own business!
Paul: Here's what you're supposed to feel on this schedule that I want to impose on you.
Megan: Exactly. So, anytime it's prescriptive, rather than something that comes from you, from inside of you that you claim. I don’t have any posi—I don't have (chuckles) any positive—I don’t have any problem with "positive thinking," if it is something that you choose for yourself and it feels valid and real and helpful. But this idea that, um, looking on the bright side is the only "healthy" way to look at things, it's a lie and it's not helping anybody.
Paul: And, I think, so often, it's a way, if the person who's prescribing that, escaping any potential for them to feel uncomfortable with emotions they don’t wanna deal with, or have a nuanced conversation that perhaps ends up with, "Wow, what happened to you is really shitty, and I don’t have any answers and I can't fix it." Why, why do you think people want to avoid that?
Megan: Well, I think you just described it: we don’t wanna feel helpless. I think that on a, on a deep level, we know that we can't fix each other's pain. But our minds tell us that we are supposed to, that it's our job to make somebody feel better. And that, that dissonance, right, makes us feel really helpless, and we don’t like feeling helpless. Feeling helpless SUCKS! It's a terrible positon to be in. And instead of feeling that discomfort, we jump in with what we've been trained to do, which is to cheer somebody up. If you are not happy, it’s because you're doing it wrong, right. And I, I love what you said a minute ago, which was, um, something along the lines of, "You need to do this better, because your sadness right now is making me uncomfortable, and I'm not okay with that." So we, we would rather prioritize, um, a false comfort than the truth of somebody's reality if the truth of their reality is painful.
Paul: And, and—amen. And, I think sometimes, even if that person isn't consciously thinking, "I feel uncomfortable with that person having that emotion," it, it, it may be that they feel uncomfortable that … they, their worth is tied up in this idea that they can, you know, assuage somebody's pain. And in my experience, the, the thing—and it's not my goal when I try to help somebody or be there for them—is to just … listen, to say I'm here for you, what you're going through must be incredibly painful, I can't imagine, um, hug 'em. Offer to bring them food. Chime in. Chime in.
Megan: (Laughs) Yeah. I mean, the, I like what you said there, that it, that it isn't conscious. It's not usually a conscious thing. I talk a lot about, um, the way that we deal with grief in this culture is broken. The way that we talk about grief is wrong. And I think that some people can start to feel really defensive around that. Like you're telling me that I'm doing everything wrong. Well, well yes, I am (laughs), because, because you are. You're doing everything wrong. But it's one of those things where it's not your fault. Like it's not your fault that you don’t know how to tend to your own pain or really listen to somebody else's pain without jumping in to cheer them up or make them better.
Paul: It hasn’t been modeled for you.
Megan: Yeah! I mean, what are you supposed to do? All of our cultural storylines, all of our movies, all of our books are about transformation. It's about the, the heroine muscling through the hard times to find the bright, the bright, shiny piece, lear-, learning lesson inside of it and turning everything around. And if you're not doing that, you're somehow failing, right. This is what we're steeped in. We're steeped in sort of that old, Puritanical work ethic of, um, if things are bad, it's because you caused it. If you didn’t cause it, then it's a, a test to prove your strength. Right, this is the sort of stuff, again, even if you're not thinking about this stuff consciously, this is the sea that we're swimming in. So it's not your fault if you don’t know how to really listen to someone else's pain or even to your own pain because you’ve been taught the wrong ways to do it. However, once you understand that what you're doing is not useful, it's not effective, it is your responsibility to learn how to do better. So it's not your fault, but it is your responsibility.
Paul: And so, I would imagine in your book, you cover that. Because people don’t have your book in front of them right now, and I don’t, obviously, want you to, um, de- (chuckles), describe everything that is in your book—
Megan: (Laughs) Let me just do the audio version.
Paul: Yeah. Give us some, some tidbits of how we can show up better, not only for other people, but for ourselves.
Megan: Yeah. So there are lots of things. I actually liked what you, the list that you started doing, which is, um, sort of tend the organism. Your job, as a support person, is not to fix somebody's pain. You can't. What you can do is come up underneath them as a support, right. You can be there so that they can fall apart in whatever ways they need to. And we do that by, um, tending to the physical things. So one of my dear friends, when my partner first died, um, she kept coming back to like, "You just need to tend the organism. You need to be eating, sleeping, drinking, and moving." And these are things that we can do as support people, right. Deliver food, offer to talk the dog, take the recycling to the curb. Those tangible, repeatable things. When someone you love dies and your life sort of rips open and melts into several pieces, the outside world still keeps going, right. So, anything you can so as a support person to sort of mitigate the stress of the outside world continuing to function, right. Picking up the kids from school, taking the dog for a walk, taking the recycling out. Those sorts of mundane and ordinary things allow your friend or your family member to just be in pain. And that seems kind of weird, right, because again conditioning-wise, right, we think that our job is to take away somebody' part, and it's not. Our job is to … help structure life in such a way that the grieving person only has to be in pain. They don’t have to do everything else.
Paul: I'm sure you’ve had those moments where you get terrible news on a day, and it's sunny out and children are laughing and playing with the puppy. And it's like, in that moment, the complexity of the world hits you in such a profound way. And it's, it, I dunno, maybe I should just talk about myself, but it's, it's hard not to feel … I dunno, to take a little bit of it personally. (Chuckles) You know it's ridiculous, but to sat what isn't the world dropping everything they're doing and (laughs) coming and validating my sadness and pain—which is ridiculous, but that, that feeling in that moment is, is like the world is, not only going on without you, but they're laughing and they’ve got streamers and confetti. And it's such an awful feeling.
Megan: Yeah, that dissonance.
Paul: Can you talk about losing your partner?
Megan: Yeah, I can. I actually wanna circle back to, to what you just said first, because I think this is a really good illustration here. That, um, you know, every once in a while, we have, uh, like the current apocalypse theory, like the world is gonna end in 2012. And then, no, the end, the world is gonna end over here. The world ends for somebody every day, right. When your person dies, the world dies. And to know that, for you, everything is different now, and yet the sum is still shining. And your neighbor across the street is still, you know, shuffling out in their slippers to get their paper in the morning. And everything else is going on as normal, and nothing will ever be normal for you again, right. Somebody's universe ends every single day, and the rest of us don’t know. And, again, that's not because we're terrible human beings. It' because our world didn’t end. But that is a cruelty, right. For grieving people, that is a cruelty. Like, um, this analogy that I've been using for a while is you're, you're at a, at the movies, and you bought a ticket to see a comedy. And a quarter of the way through the movie, and then, and all of a sudden, the screen rips in two, and everything starts melting, and it’s apocalyptic all around you. And then a horror movie starts playing on the screen. But you're the only one who seems to notice. And if you like look at the people you can with and you're like, "Wait a minute. This isn't the movie that we bought tickets, like this isn't right." And they're like, "Yeah, this is a cool movie." You know, "Pass the popcorn." It's sort of like that, right, this, this movie of life, the, the screen of the world that we all participate in and call normal, until it's not anymore. But it's our view that's changed, and everybody else is watching the screen as though everything is fine.
Paul: So, where do we find that line … between having empathy for others and being a responsible citizen and neighbor and friend, and … also having joy in our life.
Megan: That is such a huge question, right. I think that we can be better listeners, right. You don’t have to go in and listen to or attend to every person's pain, right. Like that's, that's actually not how things work. But being willing to pay attention—Like I study people for a living, right. Like I'm always watching, and especially, you know, watching who appears to be missing, where's the person, um, with the hitch in their voice when they're ordering their coffee. What is that hitch, right? I'm just fascinated by who is present and absent at the same time, and what stories do we carry.
Paul: Isn't it funny? Sometimes, we can know more about somebody in line ordering coffee than they probably will know about themselves until the day they die.
Megan: Yeah, sometimes, when you're an astute studier of humans. Right, I mean, we're all making assumptions and, and maybe we don’t check out those assumptions. But, but yeah, you know, the person whose eyes well up at a certain song while they're standing in line at the coffee shop, and they think nobody else sees. Some of us notice, right. Yeah.
Paul: A, a, a couple times I had … in my twenties, I had somebody say to me, um, "You're so hostile!" And I was COMPLETELY taken off guard. Somebody else shared with me, "Oh, yeah, I was talking to so and so, and we were just laughing about how intense you are." I had no idea! I had no idea. So … unless there's something else you wanted to touch on, uh, let's, let's talk about you losing your partner.
Megan: Yeah. So, um … we are coming up, it'll be 10 years, uh, next summer, which is, is crazy. So, um, let's see. It's always an interesting thing, like how much back story do I give to this sort of central, central story. So, um, Matt was an incredible athlete. He was—I used to joke that he was half mountain goat, because he could scale up the face of waterfalls like nothing. You know, hang, doing pull-ups, hanging from one arm, while also holding onto his 17-year-old child at the same time, like just INCREDIBLY, um, powerful, and an amazing human being. So, a little back story. I had been in, um, private practice for four or five years and was tired. And I, um, I was tired of sitting and listening and feeling sort of like a disembodied head. And I didn't want to do it anymore. And, Matt and I had been talking about, um, shifting things around in our family so that he would take over financial support of our family, and I would get to close my practice and just wonder about what was next. And, we—
Paul: And it was just the two of you?
Megan: And his son.
Paul: Okay.
Megan: Yeah. And sort of wonder about what would come next. And, we didn’t get to do that. Matt drowned in our home river. We had been, um, it had been raining for about six weeks the year that this happened. It had been raining for about six solid weeks. And we went out for a "quick" dip on the first sunny day after six solid weeks of rain. We were actually on our way to the airport to pick up Matt's son, who had, um, gone down to visit him mom for his birthday. So we were on our way to pick Jacob up from the airport, and we stopped off in our river for a quick swim. And … it was … just a, a normal day, right. We went out to breakfast the way we normally did. We picked up our dog and we drove out to the river. We played with the dog in the woods. And we noted that, um, the woods were a little bit more flooded than they usually are, like, oh, it's just been raining. And Matt went in for a swim and I stayed in the woods with the dog to play ball. And I heard Matt cough, and I didn’t think anything of it. It's Matt. He's an amazing athlete. Like didn’t even—You know, I even made a comment to the dog that, god he makes a lot of noise when he has water up his nose. And then Matt coughed again, and I turned around, and he was holding onto the top of a tree, um, on the, the little mound/island we used to call Dogwash Island. We would take Boris out, uh, and pull him up onto this little island and soap him up, and then throw the ball for him out into the river so that he could get washed off. And the little, you know, maybe a 12- or 15-foot sapling on that little, little island. And I turned around, And Matt was holding onto the top of the tree.
