The Practice of Therapy

Gordon Brewer: Well, hello everyone and welcome to the podcast and I'm really happy for you to get to know today. Edy Nathan, welcome Edy. Glad you're here.
Yes. Yes. And Edy has got a book out and I, she's gonna be talking about that some, but Edy, as I start with everyone, tell folks a little bit more about yourself and how you've landed where you've landed.
Edy Nathan: We all have stories, and those stories frame us. And the way that those stories frame us is they, they are experiences that we have that allow us to see the world in a different way.
They're often not invited. And grief is just one of those things that comes in, it's not invited, and it comes in in ways that are sometimes unexpected and sometimes expected. So when I was 27, I lost my partner. We'd only been together for two years, and that loss framed. The next many, many years of my life, I went back to school and decided that instead of being an actor, and instead of going into the corporate world and doing training, that I was gonna become a therapist and talk about grief, and write about grief and learn as much as I could from really around the world about how people dealt with grief.
And my work is a hmm. It's paying the life of my partner forward. Mm-hmm. And it is my way of honoring. My love and honoring who my partner was to me at that point in my life.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's great. That's great. Yeah. And as and, and Edie and I were chatting before we started recording, it's, I think many of you know just in my story is that my wife passed away.
To almost two years ago now after a long battle with breast cancer and all the metastasis of that and that sort of thing. So it's a, it's a topic I was telling, I was telling Edy kind of tongue in cheek, I love this topic, you know, and it just sounds kinda counterintuitive, but yeah. So, but I've had a lot of experience with not only living it, but also.
I worked in the funeral business for several years before I became a therapist, so very familiar with it. So, but you know, Edie, one of the things that you said that was just really intriguing is, is that it's something that I'm paraphrasing here, but it's something that just enters our life and we don't necessarily want it to, but it does.
Edy Nathan: Yeah, that's right. You know, and. We, we actually experience grief from the moment we're born and, and we, we don't necessarily realize it or think about it perhaps, but the minute that we leave that, the safety of. Warmth of that womb and the umbilical cord is cut. There's, there's a certain grief, there's the loss of what we knew as we were forming and the, the warmth of the, of, of that womb.
And, and it, it is a certain kind of, I think, legitimate leave taking of something that was part of our incarnation, if you will. Mm-hmm. How we, how we move with that. How we carry that will be different for everyone. Just like the way that we cope with grief after the loss of a loved one is going to be very different and no one experiences it the same way.
Even though you might say, oh, I feel anxiety, or I feel anger, or I'm feeling like I need to forgive, or God, I feel numb. The way that you experience any of those things that I just mentioned. Mm-hmm. They're yours and, and, and they, they rest with you in such a way that is personal to you.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. That's, that, that's very true. It, you know, and, and just doing the study that you have and just learning about grief, what. I know that there are a lot of myths around grief and what it is and what it's like for people, and I think as you said, everybody has their own experience. But I think one, one myth is that it's a linear process.
I think you wanna say something about that.
Edy Nathan: Oh, yeah. Oh, thank you so much for mentioning that. You are just so right on and, and I can't talk. Enough about the fact that it is non-linear. So I want everyone who's listening to understand what non-linear means. Non-linear means that grief is crazy making because it doesn't follow a path.
It's not like we're gonna go from the numbness, what I, what I call the emotional armor phase, and we're just going to nicely move from there. To roll confusion 'cause I have these 11 phases to, to you know, the, the despair and the depression. And it just doesn't follow that way because some people.
Don't feel depressed. They feel anxious, they feel anger and that's mm-hmm. What they experience second 'cause I do think mm-hmm.
That
Edy Nathan: first phase is, is a coping phase that we, our minds and our bodies tend to go to. There might be anger in there, but there is numbness, there is dysregulation, there is this sense of, of shock, even when there's been a long haul.
Waiting for someone or believing that, that your loved one was indeed going to, to leave this life that. Mm-hmm. That in their leave taking of this life and knowing that there was going to be a leave taking. People think, well, I. I'm, I'm immune. I'm going to be somehow immune because I've been living it for a year, for 10 years.
Mm-hmm.
Edy Nathan: Or a, a diagnosis got changed and then all of a sudden there's hope. It doesn't mean that upon the loss of that loved one, upon their leave, taking that you're free and clear and that you're not going to be experiencing the many different phases of grief.
Mm-hmm.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Gordon Brewer: And that's a myth.
And I think it's yeah. Another thing that I've heard along the way is we have this concept of, okay, when you, when you go through the grieving process, you'll come out on the other end and the grief will be resolved in some way.
Edy Nathan: It's over, but that's,
Gordon Brewer: it's over. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, people say all the time, you know, well, I'll get over this, or whatever.
