The Sixth Stage of Grief with David Kessler
The Sixth Stage of Grief with David Kessler
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David Kessler: Just like you said, study after study is showing us in trauma and in grief, we need community. We need others. We've all been taught the TV version of dying. Grief is messy. Grief is organic. We don't know what to say.
Dr. Taz (2): Grief comes in lots of different forms. It can come in the form of a divorce. Yes. The loss of a child.
Dr. Taz (2): Loss of a loved one. It can come in the form of a loss of a job. When we don't do this work, regardless of what it is or the experience has been, it shows up in your lab work.
David Kessler: Absolutely. Absolutely. There's
Dr. Taz (2): inflammation. There is high cortisol. There's hormone disruption. And over time. Yes. That's a diagnosis.
Dr. Taz (2): As a young physician, I think one of the hardest things I ever dealt with was loss. Watching a patient die, watching family members lose loved ones coming from the emergency room or from any of the different scenarios in my different residency rotations. This really was one that I struggled with. And somewhere along that journey, I picked up a book by Elizabeth Coover Ross, who talked about death and dying, the five stages of grief and the profound impact they have.
Dr. Taz (2): the human experience. My next guest has worked with Elizabeth Kubler Ross and all her groundbreaking work on the five stages of grief. And I can't wait to get his perspective on what grief loss and trauma. Due to the human spirit. And at the end of the day, due to our human experience, David Kessler is one of the world's foremost experts on grief and loss.
Dr. Taz (2): His experience with thousands of people on the edge of life and death has taught him the secrets to living a happy and fulfilled life. Even after life's tragedies, he's the author of six books, including the new bestselling book, Finding Meaning, The Sixth Stage of Grief. He co authored two books with Elizabeth Kubler Ross, including On Grief and Grieving, and updated Her Five Stages of Grief.
Dr. Taz (2): His first book, The Needs of the Dying, received praise from Saint Mother Teresa. David's volunteer work includes being an LAPD specialist reserve for traumatic events as well as having served on Red Cross's disaster services team. He has been trained for bioterrorist events as well as epidemics and pandemics.
Dr. Taz (2): He's the founder of grief. com which has over 5 million visits yearly from 167 countries. Please join me in welcoming David Kessler to Whole Plus. All right, David, welcome to the show.
David Kessler: So glad to be here with you.
Dr. Taz (2): This is a full circle moment for me. When I was in med school and residency, I stumbled upon Elizabeth Kubler Ross's work on death and dying.
Dr. Taz (2): I was really touched and impacted by some of the, my first experience with losing a patient. And I found you that way too. So to have you here on the show is such an honor and such a privilege. And I It couldn't be more excited. So welcome.
David Kessler: Well, thank you so much. And I'm so curious, you know, I think about her in the sixties, right?
David Kessler: Being a female physician and back then trying to be out of the box. I mean, I remember, you know, hearing the stories of how she would have the audacity to bring patients. To the physician education and it was like, no. Yeah, no. We learn from each other. We don't have patients tell us, we don't learn from our
Dr. Taz (2): patient
Dr. Taz (2): Yeah. It was
David Kessler: like, wait, no, no. We have patient education classes. Why would we wanna learn from patients? Lets takes a woman. Like,
Dr. Taz: yeah.
David Kessler: Yeah. And you know, there's probably some truth to that. And it was this idea of we have to learn. from people who are dying and people who are in grief.
Dr. Taz (2): There
David Kessler: are teachers.
Dr. Taz (2): Well, one of the reasons I really wanted you on the show, we spend a lot of time on the show talking about the spirit, the human spirit and the human experience and how that plays just as an important role into our health and our vitality or medicine, our data, and all those. things. And I feel like that gets really lost, right?
Dr. Taz (2): It gets really lost in a conversation around how somebody is doing. And I think grief in Chinese medicine is, you probably already know, grief lives in the lungs, right? And it's very much associated with the lung meridian and Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine would spend a lot of time working with people who are in a grief state to help them release grief.
Dr. Taz (2): I am so curious on how you entered. this space. This is your space. You have worked for so long on grief and really creating a methodology for those of us dealing with people who are losing loved ones, whether it's in the patient room or whether it's in our families. You know, how did you enter this to begin with?
David Kessler: I had a childhood that was full of trauma and loss from everything, losing our home when I was nine, um, My father was an addict. My mother, my father had an addiction. My mother today probably would be considered bipolar. And it was chaotic and unstable. And then I was sexually abused. I mean, so many losses.
David Kessler: And then when I was 13, my mother was very ill, had to go to a hospital hours away for this new procedure that was only in a few hospitals. called dialysis. That was new. It was new. And the ethics, the early ethics committee would decide who would get it. And she was able to get one treatment. Which we know now would like, you know, that I think they just in whatever their eyes at that time was too far gone.
David Kessler: Doesn't make any medical sense, but it is what it is and that was that reality and it was also a time in medicine where The ICU you could visit five minutes every two hours Because families were seen as an interruption of the healing process and I was 13 The rule is you had to be 14. So you couldn't see your mom.
