Auto news on Youtube Sep 28 2018

Hi, I'm Dom. Thanks for joining me today. The topic of

today's video is how long will the grief last? Well, I think that's the

million-dollar question for any one of us who have experienced the loss of a

loved one to suicide, including the gentleman who has emailed me today. So, I

have his email here. I'm gonna go through his email and then I'm gonna provide him

with my thoughts based on my 13 years of having a dealt with my own personal grief

as a result of losing my father to suicide when I was 19 but also you know

based on the years of work that I did with other people like me and like you;

suicide loss survivors. People whose loved ones have died by suicide and you

know doing the work on myself because that's what it comes down to. It's up to

us to do the work you know. I can provide you with all the wisdom and the tools

that I have but if you don't do the work and you don't do anything with them, then

you know you're not gonna get very far. So anyways I'm going to go through his

email and then I'm gonna share a couple of points that I have that hopefully

will provide him with some relief and some peace of mind and hopefully you too

So he says, hey Dom. Thank you for the work that you do. My brother died by

suicide six months ago. The pain hurts so bad and sometimes it feels like it's

even getting worse. I do have a counselor who I work with and it does help but

sometimes it feels like it's not happening fast enough. How long is this

supposed to last? How long can I expect to have to live with this pain? Thanks

again for what you do. All the bes,t Bob. Obviously his name's not Bob. Well

first of all, thank you for your email, second of all my condolences to you and

I'm very very sorry for what you are having to experience and go through

and as painful as it is I will say this to you because there's no changing the

situation you are in: your pain and your trauma are going to serve you at a later

time and I'm talking about that from you know my own personal experience, and so

I'm glad that you wrote in to me and hopefully I can shine a light on how

maybe that will be able to serve you in the future. First of all I want to say

you know when it comes to to address your question how long will the pain

last, how long does the grief last? There's no timeline, and anybody who

tells you that you'll be better in six months or you'll be better in a year or

they're lying. They're lying because they have no friggin' clue. Nobody knows right?

So there is no timeline and here's the thing: what I will say though is that

grief, emerging from the grief is not about speed. Emerging from the grief is

about how fully you are willing to experience everything that you are going

through and how deeply you are willing to go into it, how thoroughly you are

willing to go in to those emotions and into all of that nasty stuff because

most people don't feel. Most people refuse to feel. Most people will

spend their whole lives running away instead of feeling and that is why

partly why we have so many chronic illnesses, we have so much depression, we

have so much wrong with us in the West is because we don't feel. Here's the

thing: you know the body the the heart the soul the emotional system everything

that we are equipped with since birth is perfect. And I know that may ruffle some

feathers for some people who are watching but the way that we as humans

were created - perfect. The problem is we as humans like to

screw it up. We allow the mind to take the wheel and we start rationalizing and

we start analyzing, we start dissecting and sometimes you know that is a great

quality to have and it is appropriate but not in grief not in trauma not in

pain. You know it's the key when you're going through this crap is to feel and I

wish to God I had have known this when I was going through it because this is

exactly what I didn't do. I made the mistake that everybody else

makes: I did not handle my grief well, I did not handle my trauma well, I did not

cope well for at least you know the three years that I spent after my dad's

death being stuck. You know when I stayed stuck for a variety of reasons one of

them was guilt. I was one of the last people to see my dad alive one of

the last family members to see my dad alive and I blamed myself a lot and and I

told myself that I had an opportunity to stop him. But anyways I'm not gonna make

this a therapy session or about me. The point I'm trying to make is that don't

do what I did and don't do what most people do which is not feel. You have to

feel it and the more you are willing to feel it the deeper you are willing to go

into it the quicker you will emerge from it and not only will you emerge from it

more quickly, you will emerge from it wiser because here's the thing: in our

trauma, in those negative experiences that we have in life, right, those ones

that we don't like, there is some of the most amazing wisdom and the wisdom that

is going to serve us in our life down the road, is stored in that pain and if

you don't deal with the pain then you're not going to get the wisdom, all right?

And hopefully we will get to a day where it doesn't have to be that way you know

later in this video, in a couple of minutes, I'm going to talk about Network

Spinal Analysis and the founder of Network Spinal Analysis Dr. Donnie

Epstein who's an amazing guy, he talks about working to help people

you know get the wisdom without having to go through the trauma but they would

have an experience of pain. But for right now this is all we have. And so when you

don't deal with the pain and you don't deal with the feelings you're not gonna

get the wisdom and it's not gonna serve you down the road.

