See You In The AM:
A Mental Health Podcast
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Episode: Understanding Grief with Nesreen Ahmed
Show Notes
"I would just encourage people to continue to fight that fight, so to speak and stand up for and really prioritize what's most important to them. Because at the end of the day, we all get one life. We don't know what's gonna happen. We don't know what's coming. And if we compromise on the most important things then what are we doing with our time here?"
In today's episode, we will be discussing grief with Aspyn Coach Nesreen Ahmed. Nesreen is a professional certified coach and a certified grief educator with a focus on helping clients find peace after loss, divorce, or illness.
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Transcript
Allie Nickle:
Hello, and welcome to the See You in the AM podcast, where we explore the many facets of mental health and wellness, share our personal experiences, interview mental health experts, and offer practical tips and resources to help you prioritize your mental wellness. I'm your co-host, Allie Nickle from Aspyn Market, and I'm joined by my friend, business partner and founder of Aspyn Market Wynter Johnson. We know there are a lot of mental health resources out there and it's overwhelming to find the right resources that fit your needs, time and budget. So we're here to help. In each episode, we'll talk with one of Aspyn Market's mental health experts, and dig into a mental health topic that we know so many of us struggle with. In today's episode, we'll discuss grief with Coach Nesreen Ahmed. Nesreen is a professional, certified coach and a certified grief educator with a focus on helping clients find peace after lost divorce or illness. Hi Nesreen, and thanks so much for joining us.
Nesreen Ahmed:
Hello. Thank you so much for having me.
Allie Nickle:
We are so excited. I know I've watched so many of your sessions in Aspyn Coaching and we've just really talked about a lot of it. And I know grief is so huge and especially right now after the pandemic and everything, so we are just excited to hear what all you have to say. So to get started off, can you tell us a little bit about you and your background?
Nesreen Ahmed:
Sure. It's funny I never, anticipated going into grief. It was never like a subject when I was younger that I was like, oh, let's do that. It was something that as a result of my own loss I slowly worked my way into so almost 10 years ago my sister passed away very suddenly. She's my older sister. And And I was very lucky. Up until that point, nobody in my family, my immediate family had passed away. And I hadn't dealt with a lot of loss in general, or a lot of loss related to death. And so when she died, it was very traumatic for me and I spent a long time trying to figure out how to just deal with the grief that I was feeling and spent a lot of time not dealing with it, especially in the beginning. And over time, I was living in San Francisco at that time. I moved back to New York. Over time, I started to get into coaching and went into a year-long training program specifically for life and business executive coaching, that kind of thing. Had nothing to do with grief. I didn't even know at that point that grief coaching existed. But it was a few months into the program where I I talked to somebody about how I was grieving and how I was feeling and feeling, just very stuck in my grief still. And that was probably about almost two years, around two years after she had passed. And she mentioned that she had just met a grief coach and would I want to meet this woman? And I was like, I didn't know that was a thing. Tell me more about grief coaching and how does it work? And I'd seen a lot of or experienced a lot of success through the coaching that I was already doing through the program. So I was very interested but also very nervous. And eventually I did call her up and eventually we did work together. And that was the Kinda the introduction for me into grief coaching and what it could be and how it could be effective and when somebody could think about working with a grief coach versus a counselor or a therapist. And and so yeah, so I ended up getting trained and really focusing my attention on grief.
Allie Nickle:
That's amazing. There's so much that I think a grief coach or a grief counselor could do. And one, I'm sorry for your loss for your sister I can't even imagine. That must have been quite the process, and I'm so glad that you found the help that you needed. And it does take time. There's always, it's always a huge process to work through anything like that. So I'm glad that worked out and you're here today. So I know one of the main, or one of the first sessions you submitted for Aspyn Coaching and one that I've watched and we've promoted a lot is Grief Defined. And I know there's a lot of misconceptions about what grief actually is. Usually when you hear it, you think of it as it's due to death or some type of loss, but can you talk a little more about what grief does entail.
Nesreen Ahmed:
Yeah, absolutely. There's so many different things. I think the last count was like over 65 different events in life that can cause grief. There's so many different kinds, like divorce for sure, loss of health or wellbeing, loss of safety. We don't always talk about that, but, the world feels unsafe, right? If certain people feel unsafe in a relationship, Finding out you were adopted causes grief. Having a baby can cause or getting married can cause grief financial instability. I'm sure a lot of us right now are feeling that and the grief from that. So many different things that we experience on a day-to-day even moving, you don't think about moving necessarily as something that could cause grief, but I personally experienced it many times when I move, from city to city and job changes, ending your career, starting a new career. There's so many different things. It's not just somebody dies, right? Actually the sort of the broadest term or broadest definition of grief that I've come across that I often use is it's the, basically grief occurs when there's a change or an end in a certain pattern in your life. So it's very simply that it's like some kind of pattern changes or ends and there's grief involved. Some, and again, it could be lowercase grief or capital G grief.
