Taking care of your mental health is crucial, especially after losing an important person in your life. In this episode, I talk with clinical mental health counselor Jessica Zoeller about navigating grief and trauma while looking after your well-being. Jessica shares her experiences with loss and the importance of finding the right therapist for your mental health journey. We dive into the different approaches to therapy, the mind-body connection in grief, and how parents should guide children through the grieving process. Tune in to learn how to prioritize your mental well-being and find the help you deserve.
I am sharing my experience of loving the same man for 32 years, a mother to two adult children, a retired military officer, a breast cancer survivor, and my connections with others.
Anyone experiencing suicidal thoughts should reach out to a suicide hotline or local emergency number in their country: Psychology Today Suicide Hotlines and Prevention Resources Around the World
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Mental Health Amidst Grief And Recovery With Jessica Zoeller
Jessica, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
I want to tell the widowhood community that this is a four-part conversation. I’ll leave it at that. You’re going to have to invest to check out the other three parts to see what else is going on. Let me tell you, this is my first four-part conversation and it’s going to be worth your time.
It’s unique.
Understanding Clinical Mental Health Counseling
It’s worth your time and all of that. I saw you on TikTok and you were sharing about the mental health professional. What space do you operate in mental health?
I got my degree in clinical mental health counseling. After two different exams and a bunch of time being observed, I’m a clinical mental health counselor. I work with kids in a school-based therapy setting for one of the children’s hospitals in the nearby area.
That was a lot in one sentence so I’m going to circle that back. You are a mental health counselor. For someone who has no concept, what do those terms mean and why would I want to connect with you?
With clinical mental health counseling, we take a holistic approach. There’s nothing wrong with any of the different branches of mental health, but psychology is very clinical. It is all about the diagnosis while I’m going to be working with what’s going on in your life and how that is impacting you. I’ll be talking to kids about the whole family unit, generational trauma, and things like that that come up and how that’s impacting them on the daily. Versus looking at a diagnosis, what a kid’s going through, and giving them medication, it’s more about understanding them through the counseling process and talk therapy.
Thank you. A popular term is talk therapy. What is talk therapy in comparison to what you do?
I’m a cognitive behavioral therapist. When I’m explaining that to people, it’s the things that we think and the things that we feel impact our overall decision-making. Talk therapy is different for everyone because there are different theories of counseling. You might have somebody who goes for more like psychoanalysis, which is the old Freudian stuff. There’s DBT. There are a lot of different ways of doing counseling. CBT is evidence-based. It’s why I went with that. I also have a person-centered approach. It really is about trying to figure out the dynamics of it and how a person functions on a daily basis through their thoughts and feelings and also being able to help them alter that. I don’t know if I explained that 100%.
Different Types Of Mental Health Professionals
I know the term talk therapy is very popular. You ended with that statement but I wanted to branch out on that a little bit more. The reason is there are a lot of different ways that you can be helped with your grief. Sometimes, people hear therapists and put that in a broad sense bucket where there are a lot of different avenues for people that have different fields of specialties to be able to operate, like a therapist versus a psychiatrist or a psychologist. A lot of times, people are grieving, hearing terms that they’re unfamiliar with, and not searching for what professional they need to work with.
As we’re having this conversation, those different types of mental health professionals, from your perspective, what are the different titles or categories that people make themselves more familiar with as they’re trying to go, “Do I need somebody to help me? I’ve been able to do everything else by myself but now, a long time has passed and I don’t feel like I’m any better. People told me, “Time will pass. You’ll be fine. People told me, “You don’t have to talk about this all the time to everybody,” and yet I feel stuck. I hear this conversation about mental health. Where do I want to start and what type of mental health person do I even want to talk to?”
That is a really good point to bring up. I’ll break down what you said before. In psychiatry, you’re probably most likely going to talk to them for fifteen minutes. You’re going to get medications prescribed to you. They’re going to do check-ins with you every month, 2 months, 3 months, or whatever they’re giving you as far as medication. Psychology is more medical-based. They’re going to understand you through your diagnosis versus you as a person, and then your diagnosis, which is where counseling comes in. We look at your whole life and how your diagnosis is being impacted and how it has impacted you.
When it comes to grief, the hospice offered free counseling to me. I engaged in that as quickly as possible after losing my husband. He died in October and I started in November. I immediately started with this person every week. Slowly over time, that spaces out. You’ll see that less need is available. Not all of the time the therapist and the person who’s doing therapy is going to make that decision.
That person was specifically a grief therapist. If you’re going to look for somebody, I would look for somebody who has a specific concentration on grief and trauma. I’m a big believer that if you’ve been through this process, you have had some level of trauma. You feel it all the time in different parts of life in your body. I’ve talked a lot on TikTok about your body’s response to trauma. I know that happened to me even before my husband passed away. His was a terminal diagnosis that he lived with for almost three years.
I am reading through my journal and going, “That was grief. My body was physiologically responding to grief and I didn’t realize it.” Even as a person who was a mental health therapist, I was like, “I’m sick all the time. I’m overwhelmed by what’s going on,” without realizing the mind-body connection. Having a grief therapist is really important because they’re going to recognize that. They’re also going to let you talk if you have a good one.
Here’s the thing. I hear horrible stories all the time. Not everyone is the right match for a therapist. Some therapists want to challenge people with grief versus letting them sit in grief. Having somebody who is specifically a grief specialist is so important for that reason because a typical therapist is not always going to let you be in your grief. Sometimes, you’re going to want to have the challenge because they’re going to push you beyond what you’re comfortable with. When you get there and you’re comfortable with your grief, that’s when the healing begins.
Sometimes, you want to challenge yourself during grief and push yourself beyond what you are comfortable with. Once you get comfortable with grief, the healing begins. Share on XTrying out therapists like clothes is preferred. I tell this to all of the people that I work with, at least when I was in private practice. It’s a little different now because I’m school-based. They’re given to us as we go. I tell them, “It’s more important to me that you find the right therapist than you staying with me. If it’s not working, let’s find the best person possible for you to work with.”
