Ep. 186: Dr. Sherry Walling Talks About Handling Grief

Description:
As we age, we deal with death more and more. Doro and Tricia discuss this (and the best ways to deal with it) as they talk with Dr. Sherry Walling, author of Between Two Worlds. They speak about the realness of grief, ways to treat it, and finding wholeness in the aftermath of loss. Listen in as they talk through this often difficult subject.

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Quotes:

Death is not popular. The limits of our life and the finite nature of our life and our choices. It's not sexy. It's not what people want to talk about.

How we get over the fear of death, I think, requires familiarity, like how we get over fear of anything else: we get closer to it. It's the unknown of it that brings so much fear.

Some of the conversation around mental health that has happened in the context of the COVID pandemic has increased the level of interest around mental health in the business and professional communities.

Show Notes:

Sherry Walling: There are a few kinds of snapshot experiences that I think led me into my life as a clinical psychologist.

Sherry Walling: We tell a story about where we belong and who our community is and how powerful that is in determining our life course.

Sherry Walling: I just wanted to understand how we can help tell better stories about ourselves that lead to more joyful, more healthy lives.

Sherry Walling: I started in my work in the trauma and stress world and I worked with people who had really high intensity jobs.

Sherry Walling: I've taken what I know about high stress and high performance and applied that to the entrepreneurial world. And it's been a really, really interesting and satisfying career.

Sherry Walling: the conversation around mental health that has happened in the context of the COVID pandemic has really increased the level of interest around mental health.

Sherry Walling: This book is about how to live in grief and how to live in joy at the same time.

Sherry Walling: As a clinical psychologist, I came to my work with an understanding of the diagnostic problems of grief or trauma.

Sherry Walling: It wasn't until I went so deep into my own grief that I really understood the relationship between grief and love.

Sherry Walling: The experience of being close with someone who is dying is profound.

Sherry Walling: The limits of our life and the finite nature of our life and our choices. It's not sexy. It's not what people want to talk about.

Sherry Walling: There's deep importance in redeeming death as an important part of life, in redeeming our capacity as humans to be present with someone who's dying.

Sherry Walling: there's deep importance in redeeming death as an important part of life, in redeeming our capacity as humans to be present with someone who's dying.

Sherry Walling: Grief can so overwhelm one's system.

Sherry Walling: I don't think you heal from grief. I think it's a different shape of love that takes a place in your heart and mind and soul.

Sherry Walling: I hope this book gives that sense of reverence for it, a respect for the process, this acknowledgment that it is. It's mighty and powerful.

Sherry Walling: I became a circus artist during my season of grief and learned the flying trapeze and aerial fabrics

Sherry Walling: It's such a gift to listen if someone's grieving.

Sherry Walling: I actually wrote a lot of the book in the airplane, crying while flying back and forth across the country.

Sherry Walling: I could stress about it or fight it or pretend it's not going to happen. Or I can just, again, sort of make a plan and give it space.

Sherry Walling: What are the meaningful actions that I can take around this anxiety in my own fear about my own death or my own mortality.

Sherry Walling: I think also there must be a reverence for the fact that we just can't control it.

Sherry Walling: I had a moment or the experience of really seeing myself as this daughter who was losing her father.

Sherry Walling: that ability to be very empathetic and tender with myself about my own grief was very important and very healing.

Sherry Walling: I think we're all kind of desperate for some new tools in mental health care.

Sherry Walling: I've also trained with maps, which is the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which is rolling out most of the training for clinicians in this world.

Keywords:

#TriciaReillyKoch, #DoroBushKoch, #HealthGig, #Longevity, #Wellness, #PhysicalHealth, #MentalHealth, #Health, #HealthCare