When Grief Meets Trauma: Navigating Traumatic Loss with Dr Yvonne Waft, Clinical Psychologist.

Season #1 October 01, 2024

🎙️ Episode Summary: In this powerful episode of "A Guide to Afterlife," I sit down with trauma expert Dr. Yvonne Waft to unpack the complex intersection of grief and trauma when losing a life partner. Get ready for an eye-opening discussion that will change how you think about loss and resilience.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

• Discover what trauma really means and how it can hijack your grieving process

• Learn to spot the signs that your grief might be complicated by unresolved trauma

• Uncover practical strategies to regulate your nervous system and support healing

• Explore the surprising concept of post-traumatic growth

💡 Highlights:

Listen to an inspiring story of Dr. Waft's personal journey from surviving traumatic experiences while growing up to becoming a trauma expert

• Let's explore cultural differences in grief expression and how they impact healing

• Find out why avoiding emotions isn't true resilience

• EMDR therapy: A powerful tool for processing traumatic memories

🎭 Quotes:

"Trauma is any overwhelming or life-threatening event that disturbs our capacity to cope." - Dr. Yvonne Waft

🚨 Who Needs to Hear This:

• Anyone who's lost a partner and feels stuck in their grief

• Friends and family supporting someone through a significant loss

• Mental health professionals looking to deepen their understanding of grief and trauma

🔗 Resources Mentioned:

• Dr. Yvonne Waft's book: "Coping with Trauma"

• EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy

• Grief Therapy Group for Widows

🎬 Next Steps:

If you're struggling with grief or suspect unresolved trauma, remember: it's is important to seek professional help. Reach out to a trauma-informed therapist or join a support group. And don't forget to check out Dr. Waft's book for more insights!

📣 Share Your Thoughts:

We'd love to hear from you! How has this episode changed your understanding of grief and trauma? Share your reflections in the comments or reach out on social media.

🎧 Stay Tuned:

Don't miss our next episode, dropping next Tuesday. Hit subscribe to ensure you never miss a beat in your journey through grief and beyond.

