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Chris & Michael on Thriving... While Grieving?
101 Plays5 years ago
Pain and loss--in the many different forms they may show up--are an unavoidable aspect of life, and dealing with them can be immensely draining. Listen in as Chris and Michael chat about the impact that grief can have on lawyers in particular, and practical tools for healing and growing through the grieving process.
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Transcript
The Double-Edged Sword of Shared Emotions
00:00:04
Speaker
And I'll end with one phrase. Joy shared is double, grief shared is half. Oh, I love that joy shared is double grief shared is half. That is brilliant. And I've heard that recently.
Meet Michael Kahn: From Law to Therapy
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome to this episode of The Thriving Lawyers Podcast. I am one of your hosts, Chris Osborne. I am a lawyer and continuing education developer and provider in Charlotte, North Carolina. With me today is my guest,
00:00:40
Speaker
Michael Kahn, who is actually the other half of real-time creative learning experiences, but also in his own right, a licensed mental health therapist and clinician, and he does a great deal of work with lawyers in various contexts dealing with something we're going to talk about as today's topic, grief.
Understanding Grief Beyond Death
00:01:00
Speaker
A lot of people think of grief as something that you experience only around death in particular. That's usually when it's talked about. But it turns out that grief has a lot wider application, and it has a wide range of applications in particularly for us in the practice of law. So Michael, welcome. Glad to have you with us here today. Thank you, Chris. Looking forward to talking about the subject that is very
00:01:30
Speaker
very close to my heart actually and work that I've done as a therapist and now as a therapist lawyer. Fantastic. So tell me a little bit about I know your story and you've shared a little bit with prior podcast listeners on how you ended up leaving the law and you got trained as a mental health counselor.
00:01:52
Speaker
But tell me about kind of when did you first start working with patients, clients who were dealing with grief? When did that become a facet of your counseling practice? Well, when I worked at the agency in Charlotte, my first job out of grad school, you had to be a generalist. So I dealt with grief and loss there. In fact, I had a colleague who once told me, you know, if you really pay attention to
00:02:22
Speaker
Every personal concern that people bring to your office, almost always there's some facet of grief or loss. And it really got me thinking, and it's really kind of true. As you said, when many of us think about grief, we think about death. But grief and loss comes up a lot in so many ways
Grief's Impact on Life Transitions
00:02:48
Speaker
in our life. For example, divorce.
00:02:53
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Aging, job change, pet loss, illness, or well, some kind of disability where you lose functioning for good, miscarriage, things like that. And so many other areas where grief and loss, where you experience grief and loss, we don't maybe think of it that way.
00:03:19
Speaker
I remember somebody exposed me to that thought. I haven't read this book. I believe my wife has a book by Jerry Sitzer, and now the title of it is Escaping Me, but I remember he gave the example in there of, even after like a divorce, somebody feels like basically you could compare it to, you know, you've lost a limb, lost a leg.
00:03:42
Speaker
And so you're not dead. You still are going to function and do a lot of what you did before, but you are forever changed. You're not going to operate the same way. Is that a fair kind of metaphor to what it's like to live after a substantial loss of some sort?
Adjusting to a New Normal
00:04:00
Speaker
Yeah, and a praise we like to, or the folks in my profession like to use is new normal.
00:04:07
Speaker
that when something happens where you lose something, then you have to deal with this new way that your life looks. A great example, in my workshops, I share a quote from a running back to the Panthers and he talks about, he's talking about a teammate. Yeah, I can't believe I'm never going to see him again. Things are never going to be the same. I feel like I saw him and now all of a sudden he's gone.
00:04:36
Speaker
And there are one or two elements of that quote. Then I asked participants, well, what happened? What do you think happened? And almost always, folks say, oh, wow, somebody died. Someone he knew, maybe a family or a friend or something died. And I share the rest of the story, as it were, that it was a payment of his, John Stewart, a running back who was traded.
00:05:05
Speaker
And but it sounds like everything in that quote sounds like he died. And it's a great example of how we experience the elements of loss around more than just death.