Allie Nickle:
So a question for you about that. I'm a mom to a three year old who I think is about to barge in here actually. And I can completely relate to the thought of grieving when you become a mom going through an identity change, going through, figuring out, going back to work, what does that look like? How does your life change in everything? How many clients or people do you talk to that realize that is a stage of grief, and do you help a lot of people through that? Or is it more, do you see more people processing the death of a loved one or something like that? I guess the question I'm trying to get at is, as somebody, in my situation as a new mom trying to figure it out, would you recommend going to see a grief coach or what would you recommend for them to do?
Nesreen Ahmed:
So I'll answer the first question first and then I'll answer the second question. Unfortunately, no, I don't think that most people, especially mothers, especially women I don't think, and I'm also a new mom. My, my daughter turned three last week. And I also didn't realize that I'd be grieving in the way that I'd be grieving. And still in a way am, I mean my daughter's amazing and I adore her. And I very often think about how much easier life was before I became a mother. Not better, but yes, super easier. Wow, what a difference. And there's different things that we give up. There's a lot of things that we have to give up and our priorities changes, and there's this whole paradigm shift, and it's really unfortunate that women don't recognize, we talk a lot about postpartum, right? Postpartum depression and the side effects of that. But we don't really go into the deeper, there's some core things that change and yes, the grief that's associated with that. So unfortunately I don't work with a lot of women who are going through that. Most people I'm seeing are, it's a, it's usually either a divorce or a death. Those are the two sort of biggest things. But I have a lot of clients who are also going through career transition right now and layoffs and all kinds of things that are really impacting them. And yes. The second question. Yes, definitely. I think a grief coach would be the best person to see in becoming a new mother because a grief counselor is more there to help you through. And I don't wanna say they're just there to help through loss around death. But often that's the core of their training. And they're not always gonna be looking to help you long term how to rearrange your life, how to integrate all these different losses and move forward with a plan. And that's a lot of what a grief coach is here to help you do. It's about to talk about the loss, of course, and to process that, but also to think about how do we now live with this? How do we integrate this? How does this become part of our lives and how do we create a life that sustains the loss, but also sustains and invites more joy and more ease and more connection, and so I think it'd be yeah. I think a grief coach is wonderful for so many different reasons and different life events. But particularly when it comes to the change in the complete change in life when having a child, I think a grief coach could be really helpful.
Allie Nickle:
I love that. And I love the mindset around, okay, processing the grief, but then figuring out how to move forward and find the joy and everything. I. I think that's right on. And I have find the joy right here on a sticky note on my desk. So that resonates with me a lot. One of the things I wanna tag onto that you said is career transition. I know there's so many huge layoffs going on right now, and that is a huge one, and that is a very big grieving process that a lot of people are going through. What advice do you have for anybody listening right now that is going through that or has gone through that recently?
Nesreen Ahmed:
The first thing is to know that it's not personal. I think especially when it comes to losing your job, it's what did I do wrong? What? Like, why wasn't I good enough? Like there's that internal reaction of You are not good enough, right? When you get laid off and it has nothing to do with you. I'm sure you're fantastic at your job, even if you weren't fantastic at your job. A lot of times it's not personal. A lot of times it's just about numbers. It's just about, getting to a certain a certain amount of people, a certain amount of revenue, right? Like it's it really is not personal. And so I think really trying to take the personal affront or insult that you might feel, take that out of the equation because that will have an impact on how you do your job search. It'll have an impact on every interview you do, what you apply for. It can ripple right into so many different areas of our lives. And so really making sure that you don't take it personally recognizing that this is just a very challenging time in life. And I mean that not in just in our own personal lives, but as a community, as a country, as a world, right? We are going through some huge trauma and change and just this complete upset of everything that we've known for most of our lives. In addition to all of the craziness and the chaos of our own personal lives changing, right? Having a child in the middle of a pandemic. Crazy. You know what I mean? Not having a child and being in the middle of a pandemic. Crazy. And so just recognizing that this is a very trying time. And so there's a lot of people that yes are gonna be looking for work, right? There's gonna be a lot more competition than there used to be. You may not get the kind of responses that you may have gotten in the past. You might be looking for a job where you're, you are position is not quite what it was, right? You might have to look for a more entry level position, take a pay cut, right? So having to just recognize, life is what it is right now. It's not always gonna be this way but it is what it is right now. And so really trying to figure out for yourself, a, how can I take care of myself, right? How can I make sure that my mental, emotional, physical wellbeing, my spiritual wellbeing, it's all handled, it's all, a non-negotiable and then starting to make some real choices, asking yourself some real important questions about what are my compromises? What am I willing to compromise? Is it gonna be that, okay, I'll make a little bit less, but I'm gonna join a really great company. Or am I gonna wait until I find something really good that fits me and I want that position, even though it might be harder to find, it might be harder to get right. And so really starting to ask yourself, having conversations with your spouse, with your family, figuring out what's gonna work for you. Some people it's I just need a job today. I just need to put some. Food on the table. I need to pay the bills, we gotta keep the lights on. I don't care what it is, I'm gonna go do anything. And other people have a little bit more of a leeway, have more savings, have more opportunity to say, you know what? I'm gonna, I'm gonna hold out until I find something that's really, that really makes sense for me at this point. So I think, you have to have some hard conversations with yourself and with your family to make the choice that makes the most sense for you. But just knowing that it's not about you. And it, it is just a difficult time in life right now. It's a difficult time in our world right now. And so it might be that much more difficult to find the job that really, that you want and would love.