David Kessler: I couldn't see my mom. There were a few nurses who snuck me in. But most of them were, you know, rule abiding nurses. And we were at a hotel across the street. And all of a sudden, one day in the lobby of that hotel, I spent all my time in the lobbies, the hospital lobby, the hotel lobby, someone started yelling fire.
David Kessler: We all ran out. Up on the 18th floor, flames started pouring out of a building, out of the hotel building. Firetrucks pulled up. I mean, it was kind of exciting for me. I was bored, you know? Right, right. And firetrucks pull up and shooting begins. What? And they realize this is not just a fire, they had an active shooter.
David Kessler: What year is this? This was 1973. Okay. It went on. For hours, it's now considered one of the first mass shootings in the U. S.
Dr. Taz (2): And you're there. I'm there.
David Kessler: Witnessing police being killed, hotel guests, my father desperately trying to get us over to the hospital, finally get us back to the safety of the hospital.
David Kessler: In a couple of days, my mother dies. No support. The only thing a fellow patient's wife said to me in a stairwell out of her kindness was stay strong, which I think for men and most people gets interpreted as take care of everyone else and put your feelings aside.
Dr. Taz (2): Don't express your emotions.
David Kessler: Oh, no. I mean, there was no sense of that and there was just no one there.
David Kessler: I tried to talk to my father about grief. He just shut it down. And I went into this going damaged. Damaged, broken, this is life. Dropped out of high school, 9th grade, thought that's it. And I was just lost for a few years. My father didn't know how to be a parent. I was so lost. And then someone said to me, a neighbor, I mean, thank goodness for the strangers that come into our life.
David Kessler: A neighbor said to me, you know, you can go do this GED thing where you go challenged to get your high school diploma because you're smart. And I'm like, really? It's not over. I thought I screwed up the school thing, challenged it, then challenged my high school diploma and actually got it, went to community college.
David Kessler: And they said, there's two easy classes. Human sexuality, but it's full, and death and dying, but people don't often want to take that. I said, I'll take that. And I get in there, and I learn about this woman, Elizabeth Cooper Ross,
Dr. Taz (2): and her stages. you, so some people watching and listening may not even know who she is, which is hard to believe, right?
Dr. Taz (2): But she was, I would call her a pioneer when it comes to, yeah.
David Kessler: We have hospice in this country? Because of her, and really pushing it forward, and helping to get it paid by Medicare. Working with so many other people back then. She, here's what was fascinating about her. She didn't invent something. She observed something in nature.
David Kessler: She said, I've been watching people who are dying. And it seems like they have these experiences. No different than going, I've been watching the sun. It seems to come up in the East and set in the West. And she saw people were going through these experiences of, I can't believe this is happening. Denial.
David Kessler: I'm angry. This is happening. Anger. Deal making. If I, if I volunteer more, if I do this, if I give to charity, might I get more time? Um, and the people in grief are also doing that around them,
Dr. Taz: right?
David Kessler: And then back in her day, it was sadness and depression. We're considered the same. People are sad. And then we have to, at some point, begin to dance with acceptance.
Dr. Taz (2): And these are the five stages of free denial, anger, bargaining,
David Kessler: depression, and acceptance. And she would have told you back then. And I still say it. We, wrote a book adapting her stages of dying for stages of grief. One of the criticisms was, well, they weren't adapted for grief. And I'm like, no, whole book.
David Kessler: And on page one, we made sure we said they're not linear. There's no one right way to do grief. It's not a destination, right? It's not a destination. It's not as the media has tried to turn it into five easy steps for healing your grief. It's not that. Grief is messy. Grief is organic. You know, grief turns our world upside down.
David Kessler: What does
Dr. Taz (2): grief do to us? Beyond what we experience, what is it doing to us? I
David Kessler: think it changes us. It changes our brain. It changes our body. You know, it's, it's, I think we forget it's one of the hugest things we will go through in this lifetime. And there's no information. on how to do it. We don't teach it.
David Kessler: We teach our children everything except loss. And what's also amazing about her stages to these days, and Elizabeth is the first person to say, oh my gosh, when people would go, like I would be with her, and a clinician would come in and say, I've got a case. And they would tell us the case and we're like 20 minutes in going, all right, we can't wait for the question.
Dr. Taz: Right.
David Kessler: And then they would say, okay, Elizabeth, What stage are they in? And Elizabeth would go, Forget the stages, meet them where they are. You know, and it's just, it's about not, I think about her, and it was really hard in her lifetime. Imagine, I think 26 books, thousands of lectures, and people wanted to reduce her to five words.
Dr. Taz (2): What would she say if she was here today?
David Kessler: She would be so thrilled. We're talking more about grief, and she would be disappointed that we're not further along.
Dr. Taz (2): You know, grief, I've sat with so many patients, family members, watched my husband struggle with the loss of his mother. It looks really different on different people.
David Kessler: Yes. If
Dr. Taz (2): you're sitting on the outside of someone who's experiencing grief, what can you do? How do you reach them?