Now of course time and place right? There a lot you know maybe when you're at work

and feelings of anger come up maybe it's not the time place to throw you know

your coffee mug against the wall by your co-workers cubicle right? Or maybe in a

boardroom you know when you're in the middle of a meeting maybe that's not the

time to get up and you know or get down on your knees and and and start hitting

the floor and saying it's not fair and burst into tears right? Time and place,

but the important thing is that when you are at the appropriate time and place

that you're able to call those feelings back up. You know, when you're at home and

you feel like you miss your brother you know and you feel that pain and that

grief of him not being here. You know, one of the best things that you can do for

yourself is to feel it and feel it fully. And you know one of the greatest things

that the body loves and that the emotions love and that the heart loves,

is affirming how you feel out loud. That is something that I learned recently -

within the last few years - is really just saying it out loud. You know, "this sucks"

"This is so painful, it feels like it's never going to end" you know, because it's

like the emotions it's it's like digging even deeper, it's like you're expressing

the emotion that much more fully when you're able to put it into words because

most people won't put it into words. Most people won't talk about it, and so what

happens is the emotion doesn't get processed, and they don't get the wisdom

and they stay stuck. And then they wonder why their lives, you know, are not as

fulfilling, why they don't experience joy, why they don't experience happiness to

the same degree. Well it's because you didn't process the grief, you don't have any

room in you to experience the joy, you know, any more fully. So now that's kind

of my rant for for this video before I move into some really actionable steps.

But you really have to feel it. The other thing is you know obviously

you are responsible for your own healing, like I talk about my book The Three

Paths to Healing. You are responsible for your own healing, it's up to you to get

yourself to the place where you want to be. Obviously you're doing that like you

talked about your email; you're seeing a counselor, you know, you're getting help.

So pat yourself on the back and reward yourself for getting help and know that

it sounds to me at least, I don't know you I haven't had a phone session with

you yet - maybe one day, but it sounds to me like you're doing the things that you

need to do to take care of you and if you're doing that, then that's what's

going to help you to process those emotions quickly, fully, and efficiently.

So now I'm gonna get in to some of the hard-hitting tactics and strategies that

I would highly recommend you at least look into or consider to help you to

move through this even quicker. So the first strategy that really helped me and

that has helped a tremendous amount of my family and friends now and something

I wish I knew about back in the day when I was dealing with my grief is called

Network Spinal Analysis or Network Chiropractic Care. Most of you watching

probably haven't heard of NSA. essentially what NSA is, is it's a form

of chiropractic care, but it's not what you think. It's not the traditional

chiropractic care where they go in and crack your bones and whip your neck and

you know do all these crazy adjustments on your body. The whole idea with NSA is

that you know when you go through trauma that trauma gets stored in the body as

tension, and it gets stored around the spine. And if you know anything about

anatomy, the spine is like the superhighway that your brain uses to

communicate with the rest of your body, because you've got like the vertebrae and

then from the vertebrae you've got all these nerves that reach out to other

parts of the body. And so what happens is when we go through trauma and the

tension gets stored around the spine, it causes the vertebrae to subluxate, to twist and

they pinch off the nerves and what happens is, that inhibits your brain's

ability to communicate with whatever part of your body that nerve is

responsible for. So you know, different parts of the body are different are

responsible for different things. Some parts of the body are responsible for

regulating emotions and processing emotions, some parts of the body are

responsible for how connected we feel to other people, some parts of the body are

responsible for, you know, like how fully we can feel emotions, how deeply we can

feel emotions, and so what NSA does essentially is it relieves the tension

around the spine, allowing your body to bring back online if you will those

different parts of the body. And so you begin to feel more fully, you begin to

process emotions more efficiently and more quickly, you learn to trust your

body, you learn to pay attention to the really subtle cues. So for instance if

you're somebody like me who works yourself into the ground as I did for

years, I have one speed and it's like it's like a hundred, all right? I have one

speed and that is it and if you're anything like me you understand you know

I've been burnt out more times than you can shake a stick at and it sucks

because you think that you're being productive, but then you burn out and

what happens is you spend days or sometimes even weeks recovering from the burnout,

and those are days and weeks that you're not doing your best and you're not doing