Allie Nickle:
What do you think, do you see patterns in stuff like this? Between covid and layoffs and everything? What can we expect from emotional response and trauma in the years to come? Are there patterns that you've seen after the pandemic and through different stages of life like this that people can expect or that you would expect to see in terms of how people process things, work through things? What comes next?
Nesreen Ahmed:
Oh my God, I wish, like I had a crystal ball, that I could answer that question better. I wish, I wanna know what's coming so much just for my own personal sanity. I think that more and more people, first of all, are starting to talk about trauma and what it is, how it's defined, how it lives within us, and how it impacts us. But I don't think it's happening on the sort of global scale that we've experienced. Do you know what I mean? I think people are talking about trauma on a more individual level still, and I think there needs to be a larger conversation about what's happened to us and how to start to heal from that as a collective. What I can see is also more of a, and this happens a lot in grief, where people are starting to really be like, okay, this huge thing has happened and now I want to step back and reassess. Am I in the right career? Do I need to stay in this job that does not care about me, is not paying enough, doesn't have any boundaries in terms or doesn't respect my boundaries in terms of when I can work or where I can work. You know what I mean? People have definitely started to make some serious, changes and, and reassess like what's really important, right? I, my fear is that will not continue. My fear is that people will slide back into this is just the way it's been, this is the way it is. I can't change it, or I'm not getting the changes that I wanna see, and therefore they give that up. And so if anything, I would just encourage people to continue to fight that fight, so to speak and stand up for and really prioritize what's most important to them. Because at the end of the day, we all get one life. We don't know what's gonna happen. We don't know what's coming. And if we compromise on the most important things then what are we doing with our time here?
Wynter Johnson:
Nesreen, it's interesting you mentioned sliding back into the way things work and after the pandemic it's been really interesting on there was a lot of energy around these changes and new challenges and there was some, it felt like opportunity. And then I feel like we slid back into this stage of like collective grief right now where you have a lot of people, Allie and I talk all the time about it feels like everyone around us is just having a really rough time right now. And how do you recommend as a grief coach when you're grieving on your own, your friends and family are grieving, but everyone else is grieving around you. What do you do to Pull yourself out of that. It, because it can be really hard to not just fall into it with everyone else.
Nesreen Ahmed:
I, I I don't think it's one thing for one person but to, to generalize a little bit I think it is about going back to what Allie mentioned, like that post-it note of just like finding joy. I think we have to take the really little. Incredible moments that we experience that sometimes we don't even recognize and try to enhance those or highlight them. So for instance, like my daughter just turned three and I'm like, oh my God, she's the best thing ever. And it like, I feel grief cuz I'm like, stop getting older. Can you please just stop? Stop getting taller. I want you to be this way forever. Not forever, but for a little longer. Agreed. And I just have so much fun with her and I find myself at times. Because I'm with her a lot. I find myself at times on the phone and not paying attention to her, and I'm like what am I doing? What's more important? You know what I mean? And so trying to be more present, trying to be more in the moment and appreciate and enjoy what I have the gratitude for what I have. It's those things that I find are really helpful for me. But also recognizing that Sometimes I as, and I've been saying this, as you both know, I've been grieving recently and I've been saying, f life right now. I'm just in a place where I'm like, f you life. I don't want to care. I don't care. I'm not here for that right now. And giving myself permission to do that and to say that, like I don't have to be all in on everything right now. I don't have to be gung-ho and passionate and loving everything. Like it's okay that it sucks. This is a time of suffering right now for me and for a lot of us, and I think so many of us think that we have to be positive all the time, or think that negative thoughts or negative emotions are bad and we can't have them, and we should push them away. And we don't wanna be that like Debbie Downer. And it's I'm not saying stay there forever, but also give yourself time and permission to be there. Give yourself the permission to say, this is a really difficult time and I'm struggling. It doesn't mean we're gonna be here forever collectively. It doesn't mean we're gonna be here forever personally. But if we're having a difficult time right now, one of the worst things we can do is try to pretend that everything's fine and resist the fact that we're struggling. I. If we try to ignore it, it's not going away. It's not gonna get better. It is about giving ourselves that space and giving ourselves the time to heal and recognizing sometimes we don't wanna heal, we're not ready for it. You know what I mean? Or sometimes we'll be ready and sometimes we won't. And it's that ebb and flow and just taking it one day at a time.