Paul: It was water up to the top of the tree—
Megan: The water had risen that high, that it went up to the top of the tree. And I turned around in time to see him let go of the top of the tree and fall back into the water. And then I ran into the water after him. And then Boris, our dog, ran in after me—he still has his ball in his mouth, like we were going in to play. And, you know, from the, from the edge of the water—now remember that I said that Matt was an incredible athlete. He was in that river two or three times a week. He would take off for extended hiking trips. Like the man knew, not only, um, the woods and the water, but his own physical capabilities and his limits. He didn’t make dumb choices. And, we both looked at that water and it didn’t seem like there was anything—It didn’t seem like it was fast, there were no rapids, none of those things. It looked like a slightly larger version of our regular river. But when I ran into the water after him, there was an incredibly strong current just under the surface that you couldn’t tell from the water's edge. And I got caught in the current. And I saw our dog actually get caught in an eddy. And in that moment, I thought, um, "If Matt survives and the dog dies, he's gonna kill me! And if Matt dies and I live, I need my dog." And at that moment, I, um, you know, I was getting tired fighting against the current. And I just let go. And I was like, "Something's gonna get us out of here, and if it doesn’t I don’t care." And Boris and I were carried about two and a half miles down the river—
Paul: Holy shit!
Megan: —before we got—I know! Before we got spit bat out, spik ap, spit back out by an eddy onto a shore. And—
Paul: And you had lost sat, uh, sight of Matt at this point—
Megan: The last time I saw him was when he let go of the top of the tree. Yeah. I mean, you, you hit fast-moving water, and there's no time for looking around, right. So when Boris and I, um, got washed up on shore, the woods there were so dense that I couldn’t tell where the sun was. So I couldn’t tell the direction. And I'd been tossed around by the water, so I, I thought we were on a certain side of the river. And so I was like, "We're gonna go this way." Boris, you know, dogs are smarter than human—certainly smarter than me—and he tried to go the other direction. And I was like, "No, buddy. It's not that way. Like we have to go this way; we have to get help. Like, here's the parking lot's over here." So I was lost in the woods for 45 minutes at least. And I say I was lost and not we were lost, because when I gave up after 45 minutes of being lost in the woods, knowing Matt was out there somewhere, um, I looked at the dog and I was like, "I can't, I can't get us out of here. I need you to do this." And I said that, and he turned around the way that we had come. Less than five minutes, he brought us to a clearing with a housing development on the other side. He knew where we were! I had no idea. And so, I hate this part of the story, because I—So we're coming across the, uh, coming across the clearing. And the entire time, you know, and hour or so in the woods, I'd been yelling for help. And come across this clearing, there's this housing development. And this, um, this woman and two small children came outside. And I'm yelling for help; "You have to call 911." And she comes out and she's like, "Why?" And in my heading, I'm thinking like, "You live on a fucking river bank, and it is swollen after six weeks of rain. Your first question should not be 'Why.' It is find your damn phone!" And—gotta love 'em—one of the little girls came out and said, "We'd been hearing somebody calling for help for an hour, but we thought it was a bird." No! (Laughs). So, uh, the, the husband of the family, um, took Boris and I in the truck and drove two miles back, um, to the, to the place where I had last seen him. And we called the warden service. And they took, um, about three hours with search and rescue and rescue planes. And all of those things looking, looking for Matt, until it became a recovery project instead of a rescue project. They drained the river, and they found his body tangled in some reeds about six yards from where I had last seen him. And it just … I remember the quiet of that. (Chuckles) It's been almost 10 years, and I can go right back there. What a bullshit day. And, leaving there and driving back home, knowing who I needed to tell … and the phone calls I needed to make … Matt was supposed to, Matt and I were supposed to pick up, uh, his son at the airport. And, obviously, we couldn’t do that. And so, I started calling Matt's family. His dad hung up on me, cuz he didn’t wanna hear it. He couldn’t let the news be true. And, you know, picking up a young man from the airport and sitting him down and saying I need to tell you about how your dad died … How do you do that? So Jacob and I, um, split up all of the phone numbers in Matt's phone and sat down on our bed and just went through and called everybody. And, one person I called—I was calling from Matt's phone—and she answered the phone, and she went, "Mattie, I'm so glad to hear from you!"
Paul: Wow.
Megan: And to have to say, "Sweetheart, are you driving? It's not Matt; it's Megan. I need you to pull over." Like how do you, how do you do that and survive? How do you do that and go for coffee? How do you do that and remember what day the damn recycling goes out, or care? And then to, to loop back for a second about what you mentioned with, um, with the dissonance with the rest of the world, right, how dare the sun be shining? How dare ANYTHING be happening?
Paul: How, how can you go on with your birthday party the day after this happened?
Megan: That's right. Right, Matt's son turned 18 the day after his dad died. How do you do that? You know, 10 years later, how do you celebrate a birthday, knowing that your dad died the day before? Matt died, uh, three months short of his 40th birthday. That's … weird. And it cracks the world open. And, I mean, I was, I wasn’t a stranger to difficult things, right. Like I was in private practice for a long time. I did domestic violence work, I did sexual violence work. Like, accustomed to pain. But, this was something of, you know, orders of magnitude different than that, right.
Paul: What were some things that shifted in you, other, other than what we've talked about so far? Things that people who have not lost a, uh, partner, um, don't realize, or were just particular to you.
Megan: Yeah. I think there's a lot of things. I think there's a lot of temptation to say, um, "I didn’t know anything before this happened," which, which gets into sort of dangerous territory of like, you needed this difficult lesson in order to wake up to what's important in the world. Which, if we just wanna veer there for a second, what a bullshit thing to say to somebody. You needed your baby to die so that you could learn what was really important in life, right. Like we, you know, I say baby cuz we do this to like any catastrophic loss. We're like, "Oh, you must have needed to learn what was important." And, I mean, let's take that apart for a second. What that actually says is you weren’t good enough before this happened, so you needed something this devastating in order to learn a lesson. That is cruel—
Paul: You, you couldn’t have learned it without this.
Megan: Yeah. Like you were so bad or so ignorant, that this is what the "universe" needed to do to shake you up, right. And then, also, what kind of weird math is that, that, um, someone else's life is a worthy test or a worthy price that you could learn a lesson? Right, like Matt didn’t die so I could learn something. That's dumb! So while I have learned things from this experience, I, I wanna be really, um, careful that we don’t veer into territory where like here are the amazing things, the gifts that I drew from this, or the, the lessons that I needed. Because it's, it's, it's just really sticky territory. At the same time, um, I think one of the big things that I felt: It had, I mean, I, I think I knew, sort of, about the happy ending cult thing, like the, you know, rainbows and puppy dogs and the transformation narrative. I certainly, in a lot of ways, still believe in the transformation narrative when it fits. But this experience opened up that chasm for me of like, not everything is a growth experience meant for your enrichment. There's not always a resolution. And, I don’t, I don’t think I'd ever knocked up against that culturally in such a way before. When Matt died, I, I quit my practice the day that Matt died, and didn't see anybody again. There was no way that I was about to sit with people when this just happened. Like, that wouldn’t have been ethically good anyway, but there's no way I could have done it—
Paul: You mean professionally.
Megan: Yeah, professionally. And, uh, and I swear I would never go back, which is hilarious, cuz, you know, I did. But … where was I going with that? Oh, I wanted to call my former clients and be like, "I was so full of shit," like, "I have no idea what I was doing. I was a terrible therapist." Now, I know that I did good work. I did really, really good work. And, I'm reasonably sure that that transformation narrative was running in my own background, right. Like you do this really hard work and you extract the gold from it, right. Like that, that sort of Jungian idea of extracting the gold from any difficulty. Sometimes there isn't any gold. There are things that you learn to live with that can't be transformed or redeemed. And I don’t know that I thought of things that way before Matt died and before I, um, joined the community that I'm in and started doing the work that I do. There are some losses that don’t go away.
Paul: Yeah. You know, I think about, you know, stories like yours or, you know, a parent whose child disappears and they never get closure. I mean, I, I … have been putting off the idea of getting a dog just because I don’t want to feel the pain I did two years ago when I lost one, or the idea that I'll leave the door open and it will get hit by a car or whatever. Because that, it, it … I, I can't imagine some of the things that people have to sit with for the rest of their lives. So how do we acknowledge that occasionally … people do grow for it and their experience can benefit others? Is that something we just keep to ourself and it's our own personal thing, if we ever … experience that, but it's not something we should feel?
Megan: That's a really great question. I think we come back to what the difference between something you choose for yourself versus something that is put upon you. Arguably, I have made something incredibly beautiful out of what's happened to me. I get to companion people going through the hardest times or the worst times of their lives. I get to help their friends and family learn how to be better, more effective support. That's an amazing gift for me to be able to do that. And, that's not a fair trade, right. Matt didn’t die so that I could help others. Who doesn’t get helped by the fact that Matt died? What might I have been or who might I have better? Who might he have been, had this not happened? So I, I don’t think we can do a transactional analysis of, um, pain and suffering. And also, you know, when, when Matt died—because I was a therapist, because I was a writer, because I was an artist before any of this stuff happened—the night of his funeral, people were coming up to me and saying, "You're gonna become such a better therapist because of this." Well, fuck you, right. Like, really, this is … you didn’t think I was a good therapist before this happened? But, um, this push to turn your pain and suffering into a gift for others … as a practice, it's neutral. It’s not an evil thing to do; it's not a fantastic thing to do. It's a choice, it's an option. It's something that sometimes happens. This is something that I chose for myself, uh, for, for a few different reasons. But this is a path that I chose. When other people were telling me that I had to do something with this, that's wrong. Like we should never be—I mean, you're gonna know this phrase—like you never take somebody else's inventory for them. Don’t tell somebody else how to live their own damn life. Be curious about what they might want for themselves. How might this inform you? How do you carry this? I know THOUSANDS of people whose children died or their partners died or their sibling died. And they haven’t built a life of professional service to the grieving community. And yet, they carry their losses with them every second of every day. And their lives are beautiful. There's a, a lived dissonance in that, right, that … we all do this. We all carry things that are immensely painful, death-related or not. And they exist side-by-side with joy and beauty and happiness, because, in my opinion, this is how we're built. And whether we consciously carry them or not I think is the, is sort of the cleaving point, right. You talked about, you know, you've been reluctant to even entertain the idea of getting another dog because you know what it felt like to lose that dog. Like losing who you love sucks. And, very often, we say things like, "I can't imagine," but your nervous system can imagine, and it starts to. And, again, this is not a bad thing, right. Like the fact that we sort of shut that down and we other and we make distance—not a bad this, right. It's, it's sort of a way of preventing emotional flooding. And that intensity of emotion is, is difficult. It’s difficult in and of itself, but you put that emotion inside a culture that doesn’t value or support intense emotion, and it makes it doubly hard to go there, right.