Supporting Parents Through Kindermorn
00:05:19
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And over the years, have you had opportunities to work with people on grief in different settings? And tell us about what that's looked like. So I really got into working with
00:05:33
Speaker
around grief in different settings when I started working at Kindermorn, which was an agency is an agency in Charlotte. And it works mostly with people who have had children die. And I started co leading a group for parents who have had miscarriages and stillbirths and very young infants die. So I did a support group for parents who sometimes couples sometimes just one one parent came
00:06:03
Speaker
and help them cope with the devastating loss of having a child. I'm curious, have you had that sort of thing happen to you? And if not, how are you able to walk with people in that, given that you may not have experienced the exact loss that they have? That's a great question. And I often think about what drew me to this area. No, the answer is no. I have not had that experience.
00:06:33
Speaker
And, um, and I, and I've had to think about what is it that draws me to this work? Because of course, when I tell non-therapists that I do this kind of work, most say, wow, I don't know how you do that because it feels very heavy to people and they don't know how you could do that. And then just go home and not have that. Just, um, just, you know, weighing
Therapy: A Path to Authenticity and Resilience
00:07:01
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on you. Thank you.
00:07:02
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And I think what it is for me is helping people, when people are grieving, their masts and their facades are off, or at least off more than they usually are. So you're dealing with people that they're most authentic. And the thing too about grief is many of us, most of us have the ability to cope with our grief.
00:07:30
Speaker
Sometimes we need some, some help along the way with a therapist or a friend or a rabbi or a priest or someone like that. But most of us have that resilience. And for me, it's seeing people go going from the beginning point where they're dealing with this loss and the, the, the, the huge amount of pain and then getting to the other side where things are never going to be the same, of course, but they're able to get to the other side and see that
00:07:59
Speaker
I do have a life ahead of me and I do still have a relationship with this person who died in this case. We're talking about as an example death but I still have a relationship with this person and it's just different than
00:08:12
Speaker
what it was. And there's a sense in which I think I can relate having experienced a little bit of that in grieving different losses. The loss of my mother and then my sister to breast cancer. I've spent some time kind of grieving things that happened as a kid, you know, with my parents' divorce and stuff that this is many, many years later after it's happened, but recognizing that
00:08:38
Speaker
There's something to be gained in facing that pain, in naming it, and in kind of going through it. You do kind of come out on the other side stronger. It's really hard to explain if you haven't had that kind of loss, but you can kind of tell when you're talking to somebody who's been through some loss.
00:08:57
Speaker
and been strengthened by it. It's not just this, oh, it gives you perspective, or a lot of people say, oh, I take life really seriously now, I don't waste it. There's that aspect, but there's something also, I think somebody gave me a phrase one time, they said, pain is actually not your enemy. Fear of pain is your enemy. Fear of pain is what will shut you down or get you paralyzed or despondent. But if you kind of face pain and come through, it's kind of like, wait a minute,
00:09:27
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I'm still here.
The Unique Grief of Lawyers
00:09:29
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I Weathered that I survived that and and and and I'm okay and and and maybe I can stand and you know Get back something again having to adjust to it's never gonna be the same as it was How would you say grief shows up is a relevant topic for lawyers to think about and pay attention to? Well lawyers are people oh, that's right though the lawyers
00:09:56
Speaker
Lawyers experience loss just like anybody else. And in fact, I do a group for lawyers, a psychoeducational group for lawyers experiencing grief and loss. And it's not, it's grief defined broadly. It's not just for the lawyer assistance program, British Columbia. Okay. Where you live, that's right. And I also have done it in Portland as well for the Oregon attorney assistance program.
00:10:26
Speaker
What, the lawyers come with experiences that we've talked about, lots of different types of losses. Most of the folks who come are dealing with a death, but not everyone. Some are dealing with the loss of a job or the loss of, or moving. One lawyer had to leave the United States and come back to Canada and was dealing with that loss, leaving so many things behind.