Wynter Johnson:
I love the idea of saying, F you life, because I feel like we all get the message of, but you should be grateful. You should have a gratitude journal. You should have your three things every day that you're grateful for, that'll pull you out of this. And sometimes it is okay to say, F you life. I'll get back to the gratitude another time like, and not that we're not still grateful for what we have, but it's okay to just say, this is not my moment.
Nesreen Ahmed:
Yeah. And I think most people don't, again, don't f to give her, give themselves permission to do that. It's again, these, oh, I can't be angry. Angry is bad. Or being sad. Ugh, being sad is the worst. Like I had a client tell me a while back sadness is the worst emotion because you don't do anything. At least anger motivates her. It pushes her, it gets her to take action. Sadness, she's just weak. And I'm like, woo. I do not see sadness as a weakness. I do not see sadness as a weakness.
Wynter Johnson:
How do you see sadness?
Nesreen Ahmed:
I see it as a power. If you can learn to endure sadness and true grief, ooh, that's power, that's strength. That's something not everybody has and not something that you can learn, right? You gotta go through it, but once you do, you can be invincible. There's so many different things you can do with that energy. With that healing. And I think it sadness has gotten a really bad rap over the years. It reminds me of that Pixar movie with sadness.
Allie Nickle:
I was just gonna say, this is all Inside Out. That movie is so powerful for the same reasons that you're talking about right now. So how do you get to a point where you can embrace sadness like that?
Nesreen Ahmed:
I think it's a step by step process. Again, I think it's being willing to go into your grief and face it and be in it. I Dr. Alan Wolfelt is a really renowned grief expert, and one of the things he talks about is the wilderness of grief and this rawness that the rawness of the soul. And most of us never allow ourselves to go there, or we're forced to go there, by our, by the intensity of our emotions for a few minutes. But I think with practice, with time, with support, with trust in yourself, that if you go there for a minute, you'll still be okay. I think there's that practice and that, that willingness to be fully in it, right? To fully feel just the depth of pain and hurt and rawness and. Come back out and then, move on with the rest of your day, depending on what time of day it is. But learning how to do that consistently and effectively I think that's where you learn that it's okay to be sad. It's not gonna crush me. It's okay to have grief. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna buckle under the weight of it. I will be able to move through this and it will require a lot of me. I am very clear with anybody that I work with that this is not an easy process. This is definitely not an easy process. It requires a lot of you. But it's not it doesn't require so much that you can't do it.
Wynter Johnson:
It's not an easy process and you have to work through it. You have to move through it, and there's this misconception that time heals all wounds. If you just give a time, it's gonna go away. And I know personally from grief that's not true. Time sometimes can make it even harder as you get further and further away. How do you, what do you tell people who are not experiencing that relief over time or, it's feeling worse over time. How do you address that with people you work with?