David Kessler: I think the biggest thing to learn and to understand, and I, this is something when in our program is when we teach therapists and coaches and health care professionals, there is no fixing.
Dr. Taz: Mmm, that's
David Kessler: a big one. There is no three interventions to do this. It is not about platitudes, it is about your presence. And My website is grief. com and I see the back end of it. The page that gets most visited is the best and worst things to say to people in grief. We don't know what to say. Like 3am is where all these people are on it.
David Kessler: We don't know what to say. And. We think there's this myth, and clinicians have it, and everyone has it.
Dr. Taz: Right.
David Kessler: Gotta figure out the right words. Right. And we don't understand, it's about going, I don't have the right words. I don't even know what to say. And I love you, and I'm here with you. And I'm going to be next to you on this path.
David Kessler: I can't go on the path with you, but I'm right here next to
Dr. Taz (2): you. Well, you've spent a lot of time developing tools for the clinician. for the human who's going through this process. Let's go back to how this evolved in terms of your relationship with Elizabeth, what you guys were able to create together, and I believe even Mother Teresa recognized you at some point.
Dr. Taz (2): Oh my gosh, let me tell you. Fill in the story a little
Dr. Taz: bit for
David Kessler: us. I have, I have a career because of these two women. I mean, there's a lot of people, I'm sure you know them, plenty of people send us books. They've written wonderful books and they can't sort of get them on the map and there's no way to create lightning on purpose.
David Kessler: And here were these two women, Elizabeth Kubler Ross and Mother Teresa, really helped put me on the map. So I had. Uh, gone to Calcutta to go to her, her home for the day. Which is where
Dr. Taz (2): my mom grew up. Yes. I was just sharing that with
David Kessler: you. And I think she was in an area there with Mother Teresa at a certain point.
David Kessler: She
Dr. Taz (2): went to, you know, uh, in India at the time, the British convent schools were where the equivalent of our private schools today. And the convent that she was at in Calcutta is actually where Mother Teresa was in residence. So she got to witness Mother Teresa ministering, you know, to all types of people and, uh, definitely got to meet her and all that other stuff, which is a little surreal to me.
Dr. Taz (2): Right. But, um, she took us back to that convent and, and kind of showed us like where all of that took place, but you had a much deeper relationship.
David Kessler: I, um, I, I was at her home and you could no longer see her because she was ill. I would see her in Mass. I went to Mass and in her home it was 40 people who were dying.
David Kessler: I saw people neatly in a room dying. Wow. I wasn't used to 40 people dying at once and I'll tell you I said to the sister there, I said, what are people, because I was there getting ready to help, I said, what are people dying of? And she goes, We don't know. We don't care. We don't have time to ask. Are you here to help or not?
David Kessler: I'm like, I'm here to help. Okay. And there was, I gotta tell you, there was nothing I could do. There wasn't even a language between us. I could just be one human being with another human being. No words at the end of life. Just your presence. I mean, you're there. I mean, the most you could do is if someone needed a shower, like there were no Hoyer lifts or anything.
David Kessler: Literally, I would pick them up. You would go in the shower with them. They had a shower, you had a shower, you'd come out. It was so hot there. It was a self drying system. And you know, it was just being. It was being, I mean, they had, you know, Tylenol at the time for pain, but it was being with one another and just your eyes knowing you're not alone.
David Kessler: I mean, I think if anything, I learned to, gosh, it's going to get me.
Dr. Taz: I
David Kessler: learned to speak with the kindness of our eyes, just with the kindness of our eyes.
Dr. Taz (2): And what is, and how did Mother Teresa, is that how you, did you? So
David Kessler: then one day, I'm just there at her convent and one of the sisters says, Oh, mother heard about you're doing a book and all that and wants to talk to you.
David Kessler: When's convenient? And I'm like, I don't know, whenever she wants. And this was
Dr. Taz (2): your first book?
David Kessler: Yes. My first book, The Needs of the Dying. And that's why I was there. And so, uh, they brought me, uh, to her. And I mean, like, this tall.
Dr. Taz (2): Yeah. This tall. Not tall. Not tall at all. This tall.
David Kessler: Yeah. And we sat down and we talked and I said, we have so many resources in my country for the dying.
David Kessler: You have so few here. How do you do it? And she looked at me almost like, silly boy. She said, because I was 30 at the time, she goes, The dying need tender, loving care, nothing else. The dying need tender, and how much technology do we throw at the dying?
Dr. Taz (2): Right.
David Kessler: And miss the tender, loving care, even with those in grief.
David Kessler: And so, anyway, from there, um, you know, I had that incredible experience of spending time with her. And, um, Um, then when the book was coming out, the publisher and, uh, my agent said, let's send it to her. See if she'll do a blurb. And I'm like, Mother Teresa doesn't blurb. She doesn't blurb. And so I reluctantly did that.
David Kessler: I had seen her on TV saying she loves reading new books. So I sent her the book, the thank you note and a picture to remind her of who I was. And I was done and of course I was never going to hear from them. Right. And then one day the sister calls up and says, you know, mother would like to say something about your book.