Episode Transcript

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00:00:08 A Guide to Afterlife: Episode 1\
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[00:00:08] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Welcome to a guide to afterlife, your go to podcast for the young and widowed.\
[00:00:12] Dr Monika Wieliczko: This is your weekly space to to help you live through grief.\
[00:00:16] Dr Monika Wieliczko: I'm your host of Monika Velichko, psychologist and your fellow widow.\
[00:00:20] Dr Monika Wieliczko: I'm bringing psychological skills to boost your resilience and help you make room for life while you grieve.\
[00:00:26] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Listen in to insightful conversations with grief experts and those touched by a profound loss.\
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00:01:05 Trauma of Loss\
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[00:00:31] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Together, we challenge the way people think about grief, offering hope of life after loss.\
[00:00:37] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Expect honest stories of loss and creative ways to overcome grief challenges.\
[00:00:43] Dr Monika Wieliczko: We tackle common widowhood issues such as relationships, parenting, coping, and social isolation.\
[00:00:50] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Each episode gives you access to hand picked resources and tips on difficult emotions, upsetting symptoms, where to seek support, and how to help children grieve.\
[00:01:00] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Join the conversation and become a part of the grief evolution.\
[00:01:05] Dr Monika Wieliczko: In today's episode, we're talking about trauma of loss.\
[00:01:09] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And with me today is doctor Yvonne Waft.\
[00:01:12] Dr Monika Wieliczko: So doctor Yvonne Woft is a clinical psychologist specializing in trauma and an author of a newly published book, Coping with Trauma, which is a very candid account of her trauma coupled with theory and coping mechanism.\
[00:01:25] Dr Monika Wieliczko: So welcome, Yvonne.\
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00:02:38 Understanding Trauma and Coping with Significant Loss\
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[00:01:27] Dr Yvonne Waft: Thank you.\
[00:01:27] Dr Yvonne Waft: It's lovely to be here and thank you for the lovely introduction.\
[00:01:30] Dr Monika Wieliczko: It's lovely to have you here.\
[00:01:32] Dr Monika Wieliczko: I was so happy that you agreed to to come and talk to us about, well, about trauma and about how to cope with it.\
[00:01:41] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Especially in a context of a significant loss.\
[00:01:44] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And reading your book, which by the way I found incredibly useful and, just reflecting on that resilience.\
[00:01:53] Dr Monika Wieliczko: One thing that really stood out for me is that simple fact with is that trauma is a part of life, so is death.\
[00:02:00] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And as much as not every loss will be perceived as traumatic, a loss of a life partner often is.\
[00:02:07] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And that simple fact, the closer the relationship is to the person that we've lost, the harder it hits us.\
[00:02:13] Dr Monika Wieliczko: So losing a life partner at a young age is likely to have a profound impact on our lives, and it's likely to be traumatizing.\
[00:02:21] Dr Monika Wieliczko: So I think it was just so important to talk about the impact of loss and how to identify the traumatic elements of loss.\
[00:02:31] Dr Monika Wieliczko: So in other words, what I was thinking is that we're not just talking about grief.\
[00:02:38] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Often at some point we actually have to acknowledge that there is a traumatic experience that's impacting our experience of grief and loss.\
[00:02:46] Dr Monika Wieliczko: So, so yes, I suppose I what I would like to start is to perhaps think about what is trauma.\
[00:02:56] Dr Monika Wieliczko: So kind of like a broad definition of what it actually is and what brought you into the field of working with trauma.\
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00:05:24 Understanding Trauma and its Effects\
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[00:03:02] Dr Yvonne Waft: Yeah.\
[00:03:03] Dr Yvonne Waft: Those are quite big questions actually.\
[00:03:05] Dr Yvonne Waft: So what is trauma?\
[00:03:06] Dr Yvonne Waft: I think one of the definitions that's used is it's any overwhelming event that overwhelms the person's capacity to cope really.\
[00:03:15] Dr Yvonne Waft: Something that's outside of our normal experience, well outside of our normal experience and overwhelming.\
[00:03:24] Dr Yvonne Waft: And typically, if someone's been through something traumatic, so if we think about the really big traumas, something like an earthquake or, a plane crash or something like that and they survive, then after the event, they're likely to have a number of different experiences or symptoms if you like.\
[00:03:43] Dr Yvonne Waft: And that might be things like intrusive memories, thoughts, feelings, images popping into their mind or coming up in their body over and over again in the aftermath of the event.\
[00:03:56] Dr Yvonne Waft: They might find that they're avoiding lots of things that they would normally do.\
[00:04:01] Dr Yvonne Waft: So for example, after maybe a car crash, they might avoid driving their car or even going out on the roads at all, coping be even as a passenger or even as a pedestrian.\
[00:04:10] Dr Yvonne Waft: They might avoid all places where road accidents might happen.\
[00:04:15] Dr Yvonne Waft: And that's obviously very limiting for life.\
[00:04:17] Dr Yvonne Waft: They might experience lots of what we call hyperarousal, which is, you know, where you go into that anxiety response, that kind of fight flight response and you're constantly on the lookout for something going wrong, feeling very, very sort of hyperactivated all the time, unable to relax, unable to sleep, those kind of symptoms.\
[00:04:38] Dr Yvonne Waft: And then the other thing that people often find is that they might have just generalized anxiety, anxiety, low mood, even low self esteem, loss of interest in activities, just generally feeling not great about life, depression effectively.\
[00:04:46] Dr Yvonne Waft: So those are those are kind of the things that happen after a traumatic event.\
[00:04:52] Dr Yvonne Waft: And some of those of, I think, will happen trauma Yvonne ordinary loss.\
[00:04:57] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, the loss of your grandma when you're a teenager, perhaps.\
[00:04:59] Dr Yvonne Waft: And that might feel normal and the mind and the body kind of processes that over a period of time and you move through it.\
[00:05:12] Dr Yvonne Waft: And I think the difference with trauma is that it's more difficult to move through a traumatic event and coping out the other side as it were changed, but functioning well.\
[00:05:22] Dr Yvonne Waft: I think that's the difference.\
[00:05:24] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yes.\
[00:05:25] Dr Monika Wieliczko: I hear what you're saying about the severity of the traumatic a similar way as you would perhaps refer to a physical trauma which is like if you have a broken leg, you know, you're probably Yvonne heal fairly quickly.\
[00:05:39] Dr Monika Wieliczko: We just need some rest and time.\
[00:05:41] Dr Monika Wieliczko: What we would probably say, you know, just take your time and your body is Yvonne heal.\
[00:05:45] Dr Monika Wieliczko: But when there is a significant trauma, I don't know, you've got a broken spine or there are multiple traumas into the body, then that's probably going to require a bit more help.\
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00:07:58 Understanding the Complexity of Grief and Loss\
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[00:05:56] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yeah.\
[00:05:57] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Professional help.\
[00:05:58] Dr Monika Wieliczko: I think that's what you're probably gauging towards.\
[00:06:01] Dr Monika Wieliczko: There's a huge difference I think between a loss that is a part of life like losing your grandparents when they're elderly and obviously it's sad and difficult and overwhelming.\
[00:06:13] Dr Monika Wieliczko: But it's kind of understood as something that just happens in life like sometimes you break a leg or have a bruise or Yeah.\
[00:06:20] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yeah.\
[00:06:20] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Have a strain or something like that.\
[00:06:22] Dr Monika Wieliczko: But I think where I'm kind of coming from with my thinking is that losing a life partner or losing someone prematurely, it's not just a loss of life partner, the same way as if you're losing a child or just something that happens too early in life.\
[00:06:37] Dr Monika Wieliczko: It's a significant loss, isn't it?\
[00:06:38] Dr Yvonne Waft: Absolutely.\
[00:06:39] Dr Yvonne Waft: It's sort of out of the ordinary expectation that we have for life, isn't it?\
[00:06:43] Dr Yvonne Waft: I was just thinking about my mother-in-law who's 91 now.\
[00:06:47] Dr Yvonne Waft: She lost her husband, you know, after a loss, long marriage of 60 plus years, 65 years, I think, 7 years ago.\
[00:06:56] Dr Yvonne Waft: For her, it was a difficult period because they've been together for so long.\
[00:07:00] Dr Yvonne Waft: They've been together since their teens, and they've married sort of in their early twenties.\
[00:07:05] Dr Yvonne Waft: And, you know, she lost him in her mid eighties.\
[00:07:08] Dr Yvonne Waft: That was difficult, but it was expected, and it was in the normal course of events.\
[00:07:13] Dr Yvonne Waft: They'd reached very old age.\
[00:07:15] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, they're in their sort of mid to late eighties.\
[00:07:18] Dr Yvonne Waft: And it was expected that probably he would die first coping the male partner.\
[00:07:22] Dr Yvonne Waft: And, yes, she went through a period of feeling very sad and feeling a bit loss, and she's very much functioning as you would expect a 91 year old to be functioning now.\
[00:07:32] Dr Yvonne Waft: I mean, obviously, her life is more limited because she's 91.\