But that's I do not like that. Just because it's something you can move through. That's right. And there might be, there might be, yeah. Yeah. You get to a place where, you know, you find joy again. There's a place where you as I like to call it, you find the new normal.
Mm-hmm.
Gordon Brewer: And that the other person is long, no longer there, but they, they are very much a part of you.
Edy Nathan: That's right.
Gordon Brewer: That can't, and that can't be changed. Yeah. No,
Edy Nathan: not at all. And, and, and it's, I think it's why the title of my book is It's Grief and the subtitle is The Dance of Self-Discovery through Trauma and Loss. Mm-hmm. And people question, well, how, how could you like put dance and grief together?
Mm-hmm.
Edy Nathan: And, and. In explaining it, it, it's, it's, it's, it's a partnership. Mm-hmm. And when you experience the dev, the devastation of grief, it is about finding a way to to partner with it, because it's gonna be part of you. It is. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I wouldn't actually want it to be gone because mm-hmm. That would mean somehow that the grief and the losses that I've experienced are just erased and they make up who I am.
They make up Gordon who you are. Mm-hmm. You are a who you are, be. Because of what you saw, what you went through, what you've been grieving and, and your, your wife is, is, is part of you. Mm-hmm. And part of your story, so to say I'm done is almost like racing a story. Mm-hmm. I don't believe in the erasure of, of a story I believe in.
We are all storytellers and how do we incorporate and dance with the stories of our life, right? To make us richer, to make us more awake and aware and caring of ourselves.
Gordon Brewer: Yes. Yes. So what have you, what have you found, and kind of maybe walk us through kind of your way of thinking about all of this and just kind of the as you said, you've, I, I believe you said you had like 11 phases that you've kind of identified Yeah.
That people can go through, and I would assume that. Again, like we have already talked about, it's not a linear kind of thing. It's just kind of jumps around. That's right.
Edy Nathan: And, and that's exactly it. I, I would say that that first phase, which, which I mentioned that emotional armor phase, I see that people will go back to that first phase almost as.
A resting place that, that numbness is like a removal. Even shock can be a removal. The, the, the, the dis, the kind of the dissociation can be a removal. Mm-hmm. The protest, the, the, the denial. You know, all of this is like you're, you're just needing a rest from everything that's going, that's been going on, but it, even though I call them 11 phases.
They are not. They do not. In any way show up in order. They might, but they might not. Mm-hmm. And you might, my last phase is a phase I call Grace. And you might find, oh, you know, in this moment I'm not feeling anger. And I've, I've, I've been working on the anger that my loved one didn't wait for me to be with them when they died.
This is a, a
Edy Nathan: common voiced concern. Mm-hmm. And sa deep sadness. And, and there, there, there's an anger there and, and, oh, well I've, I've come to peace. I have a certain peace around that. And so that is a grace and it doesn't mean that that. Peace lasts forever. There might be something that, that comes in that reminds you of how you felt in the moment of not being there and, and maybe you blame yourself.
Maybe something happened where you just left the room to get a drink of water and it's like,
mm-hmm.
Edy Nathan: What, you know, what, what, what the dying teach us over and over again, and Elizabeth Kubler Ross studied the dying, and she came up with five stages of dying, which there's a myth. People think that those five stages of dying are for the people who are grieving, and they're a little bit different, and they're actually more mm-hmm.
Here than not. Mm-hmm. You know, and this idea of acceptance. Well, I, I will never accept my partner's death. Not really. I, I, mm-hmm. I, I, I don't want to integrate that. And there's not a closure. There's actually an integration, which is active closure feels like the end. Mm-hmm. So. I, I, I like people to think that, that you're gonna come back to anger and, and, and anger is not a bad thing.
It's just an emotion that you're experiencing. And then you might experience that grace, or you might experiencing anxiety or you might experience the despair and it, it moves in and out in those very non-linear ways. So, and, and, and, and those 11 phases are very open to. Yes. And from anyone who is grieving, which means maybe you wanna add resistance or resilience to that, go ahead.
Where does that come in for you? How does it come in that it's not, none of these are in stone.
Gordon Brewer: Yes. Yes. So you wanna maybe mention those 11 different phases?
Edy Nathan: No. To someone kind of have an idea about it. You know, I, I, I could, but I, I, I really would like to, if you don't mind focusing on. The anger and the anxiety piece, because I think that they're really important and, and they're the fourth and and fifth phases.
And the reason that I bring them up is, is people will often feel a tremendous amount of anxiety. They feel like they don't wanna leave their homes or they can't go to work, or they are just overwhelmed with emotion and they don't know how to cope. Mm-hmm. And in my book, I have a huge section on anxiety and, and it's.
I think it's, it's very important to understand that when there is anxiety, it's often commingled with the anger. And I think that for your listening audience, I want to focus on these two pieces because if. They allowed themselves to feel some anger, whatever that anger is. And I'm not necessarily talking about rage where you, you know, you're throwing glasses or you're hitting things.