good work and you feel lethargic and you feel just like garbage,

right? You can't even think straight. So what NSA is really helping me to do is

help me to become, you know, because when we're getting, our body will signal to us

when we're getting close to burnout right? When we're doing too much, when we

need to rest, what happens? Again we don't feel, we as humans we ignore it, right? or

we're just not consciously aware of the subtle cues

that our body is giving us that we need rest or we need certain types of food or

you know whatever. And so what NSA has done to help me, is

it has helped me to become so much more sensitive and acutely aware to the

subtlest of cues that my body is giving me that I need to slow down, or I'm

eating too much of certain foods, or I'm not eating enough of certain foods, or

that I need to move, I need to get out and exercise, you know? Some of the things

that NSA has also helped me with is it's helped me to process not only the grief

and come to terms with the grief that I dealt with after my dad died and the

residual grief that I have stuffed down as a result of not wanting to feel, but

also it's helped me to deal with childhood trauma, and it's helped me to

look at my childhood in a way that has been completely different than the

perspective I've held for my entire life. And so I know this kind of sounds like

it's way out there, but it's not. You know NSA has been so helpful for me in my

life, it has been the number one healing, and I have tried so many healing

modalities, I've been all over the world, I've, you know, attended lectures

and and you know met different healers and spiritual guides and you know people

who do all kinds of things from naturopathic care to energy work and you

know, like all sorts of stuff right? I've attended Buddhist lectures, you know I've

done all kinds of energy work, and this is the thing that has helped me the most.

the other thing is it will eliminate like the little stuff that would

normally set you off that normally makes you lose your mind, it doesn't bother you

anymore. It doesn't even register anymore. You become so much more peaceful, you

become so much more loving, you become so much more relaxed, and what happens when

you feel that way, is other people feel it from you too,

and then not only do you deal with your grief effectively and move through it

effectively, you become a better human being overall because you have an

increased ability to connect with others, to feel emotions, you, like I said, you

trust your body more and you trust your emotions more and you trust your

instincts more; that's probably one of the greatest things that I've gotten out

of NSA, is being able to trust myself and my own instincts whenever I make a

decision. And so I was introduced to NSA you know I got to give credit where

credit is due, I was introduced to NSA by one of my coaches you know and a guy who

I I say was one of my coaches I had a coaching session with him and I've been

following him on YouTube for the last you know I think three

three-and-a-half years about as long as I've been doing NSA and his name is

Coach Corey Wayne and he is just, he's phenomenal, like his work is amazing and

his work has really influenced the work that I do and he's really helped me to

get to where I am just by reading his books and watching his videos so I would

highly recommend you check out one of his videos, it's called how to be more

confident in sure of your actions, and he goes through how NSA has helped him and

has changed his life. As well the other thing that I would highly recommend you

do is get yourself a really great naturopath, a really great naturopathic

doctor. Now I work with a fantastic naturopath in the city that I'm in

she's very very committed and dedicated to her patients, very hungry for

knowledge and wisdom and always enthusiastic about sharing that with her

patients, but what I love about naturopathic medicine and having a

naturopath is that, number one, I don't want to put a whole pile of chemicals

into my body. So no antidepressants. Do they help people? Absolutely. Are they

necessary? Yep, sometimes. Sometimes they are, but they're not for everybody and

they're not forever. And for me they just weren't something that I wanted to do

you know, I didn't want to put that stuff in my body. I wanted heal myself.

Did it take me a lot longer? Possibly. Was it more painful? Maybe, I don't know, but

you know, the great thing about having a naturopathic doctor is what happens when

we go through trauma? We aren't sleeping well, right, our sleep cycle is

off. Maybe we're not able to get to sleep,

maybe our sleep isn't restful, you know? We're not eating because what happens? it

affects our appetite so a lot of people, they lose their appetite and they don't

eat, which is exactly what happened with me 13 years ago. And so then when

you're not eating properly, and you're not sleeping properly, and you were

dealing with grief, what happens? You become even more stressed out because

your body is not getting the rest that it needs, it's not recovering, and so that

stress continues to compound. What happens when we're grieving and we're

stressed, is that it overwhelms us even more and it magnifies how we're feeling

and so what I would highly recommend you do, because the other thing is if you're