Finding The Right Therapist For You
Thank you. I’m not sure which way I want to go but I’m going to go with this one first. I’m trying to find a therapist. How do I find out if they’re the right one for me? What are some recommendations in this process of trying to find who I will fit with? Do I ask questions? Do I see three people because my copay is $30 and I need to invest in that for the long haul? What are some overarching things to consider in the process of trying to find who’s going to work well with me?
That’s fair. If you go to a person’s specific website, they should have bios in all of them so they can tell you which orientation they come from from the different theories of therapy. It also will tell you their specializations in those bios. You can see if people are aligning with who you are and what your belief systems are a little bit.
I know that in the settings that I’ve worked in, there have been people from all walks of life and all different belief systems who are therapists. If you’re a person who’s looking to have a spiritual or religious background, they should have that in their bio. If they don’t, it’s not a red flag because some people don’t know how to make a website, but it should say something along the lines of Spiritual Counselor, LGBTQ Friendly Counselor, or somebody who specializes in something like grief specifically.
I would look for somebody who works with trauma and grief because of the situation and because of why you’re seeking counseling. Look for somebody who’s going to align with you because you want to be able to feel comfortable talking about your thoughts and your beliefs on different things. Even with that, they are bios. There are people who put things in there and you’re like, “They’re not this or that.” W hen you go in for your first session, it should be 100% you interviewing them as well.
This is the problem. As a therapist, we’re told not to talk about ourselves and self-disclose. When that first session is going on, you’re not going to be like, “Do you have kids?” You could ask that question and they may or may not answer. I’ve met therapists who would be like, “We’re not here to talk about me. We’re here to talk about you.”
When we’re in school, they talk about the power differential that exists with therapists and clients. And for me, my number one goal when I’m working with somebody is to break that down. I want somebody to feel like they’re talking to somebody in their life, not as a friend necessarily because that’s not ethical but somebody who’s going to talk to you as a real person and who’s going to bring up things occasionally that are personal. I don’t want them to be like, “I lost my grandfather and it was so hard,” but to say, “I’ve experienced loss and it is really difficult.” I want somebody who’s able to relate on that level. If you can’t tell, I’m a talker.
That’s where this is supposed to go. I’m supposed to ask questions to let you fly. That’s what this is.
I’m used to sitting, listening, and asking the questions. Whenever I enter therapy, I’m sure that therapists are like, “It’s time to sit back and drink my coffee because she’s going to talk for the next hour.” I would say somebody who’s going to let you talk because that’s what you really need. We’re so used to sitting and listening that we need people who are going to allow us to talk and feel what we need to feel.
There are different therapists. They have all different kinds of personalities. Some of them are going to challenge you. If that’s what you’re looking for, ask them or tell them exactly that. You can say, “I’m stuck in my grief. I need somebody who’s going to challenge my thought process.” If you’re willing to say those things, you’re going to find the right person. Treat that first session as an interview for them and how they’re going to work with you in your grief.
When you can admit to yourself that you need someone to challenge your thought process during grief, you can find the right person to help you out. Share on XThank you. I am a huge advocate for dealing with our mental health and our grief. For many people, this is the first type of grief that they realize they cannot handle. Life presents us with the opportunity to grieve in so many different ways but we may not put that label on grief when my pet passes, I have my first breakup as a teenager, my parents relocated, I have health issues, I get fired from a job, or I have a terrible boss. It goes on and on and on.
I know you know this but for the people that are reading, those are under the category of grief. You may want to sit down and say, “What were my coping skills when I had that first breakup? Did I hang out with my friends and we went to a party and I said, “There are more fishes in the sea,” and I masked that I was hurt or did I give myself time? Did I eat a gallon of ice cream? Did I go to the movies? Did I go, “That relationship didn’t work. Was that them? Was that me?” Did you self-reflect or did you try to ignore it, got yourself another boo, and kept going?
When you start looking back at all the griefs you’ve experienced in life, your resilience is a real thing and you can see that you’ve been able to endure. If your patterns of coping with that grief are not sustaining you with the passing of a loved one, that’s a reality for me to say, “This is beyond me.” That’s what I experienced. I had a miscarriage. We had a pet that passed. I was let go from a job before I dealt with breast cancer myself the year before Mark passed. When he passed I was like, “This is a whole nother ball game right here.”
My late husband is Caucasian. I’m in a biracial marriage. I need to have a sense of how a person is going to operate with me because they may see me as a Black woman but they may be feeling some kind of way that this Black woman was married to this White man and we were together for 32 years. I need someone to understand that even though I’m in this grief fog, I’m a retired Army officer. I’m not sitting here waiting for someone to direct me. I have a sense of purpose. I’m a supervisor. I have a strong sense of my faith. I’m a mother. I know how to say no. I’m in a rough patch. I’m not discounting who I’ve been up until now but I’m in uncharted territory, which means I get to ask you questions.
People need to be okay with having 3 to 4 questions of what you want to ask to get a feel for this person because they’re about to be a very important part of your landscape. If you are in a relationship with a mental health professional, you can’t be honest. Why are you even doing this with them? Find somebody else.
To me, it’s like a hairdresser. You give them a picture and tell them how you want your hair and then they do something different. I’m like, “That is not what I asked for.” If I don’t have that conversation, you’re going to waste time. Time is something we know more than anything else that we have a limited amount of. I thank you for being able to empower people to be able to talk and ask questions about what they need to do when they’re considering their mental health professional.
Different Ways Grief Impacts Our Bodies
I would like to talk about the different ways in which grief impacts our bodies because people think it’s not doing everything to every part of us. How that impacts you dictates how we show up in the world. People discount how it impacts us physically, mentally, and spiritually and that’s why they sleep on the idea that they do need someone to help them in this process.
I agree with you. There’s a book that I read called The Body Keeps the Score. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it. It’s incredible. It shows you how much the body is impacted by trauma and history and how we’re feeling that on a daily basis. My husband died on October 22nd.
Not October 22nd, 2024?
2020.
I didn’t want people to be like, “She’s talking to her now?”