Mm-hmm. But just, wow, what am I feeling angry about? What they might find is the anger, the anxiety begins to dissipate. And anxiety is one of those pieces that just overwhelms. And the anxiety can come from actually the second phase, which is role confusion. Who am I now that I've lost my partner, my child, my parent, my grandmother, my auntie, my best friend?
Who am I in the world? Mm-hmm. The roles need to get. They get reorganized and you don't wanna lose a role. Am I no longer a daughter because I lost my mom? No, you're always gonna be a daughter. Mm-hmm. To that person who was your mother. Mm-hmm. Or to the grandmother who was your grandmother. And you might not be in an active state in that role, but it doesn't mean that you can, that you, you don't have to lose it.
You just find other ways to honor it.
Gordon Brewer: Right.
Edy Nathan: You do that well on Mother's Day, you get a card for your mother and you write a note, even if she's still not around on Father's Day, maybe you do something that your father loved to do, and that's based on the kind of relationship you might have had with either parent.
Mm-hmm. Same thing for a spouse or a partner. You know, how do you honor the role that you had with them? And, you know, I, I just actually lost a very, very dear friend Robin, who had a 13 year struggle with, with ovarian cancer and with breast cancer, and she just fought and then she decided I'm, I'm finished, I'm done.
And I'm honoring her right now in this moment by even talking about her.
Mm. And
Edy Nathan: so it's not, and will my role, I have chills, you know, and will my role as, as a friend, even if we didn't speak to each other, we could get on a phone six months after not talking to one another, and there we were, we were like, mm-hmm.
Just like we weren't talking about the weather, we were just mm-hmm. There.
Mm-hmm.
Edy Nathan: So I, I, I think that that role confusion and the anxiety and the anger, and allow yourself to get angry. Mm-hmm. Allow yourself to feel it, ask the questions, what am I angry about? What could I be angry about? Sometimes it has to do with control or a lack thereof.
So and I would say that the, my last phase is grace, which is what I've also spoken about and forgiveness. And you know, there's a lot of other phases in there, but that forgiveness phase, it's not about forgiving who you lost, but forgiving yourself for perhaps how you reacted or forgiving yourself for needing to hold on perhaps to the negative, which keeps you angry.
Mm-hmm. So you see how it just moves in and out of each other. Right. And it is an honoring.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's you know, one of the ways that I've like to think about it is, is that our, our brain, our brains make connections and we make like you said earlier, we define ourselves based on relationships and our roles in those relationships.
And then when that. When that person is gone, it kinda leaves a void there. And so our kind of I forget who it was, I guess it was William Ward and I think I'm saying his name correctly, as one of the early researchers of, you know, in grief, grief therapy and that same thing. And he used the term the tasks of grief.
Mm-hmm. And he said part, part of it is just redefining yourself. Now that that relationship is no longer, it's still there. The relationship's still there, but the relationship's in a different form now. That's, and so that, you know, the, our brains have a hard time doing that. That's right. Because we want everything in nice, neat little packages and the problem, wanna clean it
up, don't we?
Gordon Brewer: Right. And and our brains just don't, don't do that well. And so it's being able to, like you said, give herself grace to. To kind of move through the messiness of it all and you know, and, and have those days where you fall apart, where it just hits hard. And then other days where you, I know in, in working with some of my clients that are grieving have gone through grief work is that they find themselves over time not feeling as intensely the grief that they did in the beginning.
And they also notice that they don't feel quite so sad. Then, then the problem of guilt around that comes in of, oh, well I'm not, I'm not honoring my, my loved one because I'm no longer feeling it as as intense. And so I think. That part of the, I think the work of grief is allowing yourself that space to not feel it as intensely.
And, and that doesn't mean that you love your, you, you love any less, or it's not any less. I. Wasn't any less painful, but it might not feel as intense. And hopefully that makes sense, but yeah.
Edy Nathan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You said that you know actually really quite well and thank you for that. It is. How does the relationship change to.
You've lost. Mm-hmm. And when people come, come in to see me, I'm not asking them often. I'm not asking them to share their story in immediately. What I'm asking is, what are you yearning for? What are you hungry for? Because the yearning is a loss. Wanting to connect to something you've lost. So you, you also bring something else up here, which I think is, is vital and that I talk about in, in, in its grief, which is who you are as a person, will also help inform you as to what you need, like what kind of help you need if you're an introvert mm-hmm.
Or an extrovert. How the kind of help you need or the kind of help that will help you mm-hmm. Will be different. So I really talk about an assessment. Are you an introvert or are you an extrovert, or are you an ambivert? Because that introvert isn't gonna wanna go to a group, they're not gonna wanna go talk to a whole lot of people.
