00:00

Hey there. Welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 426, "Mourn With Those That Mourn." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale, and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:22 

Alright. Hello there, my friends. It is great to be back with you, and great to be creating some new content for you this week. I know that we've had several weeks of listening to the greatest hits, and I hope that you have loved those. Those are some that I often refer my clients back to when we're working, and they need some extra help and extra guidance outside of our coaching sessions, and I just love those. I think that they are ones that help all to do this work at a deeper level. 

00:51 

So there's a lot of past podcasts that I just think would be really, really great for you to take a minute and go listen to. So if you have not noticed, when you look up this podcast on whatever you look at it, listen to it at, go down to the show notes, and in there, I have multiple... I usually get a little bit carried away and put about 10 or more, even sometimes podcasts, that I reference to, at least in content and ideas, in the current podcast that you're listening to. So if you want to learn a little bit more about this and deepen your growth and really fast pace your understanding of what's happening here, I would suggest going down and taking a look at those, and, and pulling them up and listening to them. And there may be some that the title you may go, "Mm, I don't think I need that one," but I think you'll be surprised that probably in most of them, you're going to find a couple of gold nuggets for you that are really going to help propel you forward and move you in the direction that you wanna go. 

01:53 

So that being said, I just want to remind you also of my next Talk with Tanya is September 8th. This is just a free webinar where you can come and get coached, and we talk about things. We discuss concepts. Like last time, a gentleman came, and he shared, I think it was a poem or something that somebody had written, and then we ended up having a really great discussion about men and intimacy and sexuality and connection and how all of that fits. I think it was a really great discussion for all of us. We get to do all kinds of stuff. So just show up. You can go to my website, tanyahale.com. Go on the Group Coaching tab, and you will see the option to sign up for that Talk with Tanya. 

02:38 

Alright. That being said, we are jumping in today with podcast number 426, which blows my mind anyway. That's seven and a half years worth of podcasting there for me. But this one is titled Mourn With Those That Mourn. So this phrase comes from a book that I use in my religious tradition. I go to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we use a book called The Book of Mormon. Now, if that kind of freaked some of you out, hold on just a second, okay? The Book of Mormon is a record of people, we believe, who lived in the Americas, who had a visit from Jesus Christ when they were there after His resurrection, and this Book of Mormon talks a lot about Jesus Christ, and I love that there, that this phrase comes from this. 

03:27 

So there are some people who are wanting to learn about Christ, and they go to a man named Alma, and this man is teaching them about what they need to do in order to be baptized. And one of the requirements that he says is that they need to be willing to mourn with those that mourn, and that's what we're gonna be talking about here today, is this concept of what does that really mean. I think it's often an overlooked phrase. We just kind of go, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We mourn with those that mourn," right? We show up with casseroles or with dinners or with desserts or whatever. I go out to lunch with my friend. We go for a walk. We do these things, right? 

04:11 

And we do show up that way, but our instincts, what comes naturally to our primitive brain, is not actually to do what it means when it says to mourn with those that mourn. I think most of us are pretty good at showing up. Like I mentioned, we may show up with a meal. We may schedule to go on a walk or go out to lunch with a friend who's struggling, someone whose parent just died, someone whose spouse has just left, and they're getting divorced, someone whose child is struggling. We do try and show up. We really, in our hearts, want to be loving and compassionate and kind, and this piece, showing up, is the first part. Saying, "Hey, I see you struggling. Can I come over? Can we have a talk?" Texting people, arranging to go out to lunch. All of that is part of this mourning with those that mourn. 

05:06 

And yet we often go downhill from there, right? We understand the showing up part, but we don't really know how to mourn with them. And what I think this means is that it means to sit with them, to feel bad with them, to cry with them, to grieve with them. But many of us really don't know how to do that, and we feel so uncomfortable seeing somebody else in discomfort, especially someone that we love, that we unknowingly shift out of a compassionate mode, and we stop mourning with them. 

05:40 

So what do we do instead? I want you to see if any of these sound familiar in ways that you have responded to other people in their time of need or in ways that other people have responded to you in your time of need. And this is probably not all inclusive, but this is a list that I came up with. 