It was a few years ago on the 22nd. When the weather changed, and I am getting old and my body is changing with the weather and stuff, but it was a profound physical and then also mental decline out of nowhere to the point where I had to talk to my boss about it and be like, “I need to tell you that this is going on.” It wasn’t something that was impairing me as a provider. I’ve gotten very good at compartmentalizing when I’m in my office. The minute I hit my office, I’m a different person almost until I get a text message and I’m like, “I’m Jessica.” It’s not like a different personality or anything like that, but it’s like, “Right now, this is all I can be as the provider.”
I knew with the dates coming up that it was very likely I was going to be impaired enough that I would not be able to work on the day that he died, so I took that day off. Physically, trauma took me out. It was a slug-on-the-couch kind of day because there was no doing anything else other than watching the memorial video from his funeral.
I made a slideshow from the minute that we met all the way until before he died. It’s about fourteen minutes long that I show my kids every year on the day that he died. It’s one of our traditions that we do. It goes through when I got pregnant with them, when they were born, and all those things. I did the motions, felt things, and gave myself time to do that but I still could feel that very physically.
When you’re going through grief and experiencing it, which seems to peak for me at this time of the year, you have to make space for it and you have to make accommodations for it. Talking to people who are important to know that you need that extra support or space for grief is super important. I talked to my boss. Unfortunately, I started the position in March 2024 so the people I was with through the whole process, I’m gone from. I had to go through the motions of telling her but now I know that I don’t have to do that in 2025. They were lovely. They sent flowers on the day and stuff. Everyone is not that lucky to have a boss who is going to be supportive in that situation, but setting boundaries is so important to overcoming the physiological effects of grief because you have to make space for it. That’s my take on it. It can do major damage.
I was so sick. I read back on the journal that I made for my kids while he was sick. First off, I had a stomach virus. I had to clean everything because he was immune suppressed because he was doing cancer treatments with chemo. I went to clean everything and threw my back out. Back to back, things happened, so I was out for that. Right after that, I got a major respiratory infection. My immune system was shot. My body was not fighting these things that were happening back to back.
On top of everything with all of the physiological effects, it brings down your mental health. You’re having this cyclical thing going on where your mental health is low, your immune system is low, you get sick, and then your mental health responds to not being well. It’s a cycle that doesn’t end until something can be put in there.
I hate to say this because it sounds so therapist but drink water. Exercise if you can. Eat healthy. Eat some vegetables or fruit. Do something kind for yourself. Provide self-care, which I know is such a buzzword, but do something for you when these trauma points happen to help it. It’s not going to stop it. Grief is a rolling ball down a hill. It’s going to come one way or another but you can slow it down with some of the things that you can do for yourself.
Grief is a rolling ball down a hill. It will come one way or another. But you can slow it down with some of the things you can do for yourself. Share on XI would agree. I would add this one thing and tell me what you think of this. Oftentimes, I hear people say, “You have to do this,” and we don’t. There’s power in saying, “I choose to do this,” because we will connect with people who are choosing not to do any of the things that are recommended. On the flip side of that, I’ve also found that those are the people who feel stuck more than anything else because they have determined hogwash to everything you’re saying. They’re like, “Everybody loses someone. You’ll get over it.” I go, “Let me see how that works for you.
I try to consider myself like a car. You were able to get your favorite vehicle. That’s going to be a Jeep Wrangler for me because I’m a Jeep girl. You have your Jeep all set up the way you want. You’re going to have your Jeep taken care of. You’re going to get the service done. You’re going to get your tires done, you’re going to do all those things, keep it clean, and do all that because you care about your Jeep.
Our body needs to produce more cells to keep rejuvenating ourselves. That comes from healthy food. That comes from water. That comes from allowing it to rest. If you drove your vehicle 24 hours a day 7 days a week and never serviced it, it’s going to break down. When that starts happening to us as human beings, we’re looking at one, two, or three things to go back and look at everything that happened. This body is struggling to stay afloat and we have to help it.
We oftentimes don’t see the value of some of the very simple things. When grief starts griefing, go for a walk. It doesn’t mean you have to have money. You don’t have to have a gym membership. If you can’t leave the house, you can walk in place. You can get up and move to a different room. To me, I am recalibrating myself. If we don’t do that, it hurts a lot.
I am seven years into this journey and I have remarried. A few months ago, I received some documents about my late husband. I thought I covered everything. I have a spreadsheet. I did stuff. It was like, “You have to take care of this. You need his birth certificate, death certificate, DD214, and your marriage license.” Saying those altogether makes me want to crumble but I had to go through all that. I could start feeling like I was disassociating. I saw myself being emotionally distracted. I was like, “We’ve been here before.” I was able to start leveraging some coping skills but the closer it got to wrapping this business up, the more it was difficult.
I then received the final letter. I was on that couch after work watching TV because my energy was taken by dealing with all of that. I could have pushed on and done other things but it would not have served me well. I went to bed at 7:00 that night. I had nothing to give. Grief does that to us. We serve ourselves better when we realize that and handle ourselves gently during those difficult times or these grievance seasons that we go through.
How Loss Impacts Mental Health Work
I want to say thank you for being willing to share about your husband’s passing. There’s the spoiler. That’s part two of the conversation which we’re not doing here. There are four because there’s more to come. I won’t say anything else about that. How has your husband’s passing changed the way you show up working in the mental health field?
I try to compartmentalize a lot but I know it has impacted me. My ability to empathize with people who are dealing with grief is different. I can say that I had a tremendous loss before my husband. I had a miscarriage, and that destroyed me for a year. It was our second year of marriage. That was nothing compared to what has happened in this situation.
What it does say is the grief you’re experiencing is the worst grief you’re having. That seemed like that there, and then it’s like, “We’re going to upgrade your grief to something else.”
T hey’re all different kinds of grief. I hear the comparison of grief and I think that it doesn’t do a whole lot for us. I don’t want to compare grief. People have a tendency to compare because they want to be able to feel their feelings. Even within the grief community, not to throw shade, but we hear people talk about this too. It’s like, “You had to deal with the long terminal diagnosis. That had to have been so hard to watch them get sick for so long and to watch them wither away and die.” There are other people who go, “You lost your husband or wife so suddenly. I couldn’t have never done that.”