[00:07:36] Dr Yvonne Waft: But in terms of the loss, she's moved through that to a place of acceptance and comfort with it and appreciation for the long life they had together and the threesomes they brought up and the successes that those threesomes have achieved and feeling a life well lived and a marriage well enjoyed and, you know, they have their ups and downs like anybody.\
[00:07:58] Dr Yvonne Waft: Mhmm.\
[00:07:58] Dr Yvonne Waft: But I think the point is that that's in the normal course of Yvonne.\
[00:08:02] Dr Yvonne Waft: And, yes, it probably felt devastating at the time to her, but it was expected.\
[00:08:07] Dr Yvonne Waft: It was in the normal course of events, and and she was able to move through it.\
[00:08:11] Dr Yvonne Waft: Whereas someone like yourself who lost their life partner to cancer very young, it's very different, isn't it?\
[00:08:17] Dr Yvonne Waft: It's it's not in the normal course of events.\
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00:10:52 Understanding the Impact of Loss on Different Relationships and Stages of Life\
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[00:08:19] Dr Yvonne Waft: It interrupts the plans that you have for yourself.\
[00:08:22] Dr Yvonne Waft: It snatches things away from you.\
[00:08:25] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, you've planned to have this life with someone.\
[00:08:28] Dr Yvonne Waft: You've got expectations, perhaps of growing old together, perhaps of having children together, perhaps of supporting each other through major life milestones and having all of that snatched away from you.\
[00:08:41] Dr Yvonne Waft: Or just thinking of another situation, a friend of of, with is coming up to the first anniversary of her death.\
[00:08:47] Dr Yvonne Waft: She was a very close friend of mine.\
[00:08:49] Dr Yvonne Waft: She was 37 and she'd been through leukemia.\
[00:08:52] Dr Yvonne Waft: She had 2 young children and a husband.\
[00:08:55] Dr Yvonne Waft: And, of course, he's been left with these 2 young children who are now growing up without a mother.\
[00:09:00] Dr Yvonne Waft: And, you know, all of those things that he'd been hoping that, you know, the children would grow up with their mom.\
[00:09:06] Dr Yvonne Waft: For those children, the loss of a mother at whatever age, if you're still a child, it's a vulnerable age to lose your mum.\
[00:09:13] Dr Yvonne Waft: These things are not in the normal course of Yvonne.\
[00:09:16] Dr Yvonne Waft: They happen.\
[00:09:16] Dr Yvonne Waft: Of course, they do.\
[00:09:17] Dr Yvonne Waft: But there's something unusual and unexpected and and there's there's more to the loss than in the case of, for example, my mother-in-law losing her husband.\
[00:09:27] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yes.\
[00:09:27] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Exactly.\
[00:09:28] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And it's not to say that we categorizing losses of less or more.\
[00:09:33] Dr Monika Wieliczko: That's the context, as you're saying, of the loss.\
[00:09:35] Dr Monika Wieliczko: So the same event can have a completely different consequences depending on where we are in life, at which stage we are in life, what is our relationship with the person that died, and how close we are together.\
[00:09:48] Dr Monika Wieliczko: So as you're saying, the more invested we are into a relationship, the harder the loss.\
[00:09:53] Dr Monika Wieliczko: But as you said, if you had years of successful marriage, you've lived and achieved certain milestones in life, then it's a different kind of experience because actually, as you're saying, you're able to reach that sense of gratitude that you've received something, you've lived through your years.\
[00:10:09] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Whereas I think the kind of the resentment I think that often comes up when you lose someone prematurely is that, well, yes, I've been left with empty hands and I have to start from scratch, or how am I supposed to even begin to think about life after such a profound loss?\
[00:10:26] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And I think as he's saying, that's the element of loss.\
[00:10:30] Dr Monika Wieliczko: That is just the traumatic element of the loss.\
[00:10:32] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Post doesn't get registered.\
[00:10:34] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And I often hear that people saying that I can't relate to other people who've lost a grandparent or even a parent because it's not the same, and and I think there's some truth in that.\
[00:10:45] Dr Monika Wieliczko: It's much more complicated when such a significant part of your life is being destroyed.\
[00:10:50] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yeah.\
[00:10:50] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And you have to rebuild it.\
[00:10:52] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yeah.\
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00:13:54 Dealing with Trauma and Loss\
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[00:10:53] Dr Yvonne Waft: I mean, just thinking about, you know, my mother-in-law, she's 91.\
[00:10:56] Dr Yvonne Waft: She's not looking to have another relationship, have more children.\
[00:11:00] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, she's she's in her nineties.\
[00:11:01] Dr Yvonne Waft: She's lived her life.\
[00:11:03] Dr Yvonne Waft: And, yes, she's lost her life partner, but that's a very different situation to find herself in than, for example, my friend's husband who's now bringing up 2 young children alone and dealing with his own grief, dealing with their grief and, you know, single parenting in a in a world that's not set up for single parents.\
[00:11:23] Dr Yvonne Waft: So it's it's that difference, isn't it?\
[00:11:25] Dr Yvonne Waft: It's that unfairness of with, the injustice of what you're left with depending on where in your life you are and and the circumstances of the loss.\
[00:11:34] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yes.\
[00:11:35] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And I suppose I was thinking because, you know, reading your book, I was thinking because you're very open about your own experiences of of trauma.\
[00:11:44] Dr Monika Wieliczko: I mean, it's not necessary about the loss, but you obviously your own loss is different kind of loss, not loss of a life partner and loss through death.\
[00:11:53] Dr Monika Wieliczko: But and I think that really when I was reading it, I suppose one coping that came to my mind was that you bring in that very honest, very transparent way of naming what's been lost and it's visible.\
[00:12:06] Dr Monika Wieliczko: But I was just wondering, at which point did your interest in trauma emerge?\
[00:12:12] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Like, what was that tipping point for you or that you were able to come out from a position of someone who experienced significant trauma and then be able to work with it and actually utilize your experiences in such a wonderful way to help other people go through trauma.\
[00:12:30] Dr Monika Wieliczko: I'm just thinking about that because I think this is such a core experience of where something traumatic can turn into something more resilient.\
[00:12:39] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yeah.\
[00:12:40] Dr Monika Wieliczko: For\
[00:12:40] Dr Yvonne Waft: listeners who haven't read my book, the background to my trauma, there's 2 elements to it.\
[00:12:46] Dr Yvonne Waft: I had a very difficult relationship with my father growing up.\
[00:12:49] Dr Yvonne Waft: He was a quite abusive person.\
[00:12:52] Dr Yvonne Waft: So that's one element of my trauma.\
[00:12:54] Dr Yvonne Waft: And I suppose you might think in terms of loss that, you know, I didn't ever, ever have the father that I needed growing up.\
[00:13:02] Dr Yvonne Waft: And I also didn't have the protection from a quite abusive father that I should have had.\
[00:13:07] Dr Yvonne Waft: So my childhood in some ways was loss.\
[00:13:10] Dr Yvonne Waft: It wasn't the worst childhood I've heard about.\
[00:13:12] Dr Yvonne Waft: As a clinical psychologist, I've heard of far, far worse.\
[00:13:15] Dr Yvonne Waft: There were redeeming features.\
[00:13:17] Dr Yvonne Waft: So, you know, I'm I'm not saying I had the worst of childhoods but it wasn't great and it should have been better.\
[00:13:23] Dr Yvonne Waft: And then, on top of that, at the age of 19, I had, a very nasty run-in with meningitis, bacterial meningitis and sepsis, which caused me to nearly die.\
[00:13:38] Dr Yvonne Waft: And then, when I didn't die, I ended up with gangrene in my legs and had to have them amputated, which isn't an uncommon experience with sepsis.\
[00:13:47] Dr Yvonne Waft: When people get very, very ill with sepsis, they often lose limbs, and that was my experience.\
[00:13:53] Dr Yvonne Waft: So I I lost my legs.\
[00:13:54] Dr Yvonne Waft: I became physically disabled, you know, obviously a permanent disability.\
[00:13:58] Dr Yvonne Waft: And everything that I'd sort of planned for my life from that point forward had to change.\
[00:14:04] Dr Yvonne Waft: I was going to be living my life from a wheelchair.\
[00:14:07] Dr Yvonne Waft: I'd been away at college.\
[00:14:08] Dr Yvonne Waft: I ended up back at my parents' house, which wasn't ideal Yvonne what I said about my parents.\
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00:17:27 The Journey of Post-Traumatic Growth through Psychology\
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[00:14:13] Dr Yvonne Waft: And I had to restart and build from scratch, which, you know, kind of resonates a little bit with what you said about when you lose a life partner earlier in life.\
[00:14:21] Dr Yvonne Waft: You then have to go back and start from scratch and rebuild.\
[00:14:24] Dr Yvonne Waft: I thought I'd just about done adolescence and building an identity and all of that side of things.\
[00:14:30] Dr Yvonne Waft: And suddenly I had to build a whole new identity as a young disabled woman back in the mid 19 eighties.\
[00:14:37] Dr Yvonne Waft: So it is that thing of, you know, having to rebuild and and losing, you know, all the things that you'd thought were going to happen and assumed were going to happen and having to rebuild and start from scratch again.\
[00:14:50] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yes.\
[00:14:50] Dr Monika Wieliczko: It's such a devastating loss, especially as you said at this very early stage of your adult life.\
[00:14:59] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And, you know, as you were talking, I thought, yes, because it does like loss of a life partner feels like a loss of a part of you.\