David Kessler: Wow. And I'm like, what? And so just, and she doesn't blurb. She praises. Uh huh. And I, uh, I am in gratitude to this day. What did she say? She just talked about, like, that this is really, um, information that will help people. And how tender it was, and that, you know, the knowledge would help. And it was so sweet.
David Kessler: And it was really about
Dr. Taz (2): What did that first book do? What did it do? What were you trying to say?
David Kessler: I was trying to teach people about end of life, everything I wish had been done, had been done in my childhood. And it was one third medical, one third psychological, one third spiritual. I wanted it to sort of blend those together.
David Kessler: Science and spirit. Science and spirit. I love it. And just about, you know, everything from Dealing with advanced directives to visiting, to being present, to talking with the dying, to learning. And I'll tell you, Kubler Ross was funny. I, when I first met her, she was like, I'm retired. I'm done. She had had her stroke.
David Kessler: And I said, I, I need nothing. I'm, you know, and we became good friends. And then. She couldn't keep her hands off that book. She's like, well, what did you say about this? Did you hit the spiritual quadrant? So then she was in it, so she touched that book and praised it. So then by the time it came out between Mother Teresa and her kind words, oh my gosh.
David Kessler: It just,
Dr. Taz (2): it took off.
David Kessler: It hit the world in a way that I It was more than I deserved, you know, something we
Dr. Taz (2): need. I mean, even today as we're sitting here, we're hearing debates, right? On assisted suicide. We're here. We've just gone through the pandemic, right? There's been an unprecedented amount of loss. It feels like that we've experienced as a planet, you know, for sure.
Dr. Taz (2): So I think your work, you know, even going back to that first book and to her work couldn't be more timely, you know, so to speak. But if I had to. pin you down and ask you, what is the science of dying? What are like some of the, the things that are universal that you've noticed over and over again? And then I'm going to do the same thing and, and pin you down and ask about that spiritual quadrant and what is it that we need to understand about the human spirit?
Dr. Taz (2): But let's start with the science.
David Kessler: Yeah, you know, the first thing I'd want to say is that we live in a world where we've all been taught the TV version of dying.
Dr. Taz: Mm hmm.
David Kessler: And people all the time, as I work with them in grief, saying, You don't know what a horrible death. It was just, it was horrible. No human being should have to go through it.
David Kessler: And I'll go, Tell me what happened. And I think I'm going to hear something out of the ordinary. And I'm like, Oh no, that's a normal breathing pattern. Oh yeah, that happens. But we expect the people to die by going, Thank you for being here. I love you. TV! And instead, the body winds down. It's a, it's like a, a, a factory.
David Kessler: Slowly closing areas down. And it's noisy, and it's things we often haven't seen. And we don't understand what to expect. And I put a chapter in that first book, The Needs of the Dying, that said, This is what dying is going to look like. And the publisher even wanted me to say, Skip it if you must, but I think it's important you know.
David Kessler: And people tell me now when they realize, Oh, those are the breathing patterns. Oh. That's Chainstokesbury. I mean all these things that we just don't know to expect. People who have had animals have sort of seen it and they don't realize we're gonna die that same way. And here's the thing, the other person that was a dear friend of mine, um, was Louise Hay.
David Kessler: Mm
Dr. Taz: hmm, yes.
David Kessler: And Louise said once, if you're dying you want David Kessler around. And once again I was probably in my thirties. And I was hurt by the comment. Why? And I was like, cause I wanted to be the guy that someone said, if you're having a party, you know who you gotta have? You wanna have David Kessler there, and that's the guy, I mean, he's like, no one's more fun than David.
David Kessler: That's who I wanted to be. Right. But after I got past the ego part of that comment, I thought, what is it, cause it's not the first time I heard it, and here's what it is. When I walk into a room and someone's dying. I'm one of the few people that walks in like nothing's going wrong.
Dr. Taz: Mm hmm.
David Kessler: That like, this is, this is the, this is the winding down of a body.
Dr. Taz (2): And it's normal.
David Kessler: And it's normal. And it's natural. And here's the thing, people go, but you don't understand how it looked and all that. And I'll say to them, the body has to become uninhabitable or we would never leave. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. If I could stay young and great and fine and healthy, well, I wouldn't ever die.
David Kessler: The body, our spirit has to go, yes, we're done. We're done here.
Dr. Taz (2): So what's happening to the spirit? of the person in the situation, and then even to the people around them.
David Kessler: Well, first of all, I love that idea of the spirit and the body, because people will say to me, Oh, you don't understand, they were disfigured, there's cancer, da da da, I don't know, I can't look at them.
David Kessler: I'll go, look into their eyes. The eyes never change. No matter how disfigured the body is getting. Our eyes just, you see right into our soul, window of the soul. And so I talk about seeing the eyes and then it's also fascinating how they intersect when people are dying. And it was in the movie Moonstruck, they did it beautifully.
David Kessler: People, someone's dying and all of a sudden they wake up and there's a burst of energy. And I talk about it as the rally before death. And we often have. This one last look by the spirit of coming forth and being present. And I used to have a tough time because people go, they're doing great. Oh, thank goodness.