People tend to compare grief because they want to be able to feel their feelings. Share on XWe have that direct parallel. My husband and I were on vacation. He had a heart attack and died that day. They’re like, “Did they both die?” I’m like, “That’s the problem.”
We do it outside of our community. Is divorce worse than grief? It’s different. I have somebody whose house burned down. All of their things are gone. All of their memories are gone. All their photos are gone. There are no external hard drives. That is an incredible grief that has to go on there versus, “My grandma died,” or, “My dog died.” I can see these extreme reactions to some of them. I have to pull back and remember myself as a human and go, “That is still an incredible loss for them. If they’re having this response, it’s because that’s what they know is the most incredible, tremendous loss for them at the time.”
If anything, my loss has humbled me in some way when it comes to approaching grief. In the olden days, I remember there being some levels, especially when my husband was sick. I remember a session where there was a child. I’m sorry. I know this is probably an awful thing to say but I’m going to be authentic because my number one goal in life is to be authentic. I was in this session with a kid who lost a pet and it was the most emotional thing for them ever. I’m sitting here going, “My husband’s currently dying of cancer and this is the worst thing that has happened in your life at this point.” I had to check myself really hard at that moment.
This is not something you said audibly. This is something you’re thinking within your mind.
This is internally. I’m thinking to myself. I would never say that to anybody.
I want to clarify. I knew that’s what it was but for the people reading, I want them to understand.
I don’t want them to be like, “What a monster.” Internally, I’m thinking to myself, “How lucky that that’s the worst thing that has happened to you in life.”When those moments come, and that’s probably why I’m more likely to be empathetic in this situation, that is the worst thing that has happened. I’ve watched multiple different levels of grief in my life, whether it was the loss of all of my grandparents at this point in very different traumatizing ways in some situations, my miscarriages that I’ve had, or the loss of my husband. At that point, those things were the worst thing that had happened to me. How could I have any concept of what it’s like to lose at this level?
It’s getting to this point of other than something happening to my children, which if there’s anything that will bring me to tears, it’s that, I cannot imagine anything worse. I don’t know what it would be for me. My mother and I are very close so I imagine that will be incredibly difficult for me. This is all I know, so I’m able to reflect on the past and go, “That’s all I knew then is the worst pain so I have to be able to apply that with my clients and the people that I work with every day.” The loss of Jerry has put grief and loss in perspective for me whereas before, maybe I was slightly selfish in the way that I thought about it.
You were naive.
I was still a baby therapist. I was brand new. I graduated in February 2020 and he died in October 2020. When I say these things, I was still fresh out of college, not having a whole lot of experience. At this point, I’m able to pull back and do a little reflection. You have to over time be able to be a better therapist.
It made you better at what you do.
I hate to say that. It’s so gross to say but that’s the case with so many different points of life. The question of who I am right now is a different person than who he married. I am stronger. He paid all the bills and did the financial stuff. I took over that stuff. I have to be more responsible. Also, on an emotional level, I am responsible for my kids’ well-being. We can talk about that later.
Does Age Matter In Mental Health?
When someone is looking for a mental health professional and they’re fresh out of school, going back to relatable, is it okay for them to say, “This person has not had enough life experience so they can’t be guiding me through much of anything.”
I don’t want to say that at all.
I know a lot of people feel that way. When they’re trying to find someone, age and experience are part of their ability to say, “How are you going to give me guidance?” That’s a conversation I hear often with people.
The same thing is true with addiction and people who work with veterans. There’s a lot of that conversation of, “How could I work with somebody who couldn’t understand what I’m going through right now?” A lot of those people are fresh out of school. I can’t judge a person because they got out of school. They’ve gone through their own life journey. I can’t judge somebody based on the age that they’re at when they start counseling. I don’t know if I would want to go to a twenty-year-old counselor because they graduated early in school or something like that because they haven’t lived life, but you’re not going to find that at all.
If you’re looking for somebody who has been doing this for a while, you’re going to want to look for extra letters. It’s different in every state. You’re going to want to do a little research when you’re deciding because every state is different, unfortunately, with how they label therapists. For Ohio where I’m from, what they have is LPC. It means that I am still licensed but I’m dependently licensed, I have to be supervised for 3,000 hours in order to get my independent license, and I have to pass an exam.
You graduate and take an exam to get your dependent license. You pass your 3,000 hours that are observed and talk to a supervisor for a total of 150 hours out of that 3,000 hours. You’re doing one-on-one work, talking about what you’re doing, how you could get better, and all of those kinds of things. You then gain your LPCC if you pass another exam and finish those 3,000 hours.
If you’re looking for somebody who has the experience and who’s going to be a little more well-versed with time, you’re going to want to look for extra letters. However, and this is what I tell people too, you’re going to find cheaper rates with people who have gotten out of school. You’re also going to find people who have the most up-to-date information because they’ve come out of school. There are new things coming out all the time and new developments. They’re covering new topics in these programs so that the people are able to address issues on a regular basis. There are benefits to both situations. I have met jaded long-time counselors.
That’s in any profession. That’s in anything that someone does. They may lose their spark or their emphasis in doing that because they’ve been burnt out, whether it’s a first responder, a teacher, or a Military. Sometimes, the thing that you do can wear you down. I would expect it to be in this career path also.
I don’t know that it does matter. Go back to the bio and see what they’re passionate about and what they want to make an impact on in their own profile. That’s only what they’re putting in there. It’s challenging. It is not easy to find somebody who’s a perfect match for you. Those are the guidelines that I usually tell people about and how hard it is. It’s like a sliding scale of trying to figure out the right fit.
Addressing Denial Of Mental Health Needs
Thank you for providing that because people often are only seeing it one way. I want to ask you this. Have you connected with anyone professionally or personally who has decided mental health assistance is hogwashed but their grief is showing that it really is necessary? How do you manage those conversations?
Are you talking about in real life?