Paul: I, I think that same dynamic, or lack of dynamic, is why we fail our returning vets.
Megan: Um-hmm. Yeah.
Paul: Is there, there's no reintegration and just … as much as I dislike the phrase, we hold space for them. At least, I feel uncomfortable saying that. I don’t mind hearing therapists say that but—
Megan: (Laughs) We have a pass for all of the dorky phrases. Well, this, I think this is a really good point, right, that this actually fits really neatly into what we're talking about. So for retuning vets, they have seen things that most of us have never or will never see. They live in a different world. Their movie screen shows something entirely different from the rom-com that we’re looking at. And … fitting back into a world that you can no longer fit life back into is, is weird. And then you also come into that, like the, the warrior architype, right, where like you will triumph over what you've seen, and you will come back strong. Like all of this—What happens if you're not strong?
Paul: And warriors come back wounded.
Megan: Warriors come back wounded. That's right—
Paul: They're still brave, but they, but they feel. Have you ever read the book, uh, "What It's Like to Go to War," by Karl Marlantes?
Megan: No.
Paul: Highly, highly recommend it. He, uh, was a, uh, highly decorated, uh, Vietnam veteran. And, uh, just writes so eloquently about the shadow self and reintegrating and the lack of a cultural welcoming committee and comfort and support for vets when they, when they return. That they're just plopped down, and "Okay, go get a 9-to-5 job and sit at your desk and don't have the jitters."
Megan: Right? Like, yeah, just mind over matter, man! Like … no! No. There's also a great book. Do you know the book, "At Hell's Gate" by Claude AnShin Thomas?
Paul: Uh-uh.
Megan: (Gasps) THAT is, that man is amazing! So, uh, when Matt first died, and I have always been a voracious reader, and I hurled a number of books across rooms, uh (laughs), stabbed through them with pens, like all of this stuff. And, uh, um, "At Hell's Gate" was one of the first books I felt like spoke to my reality. Now, light years apart; he's talking about the Vietnam War and the things that he, the acts that he committed, the things that he was part of, the things that he saw. Completely light years different. I, I'm, you know, I won't even begin to pretend I have any idea what he survived. But what he was talking about was like, I lived these things, and when I came back to the States and I went to "therapy," they were talking about like go to your happy place and, um, positive thinking and this, this, and this. And he's like … I, I don’t even wanna, I don’t wanna share any of the imagery cuz I don’t … Like I'm a images—
Paul: What a, what a denial of someone's reality.
Megan: A complete and total denial of reality. And he's like, "This is not gonna help me." And the way (chuckles) that he talked about it, I was like oh my gosh, you're speaking my language. He went to, um, I think he went to Plum Village, to, because somebody had said, you know, some of the Buddhist practices had been really helpful for returning vets. And he went to Plum Village, and he was like, "If one more fucking nun tells me to breathe, I'm gonna punch them!"
Paul: (Laughs)
Megan: And I love that. Now he's a, he's a monk, right, so he's lived this, But he's lived that, um, like the core of mindfulness practice of, of all of those practices that help you drop into yourself and bear, bear witness to your own suffering. He has lived that from the inside, and there is no glossy spin on that at all. He's like, "This is fucking hard. And the only way that I can survive is by making space for myself with my breath." Like that meant something to me. That meant something way more to me than like, you know, imagine your happy place. Well, my happy place was the river. I can't actually go there and feel at peace anymore. So there's, there … there are ways to companion yourself or others inside suffering, but you have to keep your eyes open and see suffering for what it is. It’s not fucking pretty.
Paul: So when you were saying he has to, uh, something about his breath in … creating space or holding space for himself, does that mean just becoming present and holding all the awful feelings instead of just hoping the go away so that you can process them?
Megan: Yeah. I, I don’t wanna guess at his process, because I don’t know him personally.
Paul: I don’t mind doing it.
Megan: (Laughs) You do it; go for it! But I think that there are things that we can take from that. In any of these things, whenever we're talking about, uh, bearing witness or holding space, it's about not dea-, not denying the reality. Don’t put a glossy spin on shit that isn't glossy, right. There's a, there's a talk that I give often, um, for hospitals and medical providers that is, acknowledgment is the best medicine we have. It doesn’t seem like it should do anything, but when somebody is in pain and you look at them and you say I see you, that's medicine. When you look at them and you don’t acknowledge that they're in pain, you don’t acknowledge their suffering, and instead you start talking to them about "getting back to life, finding closure, moving on," you are in denial and you are inflicting suffering.
Paul: Couldn’t agree more.
Megan: Yeah.
Paul: Couldn’t agree more.
Megan: There's, you know, I, I talk about grief related to death. It's, it's sort of my core thing, but this is actually a much wider issue. If you think about why the Truth and Reconciliation Committee was so powerful—you know what I'm speaking about, right?
Paul: Um-hmm.
Megan: Justice wasn't, "justice" wasn’t served. No family members came back from the dead. But the perpetrators of that violence, of that genocide stood in a room and said I did this. And the surviving family members were there, and they heard, we did this to your family.
Paul: Are you talking about Rwanda?
Megan: Yeah. Right. How powerful is that? You tell the truth about what actually happened. Does it fix anything? No. People are still dead. There is still trauma. There is still work to do. And, being told the truth about what happened, not making it pretty, not making it glossy, not saying there was a reason for it, not justifying it, but letting the thing be. That is medicine.
Paul: Because so often, the person who's been traumatized is fighting that part of their brain that wants to minimize it, so that we have a sense of control, that the world doesn’t have chaos and cruelty in it. And … when I went through the stuff that, that I went through, uh, six years ago, I sought that validation and acknowledgment out like a … thirsty person in a desert looking for water. And whenever I found it, it, it would, it would get me through the day and give me hope and, and recharge my battery enough to get through another day without wanting to die. And I, I know that sounds overly dramatic, but that's what I felt.
Megan: Um-hmm, and that's what's real, right. There, there's a difference, for me, there's a difference between pain and suffering, right. To me, pain is this pure thing, right. Like pain is what is when someone you love dies or, um, you lose part of your body or you lose mobility or your, you know, any number of things. And suffering is what happens when we either try to minimize that for ourselves or friend and family say it’s not that bad, you need to get back out there. When there's that dissonance between your pain and the outside world, to me, that's suffering. And so, when we bear witness to somebody else's pain, you just let them be in pain. Which seems wrong in our, in our pain-averse culture. But letting somebody be in pain when pain is what is, that is not only an effective medicine, but I think it's, in a lot of ways, the only medicine we have.
Paul: Yeah, because they're processing it. It's the, it's the only step forward. It's gonna drive the bus, whether it's in that moment—
Megan: That's right.
Paul: —you processing it, or you're gonna bury it and it’s gonna drive the bus because—
Megan: Yeah. And look what, look what burying pain has given us in this culture. Right, we were talking about this a little while ago, but like drug addiction, interpersonal violence, racism, sexism, misogyny, all of these things. What do they all have in common? They all have grief in common. The all have pain in someone's life that … for who knows how many reasons has been displaced onto somebody else, right. You look at our epidemics of, um, of gun violence in this country that is predominantly white males who felt ostracized and shunned and not seen, and I in NO way say this to justify their action, because fuck that. But, there is unspoken grief at the core of all violence. Look what pretending there's a bright side to everything has given us. If we're gonna talk about things like Me Too, how do we respond to pain? How do we respond when we hear, um, the trans community talking about the violence that they experience? How are we going to listen to communities of color talking about the pain of their everyday lives that we don’t see as, um, as white folks? Like, how are we gonna listen to that pain? Are we gonna tell people to, um, to buck up and look on the bright side and pull yourself up by your bootstraps? That's rude! So, again, like sometimes, sometimes when I, um, do sort of media things about grief … in the beginning, the, the media gatekeepers will be like, "Nobody wants to talk about grief, blah, blah, blah." And I'm like—
Paul: And hence that's why we are here—
Megan: This is why we're here, right. And, everybody wants to talk about grief, but not in the ways that we’re accustomed to talking about them. Because if every time you say, "I hurt," I tell you you brought it on yourself or people have it worse than you or you just need to look on the bright side, it's not gonna make my grief go away. It’s gonna make me stop talking about it.
Paul: Like the, the well-meaning person at the fu-, the funeral, uh, who tells somebody, "But look. You have four more children." (Laughs) I mean—
Megan: Because we know that relationships are replaceable and interchangeable.
Paul: That's right.
Megan: Yeah. "Look at all the good you have around you," right. Gratitude does not work like that, right. Gratitude is not replacement theory, right. Like I'm not very good at mathematics, but, you know, whatever that—Somebody told me once, I said, I'm like, "There's, there's a math theory in there, and I don’t know what it is." And somebody told me and it went in one side and out the other. But, um, you know, this idea that appreciating what you’ve got is the antidote for the pain of what your missing. That is a central fallacy, right. We just, you know, think about like, um, the Thanksgiving season, where people are like enforced gratitude. Gratitude and grief don’t cancel each other out. They exist side by side. We care complex beings. Our hearts and our minds are made to hold complexity. I can be thankful that the, the air quality is such that I can breathe without having to think about it. I can be thankful that the sun is exactly enough million, trillion mile away that I am warm, but not incinerated. That doesn’t mean that my pain goes away.
Paul: Do you think that's because—And this is, in, in, my opinion, when you're talking about, you know, I, I want that promotion, but I'm not getting it, you know. And somebody says, "Well, you know, um, gratitude about what you have is something you might want to consider." Which is the, not to say you … it's wrong to long for that job, but, for me, one of them, one of the greatest gifts I've had in recovery is to learn to like what it is that I have organically. To not get there, saying I need to feel this, but to truly feel it. So, is that something you should never share with somebody, even if it's somebody, you know, whining about not being to, you know, afford a better computer this month? I mean, where is the line—
Megan: It's tricky territory, isn't it?
Paul: It's tricky territory because … you know, at least when you're mentoring someone in a support group, you want to awaken them to the concept of gratitude. But where is the line—A-, and, also, to the notion that sometimes difficulties can be a touchstone for growth? But, you know, I get from what you're saying that when you're talking about the loss of a loved one or something that is irreparably life-changing, you know, rather than a short-term challenge, you know, outside of losing a, a human life. I dunno, does that make sense?