[00:15:07] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And it's not just the mental, the psychological, but it's almost like a part of you is completely gone, like amputated.\
[00:15:14] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And I was just thinking that just, you know, hits that really tender spot when you were describing with.\
[00:15:20] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Just because obviously for you, it's not just physical experience of, you know, having to adjust to that new reality of having part of your body gone basically.\
[00:15:33] Dr Monika Wieliczko: But the the psychological and, you know, it's something that's obviously it's just so in your face every single day of your life.\
[00:15:41] Dr Monika Wieliczko: It affects every single aspect of your life.\
[00:15:43] Dr Yvonne Waft: Totally.\
[00:15:43] Dr Yvonne Waft: And I think you can grow around that as you as you do with any sort of loss.\
[00:15:48] Dr Yvonne Waft: You you know, time can help you to grow around that.\
[00:15:52] Dr Yvonne Waft: I think at 19, having a massive insult to your body image is pretty tough for any young woman or any young person Yvonne.\
[00:16:00] Dr Yvonne Waft: But you don't have a choice about it.\
[00:16:03] Dr Yvonne Waft: You kind of do have to move on through it.\
[00:16:05] Dr Yvonne Waft: I don't think I dealt emotionally with it.\
[00:16:08] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, a lot of those emotions at that time got kind of pushed to one side for quite a long time and I focused on other things that that were Yvonne help me move forward and I ended up getting into sport and getting into getting back into I went to university then, you know, a few years later and did a a psychology degree.\
[00:16:27] Dr Yvonne Waft: Now I didn't seek out psychology consciously as as a way of making sense of any of the mess that had gone before but I think there was an unconscious draw.\
[00:16:38] Dr Yvonne Waft: I think there was something there was a part of me that was seeking some sort of understanding of what I was living with, what I was dealing with, what had happened and I found myself studying psychology and being being drawn more and more into understanding me and what has happened to me and and all the elements of my life.\
[00:17:00] Dr Yvonne Waft: And then I think at some point during my undergrad degree, we were taught a little bit about clinical psychology and a part of me thought I want to do that.\
[00:17:07] Dr Yvonne Waft: I want to understand more.\
[00:17:09] Dr Yvonne Waft: I want to help other people as well deal with stuff like this.\
[00:17:12] Dr Yvonne Waft: And I was really drawn into sort of continuing on that quite difficult career path into clinical psychology.\
[00:17:19] Dr Yvonne Waft: I think it was during one of our lectures on the clinical doctorate that one of the lecturers was talking about this concept of post traumatic growth.\
[00:17:27] Dr Yvonne Waft: And I thought, I don't know what that is but I think I've got it and I think I can identify with that.\
[00:17:34] Dr Yvonne Waft: And and so I went away and did some reading and I thought, yeah, that's that definitely is something that I can identify with.\
[00:17:41] Dr Yvonne Waft: This idea that I've been through an awful lot of stuff and actually I've come out somehow stronger and with a more positive trajectory in my life as a result of all of that.\
[00:17:54] Dr Yvonne Waft: Yeah.\
[00:17:55] Dr Yvonne Waft: So so I think that's kind of how I ended up doing what I do, you know, through through studying psychology.\
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00:21:49 The Healing Power of Connection and Curiosity in Trauma Recovery\
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[00:18:01] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yeah.\
[00:18:02] Dr Monika Wieliczko: But what I hear, Yvonne, is there was that when you were talking, I've noticed you mentioned your curiosity that you really wanted to understand, to make sense of your experiences.\
[00:18:16] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And I think in some ways, this is what underpins all the internal, resourcing and growth from trauma because, you know, I don't know what you think about this, but I almost kind of feel that that internal curiosity about oneself and the world and what's going on and why this is happening.\
[00:18:38] Dr Monika Wieliczko: It kind of is the key or some kind of gateway to, you know, growth and understanding and processing those traumatic experiences because you you seem to be saying that that's where it all started Waft this experience of, oh, oh, what?\
[00:18:54] Dr Monika Wieliczko: What?\
[00:18:55] Dr Monika Wieliczko: What happened to me?\
[00:18:56] Dr Monika Wieliczko: So it's the position where you're curious about yourself, you're curious about the others and trying to make sense of what happened with I don't know like it post just seems like such an internal resource, that it just keeps on giving.\
[00:19:13] Dr Yvonne Waft: I think we are all often very curious, aren't we?\
[00:19:16] Dr Yvonne Waft: And that's why I think social media groups spring up to deal with life experiences, whatever they are, whether it's about trauma, whether it's about, for example, childhood sexual abuse, whether it's about grief, loss, whether it's about self harm, whether it's about eating disorders.\
[00:19:33] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, if you go on Facebook and search for any kind of difficult life experience, you'll find a Facebook group for that, I think.\
[00:19:40] Dr Yvonne Waft: And I think that's just natural human curiosity, isn't it, to make sense of what's happening to us, to understand what's happening to us, to get other people's perspectives, or to connect with other people who maybe understand what we've been through.\
[00:19:50] Dr Yvonne Waft: With I think that's one of the most healing things that I experienced was, connecting with others who'd been through traumatic events.\
[00:19:57] Dr Yvonne Waft: I think one of the things that I did not long after in fact, almost immediately after coming out of hospital, I I made an accidental contact with someone who was the captain of the Great Britain men's wheelchair basketball team at the time.\
[00:20:17] Dr Yvonne Waft: And he lived quite near me, and he had the same physio as me.\
[00:20:21] Dr Yvonne Waft: And, the physio put us in contact.\
[00:20:24] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, I was able to go along to a wheelchair basketball training session, and I was absolutely hooked, not just on the sport, which I really enjoyed.\
[00:20:32] Dr Yvonne Waft: It was real sort of heavy duty rough and tumble kind of post, and I I really, really enjoyed that.\
[00:20:39] Dr Yvonne Waft: But it was also a bunch of people who had been through adverse life experiences.\
[00:20:44] Dr Yvonne Waft: I mean, you don't go to a wheelchair training session a wheelchair basketball training session and not meet people who've been through adverse life experiences whether they were born with disability or whether they have acquired a disability somehow in life.\
[00:20:57] Dr Yvonne Waft: They'll have been through some adversity on that journey.\
[00:21:01] Dr Yvonne Waft: So it was connecting with those people and being able to see that I could still have a life and that it could be a valuable life because those people weren't just playing basketball.\
[00:21:11] Dr Yvonne Waft: Some of them had careers, some of them had families, they're all doing different things, some of them were studying.\
[00:21:16] Dr Yvonne Waft: It started to open doors in my mind where, you know, in in that hospital bed when I was recovering from this major, major illness, I thought doors had been shut to me.\
[00:21:26] Dr Yvonne Waft: I thought my life was going to be very limited from that point onwards.\
[00:21:31] Dr Yvonne Waft: And in actual fact, I was seeing all these people doing all these different things and thinking, I do still have options.\
[00:21:37] Dr Yvonne Waft: I think it's that connection with other people that broadens your view and enables you to think about what can I do now rather than how am I limited?\
[00:21:46] Dr Yvonne Waft: So for me, that was important.\
[00:21:49] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Mhmm.\
[00:21:50] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yeah.\
[00:21:50] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And obviously, that is just a definition of resilience.\
[00:21:53] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Mhmm.\
[00:21:54] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Isn't it?\
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00:23:44 The Importance of Curiosity and Connection in Overcoming Loss and Trauma\
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[00:21:54] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yeah.\
[00:21:55] Dr Monika Wieliczko: The ability to find the resources to be able to not just survive, thrive in a difficult environment, in a difficult situation like that.\
[00:22:05] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And I suppose what you're saying is that ability to connect, to make connections with people, seeking those connections yourself, and you're saying actually realizing the next door there's this guy Yeah.\
[00:22:19] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Who literally opens door to this new world of, people playing basketball on the wheelchair.\
[00:22:27] Dr Monika Wieliczko: You know, just suddenly, as you're saying, you're discovering this different world, which is, you know, in some ways similar to what a lot of people who've lost their life partner are talking about.\
[00:22:38] Dr Monika Wieliczko: That actually finding a community of other widows or widowers is incredibly important because you are recognizing that other people have managed to build life after loss.\
[00:22:49] Dr Monika Wieliczko: So they've they they're living their lives despite the adversity, and they're able to make room for the things despite the loss or to grow that life alongside the loss.\
[00:23:01] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And that that seems incredibly important.\
[00:23:03] Dr Monika Wieliczko: But I'm just thinking of going back to that curiosity and what happens when there isn't any curiosity because that's the other group of people who either haven't been supported or they haven't had enough of internal resources or the environment in which they were placed that didn't provide that kind of thriving community or that support system that often kind of leads to a different experience of, I suppose, withdrawal from the world, the sense of isolation, loneliness, and which is kind of part of every experience of trauma and and loss, I think.\