Yeah. This is not someone that came to your office but this is who you bumped into at the grocery store. Let me say it in a different way. I bumped into you in the grocery store and we happened to start talking because I saw your nails were cute. We started talking about this, and then we happened to both talk about losing our spouse. I talk about how I’ve started isolating. I don’t trust coming outside much. I’ve been drinking a lot. I feel like God took my husband as a personal attack. I don’t want to do any therapy because I’m like, “What are they going to tell me? He’s still dead.” What would you say to me?
This is tough. If you’re not open to mental health therapeutic services, they’re probably not going to work super well for you. I’m not saying that you have to have a buy-in when you first start. You can gain that over time but you have to have some level of buy-in in order to get your butt off the couch, out of your desk chair, or wherever it is and get to a session. It could be online. I was going to recommend this earlier. I did all of mine online. It was the best thing I’ve ever done.
I’ve seen my therapist online. We were in person then COVID happened and he started doing virtual. I was like, “One less place I got to drive?” I’m here.”
I don’t want to recommend anything but BetterHelp and all of the ones that are out there.
Virtual is a wonderful option.
Virtual is good. I can tell you that the majority of at least younger counselors are still offering telehealth as an option. If a person doesn’t have some level of buy-in, most likely, they’re not even going to get to themselves to a point that they get to an appointment. For me, I’m brutally honest with people. I’m never going to say anything about you that I wouldn’t say to your face. That is my number one goal in life, to always go with that approach. It is telling them, “I know that right now you’re going through a tremendous amount. I can’t imagine what you’re personally going through even though I know on my level what I went through with grief. The only thing I can say is I know talking about it helped. I know you don’t want to necessarily be helped, but maybe talking about it and getting it out there.”
Personally for me, and it’s different for everyone, it is embracing my story and telling my story over and over again through TikTok and therapy. TikTok was its own therapy, honestly. It is talking to my friends, my family, and the people who knew what had gone on because we were very secretive during his treatment other than what we put on his CaringBridge or whatever it was called.
It’s CaringBridge. That’s what I used through my cancer journey.
It was great. It’s like a bio for a therapist. It’s a snippet versus the ins and outs of everyday life. The more that you own your story and what has happened, the more you’re going to heal. A lot of people who get stuck, not necessarily always, are either stuck in two places. One is the halo effect. Their significant other is the best. They are like, “No one could ever compare to them so I’m going to glorify them at all levels.” The other is there’s guilt, which is, “I feel bad that this is how it ended so I’m going to live in my guilt and grief forever.” It’s really hard to break through those two approaches to grief because there is such an ingrained version of that in ourselves in our grief journey.
The more you own your grieving journey and what has happened, the more you will heal. Share on XIf we get those people in front of us, it’s a miracle. It’s the people who go, “I want to see some level of norm appear again.” If you’re invested in finding some level of norm again, you have to invest in telling your story. You’re not going to do that unless you get in front of somebody who’s going to listen and listen with unconditional positive regard, which is what we go for with therapy. It’s like, “This is your experience. I’m not going to tell you what your experience should be. Have you thought about looking at it this way instead though?”
Why is it so powerful to share the story?
Embracing your story is embracing yourself. Especially if you’ve been a caregiver, it hasn’t been about you for a really long time.
A caregiver may come into this with different things than someone who was not. That needs to be addressed.
I would say the same for you with what happened to you. People grieve the loss of their person. They’ll feel for you for a minute and then they move on with their lives. They remember the lost person, as they should, but they don’t realize the ripple effect that’s going on for the rest of our lives for the people who were directly impacted by that loss.
Embracing your story is embracing what you haven’t gotten to tell and what people don’t necessarily listen to or think about on a daily. You get to embrace your own story in grief and own it because it hasn’t been a factor in all of this. It hasn’t been people’s first thought. Embracing your story does that for yourself. You get to own and be the main story in this situation instead of the whole focus being on the person who was lost. That’s necessary on some level.
I would agree because the rest of this is really about you. This is not about being selfish or inconsiderate. This is you trying to figure out how to live the rest of your life without this person being there. Their journey is complete. They are done with this human experiment that we’re going through. The grief does become about us because it’s our lived experience. I would 100% agree with that.
Helping Children Cope With Grief And Trauma
I want to shift to the area you’re working in. Adults generally know how to communicate. Adults can articulate and do something. A child that is going through trauma and grief is still trying to develop into a human being. A lot of times, they have been put in places where they’re seen and not heard or not as valuable as an adult. This is a broad scope. How does one approach a child that is grieving or dealing with trauma?
I work with 12 to 14-year-olds most of the time and maybe an occasional 11 and 15-year-old depending. A lot of them do have some sense of what their experience has been. Was it Mad Libs that would have the whole paper and then there would be little sections out of it and you had to add a verb here and a noun there? It’s like that for therapy. What you see if you’re dealing with grief and loss is, “I know what happened. I know I don’t feel good about it but I don’t know how to say exactly how I’m feeling.”
It’s giving them the tools for what those emotions look like and how we are processing the feelings and engaging in a different action or behavior than what we want to have happen. It sounds very clinical but I swear it’s not like that in real life. Giving them the tools and giving them the words to be able to express themselves is number one.
We need that as adults too. Especially in that first year, you’re super numb and you don’t even know how you feel most of the time except that you felt 30 different things within 1 hour or 1 minute and it’s constantly shifting. How confusing for a child who can’t even put one word other than, “I’m angry all the time.” I go, “I hear you,” but anger is a secondary emotion. It is not the first thing that we feel. We have to look at our emotions and think about what was the first thing that we felt. Did we feel alone? Did we feel isolated? Did we feel unwanted, unloved, not taken care of, or abandoned? What feeling did we have before we got to the anger point? We really need to look at those feelings that get us to the anger point to stop whatever action might come from the anger.
Anger is a secondary emotion. It is not the first thing we feel. We have to look at our emotions and think about what the first thing we felt was. Share on XIt’s the same work. It’s a little bit more than we would have to do with an adult who has some vocabulary that would already suffice for understanding what their emotions are. Grief and loss are a mixed bag of emotions. It’s hard to pick which one you’re feeling at any given time. It’s mainly a vocabulary increase in understanding how that’s impacting their feelings overall.
