You know, when people are a really deep in grief, it is just such a cry for a beautiful emotion of a loss of love and that it is a bittersweet, beautiful thing and I feel for when I have clients go through that and it is tough.
The thing is though, I also run into so many people that while experiencing and going through the grief, they try to hold it together.
They hold it together because they're afraid people around them are going to see them as They hold it together because they are worried about what other people are thinking of them.
Welcome, I'm Peter Williams and for the past 10 years I've been connecting with thousands of people from the stage and online to help them discover the importance of spiritual and energetic practices so they can thrive with confidence, clarity and purpose.
It is time to awaken your connection, align with your soul and achieve your own inner power power right here on the Inner Power podcast.
Hey everyone and welcome back.
It's nice to have you here again for another episode and just continuing on with the theme of Around the Soul and kind of now bringing it back to the human element where we're going to be talking about the grief.
As I always say, and if you've been to one of my live shows, I will be up front with you and grief is a bitch.
It's just one of the hardest and ugliest emotions that we have to deal with because it just hits us and it continues to hit us over and over again.
And of course, in the line of work that I'm in, it is something that I encounter every single day.
And I combat this, you know, a lot of people do ask me.
So Pete, like, doesn't this get tiring?
Don't you get weighed down by it?
And the answer is yes, it does.
But I have my tricks, I have my methods, I have my ways of not letting it get to me.
And the key one here is to find the happiness, find the laughter, that's always my key.
And of course, if you've been following me for a while, And, you know, like I said, if you've come to one of my events, you will notice that as much as I'll go deep and I honor the depth and I honor the emotions.
I don't like to stay there for too long.
I literally will bounce out of that.
And from those very deep tears, you know, I'd like to bring it back to laughter because that's the way to keep that vibration up.
And that's where it's actually easier for myself and for all of us to connect with our loved ones who have passed as if we do that.
But you know, the beautiful thing is I can help people and I try to help as many of you as I possibly can with the journey of grief by connecting and connecting with your loved ones and you know, showing you and telling you and providing that evidence that there is something more and that they are there.
They're not gone.
They're physically gone.
They've just transformed.
They're now back into their, back into our true form of, of being the soul.
And they still carry all the emotions, the emotions and the memories that they had when they were here with you.
And it's such a beautiful process to be able to share with so many of you.
And it's just that part of when it comes to this and as much as my connections can help alleviate some of that pain and some of that grief.
It can help heal you and your loved one as well.
And it also can provide a small element of closure if need be.
So there's some beautiful benefits to doing it.
The hard part is though, is it doesn't matter how often I could connect with your love one, the truth is that nothing's really ever going to help you stop grieving.
And that's why I wanted to get on here and have this bit more of a serious episode with you and just give you a couple of different viewpoints on how it happens and what it is.
And the biggest piece of advice I just want to give every single one of you that's listening to this or watching this on YouTube, is give yourself time to grieve.
Grief is not something that you can rush.
Grief is not something that has a finish line.
Grief is not something that you should brush under the carpet because if you do, the only thing you're going to do is prolong the journey of your grieving.
It is your journey.
It is your pain and that pain is just pure loss of the love.
It's your love coming out.
It is your expression of love and the loss of that love.
That's what the grief is.
And you know when people are really deep in grief it is just such a cry for a beautiful emotion of a loss of love and that it is a it's a Bittersweet beautiful thing and I feel for when I have clients go through that and it is tough The thing is though.
I also run into so many people that while Experiencing and going through the grief they try to hold it together They hold it together because they're afraid People around them are gonna see them as weak.
They hold it together because they are worried about what other people are thinking of them Perhaps, you know, people are holding it together because you feel you need or they need to carry everyone else at this point in time.
Now that's okay and that may happen.
But the thing is, you will still need to grieve.
The more you suppress it, the more you push it down into your body, it will sit there.
It ain't going anywhere.
The hardest part is if you choose that path and that's the way that you're wanting to go through your grief journey, you are literally creating your own personal, emotional jack-in-the-box.
That is when the grief becomes unpredictable and therefore your emotional response also so unpredictable and you will find that it becomes almost unhelpful and it comes out when you least expect it, hence the jack in the box.
Now I love this because I'm just going to explain this to you and this you may have heard this if you have it's great if not this may help you, but I loved this and I explain this to everyone.
My life shows when the topic of grief does come up and what it is is that a psychologist set it very succinctly and beautifully by saying, "If you imagine a big wall, so you know, if you're right, I've got a big wall behind me in the studio here.
So if you're watching this, you'll understand what I'm talking about, but I'll just imagine a wall if you're listening.
" And you've got a big wall.
Now what happens is on that wall is a button, and that button, that big red button on that wall represents your grief.
And every time that button gets hit, your grief gets set off.
that's when the emotions come out, you know, depending on the level of grief that you're still experiencing, it could end up in a meltdown, for example, or a breakdown.
But what's interesting is that at the beginning stages of your grief, the size of that button is very different.
So when you are first starting your grief journey, you will find that that red button is the size of the wall, meaning that whoever's close to that wall, even if they brush it, bump it accidentally in it, that button gets pressed.