[00:23:40] Dr Monika Wieliczko: But for some people, I think it's very difficult to come out of that loss.\
[00:23:44] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Meaning that there either isn't enough support out there and maybe there isn't that kind of awareness of what needs to happen in order for them to be able to return to living after after such a significant loss.\
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00:27:13 Exploring the Influence of Personal Resources on Coping with Traumatic Loss\
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[00:23:58] Dr Yvonne Waft: Yeah.\
[00:23:59] Dr Yvonne Waft: I think, you know, one of the things I talk about in my book a little bit is that, you know, I did have advantages in some ways.\
[00:24:06] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, I was academically very able and that in a way was my sort of safe place during childhood Waft throwing myself into studying and academic work.\
[00:24:18] Dr Yvonne Waft: And, you know, because I was attending a decent middle class sort of state school in a decent sort of middle class village, you know, mixing with, you know, white British kind of middle class peers.\
[00:24:35] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, there was there was a lot of advantage there.\
[00:24:37] Dr Yvonne Waft: If I'd have been, let's say, a person of color growing up in an inner city with an inner city school where there was maybe violence and gang related stuff going Yvonne, my experience might have been very, very different.\
[00:24:51] Dr Yvonne Waft: And, you know, there's probably degrees of that sort of in between those two extremes.\
[00:24:56] Dr Yvonne Waft: And I think, you know, things like white privilege, things like academic privilege, things like I mean, we weren't a wealthy family, but we certainly weren't the poorest of the poor, you know, far from it.\
[00:25:09] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, we were quite privileged in that sense.\
[00:25:12] Dr Yvonne Waft: And I think those things make a difference.\
[00:25:13] Dr Yvonne Waft: They give you an element of resilience, you know.\
[00:25:17] Dr Yvonne Waft: My childhood wasn't great but there were definite advantages within it that enabled me to then have the academic success and ability.\
[00:25:28] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, I already had my a levels under my belt.\
[00:25:31] Dr Yvonne Waft: They weren't great a levels but they were a levels nonetheless before I had this illness.\
[00:25:36] Dr Yvonne Waft: So even when my sort of life was massively disrupted disrupted and set back by several years with by this illness, I had my a levels there.\
[00:25:45] Dr Yvonne Waft: So I was able to go back into university when I felt ready, when I felt pulled to.\
[00:25:50] Dr Yvonne Waft: So that was an advantage for me.\
[00:25:53] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yes.\
[00:25:54] Dr Monika Wieliczko: But it's also I think what you're saying is that you were able to fall back on those resources you had before your traumatic experience and the traumatic illness and the consequences of that, as you said, because that's usually what happens when we traumatic.\
[00:26:10] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Isn't with?\
[00:26:11] Dr Monika Wieliczko: That we kind of almost like revert back to something that feels safe, that feels familiar.\
[00:26:15] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And for you, perhaps it was books and reading and studying and feeling comfortable because that's something you still were able to do despite the situation you were in.\
[00:26:25] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And that kind of makes me think about, you know, the wider context of what happened in our life before the loss and what are our strengths and maybe disadvantages or the circumstances of our upbringing, as you said, that are going to, in some ways, shape the way we cope with the loss, especially traumatic loss.\
[00:26:48] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And, you know, that there's just so much there to explore, which often I think it's almost it's kind of being ignored as if, oh, this is what happened to you.\
[00:26:58] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And and as a result of the the loss, you go into enter the state of grief.\
[00:27:04] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And as if that's a separate entity post without the context in which you exist, like the external world as you said.\
[00:27:12] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yeah.\
[00:27:13] Dr Monika Wieliczko: So what are your resources out there?\
[00:27:15] Dr Monika Wieliczko: But also the internal resources, which is what you've developed throughout your life, how you've coped with adversity in the post, and that's gonna be incredibly useful and important to you when when something happens.\
[00:27:29] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Like for me, for example, it was, you know, I've always had this internal belief that I can I can cope in a situation of a crisis or, you know, that, post kind of push through and you get through anything?\
[00:27:46] Dr Monika Wieliczko: I'm a little bit of omnipotent.\
[00:27:48] Dr Monika Wieliczko: So I'm just like, I can deal with all kind of shit in life and just whatever life throws at me.\
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00:32:20 Coping with Traumatic Loss: The Intersection of External and Internal Resources\
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[00:27:54] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And in some ways that did help, but it was also a massive hindrance for me because when you reach a really difficult state in your life, like terminal illness and very in my case, it was a very traumatic period of time, prolonged period of time where it was just very difficult to cope just with day to day life, looking after someone who's who's so ill that needs your help almost 24 hours a day.\
[00:28:22] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And that moment where it would probably would have been much better for me to be asking for help more openly.\
[00:28:31] Dr Monika Wieliczko: But you kind of I think I was in that kind of almost like a coping mode, like post get through it.\
[00:28:36] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Just just just just deal with it yourself.\
[00:28:39] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And I think some so I think what I'm trying to say is that sometimes our old coping mechanisms are incredibly helpful, but sometimes they just they're so rigid.\
[00:28:50] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Like in my case, it took a long time for me to realize actually, I probably can't and shouldn't be doing everything.\
[00:28:56] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And it's it's much harder to kind of come out of that at the point of crisis where that kind of almost like rigidity is setting in because, you know, you just have to get through something very difficult.\
[00:29:09] Dr Monika Wieliczko: But, yeah, but that's the intersection between, as you're saying, the external world, you know, what are you in an environment where people can support you to get through this very difficult traumatic resilience, which then will, in some ways, inform how well you're recovering and kind of, as you're saying, growing life around the loss, and some of those internal resources, which is what what have you got inside you that you can utilize right now to help you get through with?\
[00:29:40] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Some kind of hobbies or interests or things like certain capacities, like you were talking about your academic background and wanting to to go to university and and develop despite the significant loss.\
[00:29:55] Dr Monika Wieliczko: So there's there's so much there, I suppose, which kind of I think it's almost like it tips you over either to a place of resilient form of grieving or this kind of more complicated form of grief.\
[00:30:09] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And I suppose I wanted to talk a little bit with you about those differences.\
[00:30:13] Dr Monika Wieliczko: You know, what would that look like?\
[00:30:16] Dr Monika Wieliczko: What what would be the difference, I suppose, in because you you talked a little bit about flashbacks and, you know, what happens when something traumatic happens and and we are just kind of almost like trapped in that state of reliving.\
[00:30:31] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And I I think in your book, you you you write a lot about that.\
[00:30:34] Dr Monika Wieliczko: If I remember correctly, that kind of experience of being almost coping, like, trapped and reliving that experience and not and I suppose not being able to process with.\
[00:30:44] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Mhmm.\
[00:30:45] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Because, again, you know, I don't know what your experiences were like or who helped you with processing your losses.\
[00:30:52] Dr Monika Wieliczko: But for me, I mean, talking was was something that really helped.\
[00:30:57] Dr Monika Wieliczko: But I suppose, like, I think for many people is that experience of being kind of overwhelmed by something really tragic, something really huge.\
[00:31:08] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Like, I don't know if it's a flashback of some of that person dying or trying to help them or just watching them slowly die or having some kind of emergencies, like medical emergencies or anything like that that kind of almost like gets stuck in your brain Yeah.\
[00:31:26] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And it's difficult to shift.\
[00:31:28] Dr Yvonne Waft: Yeah.\
[00:31:29] Dr Yvonne Waft: I think, you know, when something difficult happens, what needs to happen is we need to think about it.\
[00:31:35] Dr Yvonne Waft: We need to talk about it.\
[00:31:37] Dr Yvonne Waft: We need to make sense of it.\
[00:31:38] Dr Yvonne Waft: But what happens when something is outside of normal experience and and overwhelming is that we don't want to talk about it because it upsets us and we can't find the words for it.\
[00:31:50] Dr Yvonne Waft: We don't wanna talk about it because it upsets other people and they don't seem to be able to tolerate with.\
[00:31:57] Dr Yvonne Waft: And so people shut us down.\
[00:31:58] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, we might sort of say, oh, you know, I'm feeling upset about what's happened.\