05:55 

One, we may try to solve problems for them. We might give them ideas of what they could do. "Well, have you tried this? Have you tried this? What about this?" So rather than just sitting with them, we try to start solving their problems. 

06:11 

Here's another one. Sometimes we try and fix their hurt. We might try and take over. We might even step in, like say someone's child is having some serious drug issues, and we may step in and say, "Okay, I'm gonna call this treatment center. I'm gonna do this." We try and take over, right? Watching the other person hurt, watching them struggle is difficult for us. And so to alleviate our own discomfort, we try and take over and try and fix for them. Maybe we just jump into giving false hope, trying to see the positive side, the silver lining of the cloud, right? We might say things like, "Oh, I know that you'll beat this cancer." You know, "I know that your husband, he's gonna feel bad that he left at some point." So we just dismiss in the sense that we give false hope, right? We try and be overly positive. 

07:07 

Here's another one. We might actually just dismiss their struggle. You know, when a parent dies or a child dies and we say something like, "Oh, they're in a better place." Okay? I think it's people trying but not doing a very good job, right? We dismiss the difficulty. We say, "Oh, you know, you'll be a better person for this. You'll be stronger in the long run." Well, I don't care about the long run when I'm in the thick of it right now, right? I don't need someone to give me the long game end goal when I just need to feel the big emotions right now. Okay? 

07:45 

Another thing that we tend to do is we tend to make it all about us, right? We might say, "Oh my gosh, I know exactly how you feel." Which, first of all, that's a phrase I think many of us understand that we should never use that phrase, "I know exactly how you feel," because none of us ever do, right? And, and we try to be empathetic in saying, "Listen, I've had an experience similar to yours," but what we do instead of just showing empathy is we go into a long three to five-minute story about something that we have done that's been similar. So we make it all about us. Or we may even try and one-up and say, "Oh, listen, this isn't as bad as when my mom died, because I have to tell you, when my mom died, these were the circumstances," and we go in. So there we're dismissing it and we're making it about us. 

08:37 

And then the last thing I came up with is...And I think this came up for me because as we've been reading the Book of Job for our Sunday school lessons, Job's friends turned around and started to blame him, and say, "Well, you must not be living the commandments. You must not be doing it, doing it right, doing life right, doing your spiritual life right." And so we might blame them and say, "Well, you know, it is kind of your own fault because," you know, for whatever reason. 

09:08 

And as I mentioned before, these types of responses are often based in our own discomfort. And because I am uncomfortable watching somebody struggle, I move into these things that can be a quick fix, can be something that, that alleviates my own discomfort. Sometimes these responses are based in our own self-righteous judgment, that they're doing  it wrong, that they're not smart enough to figure it out, that they should have made this other decision earlier and then they wouldn't be in the predicament that they're in. Okay? And so we have all of this stuff that we tend to do that is not mourning with those that mourn. 

09:56 

But I'll tell you what, when people are mourning, it is uncomfortable, and our primitive brain really struggles with being uncomfortable. It struggles with uncertainty. And when someone is mourning, going through a very difficult situation, it is replete with uncertainty because we don't know how it's going to resolve. And sitting with someone, seeking to mourn with someone who is mourning is all about uncertainty because we don't know how it will resolve. And guess what? It's supposed to be uncertain, especially for us. 

10:36 

When we are seeking to mourn with somebody who is mourning, it is uncertain for us because guess what? It is not ours to solve. Their struggle, their grief, their sadness is not for us to fix or to solve. Any struggle that somebody else is going through is not our business. It's not ours to fix. It's not ours to solve. 

11:02 

So if it's not ours to solve, then what does it mean when we say that we need to mourn with them? I believe that it means that we sit and we feel with them. We validate their emotion and their struggle. We listen to what they're saying. Often we might want to make it mean something about us and, and that happens in the space of insecurity that comes with having a struggling sense of self. Okay? We might get offended. We might take it personally. We might make it mean something that it actually doesn't mean. 