00:10:54
Speaker
And you talk about emotions, Chris, you were talking about dealing with pain and having and facing it and how important that is. And that's one of the things I talk about in the group. And I say psychoeducational because it's a support group and it's an education group. It's not a therapy group per se. So they're sharing their stories, but I'm also teaching them about elements of grief. And one of the things I teach them and the metaphor I use is, you know, when you're in a skid,
00:11:24
Speaker
What do they tell you to do? They tell you to turn into the skid. Oh, you mean in your car, if you're driving? In your car, sorry. Okay. Yeah, if you're in a car and you're skidding, you're supposed to turn into it. Not against it. Not against it. Okay. And that's the metaphor I use when we're talking about emotion. Okay. Because for lawyers, that can be an area that maybe they haven't done as much work in about identifying motions and understanding the value.
00:11:53
Speaker
of information that emotions tell you because lawyers can very much be more valuing the analytical and the intellectual. So one of the elements of this group is to help them value the emotional piece and connecting and hearing from other lawyers is huge. That's why doing a group of just lawyers
00:12:12
Speaker
is really helpful because I think lawyers are more comfortable being around other lawyers. It also helps if you know that other people can understand what vocational challenges you're facing.
Grief: Breaking Stereotypes for Lawyers
00:12:27
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As you and I have discussed, often the perception from the outside of lawyers is often, what do you have to worry about? Why are you stressed? That doesn't make sense.
00:12:38
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But the reality is, no, we are dealing with stress all the time, and we are often dealing with loss as well, and we're not exempt from the things that take out ordinary people. But I think there's often a pressure, either from our clients or from our work settings sometimes, to sort of be superhuman.
00:13:00
Speaker
you're tough, you rise above it and you turn on that left brain analytical side and you just kind of power through. But is that the best approach really? Is the analytical brain really, I guess I would ask it this way, is there a role for the analytical brain of a lawyer in grieving and is there more that we should aim for than just sort of a rational approach to it?
Embracing Different Grieving Styles
00:13:25
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. I mean, there's of course a role in
00:13:27
Speaker
in all parts of ourselves. And there are different ways of grieving. There are different styles. Like some folks are more emotive and you see that. You see the more emotional expression. And there are others who are, they're experiencing the same emotions, but they don't express it as much. And their way of dealing with grief is maybe more to do research. Like in my kindermore groups, when a baby would die, some folks that it really helped them
00:13:56
Speaker
to process by researching what happened, understanding more what happened, help them process their grief. Or, for some people, it's getting involved in, say, a Habitat for Humanity group, doing something physical, help them, unrelated to their loss, but something where they're doing something physical and they're building something and they're connecting with others, connecting in a way that's different than a therapy group. So, for some people,
00:14:24
Speaker
therapy or even a support group, that's not their jam. But in doing something like Habitat for Humanity is. So I guess, is it fair to say one of the myths about grief is that the goal, no matter who you are, is to be a motive and to weep and wail? Or is it more, you know, every individual's experience is going to be a little bit different? And what is meaningful for one person absolutely may not be meaningful for the next?
00:14:54
Speaker
Absolutely. And that, to me, is one of the things I hammer home in my work with clients, whether it be in a group setting or individual, which is there is no right way. That only you know what works for you. And that can be a different
00:15:15
Speaker
You can, your way of doing it is going to be different than mine, which is going to be different from somebody else. And it's hard though, because people have their sort of expectations and when we're grieving a loss, it's great to have friends and comforters and people who are around, but they're often very free with.
00:15:35
Speaker
Guidance advice and it can sort of right sometimes cross over to the pushy and look oh you got to do this because I did it and it was great for me Right, but there's more of a respect in it. You know it might look different for this other person. Yeah. Yeah, or there's they're uncomfortable with Someone like a loved one or a friend who's grieving so they want you to move through it fast yeah, and and and and
00:16:01
Speaker
and give you a little bit of time to deal with it, but then after a certain amount of time, you need to kind of now move on. And I've had just a couple things, too, that I want to share. I had a couple law firms where folks have died at the firms, and the firms have reached out to ask about, you know, how do we deal with this? In fact, we had one firm send a representative to one of my groups last time to learn more about grief so he could go back to the,
00:16:31
Speaker
the law firm and share with them some of the learnings he had in the group. Oh, that's super hopeful. That's super hopeful. Yeah. Do you have a sense at all of whether lawyers that you've worked with have tended to be in, do they support feeling the freedom to go wherever this grief process leads?