[00:32:04] Dr Yvonne Waft: They say, oh, you'll get better.\
[00:32:05] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, oh, time will heal.\
[00:32:07] Dr Yvonne Waft: And they come out with all these kind of cliches that, you know, aren't helpful actually.\
[00:32:11] Dr Yvonne Waft: They're quite dismissing.\
[00:32:13] Dr Yvonne Waft: That's people trying to protect themselves against your distress, I think.\
[00:32:17] Dr Yvonne Waft: And so then it never gets processed.\
[00:32:19] Dr Yvonne Waft: It never gets dealt with.\
[00:32:20] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, if you're having flashbacks, let's say, or nightmares about hospital visits or unpleasant procedures that you had to witness, then, you know, you're having a nightmare about that.\
[00:32:32] Dr Yvonne Waft: And just at the sort of worst moment of it, you wake up in a hot sweat feeling very, very disturbed by what you've just been dreaming about, but you never get to the end of the dream.\
[00:32:42] Dr Yvonne Waft: Dreaming is supposed to help process things, but you never get to the end of it.\
[00:32:46] Dr Yvonne Waft: You never get it processed because you wake up.\
[00:32:48] Dr Yvonne Waft: And so, you know, we we can't talk about things because people don't want to hear it.\
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00:38:04 Processing Trauma and Unprocessed Emotions\
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[00:32:53] Dr Yvonne Waft: They dismiss it.\
[00:32:54] Dr Yvonne Waft: They push it away with platitudes.\
[00:32:56] Dr Yvonne Waft: We can't dream about it because we wake up in a hot sweat, so it doesn't get processed that way.\
[00:33:02] Dr Yvonne Waft: We might join communities and start talking a little bit about it, but, you know, it sometimes just is too much and it's just too hard.\
[00:33:11] Dr Yvonne Waft: Then you maybe need specialist help.\
[00:33:15] Dr Yvonne Waft: You need to talk to someone who can sit with that level of disturbance and grief and pain and upset without dismissing it.\
[00:33:24] Dr Yvonne Waft: Someone who can just sit there and say, this sounds really tough and just be with it and be with you being as upset or as in pain or as as angry or as rageful.\
[00:33:37] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, someone who can sit with me saying that I just could kill someone, you know, over over how strongly I feel about, you know, why didn't the doctors do something more?\
[00:33:47] Dr Yvonne Waft: Why, you know, to be able to sit and rage without judgment, without someone coping, oh, you mustn't say that or oh, don't say things like that.\
[00:33:56] Dr Yvonne Waft: That's that's not nice.\
[00:33:57] Dr Yvonne Waft: You need someone and and that's where maybe a clinical psychologist or or any empathic therapist actually or just even a really good friend who who just has that capacity to hold that without judgment.\
[00:34:11] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Has the capacity.\
[00:34:12] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yeah.\
[00:34:13] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Mhmm.\
[00:34:14] Dr Yvonne Waft: And I\
[00:34:14] Dr Monika Wieliczko: think what you're saying here is I think in some ways, that what really is traumatic to us is the fact that we have all those feelings that we can't face.\
[00:34:28] Dr Monika Wieliczko: It's not just the memory of something terrible happening, but how that made you feel that somehow gets blocked out.\
[00:34:37] Dr Yvonne Waft: Yeah.\
[00:34:38] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And I we I mean, I see it a lot working with my, clients done with complex traumatic experiences of all loss.\
[00:34:46] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yes.\
[00:34:47] Dr Monika Wieliczko: That what often becomes more traumatic is that not that something happened, but how it was dealt with.\
[00:34:54] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Just to give an example, when my husband was very ill, I had, well, I was in analysis psychoanalysis, so it's a form of of intensive form of therapeutic interventions when I was basically, something traumatic would happen during the day, and then I had this one.\
[00:35:11] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Once day, I had a session when I would I could just bring this in Yeah.\
[00:35:16] Dr Monika Wieliczko: To the session and basically just process with, offload it.\
[00:35:19] Dr Monika Wieliczko: It's a form of, like, almost like vomiting out all the emotions that were building building up through the day.\
[00:35:26] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And, you know, in some ways, that was the only thing that was sustained sustaining my capacity to cope.\
[00:35:32] Dr Monika Wieliczko: They're not the only one, but that's so the most kind of consistent way of of coping with that because I was able to bring whatever I had in me, whatever disturbing feeling, sensation, overwhelming emotion I've experienced coping the day, I was able then just to bring bring it back and process it.\
[00:35:52] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And obviously, not everyone is in that position.\
[00:35:55] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And obviously, I was in therapy before my husband got ill.\
[00:35:58] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And that follow on through the loss of him and and so on that you I think having that space where you can just feel things no matter what is the concept, you know, that no matter what what it is, what it no matter what you're feeling and being able to face it is what in some ways, I think in my case, prevented it from becoming a very traumatic resilience.\
[00:36:23] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yeah.\
[00:36:23] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Traumatizing experience.\
[00:36:24] Dr Monika Wieliczko: It was traumatic, but it was it didn't traumatize me in the same way as as I think it does to some people who then I think remain stuck with that.\
[00:36:34] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And as you're saying that unprocessed, I don't know, guilt or anger, frustration, a disappointment, fear, all of that just gets completely shut down.\
[00:36:47] Dr Yvonne Waft: Yeah.\
[00:36:48] Dr Yvonne Waft: Yeah.\
[00:36:49] Dr Yvonne Waft: Absolutely.\
[00:36:50] Dr Yvonne Waft: I think all of that is is so true.\
[00:36:52] Dr Yvonne Waft: And and those particular emotions that you mentioned, the anger, the guilt, the disappointment, those are really difficult for, you know, the person on the street, just your mate, your friend to sit with them here.\
[00:37:06] Dr Yvonne Waft: And if you've had a minor car accident, you talk to your friends, you go, oh, I'm so angry with that driver and you know you talk about it, you make a joke about it, you laugh about it, time moves on and you feel okay and you get back in your car and you drive.\
[00:37:20] Dr Yvonne Waft: But if you've had a really, really significant accident and you're really, really or, you know, loss or or injury, you know, maybe if you've been in an accident and someone died, those feelings of maybe guilt, was it my fault?\
[00:37:33] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, if you try and express that and sit with it and talk to your friends about it, they'll be brushing it off with no.\
[00:37:39] Dr Yvonne Waft: No.\
[00:37:39] Dr Yvonne Waft: No.\
[00:37:39] Dr Yvonne Waft: No.\
[00:37:39] Dr Yvonne Waft: No.\
[00:37:39] Dr Yvonne Waft: Of course, it wasn't your fault.\
[00:37:41] Dr Yvonne Waft: And that doesn't give you space to feel those feelings.\
[00:37:44] Dr Yvonne Waft: It dismisses those feelings.\
[00:37:47] Dr Yvonne Waft: If you're feeling really angry, you know, and I I could kill that driver for what they did.\
[00:37:51] Dr Yvonne Waft: I could absolutely murder them or I'm glad they died from, you know, from their injuries.\
[00:37:56] Dr Yvonne Waft: Your friends won't sit with that.\
[00:37:58] Dr Yvonne Waft: They'll they'll be like, of, oh, that's a bit much.\
[00:38:02] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, and they'll shut it down.\
[00:38:04] Dr Yvonne Waft: Whereas if you if you were to be with someone who's used to dealing with this sort of thing, you know, so like you had your analyst, at the time and, you know, both work therapeutically.\
[00:38:15] Dr Yvonne Waft: So we're used to kind of hearing about these things.\
[00:38:19] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, when my friend last year was, dying well, she was going through bone marrow transplants and all sorts.\
[00:38:26] Dr Yvonne Waft: We didn't sometimes she was dying.\
[00:38:28] Dr Yvonne Waft: Sometimes she wasn't dying.\
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00:43:51 Cultural Differences in Grieving and Processing Loss\
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[00:38:29] Dr Yvonne Waft: Eventually, she died, and it wasn't from the leukemia.\
[00:38:31] Dr Yvonne Waft: It was from the treatment, that she'd had.\
[00:38:34] Dr Yvonne Waft: It was it was all very complicated.\
[00:38:36] Dr Yvonne Waft: But I was a person who she could just sit and just offload, and I would never say, oh, oh, that's a bit much.\
[00:38:44] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know?\
[00:38:45] Dr Yvonne Waft: And and sometimes we did have some really deep talks.\
[00:38:48] Dr Yvonne Waft: And she wasn't in therapy with me, but I was a friend who she could talk to almost as if, you know, someone who wouldn't dismiss.\
[00:38:55] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, if she said, you know, I mean, at times she expressed all sorts of strong feelings that your average friend wouldn't have been able to sit with.\
[00:39:04] Dr Yvonne Waft: And I think that's the resilience.\
[00:39:06] Dr Yvonne Waft: And sometimes knowing a therapist or being a therapist can be really beneficial to just give you that space, I think, to say the things that can't be said in polite company.\
[00:39:16] Dr Yvonne Waft: I think that's the thing, isn't it?\
[00:39:18] Dr Yvonne Waft: Things you can't normally say at a dinner party.\
[00:39:21] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, your your psychologist or your therapist is is someone who's able to hold that and allow you to have those really strong feelings.\
[00:39:29] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yeah.\
[00:39:29] Dr Monika Wieliczko: So making that room is so important.\
[00:39:32] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Having that permission to just feel whatever\
[00:39:35] Dr Yvonne Waft: Yeah.\
[00:39:35] Dr Monika Wieliczko: You need to feel and whatever reaction comes up, which is often blocked.\