11:39 

I know that in my previous marriage, my previous husband would have struggles at work, and he would come home and he would be all riled up and he would speak in a way that, to me, felt very harsh and animated and loud. And I, in my inexperienced youth and my emotional immaturity, I interpreted that as an attack. And so then I would start getting defensive and upset, and I would make it mean something about me when, in all actuality, it probably wasn't an attack. It probably was just his way of processing the challenges that he was experiencing at his work. 

12:21 

Mourning with him, being with him as he processed, would have meant creating a safe space for him to vent, to process all the pieces of what's going on, a safe space for him to figure it out without my judgment, without my insecurities making it about me. Not getting offended by his manner of processing that was different than mine was what I needed to learn at that time, right? I needed to allow him to have his own mode of processing. And also not blaming him for not showing up a certain way with his boss. "Oh, well, you should have done this. You should have done this. You shouldn't have said this. You should..." You know, whatever. Not dismissing his problems, you know? And not jumping in to compare my daily struggle with his. "Oh, yeah, but you wouldn't believe what the kids were doing today," right? I could have very easily done that kind of stuff, and I probably did, right? 

13:21 

But mourning with someone means that I am seeking to understand their struggle, their challenge. I am giving them a safe place to put the pieces of their struggle on the table within the relationship circle, if you remember that podcast. If you haven't, check the show notes, right? But we're gonna give them a safe place to put their pieces on the table so that they can figure it out. And when somebody else puts their stuff on the table, it is not ours to touch. We stand back, we can look at it, and we go, "Oh, wow, that sounds so difficult. That sounds so hard." But we don't touch it. We don't try and fix it. We don't blow it out of proportion. We don't minimize it. We just let their stuff sit there, and we let them figure it out without judgment or shame or blame from us. 

14:16 

Mourning means that I listen carefully to understand the emotions that the other person is experiencing, and then I validate those emotions back to them. "Oh, it makes perfect sense why you're so frustrated with that situation. Wow, that does sound like it was hard to hear. Ooh, I can see why that is so difficult for you. Hmm, sounds like your boss didn't understand the extent of what she was asking you to do." Just kind of four examples. Notice that none of them is trying to fix. None of them is telling them that they're right or wrong. None of them is blowing it off. It's validating their emotion. "It makes sense why you're so frustrated. It sounds like that was difficult to hear." Right? We are helping them know that I am seeing and experiencing your emotion, okay? We're not validating their thoughts or even the circumstance, right?

15:23 

If someone comes in and says, "Oh, my boss is such a jerk," we're not gonna say, "You're right, they are a jerk." We're gonna say, "Wow, it sounds like you had a frustrating experience with them today." Right? Validate the emotions, not the thought or the circumstance. You can validate people that you don't even agree with a little bit because we're not validating their thoughts. We're validating their emotions. We're validating the fact that they are having a human experience that is difficult. We're not saying they're right and that their boss is wrong, 'cause guess what? We have no idea. We can't make those kinds of judgment calls when someone is telling us stuff because we're only getting one side of the story, and that one side is very incomplete. 

16:11 

And even though they may go on and on and on, we are not hearing the full story because what happens when a person experiences something, I like to call it like a 4D experience. They are having feelings and emotions. They're having physical body sensations. Their brain is not only processing what's currently going on, but it is processing it through the filter of their encyclopedia of experience. Everything that has happened to them in their life, every person they have encountered, every idea they have learned, every book they've read, every movie they've seen, all of that creates a filter from, for how they view the circumstance they're currently in. And then when they have to take all of that experience and put it out into the world in a verbal sense, it comes out in a 2D, and I hear that 2D with my ear. That's all I hear, right? 

17:07 

So I cannot understand fully anybody's experience. But here's the fascinating piece, is that if I then was to go talk to this person's boss, I would get a different 4D experience on their part that is communicated to me again in a 2D. Right? They would have a very different story, a very different interpretation. This is what makes life challenging, because we will never fully understand what other people are going through. We will never fully see what's happening. So we are in no place to judge or to decide who is right or who is wrong. So we just kinda have to leave the thoughts to the side and say, "Listen, I have no idea what's going on with those thoughts." We have to learn how to stay in our lane because it is none of our business to figure out whether they are right or whether they are wrong. Our job is just to listen well, to validate the emotions like we've talked about, and to show empathy when appropriate. 