Megan: Yeah, totally makes sense. And it's, it's complicated. So … (sighs) Listening to (chuckles), listening to people whine about not being able to afford a brand new computer when they just bought, you know, the $10,000 phone last year, you know, I have a hard time with that, right. I, in my head, I'm sometimes like, you know … smack them metaphorically around, like there are people dying in the streets, right. Like, your phone is fine. I, I think (chuckles), I think that a lot of people could, um, practice awareness of their own wealth and their own privilege and their own comfort. And … I think that we are—It, it's tricky and sticky because it's all rolled up in the sort of unsolicited advice thing that we do. Our intolerance for other people's pain. There is sort of a scarcity mindset around compassion, right, that like you can't be upset about your not getting your phone cuz nobody listened to me and my phone's four months older than yours, right. So, there isn't enough compassion to go around, so I'm gonna tell you to be grateful. I think that we use encouragement to feel grateful as sort of lip service to our underlying cynicism and intolerance. I think that that happens a lot. And … you described, um, being in a mentor relationship, where you're listening to somebody sort of rehearsing a lot of things that are not helpful, right. The sort of, um, those mind ruts and those patterns that we get in and the, the narrative that we tell ourselves—nothing will ever work out, nothing's gonna go my way, all of these things. That … So, before Matt died, I used a lot of cognitive behavioral stuff in my work, and I used it on myself. Like cognitive behavioral re-patterning is and AMAZING, amazing tool: interrupting your unconscious thoughts, making them conscious, looking at the story you tell yourself, what world do you create with your thoughts. All of that stuff is valid. Sometimes I get some pushback from critics and in hate mail about like, "Yeah, but like looking at your thoughts as really powerful, how dare you say that that's not gonna change anything." And I'm like, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that cognitive behavioral work and telling yourself a story is not going to, um, remove somebody's pain. I can't tell myself a different story about Matt's death in a way that makes it okay. The people that I work with, like they can't, you can't tell the story of your baby dying the day before his due date with no known cause in a way that makes puppy dogs and rainbows appear, right. So—
Paul: And why do puppy dogs and rainbows always appear at the same time?
Megan: I'm not sure! I think it an, and alliterative thing. I like the syncopation of that line, puppy dogs and rainbows, like it, it sounds like a good thing. But it's also like what does that evoke (chuckles) for us? (Laughs) I mean, like I, you know, if I'm having a bad day and I have somebody's puppy, my day has improved. It, not necessarily a good day, but there's something about that, right, that like we think that, um, gosh, if it were only that easy, that changing your thoughts, that everything would be better. It just doesn’t work that way, and it doesn’t mean that the tool sucks. It means right place and right time. And then going back to that mentor relationship, like … consent in all things, right. So, if somebody is whining and complaining—I still whine and complain. I'm still human, right. And so like, you know, I'll text a friend and be like, "I just need a bitch fest; can you just listen to this?" And I'll, you know, blech! I have a, a friend and a colleague—Kate Kenfield, who is brilliant, and I love her—she's an empathy educator, and she has this great question, um, whenever somebody is saying something kind of blech! She'll say, "Do you want empathy or a solution right now? Which thing so you need?" What a beautiful question.
Paul: And what a helpful way to … kind of triage the moment. Do I put it over here or do I put it over there?
Megan: Exactly. What do you need from me in this moment, right? Right timing. So when you hear somebody kind of excessively whining (chuckles)—"Excessively," what kind of value judgment is that? But, um, like if you're always in inter-, interaction with somebody, and somebody is always being like, "Everybody's so mean to me, I'm not, I'm not even get a parking spot this morning," and then this happened and this happened—that's exhausting to be around. I think it's okay to say like, "It seems like it's been a really rough day right now. Do you want empathy or do you wanna problem solve?"
Paul: The, the other thing that, since we're talking about complicated situations, is the friend who is the perpetual victim in their mind, and they become draining. How do we handle that? Do we ask that question? But at what point do we begin to say, "Hey, my battery's getting drained?" And, um, you know what I'm saying?
Megan: Yeah, boundaries are our friends.
Paul: Yeah.
Megan: Yeah.
Paul: What are some, some things that we can … say to that person?
Megan: Yeah, we can script that out like crazy. So, um, let's start with grief and then we’ll move outward, right. So, um, grieving people are impossible. I say this as a person who, who was intensely grieving for a long time. Not that I'm not grieving now, but it's not acute. Grieving people are exhausting because, you know, I used to tell my friends in the, in the, you know, first few years after Matt dies, like, "You can't win, and I need you to know that I know that," right. You call me, and you're invading my space. You don’t call me, and you abandon me. I'm aware that you (chuckles) can't win, right. Like, uh, you know, I, I'm very thankful to earlier me, the, the work that I did and the self-inquiry and inquisition (laughs) and growth and all of those things, that it, it gave me, um, it gave me enough roots that I could actually, at least in some ways, see my own process and to be able to, um, communicate and navigate. I didn't always use my grown-up words, but I knew where they were. So, um, grief is exhausting, right. It is hard to keep your eyes open to the pain of the world. It is HARD. I'm not gonna demonize anybody for that because it is a difficult thing. Tiny little neurobiological loop in here, you know, when we say I can't even imagine what this is like for you, well, your nervous system can imagine, right. This is why, um, when you see somebody else suffering, your eyes well up and your heart, you feel your heart, right, because we're connected to each other. And we feel somebody else's pain the same way that we feel somebody else's joy. So being around somebody in acute pain in exhausting. And you add on top of that that, in emotional distress, um … interpersonal relationship can be challenging. And you can do your best to be present, but you have to step away sometimes for your own well-being. So, my, my first thing is always like, I talk about this, like this fire drill of love. How do we survive hard things? Well, we survive hard things because of community and because of our own, um, uh, self-knowledge and self-commitment. And the way to survive when things go sideways is to build communities that can withstand difficult emotions and difficult conversations. And we do that before life goes sideways. So, there's my fire drill of love thing. Like why do we—
Paul: Support groups, support groups, support groups. For me, that's, that—
Megan: Yeah, exactly! Like communities and networks. Practicing these kinds of conversations before you need them. So you think about fire drills, like why do we practice them? In the event of an emergency, we need it to not be new to you, to know how to get out of a building, right. We practice difficult conversations, relational skills, asking questions like do you want empathy or a solution right now from Kate Kenfield. We practice that in the everyday, mundane things, so that in the event of an emergency, these skills aren’t new. I had AMAZING friends in my life when Matt died, and still do. And we were able to say to each other, um, I am here for you. I need about two hours to go like tend to my own stuff and take a walk and, you know, go for a run, um, because I can't really attend right now. And I will be back at such and such a time. Or, uh, you know, I had (chuckles)—Weirdly enough, I had several friends who were very pregnant at the time of Matt's death. In fact, that day, I was supposed to go to a baby shower for a friend of mine. I did not make it to that baby shower—
Paul: Oh, so you're a terrible person.
Megan: Yeah. So—
Paul: Selfish.
Megan: Yeah. Terrible. I'm awful. Yeah, I didn’t go to the baby shower, you know, after Matt died—
Paul: (Laughs)
Megan: (Sighs) I, I, I'm reasonably sure she forgave me. If she's, if she's listening, she can tell me, But I'm, I'm pretty sure she did. But, you know, my friends were like, uh, I had one friend whose baby was due in November—Hi, if you're listening—I had one baby who's friend was due in November and Matt died in July. And she was INCREDIBLE! Like just so present for me and so there for me and so everything, until about three weeks before he due date, and she said, "I need to start weaning us, because when this baby comes I can't do this for you anymore. It's not because I don't love you. It's because I have a small human and, you know, all of this stuff." And, like how amazing is THAT social skill, right? To be able to say I love you, I can't do this anymore. And here's why.
Paul: There is almost no difficult conversation that can't be aided by, at the front, reminding that person how much you care or love them.
Megan: Yes. Connect first. Yeah. And telling the truth, right. And …
Paul: And expressing your needs in that—
Megan: YEAH! Like awesome boundary role modeling and advocating for yourself and all of these things. Like these just aren’t things we talk about, because what we talk about is like your job is to cheer your person up. Like, no! Your job is to have good communication skills and good boundaries.
Paul: And keep your battery charged.
Megan: And keep your battery charged, right. Like there's that standard psychotherapist line where we remind people that when you get on an airplane and they do the safety thing, they say, you know, if you're traveling with small children, put your own safety ox-, oxygen mask on first before you tend to anybody else. Yes … right. Like you can't show up for yourself if your batteries aren’t at least, you know, at about half. And you can't show up for others if you aren’t taking care of yourself. And I think, sometimes, I know it's what—I, I talk to grieving people a lot and I talk to people who want to be supportive, whether professional or personally. And, you know, a lot of people are like how do I talk to me kids about grief? Like I don’t want to show them how destroyed I am. Like, well, what's the, what's the message you send to a child if you never show them you're sad? You show them that sadness is something to be hidden. Now why do I link this into like how do we have conversations about where your, where your boundaries are and where your energy levels are? Because this like, having these conversations about the reality of being human, about our own, um, emotional needs and our relational needs—we don’t tend to talk about any of that stuff, with our kids, with each other, with ourselves, any of that stuff. And so, we're all sort of managing what's true instead of saying what's true. There's, I mean, there's tons of reasons for that. But that's, that's how I see it happened.
Paul: And, and you just also reminded me of a kind of sick pattern that you see in, uh, kind of emotionally enmeshed relationships between a parent and a child. It's where, um, guess that parents not hiding (chuckles) their sadness, but their looking to their child for comfort, which is super not okay.
Megan: Yeah. Super not okay.
Paul: And so, obviously you don’t want to hide your emotions, um … but—
Megan: Yeah. So I, I think we tap into something really interesting there, which is this, um, black and white thinking, which is really common in Western culture, right: If it's not one thing, it's entirely another. When I talk about grief as a normal, normal part of life, when I say that cheering people up and encouraging them to move on and look on the bright side, and all of this stuff is not working, the backlash that I get is like, you're so negative, people need to like GRRR! get on with their lives and all of this stuff. And I'm like, you know, there aren’t just two options. It's not, you put your grief behind you and you, um, go on to have this radiant, positive life where everything happens for a reason and you know why you're here. Or, you're sitting in a corner of your basement wearing sackcloth and mumbling to yourself for the rest of eternity. Like those aren’t our only two options. And what you were just talking about, with like … we don’t have two options when we're talking to young people about grief or, of any kind, hardship of any kind. There isn't, you show them nothing and you be very stoic and very well-protected and not go there. Or, you just blech! and you vomit your entire emotional landscape onto a child who has no capacity to receive that. There is a BIG middle ground in there, right. And like the binaries don’t work for anything except computer code, right. Like then don’t work in gender, they don’t, like they don’t work! So, like what's the middle ground of that, when you are talking about how much of my, um, emotional needs do I share with certain people, or in certain venues, right? Because I'm not gonna go to emotional territory with somebody in the middle of the fucking grocery store. I'm gonna do that in a very specific place where I know that I'm gonna be heard and cared for and protected.