[00:39:39] Dr Monika Wieliczko: So it's this natural way of processing the trauma, the loss is completely blocked out.\
[00:39:47] Dr Monika Wieliczko: It's either our internal dialogue that, you know, something coping, oh, you shouldn't be feeling this way or actually someone else being overwhelmed by and and having been on the receiving end of someone else being overwhelmed and shutting it down.\
[00:40:00] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yeah.\
[00:40:00] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Oh, you can't be angry or feeling resentful.\
[00:40:03] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yeah.\
[00:40:04] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Like, it's just it's too much.\
[00:40:05] Dr Monika Wieliczko: You know?\
[00:40:06] Dr Monika Wieliczko: So that's that's the that's when it becomes problematic and blocks this natural way of Yes.\
[00:40:11] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Of processing things because our brain has a natural way of dealing with trauma if it's placed in the right environment.\
[00:40:17] Dr Monika Wieliczko: With just happens automatically post.\
[00:40:20] Dr Monika Wieliczko: But that when when that's not possible, then you're kind of stuck with those kind of reliving those resilience.\
[00:40:27] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Often having those kind of of was like flashbacks, like little memories or often there are sensations that kind of get stuck in you, which I think at the initial stage of grief, I think it's normal to have those flashbacks or, you know, have certain sensations or the other way around coping completely numb and not feeling anything.\
[00:40:46] Dr Monika Wieliczko: There are kind of different ways how we can respond to it, isn't it?\
[00:40:49] Dr Monika Wieliczko: But if you I suppose what I was thinking is that if you kind of remain in that state for very long periods of time and nothing's changing, this natural way of processing is not taking place, then it's usually I mean, I would be probably thinking, okay, what's blocking that process from happening?\
[00:41:06] Dr Monika Wieliczko: It's not to say that you suddenly stop grieving, but being paralyzed and not being able to think or talk about your late partner or to remember certain things or being incredibly distressed by with.\
[00:41:20] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And as a result, not being able to process with, that's a sign that something's not quite right, that it's not a usual trajectory of grief.\
[00:41:29] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And then I suppose that's what I would be probably thinking.\
[00:41:32] Dr Monika Wieliczko: I don't know what you what you think about that, I suppose, but that's where my alarm bells go go off.\
[00:41:37] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And I'm thinking, okay, maybe there's something more to it than just grief.\
[00:41:42] Dr Yvonne Waft: Yeah.\
[00:41:42] Dr Yvonne Waft: I was just thinking as you were talking there that there's probably cultural differences across the world as to how we deal with these things.\
[00:41:49] Dr Yvonne Waft: I think we know that in some cultures, it's more acceptable to weep and wail loudly in the aftermath of grief.\
[00:41:58] Dr Yvonne Waft: Whereas perhaps in the more British culture, there's this sort of stiff upper lip, you know, 6 weeks and then you should be done with it kind of approach to grief.\
[00:42:06] Dr Yvonne Waft: And I don't know what it's like in Poland, whether that is, you know, sort of more acceptable to be very open with your grief.\
[00:42:12] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Just pretend it's not happening.\
[00:42:15] Dr Yvonne Waft: Yeah.\
[00:42:15] Dr Yvonne Waft: So, I mean, I think in different parts of the world, it's just Yvonne to vary, isn't it?\
[00:42:19] Dr Yvonne Waft: And like I say, you know, we've got this sort of stiff upper lip in in the UK where you're allowed to be full of grief for maybe a short period of time.\
[00:42:27] Dr Yvonne Waft: But then people start saying, I think you need some help.\
[00:42:29] Dr Yvonne Waft: You should go and see someone because you've not got better in this prescribed amount of time.\
[00:42:34] Dr Yvonne Waft: And I think, you know, as a as a culture in the UK, you know, we do have this history of sort of stiff upper lip.\
[00:42:41] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, don't don't be sort of weeping and wailing and making your emotions too visible to the world.\
[00:42:46] Dr Yvonne Waft: So even in the sort of immediate aftermath, you know, people will allow you to sort of withdraw and maybe cry and maybe sort of step outside the room, for a bit of private time.\
[00:42:57] Dr Yvonne Waft: But they don't want you to just express your emotions wildly in front of them.\
[00:43:02] Dr Yvonne Waft: Whereas in other cultures, maybe that is a lot more acceptable.\
[00:43:06] Dr Yvonne Waft: But that gets in the way then of just being able to process, you know, and and maybe feeling guilty that you're feeling feelings because it feels as though you shouldn't be.\
[00:43:15] Dr Yvonne Waft: But at the same time, you might be feeling very angry with people for not being more supportive of you through your grief or your trauma or your loss.\
[00:43:23] Dr Yvonne Waft: So all of that gets mixed in.\
[00:43:26] Dr Yvonne Waft: And then, you know, adding in all the other elements that we've talked about, you know, your earlier life experiences, how were your emotions dealt with in childhood?\
[00:43:35] Dr Yvonne Waft: Were you allowed any emotions in childhood?\
[00:43:38] Dr Yvonne Waft: Did you learn that you just had to put your emotions to one side and soldier on?\
[00:43:42] Dr Yvonne Waft: These things all impact on how open we can be with our trauma, our grief, our loss, whatever it is that we've been through.\
[00:43:51] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And I suppose I wonder what your take is on beginning to work with that kind of traumatic experience of loss in in our world.\
[00:44:00] Dr Monika Wieliczko: When someone comes to see you and they've been I don't know.\
[00:44:04] Dr Monika Wieliczko: They've lost their husband or wife 5, 10 years ago, and they are in that kind of the state of still in a state of shock, unable to process.\
[00:44:14] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Where where would you go?\
[00:44:15] Dr Monika Wieliczko: How would you work with that?\
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00:50:11 Supporting Grieving Process After Traumatic Loss\
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[00:44:17] Dr Yvonne Waft: Yeah.\
[00:44:17] Dr Yvonne Waft: So, I mean, a recent example would be someone who came to me having lost one of their adult children through suicide, the previous year.\
[00:44:26] Dr Yvonne Waft: And, you know, my my take on that is that, yes, that's bound to be a traumatic loss.\
[00:44:34] Dr Yvonne Waft: There's bound to be a grief process, but there's bound to be also lots of unanswered questions, you know, lots of why and did I do enough and could I have done more and what was so what were the the other sort of services doing?\
[00:44:49] Dr Yvonne Waft: What, you know, what help was this person accessing?\
[00:44:51] Dr Yvonne Waft: So, you know, curiosity about all of that.\
[00:44:54] Dr Yvonne Waft: So just listening to the story as it presents and as it unfolds is the first step, I suppose.\
[00:45:00] Dr Yvonne Waft: So just creating that space to say, gosh, that's a lot.\
[00:45:04] Dr Yvonne Waft: Tell me about it.\
[00:45:05] Dr Yvonne Waft: And then thinking about, well, what are the specific bits and pieces that are getting in the way here?\
[00:45:11] Dr Yvonne Waft: And I think, you know, for this particular person, they were feeling quite numb.\
[00:45:15] Dr Yvonne Waft: They were struggling to access their emotions about what had happened.\
[00:45:19] Dr Yvonne Waft: They were attending a support group where other people were experiencing a lot of emotion, and this person wasn't experiencing a lot of emotion.\
[00:45:28] Dr Yvonne Waft: They were worried about that.\
[00:45:30] Dr Yvonne Waft: So we decided that what we'd do is look at their whole life history and look at what other traumatic events they've been through and look at maybe the reasons why they did struggle to contact their emotions or to be in connection with their emotions.\
[00:45:47] Dr Yvonne Waft: And we used EMDR therapy, which is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, which is a an evidence based very effective therapy for all sorts of trauma and mental health difficulties.\
[00:46:00] Dr Yvonne Waft: And we processed a number of different memories.\
[00:46:03] Dr Yvonne Waft: Some of them seemingly unconnected to the death, but things that just unlocked a sense of it's okay to be upset.\
[00:46:11] Dr Yvonne Waft: It's okay to feel these emotions.\
[00:46:13] Dr Yvonne Waft: And then we process a number of key targets around the death.\
[00:46:18] Dr Yvonne Waft: So, you know, a phone call, another phone call.\
[00:46:22] Dr Yvonne Waft: There were some important phone calls that had happened in the sort of days around the, actual death.\
[00:46:29] Dr Yvonne Waft: And we processed just the image of what they because they didn't see the person who'd taken their own life, their their offspring.\
[00:46:37] Dr Yvonne Waft: They didn't see the aftermath of that.\
[00:46:38] Dr Yvonne Waft: They didn't see pictures or anything, but they had an image in their mind of what they thought.\
[00:46:42] Dr Yvonne Waft: And we processed that.\
[00:46:43] Dr Yvonne Waft: And we were able to come to a point of I did the best I could with what I knew at the time.\
[00:46:49] Dr Yvonne Waft: And, you know, this was the person's choice and they're at peace now.\
[00:46:54] Dr Yvonne Waft: And whilst it's never going to go away, that that parent is never going to feel okay that their offspring took their own life.\
[00:47:05] Dr Yvonne Waft: They're able to move on with that and live with that and live and grow around it now, Whereas they felt very stuck because they couldn't access those difficult emotions around.\
[00:47:16] Dr Yvonne Waft: Could I have done more, and did I let them down?\
[00:47:19] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yes.\
[00:47:20] Dr Monika Wieliczko: So, Rich, what you just described, Yvonne, which kind of taps into this idea that it's not just grief, and it's not just about that person who died, but actually everything else that happened in life that built those beliefs or those ways of coping with difficult emotions or guilt or that you just cut off from them, and that's often the case that you get thrown into that kind of post like frozen states of let's not feel because it's not safe.\