Nesreen Ahmed:
I say, of course. Of course that's happening. Why wouldn't it happen? It's like the idea, in my training way back when they talked about the idea of if you got a broken arm, would you just give it time? Are you just trying to let time you heal your broken bone? You know what I mean? Don't you go to the doctor, don't you get a cast? Don't afterwards, you do some sort of physical therapy, aren't you doing some work to be able to heal that injury? So why wouldn't we do that for our broken hearts? Why wouldn't we do the work? Why wouldn't we think about what kinds of things and tools and resources are available to be able to heal? And the unfortunate thing is that there are so many just flat out wrong cliches in our society about what happens when somebody dies and what we have to say to somebody, oh, you're so strong. Just give it time. He's in a better place. At least you had so much time with her. All these things that are incredibly insulting and again, flat out wrong. They're just wrong. Time does not heal. Time might reduce the intensity of your emotion, of your grief, of the pain, but it's not like you're like gonna wake up in 10 years and be like, I'm healed. I don't have grief anymore. Woohoo. I could go back to living. It just, it doesn't work that way, you have to be able to, you have to learn how to deal with it. You have to learn how to live with it. You have to learn how to heal from it, and you have to learn how to integrate it. It's just the, that's just the fact and I think Yeah, there's a lot of things cause we don't know what to say. We see somebody in pain and we're like, I don't want you to be in pain. I'm so sorry. But we don't feel comfortable saying anything other than the cliches. And so they're just perpetuated. And so people end up thinking that, okay, I just need to repress this or put it off to the side. I'm gonna compartmentalize and eventually I'll be okay. And I mean I have worked with a number of people who's who've experienced loss. Eight years ago, 10 years ago, I actually just had a client who told me her mother passed away in 2012 and she still got teary when she talked about her mother. You know what I mean? Like it, it's not that she was feeling the same level of grief. No, but she was still very emotional and that's because there's a lot of unresolved grief that she hasn't dealt with. And that's okay. Not everybody can deal with it right away. Sometimes that's not the right time, but The idea that, again, like we can just pretend it didn't happen or compartmentalize it and be fine is really a fallacy that I I, oh, have a, a hard time, not railing against and not preaching about every chance I get.
Allie Nickle:
One of the most powerful statements I have reminded myself of, I don't even know how many times when it comes to grief, is you don't move on, you just move forward. And I've had to remind myself of that. I have a good friend who lost her husband to cancer, and it's that same kind of thing is when you talk to her, you just want her to be happy. But that's not her reality. She's taking care of her daughter, she's living life, but whenever I talk to her, I have to remind myself she can't move on, but she's moving forward and support her through that phase versus expecting her to just not be sad about it anymore.
Nesreen Ahmed:
She may never not be sad about it. Even if she gets remarried, even if she, finds joy, finds love, has a completely different life than she does right now. There, there will always be some part of her that misses her husband. There'll be always some part of her that, is sad. Like I, and again, sadness doesn't have to be something that, something bad and wrong and that we have to avoid. It's okay that she'll be sad and it, and it's okay that she'll find joy again too.
Wynter Johnson:
And she'll never be that person that she was before. Once you experience something like that, It fundamentally changes who you are, how you perceive things, what you know, just everything changes. Yeah. Yeah, it does. Nesreen, you mentioned the cliches and things people say, and as someone who often struggles with, what do I say to someone who's grieving? Do you have advice on what people can say to friends and family who we know we're going through a hard time?
Nesreen Ahmed:
Yes, I have the best advice Wynter. I'm kidding. I, depending on the relationship you have with the person, how well you know them. And depending on who you wanna be for them in their grief, I often tell people, be very honest and say, I don't know what to say to you. I'm so afraid of saying the wrong thing. And I want you to know I love you, and I'm here for you, and I want to support you. So if I do say the wrong thing, please tell me. Help me understand how to better support you. Please know that it's not out of malice, it's ignorance and I want to be a safe space. Just saying that is huge. Huge. Cuz nobody says that, right? You think about the times where you've gone through grief. Has anybody ever said anything like that? Like it's so rare. No. And I think just being honest and transparent and saying, I don't know what to say, but I love you and I'm here for you. Like even that, if I said it to me, I'd be like, give me a hug. That's amazing. You know what I mean? And I think the, I'm so sorry for your loss or just give it time or if you need anything. Like those are all well-meaning, but it's still It either puts the onus on the other person to like then reach out to you while they're also grieving and it's struggling just to get, struggling to get through the day. Or it's I'm so sorry if you're lost it, it's a little empty, right? You hear that and you're like, oh, that's nice. What am I supposed to do with that? You know what I mean? And so being really heartfelt and honest and letting them know if it's three in the morning and you need something, call me. I'm gonna come over next week and I'm gonna make you dinner. I'm gonna clean the, clean up the house, or I'm gonna take the kids out for you. So you can have a, an afternoon off, whatever it is that you can do sometimes without, without being prompted. You're just gonna be like, okay, so Saturday we're gonna, we're gonna go for a walk. Is that all right? Or do you have plans? What, okay, can we do it Sunday? You know, And like, I think doing certain, sometimes it's showing up and doing, and sometimes it's just saying, I don't know what to say, but I want you to know my heart is with you and I love you. I hate that question.
Wynter Johnson:
What do you need? Or what can I do for you when you're going through a hard time? Because 99% of the time, I know I need something, but I don't know what. And so just showing up and like you said, going for a walk or taking the kids or, I recently was going through a rough time and a friend just sent me a gift card for a GrubHub. It didn't have to be a coordinated dinner, it didn't have to, it was my term, my my time. But just the thought of, I'm here for you. I don't know what, but here's a way you can take care of yourself. I, it's really thoughtful and hopeful.