00:16:53
Speaker
or do they feel constrained by expectations, by sort of people are like, yeah, for a little while you can sort of wallow, but after a while we need you to be back at 100%. What kind of experience do you hear people describe? Yeah, and sometimes they don't necessarily use words for it, but they do often come into the group with a mindset of what grief is supposed to look like, either through societal messages,
00:17:22
Speaker
or through gender messages or family of origin messages about what is right and what's not right. And part of my work in the group, and part of the work is done by the folks, the participants who come, is that there, again, as I said, there's no right way that you need to decide for yourself what's the best way to grieve. Because if you don't, if you're incongruent,
00:17:51
Speaker
If you have a way you want to be but then these messages tell you you can't do that, like I can't cry for example, then you're more likely to get stuck.
00:18:02
Speaker
in your grief. And I've heard of people describe, and I remember people telling me when we were in various stages of different family-type trials, that there are stages of grief.
Grief's Non-Linear Journey
00:18:14
Speaker
And there's sort of, a lot of people in the non-counseling world are familiar with, oh, there's denial, and there's anger, and there's bargaining, and there's all this stuff. But those aren't a linear process either. Are they? Like, you are now leaving stage one and entering stage two. Does it work like that?
00:18:31
Speaker
No, no, it doesn't. In fact, those, those steps, Elizabeth Kubler Ross is maybe someone folks know out there. She did her research around people who are dying and the steps they go through. Okay. And that's what that's from. Now that research has been extrapolated to people dealing with grief. Oh, but she said her research never was meant to be linear anyway.
00:18:56
Speaker
It was never meant to be the, you know, easy and clean moves from step one to step two. So, really now the research and everything around grief work says there's no linear process, there's no normal, there's no average response that people have their own unique responses. Now, sure, people are going to
00:19:22
Speaker
respond, many people respond with sadness, many people respond with anger, and eventually people get to acceptance. Yeah, that can apply to many people, but there isn't a one size fits all approach.
00:19:36
Speaker
So if it's not one size fits all, and there's not a linear progress, what would you say would be, how would you encourage somebody, particularly a lawyer, to grieve well? I mean, you sort of, like you mentioned, somebody being stuck, and so there must be a kind of not stuck. What do those two states look like? Yeah, I would say to be curious.
00:20:04
Speaker
That's a word I like to use with not just grief but in other things as well. But to be curious about how you are reacting to grief and loss and not having a judgment about it. If I can use a word that's very much been almost overused, be mindful. Be mindful so it's experiencing the feelings and the thoughts and not judging it. And it may not be pleasant.
00:20:31
Speaker
but it's the more you can experience your feelings and by the way that includes good feeling right because when we're grieving when we some play and you probably could talk about this Chris when when you're grieving your mom and when you're grieving your sister there were moments where you had positive emotions where you maybe even laughed with family members about it's something
00:20:51
Speaker
Funny memory about them and that part of grieving too. Well, that was one of the trickiest things I remember for me when I was trying to To to grieve or obviously, you know being encouraged. Okay, I need to feel these feelings I'm losing these people I care about I need to be sad and then something funny or Good would happen and you almost feel this guilt you feel like well, right? I can't
00:21:17
Speaker
the choice in this. I can't be happy about this because I'm supposed to be wearing sackcloth and ashes and ripping my clothes or eating Haagen-Dazs for hours on end. And to learn that it's okay to have your full range of feelings. Grief doesn't mean I am now wearing black and always mourning. I think the image of mourning is very different from what robust, full-bodied grief looks like.
00:21:45
Speaker
Yeah. So to frame it as having these positive emotions, that's part of grieving. So that can help. And there's one other, one other thing. And then I, um, I, I, I'm thinking we have to stop in a moment. Yeah. There's a concept that, that I like to share with folks and it's called Stugg, an acronym, sudden temporary upsurge of grief.
The Normalcy of Sudden Grief Upsurges (STUGs)
00:22:07
Speaker
And that can be an experience that we all, we all have. We think we're doing well.