Paul: A convenience store.
Megan: Exactly, right—
Paul: You're in; you're out—
Megan: —Like it's much more contained, cuz you're in and you're out—
Paul: Yeah, you lay your shit on them—
Megan: Like you got your Slurpee; you're good. So, there's a right place and a right time for this. But like that, that middle ground of like, you know, if we like take the childhood example right now. So, to talk to a kid and to say, "I feel really sad that, that Dad's not here. Do you feel sad?" Like, "When I feel sad, this is what I tend to do." Right, like, "I might not want to talk to anyone for three or four days, and you kind of notice that I don’t really wanna play. And maybe I cry in the car, or something." Like, "That's what I do. What do you do when you're sad?" I mean, we’re talking age-appropriate here. Like I wouldn’t talk to a 14-year-old like that, but I would talk to a four-year-old like that. That is very different than not showing any emotion because you don’t wanna upset your kid, or sharing way too much emotion that's not appropriate for the space. Like, we go back to like right relationship here. We can, we can talk eight-fold path all over the place. There's, there's just something for everything here. But, um, like right relationship. What do you share with whom and when? And it's not about hiding things. We all code switch, right. Like there is a place and a time to talk about certain things. And, and what I want for people is to start cultivating relationships where you can have conversations about the conversation, right. "Can we talk about how we're doing this together?" Those are super important conversations, not just in grief, but in everything.
Paul: Love it. I love it.
Megan: Me, too.
Paul: It would be so great if they taught in school a class called how to have difficult conversations.
Megan: Oh my gosh, that would be amazing!
Paul: That would be amazing. Somebody on there, get on that.
Megan: (Laughs) Get on it!
Paul: But make sure you give me credit—
Megan: Tell us where you are! Yeah, right? (Laughs) This has to come back to this. But I, I think, I think we're starting to see things like that. I think we're starting to see a movement towards that. I was just having a conversation with a colleague this morning how, you know, 10 years ago, nine and a half years ago when Matt died, there was nothing out there for grief support. Like, I'm a researcher, I'm a writer. Like I looked for things, and most of the stuff I found out there was either, um, heavily religious—which I am not—or assumed, because I was widowed, that I was over 70. I was 38 when Matt died. So, not 70. There was a, there was, it was a wasteland out there on the internet for, for people talking about the reality of grief, and certainly these atypical, um, losses or what I call out-of-order deaths. So like baby deaths and suicides and violent crimes and natural disasters, um, illnesses and accidents that happen, not at the end of a typical Western life span. Which happens a lot! And so, in the, in the nine and a half years since like there has been so much growth in talking about these things. I, I sort of liken this to, you know, in the, in the 80s, so before the internet when it was just zines and Ms. Magazine and these things and the, the brave people who came forward and started telling stories about sexual abuse. Sexual abuse was not something that was talked about. And they came out and they told their stories. And not that sexual abuse has been eradicated, not even close, but we talk about it now. We sort of as a culture (chuckles) that it's bad … Newsflash! But that was because people told their stories and they started talking. So, nine and a half or 10 years ago, um, there weren’t people telling stories about grief, about how hard it is to be here sometimes. And people telling stories, telling stories, telling stories, finding each other, making community, that has started to make change happen. We see that in sort of some, um, you know, some more progressive education or some of the books that are coming out these days. Opening these conversations with kids about how do we talk about boundaries? How do we talk about, um, boundaries and consent for your physical body? And then, how do we talk about communication skills? How do we talk about how you handle, um, bullies on the playground (chuckles), or if you're the bully. Like all of that stuff is starting to happen. So I don’t, I don’t think we’re far off—
Paul: I hope not.
Megan: —from having education in the classroom about how to have difficult conversations. I don’t think we're there yet, because I don’t think the grown-ups are willing to have difficult conversations. But the, the … the ease with which we tell and hear stories these days, the media through which we, we have to share and tell stories and to tell the truth about the things that are painful and hard in this culture and around the world, I, I honestly—gosh, I can't even believe that cynical me is gonna say this—I feel hopeful that something like that will happen.
Paul: I do, too. I do, too. I just, um, don’t know how long it will be until it's widespread enough that we don’t have the climate that we have in our culture right now.
Megan: Yeah. That's gonna take some serious undoing. And that's gonna take people being willing to be uncomfortable. And that's hard, right. So, here's, here’s a good example of this. So, um … most of my followers on social media have experienced an out-of-order death, so child death and, and, um, baby loss and suicide and natural disasters and all of these things. And, every once in a while, I'll post something about pet loss. And … without fail, one or two people will chime in and say, "How dare you write about pet loss? My baby died. I don't give a fuck—"
Paul: Are you kidding me?!
Megan: Right?! They will go OFF! Now, first of all, they haven’t been in my community very long to know that that's not how we treat each other. However, um, you know, I, I have a practice—I'm not always very good at it—but to listen to the message beneath somebody else's words. And, um, what I hear in that is somebody who feels like there's not enough listening, there's not enough compassion in the world to go around, so how dare you talk about pets when nobody wants to talk about my baby. So I'll come into the comments section and I’ll say something along the lines of, um, "It's really hard, isn't it, to, to give airtime to someone else's loss when you feel like yours is invisible and nobody wants to talk about it." We also find this when a celebrity has a loss in their lives, and suddenly everybody, or, you know, David Bowie dies, and everybody's like outpourings of grief and support and all of this. And me, you know, the grieving people in your community are like, "Ya never met the guy! And you MET my sister! And you’ve never so much as offered your condolences." Like there's a, there's a disso-, (chuckles) a compassion dissonance there, right. And so, the thing here is that we, functionally, compassion in this culture is a finite resource. We don’t share it very freely, right. We have this sort of competition about who gets to have airtime in their pain. Whose pain is worse? And we do that because compassion is a scarce resource. When resources are scare, what do we do? We fight over them. "How dare you talk about pet loss when you won't talk about my sister?" Well, of we want a culture where compassion is a abundant, vast resource, then we have to shart, start being extravagant with sharing it, don't we? If you want enough compassion and love for your loss, then you need to treat compassion as the abundant resource that it is and stop being stingy with it.
Paul: I love it—
Megan: Which is my very beautiful way of saying step the fuck off!
Paul: (Laughs)
Mg Right? I get that. When Matt died, um, you know, I tell this story in the book that, that an acquaintance of mine insisted that—I mean, gosh, every time I was near her, she mostly talked about her divorce and how it was exactly the same thing as, as me watching my partner drown in front of me. And she just kept saying like, "You just need to shake it off and go out dancing. Like that's what I needed to do when my husband left me. You just need to go out dancing."
Paul: Oh my god, what a narcissist—
Megan: And like two weeks after Matt died. Like, I don’t need to go fucking dancing! So, I mean, there is many things wrong with that. One is, um, conflating your loss with somebody else's. The other was like, at that time in my life, like before Matt died, I was not a person who ever went out dancing. Might be a different story now, but like that was not me. So why would I suddenly start doing this? And just this like … incapacity to see the person standing in front of you and to differentiate, to see that they are not you. (Laughs) And they, and they don't need this. But, you know, with some distance now—and even then, I could, cuz I was a therapist, like know this stuff, but—to be able to know like, you know, a person who is constantly high-jacking your story as a way to tell their story would say to me that their story hasn’t yet been heard. There hasn’t been enough compassion to go around.
Paul: That's what you're hearing underneath it.
Megan: That's what you're hearing underneath it, right. Like, there's that section in the book, um, where I'm talking about that competition of grief, right, where, uh, you know—So little … weird little, um, career-hazard story here. So if I'm out trying to have a "social life," or a day off and I meet somebody new and they ask me what I do for a living, if I say that I'm a, a grief educator or a grief advocate or I write and speak about grief, they will very often start telling me their grief story. All the people they've ever lost in the world. And I'm like ugh! gosh, I just (chuckles), I want was to not be working right now. But, because we don’t talk about grief, all of us are carrying some kind of pain around, waiting for a moment where it's suddenly okay to talk about it.
Paul: Yeah. We're looking for that cool drink of water.
Megan: Yeah! There was, there was a conference where I spoke a couple of years ago to a bunch of medical providers, um, up in Alaska. And we were doing a Q & A sessions, and one of the doctors said, "So, what about a client who keeps coming into your office year after year after year, still talking about their dead—" whatever, parent. "They they’ve been telling this story over and over again." Reminds me of a question you asked me earlier, sort of about that perseveration, that victim, um, self-victiming thing. And, you know, so this doctor says, "So what about a client who keeps coming in year after year after year and talking about when their dad died?" And I would say, "Well, that is a person who has not yet been heard." Huh! If you have to tell a story over and over and over again, you haven’t been heard yet. Because what do we do when we hear somebody's pain? We cheer them up. We talk about our own pain instead. We change the subject. We tell 'em it's not that bad. Of course you have to say it over and over again, right. Matt had this really … beautiful and annoying trait, where (laughs) if I was, um, telling a story that he had heard before, especially a pain story, very, very sweetly, no animosity whatsoever—which is made, what made it really annoying—um, he would very sweetly say, "I've heard this story several times. Do you feel like I'm not hearing you? What's in this story that you need me to know?" With just like this sweet thing that made me so mad. And, you know. Or like, um, "It seems like you're really angry about this. Do you wanna talk about it?" Which, when you're really angry, is a really irritating thing to have someone say to you. But there's this, there's this thing that I, that I have tried to carry. And I tried to carry it when he was, you know, still here, being annoying in person. But this like, if somebody is telling you the same story over and over again, let's talk about that. Why do you need to tell this pain story over and over again? Like, um, do you feel like you haven’t been heard? What would help you to feel heard in this story? Do you want empathy or a solution?
Paul: So, in that moment, and then what if the person, after having that moment with them, they're still, every time, it's high-jacked and it's all about them and, and that thing? I think, in that moment, what I usually do, is I'll say, "You know, I, I feel like I'm out of my league in terms of giving you the support that I think it sounds like you need, and can I help you look for a support group so that you can get more support?"