18:18 

So empathy, I know when I was younger I used to think that I had to have gone through the exact same situation in order to show empathy and say, "I know how that can feel." Or I think probably when I was younger, we would say, "I know what that's like because my mom has died too." Right? But Brene Brown helped me understand that empathy doesn't mean that I've had to have the exact same situation, 'cause none of us ever have. My mother dying would impact me in a very different way, and it probably did, than your mother dying because of our history, because of our relationship, because of how complicated or uncomplicated it was. 

19:04 

So empathy is just saying, "Wow, you know, I know it's so difficult when your mom dies." You know? Or like, I haven't had a sibling die yet, thank goodness, right? But being able to, you know, if I have a friend who has a sibling that dies, I don't know what it's like to have a sibling that died, but I do know what it's like to lose someone very close to you, as both of my parents have already died. So rather than saying, "I know how you feel," being able to say something empathetic like, "It is so hard when somebody that you love passes," you know, that is the empathy. We're tapping into a similar emotion, not the same experience. So we don't know how they feel, but we can identify a similar emotion. 

19:55 

And in that showing empathy, we're also not going to tell a three-minute story. Like, if I'm talking to a friend whose, whose mother or sibling or someone close to them has just died, I'm not gonna go in and talk all about how my mom died or how my dad died and how it impacted me. I'm not gonna go into this big, long story. I'm just gonna say a sentence or two just to say, "I get it. This is tough. It's really hard when people close to you die, and you miss them a lot." That's all we need to do to empathize, right? 

20:35 

So we understand when we are seeking to mourn with those that mourn, we understand that this is theirs to process. It is theirs to understand. It is theirs to figure out. And people do not share these types of things with us because they want us to fix it or because they want us to judge them. People share their things that they're going through because they want to connect with us, and that connection can create a deeper intimacy within the context of our relationship. 

21:08 

So John Gottman talks a lot about how people make these bids for connection. So a bid for connection is any time that we reach out to share something or to interact with someone in a way that will create a greater connection. And he says that these bids for connections, they create sliding door moments. That means that the door opens up, and there's a short amount of time that we get to walk through that door to connect with them. And if I walk through, I do connect, but if I don't like walk through, it's like closing the door. I shut down the bid for connection. 

21:46 

So we make these bids by telling people that, "Oh yeah, this is going on in my life." And we have a moment to say, "Okay, do I slow down my life enough to step into this with them, to validate their emotions, to listen to them, to just mourn with them? Or do I shut it down by judging them or trying to fix it or dismissing them?" These are great opportunities to create a greater, deeper friendship and intimacy. It's a time that we say, "I see you, I hear you, I support you." 

22:28 

I have a podcast you can find in the show notes talking about why our marriages need validation, and it's because it does this very thing. When we feel seen and heard and supported by our spouse, then we feel connected, we feel understood, we feel safe, and that creates greater intimacy. And this is, this is what happens. I, when I used to teach school, there was a great person that I worked with for a lot of years, and we worked in parallel departments, but we didn't work closely together. So I didn't know her very well for probably the first three or four years that she worked there. 

23:08 

And then we got put in the same department. We both ended up teaching remedial reading. She did the seventh graders, and I did the eighth graders. And so we started working together every single day. We saw each other, and we talked. And it's interesting that, you know, you just kind of talk. You get to know each other. And then one day, one of us, I don't even remember how this worked out, but one of us shared something that we were struggling with, something that we either had gone through or were going through, and the other person showed up to mourn with them, and that created trust. It created a deeper friendship. 

23:46 

And then the next time we met somebody else, the other person feels like they can share something, too. And then over the course of the years that we worked together, we became very good friends, and we knew each other's lives pretty well. And we knew the struggles and the difficulties because of this place where we had chosen to mourn with each other. 

24:07 

So this is what creates this connection, is being able to create this safe space, being able to see and hear the other person, right? So people put their stuff on the table, not for us to fix or judge or rearrange. They put it on so that we can know them at a deeper level. And what this does is this allows us to practice honoring their agency. Remember, their struggles are in their lane. They are not in our lane. Their struggles are not ours to fix. 