00:22:12
Speaker
We're going about our day, everything's working out, and then we smell something that reminds us of our loved one, or we see a billboard, or we pass the hospital. And our defenses aren't up, and it just hits us hard. And then we feel like, oh my gosh, I'm falling back to square one. But that is a normal experience to have. And it doesn't mean that you have fallen all the way back. It just means that this is a normal part of grieving, that you're going to have these things that happen.
00:22:42
Speaker
So knowing that stugs happen is important. Well, I love that and I think even just the freedom, you know, you don't have to be like everybody else. You don't have to have this path. You don't have to meet other people's expectations. It's really about leaning into what does this mean to you? How does it affect you? If you are feeling like you're not feeling it enough, you're not feeling the right things, ask yourself questions about that.
00:23:05
Speaker
And mainly, I would imagine, as you said earlier, being in dialogue with other people, particularly other people who may have had similar losses, is hugely helpful. And I'll end with one phrase. Joy shared is doubled. Grief shared is half.
00:23:22
Speaker
Ooh, I love that. Joy shared is doubled. Grief shared is halved. That is brilliant. And I've heard that recently. I got time for one more question.
Vocational Losses in Law
00:23:30
Speaker
What are the kinds of losses that lawyers in particular might grieve in particular in their vocation? What else might qualify as a setback, a loss, something that is worthy of at least considering, hey, is there a grief component? I'm thinking vocationally specific. Well, I would say, let's say someone is
00:23:52
Speaker
wanting to become a partner and they find out they're not or someone has had to maybe job loss, losing a big case, losing a client, losing a client, a big client, maybe your responsibilities change in some way, things like that. Anything where the train has changed, where you're losing something and it may be something good, but you're still dealing with loss.
00:24:23
Speaker
That's great. I know I've learned to think about that. I remember I tell a story sometimes in our workshops of one, I had one rare occasion where I was trying to put a stop to some what I thought was kind of bad behavior, kind of shakedown, black male behavior almost on the other side. And I actually filed a motion for summary judgment against my own client to try to lose the motion. I wanted the court to say, yes, my client was wrong because we were trying to admit we were wrong and we wanted to settle it.
00:24:51
Speaker
and tell us what we owe because we'll write that check because that check can't possibly be nearly in the stratosphere of what the other side was claiming. And I almost won that motion, but I didn't. And I remember after I lost, I couldn't go back to my office. I was like, what just happened here? And now I'm definitely going to have to try this case. We didn't get summary judgment and we tried to get it against ourselves. And I remember I just went and sat in front of like a big wall of bushes and trees just to kind of just absorb what just happened.
00:25:20
Speaker
And how do I feel about it? And to let that happen, to me, was growth. Instead of just going back, well, let me go. If somebody else is calling, somebody else needs me, where's the next file? Which I could have easily done. But for me, that was a devastating enough thing that I needed to let it have its weight. And it seems like a simple thing. It's one motion and one case. But it had all these other implications for how I was spending my time and my firm and everything.
00:25:52
Speaker
Go ahead, I'm sorry.
Episode Conclusion and Gratitude
00:25:53
Speaker
I was going to say maybe more on that story later in another context. Yeah. But we are out of time for this episode of the Thriving Lawyers podcast, but I'm so grateful to Michael for his work, for how he's encouraged me himself in grief. And he's an encouragement to lots of folks and hopefully will be down the road in the future as well. That's all for this time. We will catch you next time and we'll talk to you later.
00:26:09
Speaker
Yeah, and good work on that, Chris. That sounds like that was very helpful for you to do. Maybe more.
00:26:18
Speaker
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Thriving Lawyers Podcast. We love hearing from our loyal listeners, so please feel free to email us any questions, comments, suggested topics, or guest recommendations at the following address, feedback at thrivinglawyerspodcast.com.
00:26:34
Speaker
The Thriving Lawyers Podcast is brought to you by Real-Time Creative Learning Experiences, a national provider of continuing legal education and professional development programs that leave participants engaged, encouraged, and equipped to pursue meaningful and sustainable change in their practices, their lives, and the organizations they work in. And by Osborne Conflict Resolution, your experience guides through the uncharted terrain of business and family law disputes based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time on The Thriving Lawyers Podcast.