Megan: Boundaries for the win! Again, we go back to, this is not a binary. It's not, in order to be compassionate we need to be doormats and listen to somebody who is just lashing out and being awful or, you really just don’t have the bandwidth to listen to the story right now. You got your own shit going on. Like that's not a bad thing to say I can't be here for this. That might be a, a painful interaction, but it is, it's not wrong, right. So there's, again, if we, if we look at the binary, which was what we tend to think our only two options, you can either shut somebody down, or you can, you know, la, la, la, la, la, they're still going on, I'm just gonna sit here, doesn’t matter that I had shit to do. You know, neither of those two things are really helpful. They're not respectful to you and they're actually not helpful to the other person. These are difficult conversations. To be able to say, "I love you. I have, um, I've tried to be really present and to listen to you and I need to let you know that I can't keep doing this right now," right. "This, I'm happy to support you—"If that's true; I don't want anybody to lie, but "—I'm happy to support you. I'm happy to like do some physical things. But I can't continue to listen to you, um, yell at me or complain about other people. You have a right to tell your own story, and I need to not listen to it." Right. Boundaries are not comfortable, but boundaries are important.
Paul: What about looking them in the eye, and then pointing the remote at the TV and raising the volume?
Megan: (Laughs)
Paul: Is that—
Megan: I dunno, I feel like, I feel like that would need to be discussed.
Paul: And you don’t even break eye contact until the volume is SO loud, it's maxed out.
Megan: I think that depends on your relationship. Which is why (chuckles) I say, you need to have conversations. Get, get into a habit of having (laughs) increasingly prickly conversations (laughs) so that you can have difficult conversations when you really need to, when they really matter, right. I think we, we do so much performative relationship that, uh, it become difficult to not do that, right.
Paul: And I contri-, I think that contributes to social anxiety as well—
Megan: Absolutely! Right. I mean, this is, this is, this is, like, you know that thing where if you're nervous about going on stage and you get up on stage and you say I'm nervous about being here, you suddenly feel better because you're telling the truth.
Paul: Exactly.
Megan: Your nervous system is in alignment with itself.
Paul: Yes. Truth is a great muscle relaxer.
Megan: Exactly!
Paul: Megan, thank you so much. And your book is called "It's OK to Not Be OK." And the part again, after the, after the colon—
Megan: (Laughs) " It's OK That You're Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture that Doesn’t Understand."
Paul: And people can find you on social media at …
Megan: They can find me at Instagram, which is my current favorite platform, @refugeingrief on Twitter and on Facebook. And there's also a Patreon page, um, patreon/megandevine, where some really cool video things are happening.
Paul: Nice. And, um, uh, it, it was, what, refuge and grief?
Megan: Refuge in grief.
Paul: Oh, refuge IN grief.
Megan: Correct.
Paul: Okay. I gotcha. Thank you so much.
End of Interview
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[01:36:07] This is a struggle in a sentence survey filled put by a woman who calls herself "Peaches." And about being a sex crime victim, she writes, "I want my body back. It belongs to me." About her anger issues: "After what I've been through, I should be permitted anger." And, you know, I, I wanted to say about that one is, even more than that, you deserve to find ways to express your anger healthily and have it witnessed and have it validated. Because, you know, like Megan was talking about in the interview, it's hard to let go of, of anger when we feel like nobody is empathizing with us. There's something really healing about having your pain witnessed.
[01:36:53] "Robo-Carrie" writes about, um, her depression, anxiety, and anger issues, um: "Marriage and love is fucking hard and painful. Is it supposed to be this hard? My partner's not meeting my needs, and I feel so useless and like my hands are tied. Unfortunately, I don’t have a good therapist. I've been working on myself and the podcast has really opened my eyes to see my trauma. But my therapist is the therapist that would just let you talk and ramble, and will only give a few tips, but doesn’t give me homework or the tools to help me heal. I keep wondering if I should check myself into a facility." I'm not qualified to say whether or not you should check yourself into a facility, cuz for one, I don't even know what kind of facility you're talking about. But what I do know is that you deserve to find a therapist to help you with your trauma. And it sounds like your current therapist can't. So maybe look for one that, um, who does trauma treatment. Maybe one who does EMDR or, uh, find somebody that does somatic experiencing. That can REALLY help with trauma that's, that's trapped in the body. There's, uh—Somatic experiencing was, uh, pioneered by a guy named Peter Levine, and he wrote a book called, uh, "The Body Keeps The Score." And it's, I've don both EMDR and somatic experiencing, and both of them definitely, definitely helped me heal. And I've had therapists in the past that kind of were like you described. And, you deserve, you deserve to get the help that, that you need.
[01:38:31] This is a shame and secret survey filled out by a woman who calls herself "It's Not A Hickey." And I'm not sure what that means, but, um … She is straight, in her 20s, raised in a slightly dysfunctional environment. Ever been the victim of sexual abuse? "Some stuff happened, but I don’t know if it counts. A 'friend' of mine dry-humped and touched me over my clothes when he thought I was passed out drunk." Yes, that is sexual abuse. "I was awake for the whole thing, but too scared to do anything about it." She's never been physically abused, but she's been emotionally abused. "My ex-boyfriend was a very controlling and angry person. He knew exactly how to make me hare myself enough that I would do whatever he wanted." Any positive experiences with the abusers? "He was my significant other for five years. I loved him, but now realize how horrible he was to me. Took me three years to be able to say it's not my fault.” Darkest thoughts: "I live with a two-year-old at the moment—my roommate's daughter. And sometimes, I catch myself looking when she's naked. It's not that I'm aroused. It's more, I'm afraid I will get aroused. I guess I'm not used to such blatant nakedness. She has no shame, of course." Darkest secrets: "I have a friend who's even more messed up than I am. There have been countless incidents where I'm forced to pry knives out of her hands or call the cops because she's threatening to kill herself. Or stay up all night because she drank too much and is threatening to take a bunch of pills. Therefore, I know EXACTLY what she's thinking when she calls or texts me, and sometimes I don’t answer because I've grown to hate her for taking advantage of my affections. I could never say this to her face because she would use it as an excuse to do something drastic. I'm afraid she will kill herself and it will be my fault because I didn’t answer my phone." And I wanted to read this because that is a really, sadly, common thing. And … you are not responsible for whether or not that person takes their own life. And what she is doing—I'm sure she's not doing it consciously—but it is abusive to put that on somebody who is not qualified. And it's manipulative. It sounds like your friend is in a lot of pain and wants some connection, wants her pain witnessed, but she going about it the right way. And, continuing to … enable her, uh, actions is, is not … loving towards yourself or her. And, something you might potentially say, the next time she does that, is, "I'm feeling overwhelmed by this. And I'm not qualified to help you when you're in a state of crisis like this. Please call the suicide hotline or I'll call them for you. But, it's … it's overwhelming me. And it doesn’t mean that I don’t care about you; I do. But, I don’t want to feel drained in our relationship." You deserve to say that. I've said that to people before. And it was very freeing. Sexual fantasies most powerful to you: "As far as normal fantasies go, I like to be dominated and would maybe like to experiment more with a woman and/or group sex. I've also had sexual dreams about my mom, dad, and brother; and it freaks me out to no end. I always wake up disgusted with myself." What, if anything, would you like to say to someone you haven’t been able to? "I would like to tell my ex-boyfriend, to his face, how horrible he is. I think it would be cathartic, but there's still a little part of me that's scared or him, and an even littler part that thinks maybe I'm overreacting." You might start with … letting all of that out in a, in a healthy, supportive environment, like with a therapist or support group, and have them bear witness to your feelings. And that might change how you feel about him. Not to get together back with him, but to … look to that event … letting your anger out at him, to be the sole catalyst for you to heal and let go of your anger. And I'm not saying you shouldn’t do it. But, for me, the things that have worked in my life has been, I've, I've had to do so many different things, and each one … helps a little bit. There was no one or two or even three or four things. It's been a ton of things. What, if anything, so you wish for? "I wanna be a functional human being for once in my life. I wanna eat healthy and exercise and spend my money wisely. I wanna be a 'real' adult." Have you shared these things with others? "I've talked about my ex with people before, but not about the sexual stuff. I would like to talk to my current boyfriend about my fantasies, but never the dreams." There's a good chance he's has sexual dreams about his family and wa-, woken up disgusted, or even aroused. You know, that, that, that stuff is normal. Our brain outs on fucked up animation festivals when we're awake and when we're asleep. And, judging yourself for those is, is not kind to yourself. Plus, it’s so common. Anything you'd like to share with someone who shares your thoughts or experiences? "It gets better. I'm still fucked up to no end, but I never thought I would be like I am today. I'm happier now and someday, I'll get where I wanna be, and so will you." Thank you for that.
[01:44:28] This is a happy moment filled out by a woman who calls herself "Middle School Teach." And she writes, "On my last day of teaching my first homeroom middle school class, I got a hug from every single student. I experienced the most immense feeling of sadness and joy all at once. I knew that I had made an impact on the lives of these students, and I also knew how badly I would miss them." That, that's such an important concept—a beautiful moment, too—but such an important concept, that we can feel two things at the same time. And it's so hard, sometimes, to make sense of that.
[01:45:07] This is a struggle in a sentence filled out by a guy who calls himself "Max Power." And about his compulsive eating, he writes, "I can't focus because I'm hungry. But if I eat something, I won't stop until the kitchen is empty." I think a lot of people relate to that one. Thank you for that.
[01:45:26] This is the same survey filled out by a guy who calls himself "Phil." About his depression, he writes, "If I didn’t live with my girlfriend, I could sit in bed, leaving only to buy booze and smokes until I went broke or died." That might be a double major at a junior college: boozing and smoking in bed. How popular would that be in college. About his ADD: "Without medication, I'm an idiot. With medication, I'm robotic and awkward." About his drinking: "Losing my new job because my liver is fucked, only reinforces my world view that I'm a piece of shit who doesn’t deserve nice things like a job I like and a good salary." You're not a piece of shit. You're not a piece of shit. I see it as you just not having the right tools to do with your feelings, and so you reach for the booze. And clearly, it’s not working. So maybe the thing to do, instead of shaming yourself, is say … "Maybe I should get help." It's scary, especially trusting people by asking for help. But isn't it worth a shot? Aren't you worth not dying an ugly, alcoholic death?