And all of a sudden, your grief gets triggered.
The emotions come out.
Everything gets triggered.
The tears start to come out.
Like, you know, even the sadness and the anger and frustration might also come out because it's all still very, very raw.
So this huge button and what we mean by this huge button is it's a great kind of metaphor and visualization for that when you're first experiencing grief that people around you and quite often it's the general public who don't know that you've lost someone, they may just say something or they do something really simple but it just triggers you because it reminds you of your lover or something they did or something that they said or whatever it may be and honestly that's just them running into that wall where the button takes up the whole They don't even know it and you get triggered and then that's when their response is like oh my god What did I do?
I'm so sorry and it's like and you like you they're going.
It's not I'm sorry It's not you it's just me But that's when your button is huge and that's usually at the very very beginning stages of your grief journey Now the psychologist said in this instance that what happens is that over time that the size of your grief button, so that big red button on the wall, will actually start to decrease.
Now that's a good thing, because that obviously gives you a bit more room, and you're not gonna be as sensitive to things going on around you when you're going through the grief.
However, it does not mean that you're not going to be triggered, right?
So, you know, in that very first year of your grief journey, that button will be huge.
Come around the second year, you'll find that the button might decrease a little bit and it gets a little bit less and less and less each year.
Over time it does get and so therefore, you know, people will run into that wall but they're not necessarily hitting the button.
So it's going to require more specific instances for your grief to be triggered.
It might be, for example, that you end up meeting for someone on the, you know, their birthday even though they've And they say something kind of a little bit insensitive for getting that it was your loved one's birthday.
That's hitting a small button because it's very specific.
So they kind of go through that.
And when that happens, you still have to honor that grief.
And that's a big, big part of it.
Grief is a rite of passage because we all go through it.
It's something that we all have in common.
We're all going to go through it at some point.
And it's important to work through it.
It's important to not ignore it, work through it, communicate, talk, keep remembering and working it because that's going to help release and move through those emotions rather than suppressing it and let them become stagnant.
That's a really big thing.
Now, what I also want to point out here is that coming back to it, like there is no time limit on your grief journey.
Your grief journey is yours.
Your level of pain in this journey is yours and yours alone.
Your pain or level of pain cannot be measured.
You gotta remember this pain is very different pain.
This pain in grief, like I said, is a loss of love.
So it's pain and love coming at the same time.
The thing is we can't actually measure pain and love for it's never equal to start with.
So therefore you can't say that my grief of losing my father is more painful than the pain that you might experience from having lost your father or mother or whoever.
It's our own personal journey.
And because it's our own personal journey, the level of pain will be different.
the level of sense of loss will be different.
The way that we deal with it and work through it will be different.
The amount of time for some people to heal will be quicker than others.
Truth be told, when it comes to grief, like I said, there is no finish line.
Grief is not something that you actually get to work through and deal with and then by dealing with it, you put it in a box, you seal it and you put that away and you never look at it again.
That's not how grief works.
Grief is like acceptance.
You learn to accept that you had loss.
You learn to accept that you still love them and you learn to accept that you miss them and you also learn that it's okay to express those emotions out loud.
And the more that you do, the more you get comfortable with it.
I find that becomes a little bit easier day by day, the more that you do it.
But again, it might be different for every single one of you.
You can be the only person that comes to that point.
No one can force you to get there.
No one can really take you there.
You can get help along the way, absolutely.
And if you need that, that's why.
grief counsellors are some of the nicest people that you'll ever meet and I know a couple of them.
And one in particular comes to my mind.
She's a lovely, lovely lady.
She's also a member of ours.
So, you know, a bit biased there, but no, she knows who she is.
And but they're beautiful, beautiful people because it takes such courage to be able to help people through that journey.
And they are literally just guides to help you to work with it a little bit more.
So the big thing is it's important to give yourself the time and space to do this.
And you sometimes you need to do this unapologetically.
You may want to step away from your loved ones for a while and just have some time by yourself to work through that.
And that's completely OK.
And believe it or not, I suppose I'm a bit that way.
I'm a person who likes to have very personal me time to work through the deepest of emotions.
So you might be that person.
For other people, you might be like, I just want to be around people because I like that energy.
And if that's the case, go for it.
That's a beautiful thing and kind of, you know, work through it.
But you've just got to remember that it's so important to give yourself the time and space to do it because it's healthy.
It is healthy to grieve.
And it's also healthy to work through those emotions.
Now, the other part to this, and where I really like to get to, which I found is a lot of, got a lot of wonderful feedback from people when I've expressed this to them.
And a lot of people go, have said, thank you for that insight.
And I thought, well, great, I'll share this with you.
And hopefully it can help more people.
And this helps you.
I'd love to hear if it does.
But when I really show this because through my very unique perspective of connecting and having both viewpoints of the person receiving the connection and working through the grief, but also having your loved one on the other side and connecting with them and seeing the love that they have for you and the happiness and they're kind of like, "Hey, but we're still here.
Don't be so sad.