Nesreen Ahmed:
And most people, especially when you've gone through a loss, like your life has completely changed. You've lost somebody in your core world, you have no idea what you need, right? Or what you need is that person who just died. I. So it's like, how can I ask you to get me dinner? Like I don't care about dinner. You know what I mean? So it's like the, what do you need can be really tricky and challenging. And I often tell people, instead of saying that, just say, okay, I'm gonna bring some lasagna. You can freeze it. You can have it whenever you want. I'm gonna send GrubHub. I have a client who was we were talking and I was like, do you think he, is he eating well? And and she's I don't think so. And it was a friend of hers that she wanted to support and we were like, okay, what if you get him a subscription box? What if you just get a meal sent to his house every day for the month or whatever it is, and stuff like that. There's so many different. Resources out there, and technology has made life so easy in a way. But it's these little things that we don't think about, and how to help people who at times really don't know how to help themselves.
Wynter Johnson:
It's so important and just to recognize ways and, we're, I'm very fortunate. Hopefully everyone has those people who know how to help, how to step in and help you when you don't know how you need the help.
Nesreen Ahmed:
And I also tell grievers learn to ask, sometimes it's about asking for things and sometimes it's asking for support. Like god bless my husband. I adore him. I adore him, and he is the worst at supporting me when I'm grieving. He does not know how to just let me grieve and how to be sad and how to cry on his shoulder. Like he doesn't. He, it makes him so uncomfortable and he just wants to fix it, and he wants me to feel better and he doesn't want me to dwell on things and it's just like we have such different approaches to grief. And he just doesn't have the capacity. And it's not that I haven't asked, I've, we've had many conversations recently about what I need and what grief looks like for me and how it might be different than him. And it's just that he just doesn't know how, he doesn't have, he is learning slowly learning. And, I have to forgive him for that. It's not that he's not trying, it's not that he doesn't love me or doesn't care, it's just that he just doesn't know how, but at least I've put it out there. At least I'm helping train him. I'm helping him learn what it is that I need and what happens for me, and we have to accept that we're just different people and have different responses and our have different levels of comfort. I've learned, I've had to learn as a grief coach, I've had to learn how to be with people who are in pain. He has never had to do that. It's not something that he runs into in his daily life, nor does he want to, and so I think it's about us as grievers being able to say, here's what I need right now. I really need a shoulder to cry on. I really need you to just come sit with me while I'm in this awful place. I need you to distract me. I need kids. I need my kids to eat and I can't make dinner. But it's also about, Understanding that not everybody's gonna be able to fulfill those needs. And so sometimes you might ask and you might not get. And so it's about having the patience and compassion for the people in your life who even though they wanna help, may not be able to.
Allie Nickle:
That is huge, and I feel like that is one factor of walls being built between relationships. I can think of a couple different relationships already just off the top of my head where someone was grieving, the other person didn't know how to help, and it caused a lot of tension between the two of them because it was, you weren't there to help me, you weren't there to support me, and it was, I didn't know how So beyond being able to, one, recognize that and build that awareness of they're trying, they don't know what to do, and knowing to ask for or tell them what you need what other things can you say if you're the griever and say, I know you don't know how to help me, here's what I need. What else can people do in that situation?
Nesreen Ahmed:
I often say, if you're not gonna be able to get the support you need from the person you're asking, ask other people. Look for professionals, look for support groups. Like there are so many, especially now, there's so many different resources online available, so many different support groups that are being run on virtually right now. And I think it's important to try as much as you can to get what you need, but if you can't get it from your person that you're asking, seek it from somewhere else. Sometimes it's also about giving it to ourselves, right? Like sometimes it's I need a break. Okay, if the person you're asking is not able to give you a break, you get to take a break, right? Like you get to how to force the issue if you need to. For example sometimes I'm like, I need to go hide in the bathroom. My husband puts my daughter to sleep cuz she wants me. I can't always do it. And I'm like, honey, this is one of those moments where, You know I have to force the issue. I need the break. I need the mental break. And I don't wanna be responsible for this. So now it's on him, even though he's tired and he doesn't wanna do it either, right? So sometimes it's about forcing the issue if you can and giving yourself what you need. If you can't get it from someone else, right? So it might be that I have to face the wilderness and the rawness alone. This time around, it might be that I have to go find support from somebody else to be there with me. It might be that I need to take a break. And my I'm gonna have a conversation with my boss or my manager and let them know I need a few days. I might be with my husband or my wife, my spouse, my significant other, whatever it is, whoever it is. It might be with my kid, if they're old enough, it's like, all right, you're gonna, you're gonna, mommy's gonna take a little break and you're gonna be here, playing with your toys, or why don't you color for a little bit while I go do something else? And whatever it is, so that you can make sure to as much as you can, to get your needs met without putting anybody in danger, without sacrificing anything, but also not sacrificing yourself. I think very often it's, particularly for women, we're willing to put ourselves last even when we're grieving, it's like we have a life to maintain. It's like we can't just stop, and not take care of our kids, cuz who's gonna run the house, right? Who's gonna, who's gonna take care of these kids? If it's not my husband, right? Or it's not my husband as much as I want it to be, maybe, and when we consistently put ourselves last and then we're grieving, it's even easier to try to ignore ourselves cuz it's hard to be with grief and it's hard to be It's hard to make so many changes at once, right? If you're already at a, reduced capacity and you start asking for what you need and people say no, because they're used to you doing everything, then it's gonna be even more disappointing, right? And we just don't we can't deal with that with another loss or another frustration. So I think it's, baby stepping and trying to get our needs met and putting ourselves first, even if we're not, if the people around us and we are not used to that.