David Kessler: They're not dying. And I was like, how do I say no? It's just, I've learned to say, oh, you've been given the gift of a little more time here, maybe a day. Maybe 21st. We hear that
Dr. Taz (2): all the time. They do rally. They rally. They have OT. They were having a great day. Yeah, I mean, in Moonstruck, she got up and she started cooking.
Dr. Taz (2): I mean, and you've
David Kessler: heard stories of that. And it's this rally that happens. And then the other fascinating thing is, and this became one of my other books, is that all of a sudden, in the distance, in the corner, the dying. See someone who's already died. Yes. Yeah. And it's called a deathbed vision. There's many names.
David Kessler: Near death awareness. This is different than um, uh, when we talk about near death experiences. This is the person is dying and someone comes to greet them who's already died. And it was fascinating. I wrote this other book called Visions, Trips, and Crowded Rooms. Who and what we see before we die. And I knew I wanted it to be really credible and I interviewed doctors, nurses, first responders, clergy, psychologists on their experience working with the dying, seeing people having these visions
Dr. Taz: and
David Kessler: how comforting it is.
David Kessler: And the difference between that and a hallucination, not to mistake the two. So I think it's. It's fascinating that as the body is winding down, these spiritual beings are
Dr. Taz (2): connecting,
David Kessler: are connecting again.
Dr. Taz (2): So fascinating. And you're
David Kessler: leaving this world of body to become all spirit, only spirit.
Dr. Taz (2): Do you think we've done enough work?
Dr. Taz (2): I have a dear, dear friend who took a year, he's a surgeon, and he took a year off to go and do a sabbatical to help people in their final phases of life. And when I asked him why, he said, well, we're all getting older. I feel like I need to be there and be the guide for our community as people lose parents, loved ones, partners, whoever else.
Dr. Taz (2): And, you know, it struck me. It's like, I've not really thought about that. But he spent a year wrestling with these ideas and trying to understand how to be there because, of course, he, like me, has seen quite a bit. You know, as we, as we think about where we've come. We have hospice now, we have palliative care, you know, there's a whole field around, around this.
Dr. Taz (2): Have we done enough? What's missing?
David Kessler: The releasing of the fear. The releasing of the fear. The very thing Um, the reason why we don't talk about it, I'm so glad we're doing this because just this, we don't talk about this. I mean,
Dr. Taz (2): well, I mean, it's not like a flashy topic. It's not a flashy topic and
David Kessler: it's, it's a life affirming topic and I'm teaching what our great grandparents knew how to be with the dying, how to be with people in grief, how to be with our own mortality.
David Kessler: I have to tell you, I was walking in my neighborhood. And I run into someone, her and I worked together 30 years ago at Children's Hospital. I run into her, she's like, Oh, I've been following you, dah, dah, dah, dah. I thought about you a million times and all that. I can't believe we live so close. And she goes, I'm sorry, I can't be your friend.
David Kessler: And I went, Okay. Why? Just curious why? And she goes, it would just be too depressing. And I think that's the myth that looking at these topics, I just happened to embody that for her. Looking at these topics, first of all, I said to her, I'm actually not walking around talking death and dying in my personal life every moment, death and grief, but we don't look at this and I'll tell you something else that really showed me.
David Kessler: I used to do before the pandemic, you know, I was one of those guys, 30 lectures, three countries did it all. And I would be going to hotel after hotel in the meeting room. We'd have two or 300 people next door would be the realtors. Down the hall would be the nursing, the Kiwanis club, the Rotary club. At the end of the day, and it happened so many times, the staff would go as they cleaned up.
David Kessler: Hey, what were you teaching? And I'd go, why? And they would go, your group was laughing the most. And I would go, grief. And they'd go, what kind of grief? And I would say, that kind of grief. Here's what people don't know. Those people in the room absolutely could cry and grief had expanded their bandwidth into pain.
David Kessler: They also laughed harder. It expands our bandwidth into joy. I, sometimes I have to actually remind my friends, you know, I do grief. I know it does it, uh, cause they don't see me that way. I, I've, you know, and we'll talk about it. I've been through just great tragedies and I think I'm one of the happiest people I'm aware of that.
David Kessler: I love life. I don't this idea that we're going to die. I absolutely, I can close up, I can shut down or I can go, let me drink in this moment more. Let me really take this in. This is like an amazing moment we're in and to appreciate it.
Dr. Taz (2): Well, I think it's, you know, just, it's like almost like adversity, right?
Dr. Taz (2): I think when you experience it, you're so much more grateful. For every moment you have, for every opportunity you have, and you're able to move forward. And the
David Kessler: humanness of it all. You know, it's not like I don't get upset at the little things, but I also recognize the humanness of it.
Dr. Taz (2): Well, I think that's a really important point, because we spend a lot of time on this show talking about the human experience.