Like, yes, I may not be right there beside you, but I'm still with you.
" So I get this very unique perspective.
But what's a beautiful thing is that what spirit have shown me and also encouraged me to obviously talk about, and hence we're here, is the two different versions of grief.
The two different versions are we have happy grief, then we have sad grief.
The sad grief is something that we all will experience and go through.
And the The saddest grief I tend to find is when, like I said, that button is huge.
It's when it's really raw, it's really kind of, you know, fresh and it's just that real sense of loss and pain that comes out in a massive way.
And all we can do is feel that sense of loss and we think about their passing over again.
We might go down the thoughts and patterns of what if or if I had done this and what or whatever had it turned up or you go through all the hypotheticals and the possibilities to try and change things around because we feel like we didn't do enough or we didn't show up enough or whatever shape or form.
We constantly go through a lot of the negative stuff.
We go over all the arguments or things where we may not have resolved.
Now that they're gone, we can't and we may give ourselves a sense of guilt because we've left that unfinished between them and us.
We don't haven't really reconciled that within ourselves.
So the guilt comes on and we look at things from a very different angle when we lose someone.
And that's where that sad grief comes in.
And that's that negative space.
And it's the negative emotions.
It's the negative thoughts.
And it's quite natural when it's first happening, we're going through, you know, you might experience this like for the first 12, 18 months or so, depending on where you're at with the passing and the grieving process.
What's really fascinating is that you got to remember that our loved ones, when they pass, their actual passing, the moment they passed, and even the lead up to their passing, whether it be like through health or other circumstances, you got to remember all of that combined, which brings our grief into focus, it is actually only one moment or one small period out of their entire life.
It is one moment and that section, that moment or that point in time is what I call the sad grief.
That's when we focus on that.
When we focus on the loss, we focus on the lead up to to their passing, what went wrong with their passing, the actual moment of their passing.
When we focus on those things, that real short time span of their life, that's what I call sad grief.
The happy grief is where we then flip that and we have a look at the whole entire lifetime and lifespan of our loved one and focus on all the wonderful things that have happened in their life.
And you have a look at what they accomplished, what they did, what they were going through, and the accomplishments, the fun times, the love, the memories, the big milestones, whether it be birthdays, weddings, children's birth, grandchildren's birth, there's so many, many, many, many wonderful memories that you can recall on.
And if you do, that is when you are working in happy grief.
Now to put this in perspective, because the oldest person that I've actually channeled through was 103.
So that was a pretty good innings from their perspective to think that you could live over 100 years is pretty amazing.
But anyway, let's just say you did, or your love one made it to 100 years old.
And you gotta think about they had a pretty good, healthy life.
Now, even if you can say, right, The last 10 years of the life from 90 to 100, that last 10 years was a bit rough.
They're getting old and they weren't always of good health, etc, etc, etc.
Now, the weird part is if you focus on those last 10 years, you're only focusing on one 10th, one 10th of their entire life.
And that one 10th is the sad grief.
And if you focus on what went wrong or how hard it was for all the health or all those kind of bad things and the moment leading up to their passing, you're focusing on such a small part of their entire life.
And that is the sad grief.
If you look at the other 90 years of life and what they did and what they went through, what they accomplished, what they laughed about, what they smiled about, what they, you know, enjoyed doing, If you focus on those 90 years, those other 9/10 of their life, imagine how many more emotions and memories you've got to draw on rather than that small 1/10 per section.
So 90% focus of happy grief, 10% of sad grief.
And the whole important thing about this is that you can teach yourself.
You can start to train your mind to focus on that other beautiful and wonderful 90%.
It can be tricky, but you know what?
Go out, grab the photo albums, look on your phones, whatever you need to do, and go through those things and have those memories.
Have the conversations.
Recall and remember the things that will make you smile, laugh.
Yes, and then cry, but then laugh and cry again in a good way.
If you can get into those memories, if you can get into that aspect of your loved one, you are working in happier grief.
You're going to be focusing on the right things.
And those particular memories are going to really help you with your own journey.
It's going to help you with your own healing, and it's also going to help your past loved one with their healing and it's going to help them to have a closer connection with you when they want to come around you, make you let you know that they're still around, guide you a little bit, let you feel the love and remind you that they're still there.
You will open up the door, you will open up your mind and your heart to them a little bit more by focusing on those beautiful things.
I'm hoping that just by talking you through some of this, it's giving you the confidence and the permission that it's okay to grief.
Again, there's no rush, but the whole thing is if it can help you with your grieving journey, just to remind you to be mindful of which kind of grief you are in.
That sad grief versus the happy grief, that 10% versus that 90% because if you can train yourself to have a look at all the beautiful things that your love one did in this life and all the wonderful memories that make you smile and laugh, you are going to be working through your journey a little bit easier.
And I know that's a good thing for you.
I know that's what I want for you.
But most importantly, know that this is what your loved one on the other side wants for you to.
So hopefully this helps you.
love to hear from you if it does and again they're with you and I will leave you with this one important message.
Remember, sad grief versus happy grief.
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