I can see that. As a parent or a caregiver for a child, what are some things that may allow me to see they’re doing more than acting out? There’s a bigger situation that needs to be addressed.
I go with the theory of whether it is impacting them on a functional level. When we’re making any kind of diagnosis, we have to look that there’s a functional impact that’s being made. Is there inattentiveness causing them to not do well in school? Is there anger and aggression causing them to lash out at classmates or teachers, not just at home but also at school? We need to see that there’s a functional impairment in multiple settings and that it is causing some kind of issue.
We’re going to see our kids throw fits and be upset after the loss because of that confusion that we talked about before of not knowing our feelings and our emotions. We’re going to have that happen no matter what. When those start to bleed into other situations at school where you have to go pick them up frequently, they can’t calm themselves down, it’s happening repetitively and not once every couple of months that this is going on, the level of functional impairment, and it’s happening in multiple settings are the things that I look for as a practitioner. As a parent, I go, “One thing happened. I don’t know what to do.” As a provider, I can say that’s what we look for as a major difficulty for a person or for a kiddo.
Supporting Parents Of Grieving Children
You did slide into my next question. This may be Jessica as the mother and the provider and trying to come in the middle. Handling your children’s grief and managing that, what does that look like? What are some things that can help the parents who are dealing with that?
I at least took grief with my own kids at the same level that I took mine, which is to hold space for grief as often as we need to. I may have gone a little overboard at different times. They have a blanket on their bed with pictures of them and their dad individually. For Jerry’s Father’s Day right before he died, I made a book from the kids to him with pictures of them and him. They each have their own daddy book, which is what I call them. We’ll read those at night. I have a lot of pictures up of them and their dad everywhere. I don’t take those down. My son is the spitting image of my husband. I tell him frequently, “That’s exactly how your dad did this.” I am bringing him up in conversation and trying to keep his memory alive as much as I can without idolizing him because I also don’t want them to say, “I have to be great like Dad.”
I want them to know he was a human but I’m not going to talk crap about him. What I will do is say, “Your dad had dyslexia.” I have ADHD. My kids deal with a combo of different things. I go, “That’s like Dad. Dad forgot this,” or, “I always forget things too.” I humanize as much as I can the experience that they’re having and let them be upset. I’m not telling them, “Be a man. Buck up.” For girls, I’m not telling them, “Suck it up. You’re throwing a tantrum.”
When they say, “I miss Dad,” you’re going to probably notice different patterns. It’s always at night for my daughter. It may be because of the daddy blanket or maybe because of the book that they can read whenever they want to. We don’t read it every night. It’s not that kind of a thing. Their memories come up at night when they finally have time to think. It gives them time to think about their dad. I give them a hug and say, “Me too. What are you remembering about Dad? What do you miss about him?”
It’s tough for my daughter. She’s seven. She was three when he died. It’s really hard for her to recall things. A lot of things are things that she’s seeing on video or pictures. Recalling those things allows her to try and heal and to have some membership into the grief. She will get to a point where the only things she remembers are things from what we offer her. I will always offer those things to her because I don’t want her to feel like she doesn’t have a right to the same level of grief as us because she still lost a father. It is acknowledging the grief that our kids have and being supportive even if we think that they might be using it to get out of going to bed on time. Occasionally, it has happened.
They know how to go, “I got her.”
They get in trouble. They’re like, “I miss Dad.” Sometimes, you can see the connection and you’re like, “You messed up here.”
That’s important to know that it’s not always that. You’re like, “You’re playing me. We’re not doing that.”
It’s hard to tell when that happens.
That’s because you’re in your own grief too.
It’s to acknowledge and say, “I miss Dad too but I don’t understand why you tried to do this.” Acknowledge the grief. Never dismiss it fully. We know they might be utilizing that to get away with this, but to say, “We miss that person but I don’t know why we’re doing this.” Trying to keep his memory alive is one of my number one goals.
Even with my marriage to my new husband, we had a board at our wedding that had initials from our significant others that we lost and then also all of our grandparents’ initials on there. We want them to be present even in that moment. There’s always a need for their memory to be alive because it’s the same as when we like hearing somebody else bring up a story or a memory. It makes us remember that they were real and that they weren’t here and gone. We need to remember them. Us bringing it up as often as possible is 100% necessary.
Grief Counseling For Adolescents: Challenges And Considerations
It’s the idea that they are real. They were, but when your person is no longer here, it’s like, “Did I imagine all that? We did this. We had these experiences.” I’ll open a photo album and be like, “Yeah.” Time will play with your mind to go, “It really wasn’t that,” and it’s like, “I thought it was You have to go back and recount those memories. It is so important. Thank you for mentioning that. In the work that you do, is there a particular reason why it’s split up to the age group of 12 and 14? Is there something cognitive with adolescents? What is the line?
I’m at a middle school so that is the population I work with. I’ve worked with kids as young as four in the past, which is very difficult. I have worked with adults who are in their 60s and 70s. I’ve worked with a variety of different people but the majority of my practice has always been with younger kids.
With the four-year-olds and parents dealing with that, what are some things that are difficult that they need to consider or be patient about?
Everything because they don’t have the verbal capacity to express themselves. Everything’s going to be feelings and confusion. It’s hard to find a therapist that’s going to work with somebody that young. You can do the research a little bit and see the need for verbalizing their feelings and teaching them the vocabulary that I was speaking about before, “This is how I’m feeling. I miss this person.” I’ve seen dolls with daddy faces on them. It is letting them talk to that doll.
Along with doing individual therapy, I also did group therapy with Fernside, which is through the Hospice of Cincinnati. There were groups of different age groups. They had very young kids. Three was the youngest. It is giving them people who they can understand the loss with. Some of those kids lost siblings or grandparents, but there were a lot of kids who lost parents. It is letting them know, “There are other kids who feel this way.” Imagine being shoved into a school and everyone else has a parent that goes to this or that and you don’t have that anymore.