Dr. Taz (2): And a part of the human experience, it's not just about being like, Strong and energetic and vital and youthful looking, you know, all the time. It's also, there are going to be these other emotions that you're going to deal with. There's going to be grief, there's going to be loss, there are going to be setbacks.
Dr. Taz (2): And the ability, like you're describing, to expand, some might call that resilience to a certain extent, right? I'd be curious to see what you say about that. But the ability to expand. Through the range of emotions that we as humans have to experience but then understand that, that this is a range is a part of what gives us resilience, right?
David Kessler: And we live in a culture now that's all about, how do I master the peaks? Right. And I'm about, ooh, you want to master the peaks? Walk through the valleys well. Walk through the valleys well. Because how many of us And we see this, we see people with so much success and fame and money, and are just tragically unhappy.
David Kessler: It's, if you don't walk through the valley, you get to the peak and you go, is this all there is? All the time. Why is this peak so empty?
Dr. Taz (2): Yeah. All the time. Well, grief is not just about death. Correct.
David Kessler: Right. Good point. I'm glad you brought that up. So,
Dr. Taz (2): I, I do want to make sure people understand that grief It can come in lots of different forms.
Dr. Taz (2): Yes, it can come in the form of a divorce. The loss of a child loss of a loved one. Great. It can come in the form of a loss of a job, right there. I mean, there's so many loss of your identity, right? You know, loss of basic functions in life that you were able to do, either because of sickness or some other injury or something along those lines.
Dr. Taz (2): You know, is that type of grief different from the grief of death and dying? And what is the journey for those folks? There's a
David Kessler: little nuances there, but I always think of them as a death. I always say a breakup is the death of that relationship in the romantic form. A divorce is the death of the marriage.
David Kessler: A job loss is the death of that job. Pet loss is obviously the loss of the pet, your dear pet. But also there's things we're talking more about that like, Oh, being in relationship with. Someone who's narcissistically abusive feels like the death of yourself. There's a lot of inner deaths. Those are the only ones we can come back from that death.
David Kessler: You know, we can't undo a divorce. We can't often, we can't undo a physical death. But we can find a way to heal ourselves. Um, so there's so many losses and Here's the thing. They all sit in this world. One of the things I try to teach is security in your grief. People go, what's that? I have security in my grief.
David Kessler: I know my losses. I take care of myself. I try to grieve fully and live fully. Someone comes up and tells me they're grieving over they didn't get the school they wanted. I sit with them and see their sadness. It's not a comment on my grief. Someone else, you know, breaks up with a relationship of three months.
David Kessler: I don't go, that's not real grief. People always want to know from me, what's the worst grief? Is it a child dying? Is it a divorce from your soulmate? The worst grief is always yours.
Dr. Taz (2): Your experience.
David Kessler: Your experience. None of us experience. can know each other's grief and comparison is of our mind. We don't have a broken mind.
David Kessler: We have a broken heart.
Dr. Taz (2): Most of us, or what I've experienced, most of us experience grief right here. Yes. Right in the chest. Has that been your experience as well? As people say, I feel like I can't breathe. I feel like something's sitting on my chest. You know, these are some of the things I hear over and
David Kessler: over again.
David Kessler: I think it's probably the most common. But I experience grief in my lower back. I know people experience it in their throat. Headaches, there's broken heart syndrome that we see as a real illness now. It's real. Very real. Takasubi cardiomyopathy. And we think, probably, maybe over 90 percent of us get broken heart syndrome.
David Kessler: Changes, actual physical changes in our heart. And there's a tiny, tiny percentage that do die from it. And that's why we always say, obviously, when anyone says chest pain, I'm like, get it checked, and then we'll talk. Make sure your doctor knows about broken heart syndrome. Um, so it's, it's fascinating that, and I work closely with Paul Denniston, who does grief yoga, and he always really helps people feel where it is in their body.
David Kessler: Where does your grief reside? And just like you said, a lot of times it's right here
Dr. Taz (2): and the energy world, like the people that do energy healing. I mean, they have always been fascinated by the work that they do. They talk about grief living right in here and they talk about the movement of it. Can we move it?
Dr. Taz (2): They don't talk about it going away. They're not like, okay, let's go put it on a shelf. You're done, but they talk about moving it. Can we move it? Can we move it to a different part of the body? Can you, can you understand where it plays into the rest of your experience? So I always find that so fascinating.
Dr. Taz (2): And that our
David Kessler: emotions need motion.
Dr. Taz (2): Correct. Yeah. You
David Kessler: know, there needs to be movement internally of that energy, externally of our body.
Dr. Taz (2): Well, you have, again, Published many books since, even those first two. This is your sixth book now, right? Six
David Kessler: and seven.
Dr. Taz (2): Six and seven. All right. You're on, you're on a roll here.
Dr. Taz (2): Talk to us about what's different in these books versus some of what you've done in the past.
David Kessler: So eight years ago, been a grief expert for decades and unexpectedly, my younger son, David, at 21 years old, dies. Devastating. Devastating, devastating, devastating. I, you know, felt like my world ended. And I cancelled everything and sat with that and, you know, it was just so brutal.