not sleeping and you're not eating, you're not exercising. I guarantee you

that you are not exercising if you're not eating and you're not sleeping

because you don't have the energy. You don't have the motivation. You can't pick

yourself up off the couch and even go for a walk around the block let alone

you know going to the gym or hiring a personal trainer, whatever. So I highly

recommend you get a really great naturopath because they'll run like a

full board of tests, they'll check all your vitamin levels. You know, stuff that

is absolutely essential for fighting stress and anxiety and grief. Stuff like

you know, your b12, your B vitamin levels which are absolutely essential when

you're stressed out. You know, stuff like iron which gives you energy you know if

you're not eating then chances are there's a chance that your iron could be

low and so you want to get those things taken care of because not only is it

going to prevent you from dealing with your grief but it could also cause you

physical illness right? Because when we're stressed out and we're

malnourished, we can also get physically ill, and then again that

compounds the grief. And here's the thing: if you are, if you're getting your vitamins

if everything is at an optimal level you're gonna have more energy, you're

gonna feel more capable of dealing with the grief, you're gonna feel more

resilient and you're gonna, chances are you may even have enough energy to go

exercise, to go walk around the block, to go for a nature walk, to go for a run, to

go do weights, to go do yoga, whatever it is that will help you incorporate

movement, which is so absolutely essential. Which is the next tip that I

want to get into is fitness. Get yourself into a fitness regime or fitness

schedule and, now, I don't know what your energy levels are like, so maybe for you

you know, going and getting a personal trainer who's gonna work you out

intensely right at this very moment, maybe you need to go get your energy

levels up. Maybe you need to get your nutrition up, right? But I would highly

encourage you to get a great personal trainer because they're gonna work you

harder then you can work on your own and when you sweat and when you workout, it

helps to relieve stress, helps to relieve anxiety, helps to relieve depression,

makes you feel more strong, makes you feel better capable to handle whatever

comes at you, and this isn't just me talking, although I will say that fitness

saved my life, it really did help bring me back out of, you know, the darkness.

That was one of the things that helped tremendously, but also if you read a book,

there's a book called "Spark" by a gentleman by the name of John J Ratey. I

won't go into too much detail here because I did talk about it in my other

video, "how yoga can help you cope with your grief", but essentially John J

Ratey is a Harvard psychiatrist and he used exercise as a way to get some of

his patients completely off antidepressants anti-anxiety meds, right, or

lowered the dosage. It became their medicine, and so that's what I would

highly recommend you do because it worked tremendously well for me and

there are a lot of people out there like there, I was at an event the other

night and one of the gentlemen there talked about how running helped him to

cope with some of his mental health conditions and if you look at some of

these marathon runners and some of these people who are professional athletes or

amateur athletes a lot of them will say that they got into it for the benefit

that it brought to their mental health. So make sure that you're getting a great

fitness regime, make sure your diet is sound so, you know, I'm not a dietician

and I'm not a nutritionist, I can only tell you what worked for me and what

typically works, from a lot of the research I've done. Again you know go get

a naturopath because they can help you to determine what foods are right for

you and what foods you need right now in your diet based on, you know, where you

are, but for me alcohol, alcohol is a big no-no. Had to cut that out because it was

just bringing me down. Remember alcohol is a depressant, alcohol makes you feel

like garbage, it brings you down and so if you're depressed or if you're

grieving and you're using alcohol, again, you're just overwhelming yourself. So no

alcohol. Try and stay away from you know like sugary foods and junk foods

because they just wreak havoc on your body you know, take in a lot of really

great greens, tons and tons of greens, you know, for me greens were again another

piece of the puzzle that really brought it all home for me. You know, really high

quality meat and protein if you're not a vegan or a vegetarian, you know, just make

sure that you're following what's right for you. A lot of water water is

absolutely essential, right, water is what your body needs to make sure that it's

hydrated enough so your cells can transport nutrients through your blood

and you know so much of your bodily functions require that you are

adequately hydrated. Most of us aren't. Most of us walk around with you know a

certain level of dehydration most of the time, so those are some of the things

that I would encourage you to try out hopefully they help

So I hope this video was helpful, if you know somebody who this video could help

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go to the description box below click the contact me link and send me an email

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make sure that you go to the link below and get a copy of my book The Three

Paths to Healing: How your deepest wound can guide you to craft a monumental life,

it's available on Amazon. Alright? I hope this helps

all the best, much love to you on your path wherever you are, and I'll talk to

you soon