[00:47:50] Dr Monika Wieliczko: How with we be supported to feel all those emotions or would that will they overwhelm us?\
[00:47:56] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yeah.\
[00:47:56] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And I think what you're saying is that you've been able to provide for that person the environment when they felt safer now\
[00:48:02] Dr Yvonne Waft: Yeah.\
[00:48:03] Dr Monika Wieliczko: To be able to go there with you and very skillfully process that traumatic the multiple of traumatic experiences that were feeding into the way that we're coping with trauma Yeah.\
[00:48:14] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Of the loss Yeah.\
[00:48:16] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Of their offspring.\
[00:48:17] Dr Monika Wieliczko: So this is just the complexity of it, isn't it?\
[00:48:19] Dr Monika Wieliczko: That it's, you know, it's not just it's not just the person who died, but that there are other things that might be blocking the bereavement, the the grief process because I wonder what happened afterwards because it's, you know, with you've noticed how that supports it or didn't support their grieving process.\
[00:48:40] Dr Yvonne Waft: Well, we agreed to leave the work at that point once they felt they were on back with their grieving and and felt able to access those feelings.\
[00:48:49] Dr Yvonne Waft: And they felt able to then go to their survivors growth, the bereavement by suicide groups, and join in those conversations.\
[00:48:58] Dr Yvonne Waft: And they felt able to talk to their partner, the mother of of the person who died, you know, more openly about the feelings.\
[00:49:05] Dr Yvonne Waft: And so they felt that they could now do the grieving process themselves.\
[00:49:09] Dr Yvonne Waft: So, you know, I I kind of bid them goodbye at that point with the caveat that, you know, if this gets retriggered in the future, if something else happens and this becomes difficult again, of course, we can revisit with and come back to it because this is life, isn't it?\
[00:49:24] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, if something were to happen and they have another bereavement, maybe that would bring up some of these feelings again.\
[00:49:30] Dr Yvonne Waft: And, of course, that's okay.\
[00:49:32] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, grief is never done and dusted.\
[00:49:35] Dr Yvonne Waft: It's part of life.\
[00:49:36] Dr Yvonne Waft: We grow around it.\
[00:49:37] Dr Yvonne Waft: We learn to live with it.\
[00:49:38] Dr Yvonne Waft: But the fact that we've lost someone so meaningful to us, so important to us never goes away.\
[00:49:44] Dr Monika Wieliczko: No.\
[00:49:44] Dr Monika Wieliczko: It does not.\
[00:49:45] Dr Monika Wieliczko: But this as you're saying, there's that difference between this being just a loss and being able to access your grieving process of being kind of trapped in that initial state of shock Yeah.\
[00:49:56] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Which I often kind of refer to that, you know, that often people kind of remain in that stage for too long.\
[00:50:03] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Mhmm.\
[00:50:03] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And if that's not progressing, then there's usually a sign that something's not quite right.\
[00:50:07] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yeah.\
[00:50:07] Dr Monika Wieliczko: That something, as you said, interferes with with that normal grieving process.\
[00:50:11] Dr Yvonne Waft: Yes.\
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00:54:51 A Conversation about Coping with Trauma of Loss\
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[00:50:12] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And I and I suppose that brings me back to this kind of question of resilience that we've touched upon earlier and all those things that you've been talking about that build that resilient picture.\
[00:50:25] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And I wonder, you know, thinking about your book, but also you talk about resilience quite a loss.\
[00:50:31] Dr Monika Wieliczko: But what are the kind of the takeaway messages for our listeners about the kind of more resilient way of dealing with grief and traumatic loss?\
[00:50:41] Dr Yvonne Waft: Yeah.\
[00:50:41] Dr Yvonne Waft: Would that be I think the thing about that is that in our society, in Western society particularly, I think people mistake resilience for avoidance.\
[00:50:51] Dr Yvonne Waft: So if we avoid all the feelings and put on a stiff upper lip and pretend that everything's okay, then we're doing okay when actually there can be a huge amount of emotional stuff, garbage post festering inside us.\
[00:51:05] Dr Yvonne Waft: And actually, the more resilient way to deal with this is to face it, to approach it, to open up about it, to get in touch with those messy emotions, to talk about them, to find safe places to talk about those emotions and get messy about it.\
[00:51:24] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, tears and snot are a good coping, actually.\
[00:51:27] Dr Yvonne Waft: You know, when you really let those emotions out and really start to process them fully, then, yes, it's a bit messy and, you know, it's not for polite society in England, I don't know, around the dinner table.\
[00:51:41] Dr Yvonne Waft: But finding those places where you can be, you know, where you can be real with your emotions, finding those friends who will just sit with you and let you get snotty and messy and, you know, not worry about it.\
[00:51:55] Dr Yvonne Waft: Maybe finding a therapist who you can really open up to and talk to about this.\
[00:52:01] Dr Yvonne Waft: And it might not be a therapist.\
[00:52:02] Dr Yvonne Waft: It might be someone from your religious community.\
[00:52:05] Dr Yvonne Waft: It might be your vicar or your imam or someone someone who is open to you just being completely open with your emotions.\
[00:52:17] Dr Yvonne Waft: And I think that allows a natural sort of flow.\
[00:52:20] Dr Yvonne Waft: Once the emotions can flow and can be released, then the grief process can flow and you can learn to grow around it and you can learn to let go of the things that aren't serving you, like the anger or the guilt or whatever it might be, and start moving forward with more, I suppose, gratitude for the life that you had with that person maybe, appreciation of the good times and sadness for the difficulties that happened, the loss and be okay with that.\
[00:52:52] Dr Yvonne Waft: To be able to feel those feelings in a sort of flow where you allow it to come over you.\
[00:52:58] Dr Yvonne Waft: It flows through and then you move on with what's important in life now.\
[00:53:03] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Mhmm.\
[00:53:03] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Well, exactly.\
[00:53:04] Dr Monika Wieliczko: I think that's a really brilliant way of putting it all together how to grow that resilient environment to help you grieve.\
[00:53:12] Dr Monika Wieliczko: It's a kind of beautiful way how you put it.\
[00:53:14] Dr Monika Wieliczko: So thank you for this.\
[00:53:15] Dr Monika Wieliczko: And I before we finish, Yvonne, I just wanted to, to ask you if you could just say a few words about where people can find you a new book\
[00:53:24] Dr Yvonne Waft: Yeah.\
[00:53:25] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Because you've got quite a lot of resources in there that could be really helpful in terms of thinking about trauma of loss and and and kind of thinking about where to begin to think about the language around loss.\
[00:53:36] Dr Yvonne Waft: So my book, Coping with Trauma, is available on Amazon and also from sequoia books.com.\
[00:53:43] Dr Yvonne Waft: Sequoia hyphen books.com.\
[00:53:45] Dr Yvonne Waft: And then I'm on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram.\
[00:53:51] Dr Yvonne Waft: My Instagram is a bit more of a personal Instagram, and a bit less of a professional one, but it's kind of a hybrid.\
[00:53:57] Dr Yvonne Waft: I can't remember the exact handles.\
[00:53:58] Dr Yvonne Waft: They'll be in the show notes, but I'm basically searchable by my name, which is will\
[00:54:02] Dr Monika Wieliczko: be in the show notes, but you're you're out there.\
[00:54:04] Dr Yvonne Waft: I'm out there.\
[00:54:05] Dr Yvonne Waft: My name like yours is fairly identifiable.\
[00:54:07] Dr Yvonne Waft: I think if people do a Google search, they'll pretty much find me on all the different platforms.\
[00:54:12] Dr Yvonne Waft: So I'm out there findable on on all the major platforms.\
[00:54:17] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Well, it's been so great to have you here, Yvonne, and such a rich and important conversation to be had about trauma of loss.\
[00:54:25] Dr Monika Wieliczko: So thank you so much for being here with me.\
[00:54:27] Dr Yvonne Waft: Oh, you're welcome.\
[00:54:28] Dr Yvonne Waft: I've really enjoyed it.\
[00:54:29] Dr Yvonne Waft: And thank you for having me.\
[00:54:30] Dr Yvonne Waft: I love talking about trauma, which sounds a bit odd, but important thing to talk about because we don't talk about it enough.\
[00:54:36] Dr Yvonne Waft: And grief and loss and trauma, these are all very linked concepts.\
[00:54:40] Dr Yvonne Waft: And, yeah, we should talk about it more.\
[00:54:43] Dr Yvonne Waft: We should open up a bit more, shouldn't we?\
[00:54:45] Dr Yvonne Waft: As as a society, as a world, we should recognize it and deal with it.\
[00:54:49] Dr Yvonne Waft: Yeah.\
[00:54:49] Dr Yvonne Waft: Yeah.\
[00:54:50] Dr Yvonne Waft: Absolutely.\
[00:54:51] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Thank you for listening in.\
[00:54:53] Dr Monika Wieliczko: I hope you found it useful.\
[00:54:55] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Please stay in touch by subscribing to my podcast and leaving a review on your preferred platform to help other widows grieve and live.\
[00:55:03] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Check out our show notes for links to helpful resources or go to guide to afterlife.com to find out more and take part in the grief mot, your first aid course for grief.\
[00:55:16] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Join us next Tuesday for yet another stimulating conversation.}

When Grief Meets Trauma: Navigating Traumatic Loss with Dr Yvonne Waft, Clinical Psychologist.

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