[01:47:06] This is a shame and secret survey filled out by a … trans-masculine, um … person who calls themselves "Messy Head (But Never Bed Head)." They are … one second … they identify as bisexual, but girls are great. They're in their 20s, raised in a pretty dysfunctional environment. Ever been the victim of sexual abuse? "Some stuff happened, but I don’t know if it counts. My mom's always been really judgmental of my body. She wouldn’t make me strip or anything to look at me, but she'd comment on it. What would really bother me is that, to this day—I'm nearly 21—whenever I would get new clothes, she would make me try them on in the store in front of her, no matter how small the waiting room was, no matter the garment. As I type this, I'm not sure how long this went for. Actually, I don’t know if I'm making this up. But just thinking about this makes me really uncomfortable. I vividly remember her touching my chest to see if my bra would fit me, and I still don’t understand why. Did she really need to touch me?" She's also been physically and emotionally abused. "Traditional parents hitting me, mostly my mom. My dad was deployed a lot, and she would get really angry, especially if we had done something bad in front of people. It would be AMAZING how she's switch from being pleasant and sociable in the car—never our own; we were always dropped off because she couldn’t drive, and my dad was absent. As soon as the garage door closed, she'd be yelling, and inside the house she'd beat us with a shoe. My dad is—I'm not ever sure how to explain him for being a mostly absent father—I think he's caused a lot of psychological damage. A-ha! I recently had an anxiety attack because my teacher acted exactly like him, promising something earlier and now taking it back, despite all the work done on my part to make it happen in the first place and then treating me life the entire thing was my fault. Oh boy! My teacher gave me the biggest fucking eye roll when I told him I was okay with my project how it was instead of redoing it. That specific interaction made me shut down because of how it resembled my dad. After talking to my teacher, I had to leave the classroom and immediately started dissociating. I just couldn’t be present, but I kept coming back whenever I felt or heard him come here, like I existed just for him to interacted with. I hated it, I still hate it. I'm sorry if this doesn’t belong here. I think my family gaslighted me a lot growing up. At least my brother did, but he's three years younger and I feel like he shouldn’t be able to do that." You know, there's no—in term of, of … um, what we feel—there's, there's, there's no rules in terms of what we feel. You know, there's just healthy and unhealthy ways of, of expressing our feelings. And your mom sounds like a real narcissist. That, that is—and I'm not saying she has narcissistic personality disorder. But, definitely narcissistic qualities. That is one of the hallmarks of it, is that they, only their family truly knows that side of, of them. Any positive experiences with the abusers? "Mom: There's a lot, and we're a black family, and abuse is just a thing that happens. Dad: He's your funny, charismatic dad trope—everybody loves him, we have plenty of good experiences. When I went home for college, he took me to go swimming, and he also brought a work friend, which was a little weird. But he joked around with me and let me critique his swimming technique—I was competitive swimmer for several years. It was fun hanging out with him and fun just being in the water." Darkest thoughts: "General constant thoughts of killing myself or others when the opportunity presents itself. At the train station. Walking by traffic. Around knives. I think about murder and torture, doing it to others. What feels like obsessively compulsive thoughts about kissing or sex with friends and strangers. I have sexual thoughts about children, especially girls. I don’t know or think I'm turned on by them, or if I'm actually turned on, or if I'm just intrigued. I think I'm gross. Also, thoughts about bestiality and being raped. I'd love to be raped by a dog, I think. Sometimes I think about my dad's dick or my brother's. I hate incest, but I think I want them to fuck or rape me. I feel like I should apologize, but my dad always says, 'Don’t be sorry; be better.' Ha, ha, ha; that's a bitter laugh, if you can't tell. Recently, I've been thinking about killing my roommates. I feel like I get closer to cutting every day. I wanna tell my roommates to hide the knives, but I don’t want to worry them." It sounds like you are in a lot of, uh, a lot of pain and, and feel alone with your feelings. And, um, you know, as far as your sexual fantasies, um … you know, these are not things that, that I've never read before. And, it's what we do with our fantasies that, that matters. Darkest secrets: "I used to hurt myself. No cutting or burns; I couldn’t manage the courage for that. And my mom was always aware of the marks on my body. I would scratch myself, pull off scabs. Now ill, since my joints are so bad, underdress, and freeze and enjoy the joint pain. When I was in fifth grade, I slept over at a girl's house—also in fifth grade, in my class. This was before I knew I was trans; not like it would have made a difference. She opened the night with her showing me some shitty porn game web site and playing/showing a BDSM kidnapping scene. We were 10. I can't remember what I made of that. I know if let her do whatever she wanted to me. She tied me up with yarn, hands above my head, one leg up, and tried to shove a dry doll—head first—up my dry asshole, which now I can't help but chuckle at. In the years after, I ended up downloading this messaging app called Kik and posting my username on hardcore porn videos, telling people to come and dom me, make me their bitch, or whatever. I really wanted to be used. I think I wanted to feel worth something, but I really wanted sex. I would sext with older guys. I 'stopped' when I was 17 or so. I think it went on from eighth or ninth grade until junior year or so. I miss it. I recently found out that this would count as sexual assault, but I drew them in, so it feels like my fault. One of my doms told me to fantasize about my brother, going to him room, and riding him. I remember considering doing it, maybe trying to get us to shower together again, and I could at least touch him. God, I'm disgusting. I re-downloaded Kik, and people are still messaging me. I sent at least two people my face and that I've lived in when I was first using the app. I'm terrified that they'll find me and hurt me, but I want them to find me, at least on some level. I have a Tumblr I post nudes and do sexual requests on. I plan to kill myself over and over and over and over again since ninth or tenth grade. I've even figured out how I could do it and make it look like a semi-accident. There's a chance I'd survive it, but I could do it in my bed and nobody would be the wiser until the next day." Oh, I don’t know if I mentioned … Yes, I did, I mentioned, uh, sexual preference and environment she was raised in. Sexual fantasies most powerful to you: "Whoops! Went over this on the previous page: bestiality and rape, but also overstuffing. I wanna be able to really feel it. Slow sex with massive dicks." I think that goes without saying, that if it's a massive dick, it's gonna be slow sex. Because that's just common courtesy. What, if anything, would you like to say to someone you haven’t been able to say? "About my dad: You're trying really fucking hard, now that you're back, but you fucked up everyone you live with, especially your fucking children. And there's little you can do to make up for this. About my mom: The company you're doing your 'business' with is a thinly-veiled pyramid scheme and it's a waste of $400 a month. Fucking stop it, because it's more money than it's worth. About my roommates: I'm sorry I compulsively lied about being okay this morning, last night, and every other time. I don’t know why I do this, but it's so hard for me to be truthful about my own feelings." I am gonna venture that it's … because your feelings were never met as a child with ANY kind of compassion or validation. So, of COURSE it would be terrifying to share that part of you. And we get so used to compartmentalizing that part of ourselves and shaming ourselves for it. But there are people out there who will validate our feelings and who will love us and respect boundaries. And, that's one of the things that helps us heal. But that first step is SOOO fucking scary. It's so scary, walking into a support group or therapy or opening up to somebody who we think might be safe to open up to. But it's worth it. And even if that, it doesn’t go well at first, keep doing it. Just keep doing it. Because you'll get better at finding out who is appropriate and who isn't. And anybody that judges us, fuck them. We go around once in life. Let's … let's value ourselves, you know. We're uniquely positioned to be our own best friends. Let's take advantage of that. That's right, I'm saying let's take advantage of ourselves. (Laughs) But first, let's have a, a drink of wine to loosen ourselves up. What, if anything, do you wish for? "To die without causing anybody harm—clean up, funeral costs, emotional baggage. Actual financial stability, for once in my fucking life. Unlimited amount of Fireball—delicious cinnamon whiskey—so I can get shitfaced and not think about my problems. I wish I could smoke myself closer to death, if smoke in my lungs didn’t. And I don’t know how to describe it. I think I'm autistic. Certain sensory feelings really upset me. I wish I could violently dissect another human and leave them to bleed out and die. I wish someone would do that to me. I have a lot of wishes for violent, organ-related things. I wish my dad would tell me when I could sell my blood." Have you share these things with others? "I told people about the bad experiences with my teacher, and they sympathized, but did allude to how bad it hurt me. I can talk about myself. I feel like I'm inconveniencing everyone. I don’t want to be a bother anymore." Cuz I think that was the template, is that your parents acted inconvenienced or irritate by it. And that's on them. They failed you in that area as, as parents. So, of course it's scary. But you deserve love and validation and compassion. You're in pain and you have wounds, but you are not a bad or unusual person. We all have the ways that that pain and anxiety and self-hatred manifests itself in our, you know, impulses and fantasies and ways that we … self-, uh, sabotage. How do you feel after writing these things down? "A little better, but now intrusion thoughts are coming back and I really fucking want to hurt myself or sleep for the day, but I have to work in two hours. I might skip it and class." Is there anything you'd like to share with someone who shares your thoughts or experiences? "Sometimes, I think it would be better if we, as a society, just let everyone who wanted to die kill themselves. But on one episode—I don’t remember which one—Paul said that this depressive, anxious, untreated, for lack of a better term, brain, isn't our true self." And I still believe that. I still believe that. And I'm not saying people shouldn’t have the autonomy to do what they want with their lives. But, I think that we shouldn't just assume that we're beyond help. I'm glad I didn't, you know. And I'm still trying new thigs 20 years into … going to get help, with the psychiatrist and therapist. I mean, I've been in therapy for 25 years.
[02:00:41] This is a struggle in a sentence filled out by a guy who calls himself "Dylan Thomas Archetype." And about his alcoholism and drug addiction, he writes, "I'm an aspiring alcoholic." Listen, I think if you really put your mind to it, I think you can, I think you can do it. I think it you isolate, think about yourself enough, imagine enough worse-case scenarios, I think that dream is possible. That's, (chuckles) that's sadly what I did. And, uh, is it the chicken or the egg? But I know that those are the things that are definitely related to alcoholism. Because we think, a lot of times, that alcoholism is about the substance, but it’s really not. It's, it's the tool that we become used to using because we don’t have another tool to deal with our feelings. And, uh, and there is a, a certain … There are certain qualities that all addicts and alcoholics share. And doctors, before there were ever 12-step programs, the thing that doctors that worked closely with alcoholics, uh, all agreed upon was that alcoholics—and I think you can throw addicts in there as well—are, uh, self-centered, self- obsessive, um, hypersensitive to criticism, and emotionally immature. And I didn’t wanna believe that at first. But, uh, that described me before I began treating my alcoholism and addictions … with solutions that really worked other than numbing myself. A snapshot from his life: "The nice thing about being a depressed insomniac is that if I sit up in bed and just be depressed and miserable, the pain of all that circular self-abuse does eventually exhaust me to the point where I can't not sleep, even if it does take a couple to a few hours." Maybe you should design an app for people. You could call it "Fuck Me." And the app is just a voice reminding you of all the world's horrors, and then it eases you into cutting yourself down because you can't fix any of those horrors. I want you to get on that. I'ma see if I can get you some seed money. But thank you for that. You know, I'm, I, I might have been a little overly glib in your, in your, uh, reading your survey. But, uh, I do, dude, I do feel your pain. And I have been in that place. And that was in bed, was actually the day that my life changed, because I sat up in bed, thought all of my suicidal thoughts like I did every morning, said to myself, "Your sleeping your life away. You're a lazy piece of shit. You slept too late." My stomach tightened into its usual knot. And I realized the only thing I was looking forward to was getting drunk and high, which I knew was making me more depressed. And I said out loud, "God, help me! I can't do this anymore." And, for some reason, that was the day I got up the courage to ask for help. And, I was not and am not a religious person, but I believe that there is something in the universe, some type of energy, that when we humble ourselves and ask for help and open that part of ourselves to give and receive love, as scary as it might be, that we begin to find a strength that we couldn’t find solely within ourselves.