Letting them feel like they’re part of a place they have that support is really positive as well as keeping that space open for grief. It’s also knowing it’s going to look different and there are going to be outbursts because they cannot verbalize it and they feel as overwhelmed as we do in that moment without any ability to say anything about it. It’s challenging but making the space was very helpful on our end and letting them know it’s okay to talk about them.
School Mental Health Services You Might Not Know About
Thank you. In our total series of conversations, this is the first one with Jessica sharing her experience as a mental health professional. Our second conversation is giving Jessica space to talk about Jerry, her grief, and their family. The third conversation is with her now-husband as he is a widower. In our fourth conversation, we’ll have the both of them together having a conversation and talking about that experience. You want to catch all four of these conversations. As a parent, as it relates to you in Ohio and the school system in which you operate, what are some services that people may not know about that exist in the school system, and how do they find out about them?
You want to reach out to your school counselor and make sure that you’re asking them what resources are available. For my kiddo, their school district is fabulous. It’s not through the place that I work for but through another agency that does something similar. They have in-school therapy, which is about 30-minute sessions. For ours, it’s 30 minutes to 1 hour.
Many of the school districts that you may reach out to will have individual therapists from different places. There are usually waitlists but if there’s something significant, like a death, trauma, or grief, then they may get high priority so that they’re closer to the top of the list to get pulled faster. There may be individual therapy. I know that our school system has emotional support animals that can come by, dogs specifically, and visit the student. On the day after my husband died, they allowed the emotional support dog to be with him the entire day. He still talks about it. He was six then. He is ten now. He remembers that being available to him and being like, “I want to see this person.”
Talking to their teachers, letting them know what’s happened, and being sensitive to the situation is super important. School counselors have a regular check-in. I know that for my son, they are offering through the middle school a grief support group for people who have lost people. We are very lucky to be in a school system that has the resources that we do. You may not if you’re more in the country area where there are not as many resources available. For us, we’re right outside of a major city, about 30 minutes outside of Cincinnati, so there are resources that we have available.
I was a teacher for seven years and then went into mental health so I knew that there were some resources that had to have been available. Reach out to your school counselors and then always notify the teachers so that they can be a huge presence for your kids. It has been four years but my son still talks about how much he loves his first-grade teacher who was a huge support for him. Good teachers are going to make a huge difference as well in understanding teachers.
Thank you. We have to tell them it has happened for them to know how to assist us. We have to ask the question, “What services exist? How do I get a list of those? What do I find out?” The death of our person destroys our world and we assume that everyone else knows. We cannot make an assumption that they’re aware. We have to convey this to them so they know how to show up for us.
I hate to say this as a generalization but we have to do the same with everyone. We want people to show up, and they might for a little while. When it stops, asking for help is so necessary. We’re stubborn. I’m probably one of the most stubborn people you’ll meet. Asking for help is not easy, but when it comes to the schools, friends, or family and you need them, you have to say it. It’s the only way that we’re going to get the assistance that we need. It’s not necessarily that they’re always going to say yes, but at least you’ve put out there that you are in need of something. Whether it’s time, help, or whatever, we have to be willing to ask for it because we can’t expect them to mindread as much as we want them to be able to.
Reaching out is the only way to get assistance with grief. The people around you would not necessarily agree to help, but at least you have put out there that you need something. Share on XFinding The Right Fit: Essential Qualities In A Therapist
It’s so hard for us to say we need help. To constantly say, “My person died,” is draining. I have asked you a lot of questions. Are there any questions you have for me or something you’re thinking of?
Yeah. What do you think is the most important thing for you with a therapist if you’re looking for one? I don’t know if you were saying it theoretically or if you’re really looking for somebody, but what are you looking for the most with somebody who’s a mental health provider? What is the most important aspect of it for you?
I am not looking for one. I’m fine with who I have. The first mental health professional I worked with, I saw them the day before I viewed my husband’s body for the first time. I was not thinking I needed a mental health professional or a therapist. Another widow that I knew called me and she said, “Tina, I am so sorry. I cannot attend this funeral.” I was like, “I don’t want to attend. I don’t know what you are talking about. This isn’t what I want to do.” I understood at that moment how difficult that could be for her being fresh in this journey and not wanting to make my husband’s passing about her because of how it would impact her. Not being there was a choice she made.
She called me and said, “I have reached out to my therapist and she will see you whenever you want to see her.” The light bulb went off like, “This is uncharted territory.” You go to school for your career. You take training for different things. When we were preparing to have children, we read books and we did things. At that point, I was like, “I’m a widow. I don’t know what this is going to look like every day. I have no concept of how this is going to impact me mentally.” She said that and it was like going, “For this, you need help.” I hung up and called that person immediately. They saw me and I was like, “I’m so glad I didn’t try to do this on my own.”
I had no concept of what was before me. That let me know that was a good choice. It gave me space to validate how I was feeling. It gave me space to understand healthy and unhealthy coping skills. It was a good interaction. The only part that I maybe made the therapist upset about was that I self-terminated about nine months in because, to me, the conversations were repeating. I was having an issue. She was giving me the same coping skills. I’m working it out.
My husband was important to me. I didn’t want to tether myself to someone else to be my anchor. I needed to be my own anchor in my relationship with God. I needed to say, “Let’s start moving this out a month at a time and then two months at a time because I need to know I can stand. You’ve given me the information. We’ve done all of this. I have to learn how to live.” We shifted and then that part was over because I relocated from Pennsylvania to Virginia. Mark passed in 2017. Virtual was not a thing at that point.
I moved to Virginia because this is a place that we were looking to relocate. Mark had found a job here. I went to undergrad here and have a really good support group. It’s warmer than Pennsylvania, let’s be honest. There’s the snow, the oil bill, and all of that. I’m functioning. I’m in grad school. I’m doing seminary. One of my friends came over. She came unannounced. She says, “You’re not talking. That’s a problem.” I stood at the door and started crying. I said, “This is so ugly. This is miserable.” She goes, “I’m not afraid and you’re letting me in. You’re letting me in the house and letting me into this situation.”