David Kessler: And probably a few months in, I was home and I picked up this chapter that I had written on meaning. And I'd lift it up, I went, meaning, like, that's gonna help, and I threw it back down. And about a couple of weeks later, I read it. And it didn't take away the pain, but it gave me some comfort. And I got so curious, and I went back and I read Viktor Frankl's work.
David Kessler: And Man's Search for Meaning, and how does all this sit within us? And the one thing that personally, there was the grief expert in me, and here's the worst part, besides my son dying being the worst part, is I had to take my own medicine. I used to hand out, go to a counselor, go to a grief group, like candy.
David Kessler: I had to go to a counselor, a grief counselor, and I had to go to a grief group. It took me three times to just walk into the group. I put a cap on, I took my glasses off, and, uh, my contacts out and put glasses on, and I had to sit in a grief group with my books five feet away on a table there on display, and I couldn't say anyone.
David Kessler: That's me. That's me. I had to be the father. And so, as the grief expert watched me going through this, I would go, yep, that's true, yep, yep, yep. And when I got to, someday you're going to have to accept this, I was like, I'm not stopping there. And Kubler Ross and I had always taught acceptance isn't a finality.
David Kessler: I thought there has to be more. And finally, what I got for me was meaning, I wanted to find meaning. And as I began researching this, I thought the disconnect in this for people is when they hear meaning, they go, there's no meaning in a
Dr. Taz: child's death, in a
David Kessler: horrible divorce, in a murder. And I realized, oh, meaning isn't in the horrible event.
David Kessler: Meaning is what we do after. Meaning isn't the post traumatic stress. Meaning is the post traumatic growth. And so that became finding meaning. And I was so honored. The publisher had said, you know, it's almost like you're adding a stage. And they asked, and we asked the Kubler Ross family. And her foundation.
David Kessler: And they so graciously said yes, that I could add a sixth stage to her iconic stages. So that's finding meaning the sixth stage of grief. And it was also a chance to write again. Hey everyone, they're not linear. Stop that. So I got to say that, you know, don't misuse them and misinterpret them. But it was a way to really help people and for my own healing.
David Kessler: And that we have this choice, you know, and the choice for me, I got to tell you, in those early days, a dear friend, Diane Gray, who's head of the, was head of the Kubler Ross Foundation at the time, she said, you're going down, you're going to be down for a long time. She said, at some point, you're going to hit bottom and you're going to have a choice.
David Kessler: Do you stay there, or do you live again? And I have to tell you, after that, she had planted just a seed. And that little neighborhood that I told you I lived in, this cute little neighborhood, I could see into the future. And I could see a day in 20 years, the kids in the neighborhood riding their bike, and they stop at this house with cobwebs.
David Kessler: And the new kid says to them, Is that a haunted house? And they go, Ooh. It's a grief expert who helped everyone, but then his son died and he's never come out again. I could see becoming that person. And I realize, Oh, that's this end of the spectrum. And I see people there. What's the other end? That is the finding meaning, the post traumatic growth.
David Kessler: And I know my meaning as my son loved my work. He would never have wanted his death to constrict it. So I decided that in honor of him, my meaning would be to expand my work and go deeper, which was this.
Dr. Taz (2): Amazing. So post traumatic growth. It's on the other side.
David Kessler: How do we not just go through this, but grow
Dr. Taz (2): through it?
Dr. Taz (2): I love that. And then you have a workbook to go with it.
David Kessler: Everyone was like, what's grief work and how do we implement this? And, you know, clinicians were wanting, like, I know how to get through the third session, but where do we go after that?
Dr. Taz (2): to ask you, what do we as doctors do? Exactly.
David Kessler: Where do we go after that?
David Kessler: And this really is a manual, the workbook. I designed it that. It's like I'm sitting at your kitchen table and we're just doing it together and I tell people oh my gosh My co authors have been Kubler Ross and Louise Hay and this book my co author is the person doing it with me
Dr. Taz (2): amazing
David Kessler: at the kitchen table and I Did it lightly?
David Kessler: Some checklist like do a little checklist inventory on disloyalty. Where do you believe living again might be disloyal? Then there's some more open ended questions.
Dr. Taz (2): Wait, what's disloyalty? Like disloyalty.
David Kessler: We feel like you should never laugh again. You should never be happy again. It's that guilt just to help people become aware.
David Kessler: So I made parts easy, you know, midway, and then I really take people to the end to help them find, and I did a Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. Around grief.
Dr. Taz: Mm.
David Kessler: That the griever is on the hero's journey.
Dr. Taz (2): Mm. I
David Kessler: love that. And that we're all coming out the other end.
Dr. Taz (2): So I love all the tools and the resources that you've provided both for us as clinicians and doctors, right.
Dr. Taz (2): And even for the individual going through this. But at the end of the day, healing. Right. And becoming whole is about a community experience, right? It's about what you're surrounded by as, as we watch people. And let's say we hand this to someone that we know might need it, or even to another doctor who might need it, you know, but as we sit in this community, as we sit together, what can the rest of us do?