[02:04:57] This is a happy moment filled out by "Ninja Unicorn." And she writes, "Getting snuggles in bed from my cats and laughing until you can't feel your face anymore with my mom. You know, the laughs that you can feel in your whole body. I love those moments with my mom." That is, uh, that's so beautiful. That's so beautiful. That is such … I, I, I, I love those, those laughs where your stomach hurts and your face hurts And that you get to have those with your mom is really, really awesome. And I am becoming a total fan of snuggling with cats. My girlfriend's cat, Pablo, um … that one night a week, I go over to her place, and we usually wind up just … laying in bed and, and Pablo comes up on the pillow and rests (laughs), rests his little head between our heads. And, uh, we just pet him and he purrs. And it's the safest feeling in the world. It's so amazing. It's so amazing.
[02:06:17] This is a struggle in a sentence filled out by "Sassy Sloth." And she writes about her seasonal affective disorder: "Living in fear of the days getting shorter and the dark." Oh my god, do I relate to that! I DREAD fall. I dread that. Those days in November, you know, when it starts getting dark at four o'clock. And … it's like my depression is a stalker, and November is when my new address gets mailed to it. Any comments to make the podcast better? "Please tell us more about your ex-wife's puppy." I've, I've talked about, uh, Grady, a couple of times. But he's about, I wanna say maybe he's about eight months now. And he's, he's definitely gotten bigger, but he's still maybe eight pounds, and SO full of energy and joy. He's black and white. For Patreon donors, I've posted a couple of pictures of, of Grady and, and Ivy. And, uh, I see both of them a couple of times a week, uh, when my ex is at work, uh, or sometimes I’ll just go by when, when she's there as well, just cuz I'm, I'm jonesing to, uh, to go see the dogs. And, um, he's just, he's just awesome. Oh! One thing he does that I love is, if you get on all fours, he will jump up on your back and the just walk around your back like he's in a guard tower patrolling the area. (Laughs) And then he'll jump off your back really, like as high as he can. I just love that. I LOVE when dogs jump higher than necessary, cuz it's, they just have so much energy and happiness in them.
[02:08:17] This is a struggle in a sentence filled out by a guy who calls himself "Traveling Still." About his depression, he writes, "My calendar's full of things I really wanna do, but you and I both know I won't get out of bed." (Laughs) About his anxiety: "Staring at the computer since morning, unable to focus, swiveling at my desk, playing with the stapler. The more I procrastinate, the worse it will get, but I just can't concentrate. Oh, will you look at the clock! It's time to go. Time to go home to repeat this again tomorrow." Oh my god, that is so spot on! If you’ve never seen the movie, um, "Office Space," by the BRILLIANT Mike Judge, uh, check it out. It's SO, such a great satire on the drudgery of some 9-to-5 jobs. Snapshot from his life: "I donate blood. I'm signed up to donate marrow, if they find a match. I work in social services. I'm a return Peace Corps volunteer and an AmeriCorps volunteer. Hell, I once even saved a kid from getting run over from a train. What will it take to convince that voice in my head that I'm not a worthless asshole?" Wow. That, that speaks to the power of negative self-beliefs, doesn’t it? And that template that gets formed as a kid, of how we see ourselves and see the world and … It’s like a filter. It takes a lot of work to undo our filter, but we can do it.
[02:09:57] This is a shame and secret survey filled out by a woman who calls herself "Just A Big Clusterfuck." She identifies as bisexual. She's in her 30s. She was raised in a slightly dysfunctional environment. Was the victim of sexual abuse and reported it. "I was raped by my 19-year-old boyfriend when I was 15. He held me down and told me to shut up; I'd like it. It took me a few years to tell my mom because he was abusive and I was scared of letting her know that I failed her in some way by being weak. She called me a liar." That is so fucked up. I've heard many people share that the, the, when they go to an authority figure and share that and they are called liars, that that hurts even more than the event itself. "She called me a liar. Someone that's raped would never hide it from someone. I still don’t think she believes me, and it’s been 16 years. Took several more years, but I finally got the man who did it to admit that he raped me. He blames it on a hidden drug addiction. Weirdly enough, he would be considered a sexual predator, but last I saw he was vehemently against someone that hurts children. I was 15 and still considered a child when this happened. He's a hypocrite and a demon. He robbed me of many things, not just my innocence." She's been both physically and emotionally abused. History of abusive relationships and abandonment. "My father treated me weirdly from a young age. He noticed from kindergarten that I was highly intelligent. From then on, I was pushed to get perfect grades: be smarter, worked harder, never let him down. If I didn’t make an A, I was yelled out and told I was disappointing him. I turned to drugs in high school and stopped giving a shit about what he thought about me. Maybe his treatment of me from a young age led me to be someone that violent men would gravitate towards." Any positive experiences with the abusers? "I don’t feel there was anything positive about the abuse. I experienced horrible anxiety and pressure to be perfect and I'm afraid to be with someone." Yeah, the, the question doesn’t mean positive … that the, that, was there a positive thing about the abuse. Rather, were there positive moments with the people who abused us. Because that's one of the big mind fucks, is that very often we'll have a mixed relationship with somebody. And that's one of the things that makes it so hard for us to set boundaries or establish distance, is because it’s that mixed bag. Darkest thoughts: "I want to kill the man that raped me. It's a passive thought. I know I never will, but I find myself visualizing it. I have violent thoughts quite often. I only have one friend. I hate people with a passion. I trust only one person, and even that's shaky." Darkest secrets: "I once transported a large amount of marijuana for a friend. I had no idea we were gonna do that when we got in my vehicle. I get pleasure from pain. Not sexual; it just makes me feel. I have never been happy. I don’t know what happiness feels like. My first memory is of being three and realizing that I was an atheist. Not a very happy first memory. I know I'm fucked up and worthless. My darkest secret is that if I lose my job, I will kill myself. I know how and where I’ll do it. I'll be homeless and without a family if I get fired. My family has promised to disown me." It sounds like there are a lot of really, really deeply embedded ideas you have about yourself and life. And I would question many, many of them. And I think you are worth also questioning those. But it’s gonna take getting out of your comfort zone and opening up. And I, I think you should do it. I know it's easier said than done. Sexual fantasies most powerful to you: "I have the usual fantasies of being with celebrities. I dream of being watched while having sex. Probably because it happened more than once. I'm not sure why, but I'm attached to squirting porn. I don’t get any enjoyment out of sex; it's just there. Sharing this makes me feel fucked up. It sickens me that I can't be normal." I don’t believe there is any normal. I really don’t. And shaming ourselves for what gets us off is one of the cruelest things that we can do to ourselves. As long as we are not hurting somebody, or, or harming ourselves, disrespecting ourselves, etcetera, um … what does it matter what gets us off? Anything you'd like to say to someone you haven’t been able to? "To the man who raped me: I hate you. To my father: I'll never be good enough for you. To my ex-husband: I hope you find someone that makes you feel as worthless as you did me. To all the women who have children that they don’t want: I'd give anything to be able to be a mother. Don’t take it lightly and treat it like it's a nuisance. And to the people who bullied me all my life: One day you'll feel the pain I did. Every bully has their own. I haven’t said these things to them because I'm afraid of confrontation." What, if anything, do you wish for? "I wish I could have one day where I felt happy. One day without anxiety, fear, depression. Just pure, innocent happiness." Have you shared these things with others? "I've talked to a few people about these things, not all of them. Only my best friend knows about my violent thoughts. Whenever I try to talk to anyone else about my past or my pain, I get shut down. I'm told I'm depressing and I just need to get the hell over it. It's not that simple." No, and you don’t need to just get the hell over it. You deserve to process it with supportive people. And, who knows? You might be able to experience moments of just pure, innocent happiness. How do you feel after writing these things down? "A little lighter, like I finally opened my eyes." Thank you for that. That was really moving.
[02:16:45] And then, finally, this is a happy moment filled out by "Another Cat Lady." And she writes, "The last few months have been one of the deepest spirals into depression that I've ever experienced, and it's felt so dark and hopeless. I've had a few slumps like this in the past, and it’s been discouraging to think that I was back here again, with new and improved issues. Two weeks ago, though, in the midst of all of this, three separate people texted me to ask if I was okay or what was going on with me and tell me that they were worried about me. My first instinct was mortification. The I remembered that the last few times I've spiraled this hard, no one knew because I was so rigidly controlling about hiding it and putting on a mask. Everyone I told afterwards was so surprised. But THIS time, people know me and can see me. This time, I've let people in enough and been honest enough that people know and they care enough to say things. I don’t know how to explain how warm and wonderful and hopeful it felt to realize that this was not just like all of the other times and that I wasn’t invisible to everyone in my life. I've carried that realization like a hopeful, warming ember in my chest for the past few weeks. And I've adjusted meds with my doctor and focused on climbing out of this hole. I'm not there yet, but there's a spark. There's hope." I just love that, because that is so realistic. And, what a great testament to what I get on my soapbox about all the time, which is build yourself a community. Cuz these issues that we deal with, they are too big for us to go through alone. And we deserve to not battle them alone. It's too lonely. We tell ourself that it's safety in keeping it compartmentalized and secret. But that's not safety; that puts us at risk … to kill ourselves, to have health issues related to stress and sadness and … addictions and … Anyway.
[02:18:59] I hope you enjoyed today's episode. And if you're out there and you're struggling, just never forget that you're not alone. And, uh, thanks for listening.
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