I thought I was okay. I realized I was a functional griever like I consider a functional alcoholic. I was going to work. I was doing stuff. I’m in seminary. I thought I had checked the block, “We have now put grief in this space and we continue on with life.” What a whole silly child I was. I was like, “There’s still more work to do.”
One, my insurance needed to cover it. It was important to find somebody and network. I needed to find somebody that looked like me. I needed to find somebody who was an African American because my journey in life was different than my husband’s journey of being a White man in America. What he would resonate with is going to be different. I needed somebody who shared my faith because that is a principle of how I live my life.
If I’m looking for you to give me guidance and direction, I need that to be in line with the core parts of who I am already that will help wrap around this experience of grief that I am going through. I didn’t care if it was a man or a woman. Those things that matter to me. I needed someone that I felt was respecting me. I know sometimes in this world being a woman, we are thought less than. I need to pick up on that and see if there’s value in how you see me. Everything else, education, background, how you got into this profession, and why you are doing this, those basic things were the items that I looked for as I was looking to see who would go with me on this journey.
I moved here in 2019. I had been seeing my therapist. We started out weekly, moved to bimonthly, and then moved to monthly. Now, it’s quarterly. I probably will have a therapist like I have a dentist or anybody else. The stuff that goes on in this mind shouldn’t be unhinged. There needs to be a space to check in and do different things. I believe there’s more strength in acknowledging I need assistance versus trying to wing it on my own and making a hot mess of it all.
Always be willing to go back. A lot of people feel shame with therapy services. If they’ve completed or discharged, it doesn’t matter. It’s okay. We are constantly evolving human beings with changing feelings all the time. It’s okay to admit to ourselves like, “I’m back here. I need to go have a check-in.” Whether that’s 1 or 2 times and then you’re gone again, I would rather you come and talk to me any day of the week than for you to have to sit with those feelings and not be able to express them to somebody. It’s different for every therapist but the majority of therapists are happy to welcome somebody back who needs those check-ins or needs to restart therapeutic services in general. That’s brave if you go back after you’ve left therapy and say, “I need to come back for a little while.” It’s super brave of somebody to do that.
We are constantly evolving human beings with changing feelings all the time. Share on XI would agree. I want to circle back to something you said about shame. I have felt in my community that the need to have rigor and resilience doesn’t serve us well when we have to come to terms with the reality of where we feel weak or vulnerable because shame could be implied. It’s going to be more shameful if I fall apart and I’m not given space to honestly deal with this traumatic situation I’m experiencing because you want me to brush it underneath a rug and keep going and moving forward. I am falling apart and I do not have time for your validation or approval. I am crawling through volcano ash as more volcano ashes come down and trying to live.
When you are in this space and you realize how difficult it is, you say, “I need some help. I don’t care what other people say. I’m trying to survive.” That’s where I was at. I could care less about what someone else said. I had people go, “You’re seeing a therapist? You were in the Army and you were this.” I said, “He still died.” I was there when my husband had a heart attack. Trigger warning, I saw his body shaking and convulsing. I was calling 911. I was at the end of the hallway scantily dressed because we were in a hotel and watching my life fall apart. That played in my mind every day driving to work. We’re not toughing this out.
We’re going to figure out how the brain works to understand, “I’m in fight mode. My prefrontal cortex is going, “I’ll see you later. My amygdala is going, “We’re in charge.” Knowing those things empowered me to understand why I was feeling this way. This wasn’t some random act. There are scientific things that have been evaluated and proven. Having that knowledge that I will be sleepy, I will be tired, the grief fog, and the brain fog, that type of knowledge helped me to go, “This is something that is normal.” Grief is a normal experience and it should not be brushed away. Those things were helpful for me.
Find somebody who can crawl through the ash with you. That’s all I can suggest. Get somebody who’s going to walk through hell with you because that’s what you need to find. When you can’t do it, they can be the strength, hopefully, on some level to push you to get to walking. When it gets to the point that the magma is coming, they’re like, “You got to start walking.” Find somebody who will crawl through hell with you.
That is why I do what I do with the show because there are so many people that are isolated. They feel alone. They feel like nobody cares. I am constantly creating a community with our grief Discord, a private Facebook group, or TikTok lives because this is hard. I will never tell another widow, “I know how you feel,” because I don’t know how you felt in Jerry’s passing. I was with Mark for 32 years. I know how I feel losing him but I was a unique individual married to this unique man in a unique relationship. Are there some similarities? Can I empathize with you? Yes.
I can be standing here holding a rope as you’re crawling through the volcano ash and the lava and everything coming down but you’ve got to do the crawling. You have to do the work. I can be there, stand, and hold as you’re doing all of that. That makes it important to be able to say, “This is messy.” There are other widows and widowers who have learned to continue living a life. L earning to live again, be happy, and find joy in life and realizing how precious it is, we need people to sometimes help us do that. That’s what these conversations are for, for people to know they’re not alone.
I love that.
Advocating For Yourself In Mental Health
Thank you for being here in this conversation. I’ll allow you to close this out. Maybe there was something you wanted to share that we didn’t talk about or overall wrap up this conversation.
I would say exactly what I said before. When it comes to mental health, everyone is different. Everyone’s looking for something different when it comes to mental health. Make sure that you’re advocating for yourself. Make sure that you’re finding the right person to crawl through the ash with. You can only do that by asking the questions that you need answered. Don’t feel embarrassed or ashamed. You have to have an idea of knowing what you want, going for it, and finding the right person to meet your energy in that situation.
Keep on searching. I hope that you find the right person. I’m guessing that they’re out there somewhere. If you’re still debating on whether or not mental health is right for you, it’s right for everybody. It’s that it takes people making that decision for themselves to do it. Don’t feel embarrassed or ashamed. Everyone should have therapy, including therapists who do have therapy. Know that when you’re making that decision. I know that’s simplifying it a lot but you can do it.
Thank you for being here. Thank you, everyone, for being part of this conversation with us.
Thank you, everyone.
We’ll see you in part two.