David Kessler: Yeah. And it's so important because like you said, so many times, physicians, nurses, they're like, all I know is to say, how are you doing? Right. Which comes across like as a stupid question like well, I don't know they just died yesterday. I Tell people to add a Time after it. How are you doing today? How are you doing right now?
David Kessler: so that people get you're checking in on them and Just like you said Study after study is showing us in trauma And in grief, we need community, we need others. That's why I love doing my groups online to help others. We focus on the death of a person to help other people in our healing. Look, the most, uh, cruelest thing we do in war is kill someone.
David Kessler: The second cruelest is isolation. When we go into grief, we often want to isolate. And we need other people to heal. Grief must be witnessed. We need to see our pain in the eyes of another.
Dr. Taz (2): And I want to ask you one more question before we leave this conversation. Do men experience grief differently than women?
Dr. Taz (2): Or is the experience universal?
David Kessler: The experience is universal, but there are some things about how we were raised. You know, look, I'm a fixer. You got any problem? I've got three solutions for you. And then we, you know, I think for men it's challenging for everyone, but you know, men today are telling me it's so confusing on one hand, I'm now supposed to be vulnerable and show my feelings, but I'm also supposed to be the rock.
David Kessler: So it's like, you know, I'm not sure at any moment. And then, you know, people love that I'm a fixer, but got to grief and you got no tools.
Dr. Taz (2): Hmm. What would you tell anyone watching or listening today that's just struggling? And it doesn't have to be from death. It could be from divorce. It could be from, you know, a career disruption.
Dr. Taz (2): It could be from betrayal. So many different losses, so many different ways we experienced them. What would you tell them? What are your, what are your kind of like? Parting words to them, and directive to them, if they're just in that state of isolation, they're feeling the chest pain, they're, they just don't know where to go next.
David Kessler: I would tell you, obviously get the check, chest pain check, but after that, after that, I would say, you know,
David Kessler: really honor what you've been through, and do not minimize it. We always go, oh, but it's just a divorce, no one died, or it's just that no one died. And then sometimes we go, well, someone died, but they were a hundred or someone else. There's always a loss worse than ours and one that seems easier than ours.
David Kessler: It doesn't matter. Just be present with yours and seek support. I tell people I bought a maintenance plan for my tires and yet people don't want to give themself. A book, or a group, or a counselor, or support. And I gotta tell you, I pride myself, I said this last night, in my online groups, we are full of physicians and nurses and therapists.
David Kessler: I love when we take care of ourselves. And we don't let ourselves be the wounded healers.
Dr. Taz (2): I'm gonna add a medical nerd point to this too, is that when we don't do this work, regardless of what it is, or the experience has been, we It shows up in your lab work.
David Kessler: Absolutely. Absolutely. There's
Dr. Taz (2): inflammation, there is high cortisol, there's hormone disruption, and over time, that's a diagnosis.
Dr. Taz (2): Absolutely. So this is not just So affects
David Kessler: the body. This is not just feel better emotionally. This is your, and our soul. The vision is dampened, you know, the other thing I want to say is a number of people say, Oh, I bought your book. I put it on the shelf, not ready.
Dr. Taz: Right.
David Kessler: And I'll say, why? And they go, I'm not ready to go into the pain.
David Kessler: Our illusion with the resources, anyone's resources is that I don't want to go into the pain. The pain isn't in the shelf or the doctor's office or the counselor. It's in us. And the last thing I would leave you with And it sort of goes along with what you just said, what we run from pursues us and what we face transforms us.
Dr. Taz (2): Those are powerful words. I don't think we could end it any better than that. I hope this has been inspirational and I hope this has been a source of comfort to anyone listening today who may be at a phase of their life where they just need. Some direction. And I hope your books provide that. I know they did to me through the course of my career.
Dr. Taz (2): So I'm so grateful for that. But if somebody is ready for more and they want to connect with you, and I know you have a million resources, talk to us a little bit about that.
David Kessler: Grief. com. There's tons of free resources. There's trainings. There's. groups if you feel like you need more. Um, there's also, I put lots of things on social media.
David Kessler: I just went to TikTok. I'm finding my way there. Um, and, uh, you know, I, my handle on all those, whether it's Facebook, Instagram is TikTok is I am David Kessler. That's how folks can find me. And I put tons of information out there.
Dr. Taz (2): Fantastic.
David Kessler: Do a training for professionals and people who want to turn their pain into purpose.
David Kessler: So. Lots of resources at grief. com.
Dr. Taz (2): Amazing. Well, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for your work. I love it. I got to ask one last question. What makes you whole?
David Kessler: Finding my authentic self.
Dr. Taz (2): Love it. Thank you again.
Dr. Taz: Thank you so much for listening and watching today's episode of Whole Plus. Be sure to share this episode with your friends and family. And if you haven't already, please take a moment to subscribe to this podcast on YouTube or click the follow button on Apple, Spotify, or wherever it is that you get your podcasts.
Dr. Taz: And don't forget to follow me on all social channels at DrTazMD. Until next time, stay healthy and stay whole.