They may just want to deal with it on them by themselves. I. That's how they do it. Or they may wanna just one person and that that extrovert, gimme a group, gimme individual therapy, give me, let me tell everybody I see what's going on. And that may be their style. And then an ambivert kind of does a little bit of both.
So it's understanding. Who you are in the world and how you function and how you best take care of yourself, that can help you know who to reach out to and the kind of help that might be best for you.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. Yeah. It's a, it's a ma a matter of I guess for lack of a better way to put it, beefing up your emotional intelligence around what's happening to you and what you're, you're experiencing.
That's,
Edy Nathan: and to give you a language so that I also used and this is not my, my turn of phrase, but it's. Dr. Dr. Shef is his name, and he talked about the over distance and under distance and balance, and I talk about under distance. Over distance. And calibration. Calibration is that place on a seesaw when we were kids?
I don't know. Did you ever go on a seesaw when you were kid?
Mm-hmm. Yeah, sure. Sure. And,
Edy Nathan: and it's like you, you'd use all of your balance to try to just get to that calibrated space. And that's what, that's what the goal of the grief is. It's, it's like, let's get to calibration and you're gonna go up and down a little bit, but you're gonna get calibrated.
The under distance is when your, your, your emotions are all over the place, but you have a languaging for it. I'm, mm-hmm. I'm distance over. Distance is complete. Numbness, complete distance. Mm-hmm. And it will vacillate, it will move. Like sometimes you'll be under distance, sometimes you'll be over distance.
Sometimes you'll be calibrated. And usually that calibration is a sign of grace.
Mm-hmm.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So I would say you, you know, you used the word grace and I'm, I'm curious as to what that means to you and how that might fit into this. 'cause I've got kind of a connotation myself about the grace, but I'm interested in knowing how you think about it.
Edy Nathan: So, you know, it's, it's interesting. It was it was, it was a, it was hard to choose the word it was. That for that last phase, because it wasn't closure and it wasn't gonna be okay, you've gone, you're done. What, what is it? What does the body feel like? And so it could have a religious connotation for many.
Mm-hmm. And if it does mm-hmm. Then whatever that means for them, it, it's a very open kind of perspective, but I think of grace as that place. When you are with family and friends and everything feels calm and good and loving and everything in that moment is okay.
Mm-hmm.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm. And
Edy Nathan: there's not an internal struggle in that moment that's going on.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah.
Edy Nathan: And that's what I think of as grace.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah. Yeah, that's, I like that. I like that being
Edy Nathan: right with the self enough.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. That's good. Well Edy, I know that we could probably spend all day, you and I all day talking about this talk topic, but gotta be respectful of your time and you know, hopefully we can have more conversations in the future, but tell folks how they can get in touch with you and find out about the book and all of that sort of thing.
Edy Nathan: Absolutely. So I've got a website, which is ed nathan.com and if you mention this show. You'll get like a free download of part of a book or part of this, like one chapter of the book, or I think you might have some choices of what you'd like. Mm-hmm. You can see me on Psychology Today and of course Facebook and all social media.
And and you can also email me and you can do that through the website. So the book is called It's Grief. The dance of self-discovery through trauma and loss. And I also have a new journal and it's called It's Grief Notes to Self. And everything can be found on Amazon and good reads and any books, sellers you know, and also libraries.
If you wanna, wanna just take the book out. Mm-hmm. You can also see it on. You know, awesome library.
Gordon Brewer: So yeah, and we'll have, we'll have links in the show notes and the show summaries for people to find that easily and, and get to it quickly. So, but beautiful. Edie, thanks again for being on the podcast. Any parting thoughts you have for folks?
I.
Edy Nathan: Just one. Mm-hmm. I'm a big, I'm a big lover of the Wizard of Oz and the, you know, the Wizard of Oz is very much the hero Sheros journey. And Dorothy had to meet her tasks, if you will, that you referred to and kind of faced the grief of leaving her family and growing up. And what grief does is it kind of causes you to have to grow up a little bit in ways that you.
Don't want to. And what she needs on her journey is she needs to develop her brain and she needs to develop her heart and she needs to develop her courage. And she does that through that tale and that this is really the work of grief, to hone in on your brains, to hone in on your heart and the heart-centered work.
And your courage. 'cause it takes a lot of courage to walk this path of grief.
Mm-hmm. And
Edy Nathan: to know, like Dorothy, that when she got to the Emerald City and she had those red shoes, but she never knew the power of those red shoes and whatever you are wearing or embodying, that you've had the power all along.
Mm-hmm. To know how to take care of you during the hardest times that grief presents.
Gordon Brewer: Sure. Sure. That's great. That's wonderful. Well, Edie, thanks again for being on the podcast and I'm sure we'll be in touch and
Edy Nathan: I hope
Gordon Brewer: so. Have more conversations in the future.
Edy Nathan: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Gordon.