Wynter Johnson:
You know what's so interesting about that is I'm a little like your husband. I'm a fixer. And when I see people hurting, I want to, yeah, I want, I just, my heart hurts. I wanna make it better for them. I want to help them. And recently I was grieving in a situation and a friend of mine said, listen, I'm a hundred percent here for you. I will support you. I will do whatever you need but I've never been through this and I don't understand it. Is there someone you know who you can talk to who has a better understanding? And for a minute I thought, that hurts. And then I thought, no that's wonderful because they're not trying to support me in a way they aren't able to. And it made me think about how can I best support people, which is sometimes maybe not supporting them to the fullest extent, which it sounds even saying that, it sounds hard to say, but I thought that's a really interesting way to help someone grieve by saying, I'm not the right person to help you grieve. Which is just really a unique perspective and very different, but maybe something that I know I'm gonna look at more.
Nesreen Ahmed:
I would be a little bit cautious about that because if your friend is I love you and I wanna support you, sometimes that's enough. She doesn't have to have experienced exactly what you're experiencing, because your grief might be very different than her grief anyway. If you've gone through a loss, so let's say you, choose anybody really important to you, but let's say you lost a cousin and your friend lost a cousin. You might have a very different relationship with your cousin. You might have a very different relationship with grief. You might be, other grief might be surfacing for you that aren't surfacing for her. So your grief is gonna be your grief and your journey of grief and how you experience it and what you go through is gonna be very different. You know what I mean? Certainly there are some similarities. There are some commonalities. There are definitely I know a number of people going through divorce, they're struggling with figuring out how to co-parent and dealing with, animosity between them and their ex. So certainly there are some things that, yes, it is really nice to get advice. It's really nice to hear how other people have handled it, but that doesn't mean that your friend can't still support you. Do you know what I'm saying?
Wynter Johnson:
That's true. We all grieve so differently.
Nesreen Ahmed:
So I think it's a little bit of both. It's a both and where it's like you can still support me, still be here for me. I love you. I need you. And you're right. Maybe there are other places where I can also get support and I can get a different level or a different perspective on what I'm going through right now.
Wynter Johnson:
I think my last question is, I love your session on the different types of grief that you have in the Aspyn Coaching app, and one of the things that hit me that I think sometimes we feel that I don't think I really understood until I heard you talk about defining it, is grief from positive things. And the biggest thing I can think of is Allie and I set out to launch Aspyn Coaching. And we have new jobs and new day-to-day and new relationships and it's amazing. But there are moments of grief for the old life. In our old worlds, our old, how do you work through positive grief? Is that what you even call it? I don't even know how you'd refer to that.
Nesreen Ahmed:
Yeah. It's what Allie and I started with motherhood. Like it's this wonderful, amazing, rewarding thing that also is like, what, and it's it is, there there's a lot of grief in change, because we as humans are not built to embrace change. Our brains want stability. They want routine, they want it as easy as possible to exist. That's just a fact of Of how our minds work. And so when we start to make changes and particularly big changes, we are gonna have some level of dissonance. You know what I mean? Like between oh, this is really good and I'm really excited about this. And also but this old thing that I used to do was so much easier or so much better. There was more stability or there was more this, there was more that I missed that part of it. And I think it's A, I wanna normalize that for so many different things that happen in our lives. And then B, just to In a way to, to embrace that. Yes, like life in some ways was a lot different back then. Is it better? I don't know. Maybe for some people the answer is no. And if so, then you know let's start to address that. But if the answer is yes, like in general life is better, then I think it is about being able to say, okay, there's certain aspects of my life that I not gonna be able to change, but how do I grieve them healthily, right? How do I address the longing for what was while also being appreciative of what I have, and certainly there's a lot of different ways to go about that, and I think it's again, on an individual level of what each in each person needs. But being able to say, okay, the, even though life was maybe easier or even though life was simpler, whatever it was. Ultimately my life is better this way.