24:46 

Now, we can stand at the side of our lane and we can cheer them on and we can support them the best that we can. That is what my lane next to theirs is meant to do. Okay? My lane determines how I can best support them, and I don't step into their lane to fix it. And even if they try and pull me by the arm and say, "Come over here and take care of this for me," we go, "Nope, nope, not mine to fix." Right? My lane, my responsibility, is to determine how can I best support them in this? And we get to watch ourselves, and we're all gonna have experiences where we show up really amazing, and we're all gonna have experiences where we show up really, really crappy. 

25:33 

Alright. This is what it means to be a human. But we get to look at these ways that we respond. These are where our own personal gold nuggets are. How do I respond when people reach out? This is great personal insight for us. If I jump in and try to fix their problem, why is that? And what is that fixing trying to teach me about myself? If I dismiss them and tell them that it'll all work out and not to worry about it, why is that? What am I uncomfortable with? What does that teach me about myself? And this is the greatest blessing of having people in our lives, is this place of self-discovery that we get to engage in on a regular basis whenever we interact with people in our lives, especially when those interactions feel a little bit uncomfortable. Do I self-confront when I don't show up mourning, but rather when I show up judging or dismissing or fixing? Do I seek to understand what's behind my behaviors? Why did I jump in and tell that story for five minutes? Why did I blow them off and change the subject? Why did I try and fix this for them? 

27:00 

Because if we can dig deeper... This is the work that I do, actually, with my clients. When we see these maladaptions, these things that we do that are not in alignment with the way we want to be, when I notice that I jump in and get judge-y or I jump in and try and fix things, right? This is where we take it in our coaching sessions and we break it down and we're like, "Well, let's figure out why. What's going on behind it?" Very often there are sense of self struggles going on. There's discomfort with feeling emotion. And so we work through that so that we can really see- come to understand what is going on inside of me that is keeping me from truly being able to mourn with those that mourn? What thoughts and feelings am I have that are causing this dismissal, this fixing, this judging, all of those things? What's going on inside of me, and how do I clean that up so that I can live more in alignment with the compassionate, Christlike values that I hold dear to my heart? 

28:17 

This is the work that propels us forward. This is what grows us into our next best version. This is what deepens our ability to connect with others, this ability to self-confront, to show up in a more beautiful and loving, compassionate, and kind way. And mourning with those that mourn is a really great opportunity for us to watch ourselves, to watch ourselves show up and, and to say, "Is this what I like? Is this how I want to be with these people?" And if we can really learn to listen to other people, to validate their emotions, and to show empathy, and to just sit with them, give them a safe space to struggle, we will have deeper and more beautiful relationships for sure. 

29:26 

Okay, that's gonna do it for me today. If you want to do some of this work with me, I'll tell you what, it is capital W work. It takes time and effort and money and a lot of personal angst to see our crap and to work through it. And I know that's not a hard sell for some of you, 'cause some of you are like, "Ugh, then I don't wanna do it." But let me tell you this: it is the most valuable and meaningful work you will ever do in your entire life. I feel like my ability to be more Christlike has multiplied many, many, many times over through this work that I get to engage in. 

30:06 

Thank you for being here. I love you. I love that you are willing to step into the difficulty of creating a better life for yourself. It's hard work, and there's a lot of people who are not ready and prepared to do it, and for good reason, right? People have all kinds of different reasons, but when you are ready, and if you need some help, go to tanyaahhill.com, click on the, um, free consultation button, get on my calendar, and let's get some work done. 

30:40 

Let's really start showing up in a way that feels amazing, 'cause I'll tell you what, you've probably got another, what, 20, 30, 40 years left in life. Can you imagine being able to show up having cleaned all this up? Right? You can keep living in the dysfunction of hurtful and unkind and unconscious behaviors, or you can start figuring it out and showing up more intentionally to live the kind of life you wanna be, to, to show up in relationships the way that you really want to. That's what this work is all about. Okay. I love you, my friends. Thanks again for being here. I hope you all have a really, really amazing day, and I will see you next time. Bye. 

31:30 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "Weekend Win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.