Wynter Johnson:
I like that. Just reminding yourself why and what and where you actually are.
Nesreen Ahmed:
Yeah, like you, you made these changes for a reason. Built this business. You had this child, you've done these things for reasons. And ultimately if you were satisfied with what you were doing in the past, you probably wouldn't have made the changes in the first place. So I think it is about reconnecting to that why and to the purpose and the intentions that you had in going into this new situation in life. But again, also being willing to say, yeah, this is hard, right? It's not easy. It's not easy to have a child, it's not easy to start a business. It's not easy to take a leap, right? And to make these big changes. And I think it is about, Being okay with that, that it's hard. I think it's about recognizing the progress that we make, even if it's so sometimes small at times or it feels like there's barely any change. But some change is good change. And yeah and just recognizing that yeah, I missed that part. Like I there's, I look at grief as like two main components. Like the first part of grief is usually just the missing, right? The missing of our person, the missing of our situation or circumstance that longing for what was. And there's not that much to be done. There's not a lot of work to be done around that other than just learning how to be with that and how to hopefully, eventually turn that into something positive in our lives. And then the other part, and this is really where grief coaching and And to a certain extent, counseling and therapy comes in is really all the unfinished of what changed. So particularly if we look at death loss or divorce, it's about the relationship that was and what didn't happen. What was never said. The things that we regret or we feel guilty about. And that is where a lot of the work comes in. That's where we start to address. How do we forgive ourselves? How do we forgive the other person? How do we start to be okay with what happened exactly the way it happened? How do we let go of those dreams that we had, the hopes, the expectations that, this was gonna be our life or this was the way that our relationship was supposed to go. And so how do we start to address and learn eventually how to accept that on some level? And so that's a lot of the work that I focus on with people. It's the. The missing of our person or missing of our circumstance. I think that is just a, becomes a level of like, how do we be with this? How do we learn to integrate this and allow it to be part of our lives and part of what we experience without having a lot of weight or a burden to us.
Wynter Johnson:
And that's such a hard thing to do. That takes a lot of time and work and energy and real intention to be able to sit with what is.
Nesreen Ahmed:
Yeah. Yeah. But it also in some ways helps us learn how to change what is in our present and our future. You know what I mean? If you have a lot of things that you were dissatisfied with or upset about from previous situations, you learn. You learn a lot about, okay, this is not how I wanna live my life anymore. This is not how I want to be in my relationships anymore. This is what's. Like these core things that you discover about yourself and about what's really important to you. And I think the, if I can say this, the gift that comes with grief or one of the gifts is that, real true clarity of ooh, here's who's really important. Here's what's really important, here's what I care about and here's everything else. And usually the everything else is all the noise that plagues us and fills our lives up until we have grief. Yeah.
Wynter Johnson:
I love the way you approach that and how you can help people through this with your sessions, with your coaching, with just all of it.
Nesreen Ahmed:
Thank you.
Wynter Johnson:
Okay, Allie, I think officially that was my last question there.
Nesreen Ahmed:
I could talk about this forever but I just, I guess I kind of wanna reiterate a the collective trauma and grief that we have experienced and also to hold on to the hope that we won't always feel this way. We won't always be in this situation, even though time doesn't heal often things do change with time and our circumstances will change and the way that we feel in this moment will change. This is not a forever, complete, absolute nothing will ever change. Hold on to the hope that that you will change and that life will change.
Allie Nickle:
I love all of that, and I'm gonna go back and listen to this episode right now. All right. Thanks for tuning into the See You in the AM podcast, where your host, Allie Nickle and Wynter Johnson, and a very special thanks to Nesreen for taking the time to chat with us today. Our goal at Aspyn Market is to make mental health, self-guided therapy and coaching resources available to everyone, and we just skimmed the surface today. If there's anything we discussed today that resonated with you and you're interested in learning more about mental health, check out our app Aspyn Coaching, where you can get unlimited access to hundreds of hours of self-guided therapy and coaching from our team of Aspyn Coaches. Head over to AspynMarket.com that's Aspyn with a y. To start your seven day free trial now get full access to our features for seven days, including featured daily videos, guided journeys, journal prompts, downloadable resources and exercises. The path to a happier, healthier you starts here. Until our next episode, we hope you have a wonderful day and we'll see you in the am.