SPEAKER_00 0:04

Dear listeners, grief is one of those things that we all experience, and almost none of us are taught to carry. We are told to be strong, to give it a time, to move on, and so most of us do, or at least we look like that we're doing. We pack it away somewhere, we keep going, and we assume that's what healing looks like. But what if it is not? What if the grief we thought we left behind is still running things quietly, invisibly, in the way that we love and shut down and make decisions and fall apart in the ways that we cannot quite explain. What to think about, right? So today's conversation is all about that. About what happens when grief doesn't go anywhere, it just goes underground. So hey dear listeners, welcome back to another powerful episode of Healthy Mind Healthy Life, the podcast where we talk honestly about things that shape how we feel, how we function, and how we find our way through. I'm your host, Avik, and I'm really glad that all of you are here today. And um, dear listeners, you know, like my guest today, please welcome. But before I take the name, I would love to tell you about him. My guest today works in the space of grief. Not the surface level kind, but the kind that lives in the body long after we think we have dealt with it. And he's here to talk about what unprocessed grief actually does to our mental health, what honest grieving really looks like, and how the habits that we form around loss as teenagers can quietly shape everything that comes after. So please welcome our guest, Robert Delphine. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Thank you so much for having me, Avic. I'm really uh really glad to be here.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Amazing, amazing. So, Robert, I mean, uh, before we get into the details today, I want to come with one of my curiosity is like what bought you, I mean, brought you to this uh work personally? Like, thief is not an easy space to choose to spend your professional life in. So, I mean, what pulled you toward it rather than just cool away from it?

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Yeah, no, that's that's a great question. So I lost my dad when I was when I was 14, and I lost my mom when I was 26. And you know, for a long time, I really just kind of carried it the way that most people do, kind of like what you were saying earlier. You know, they they hold their grief very quietly, and they're doing all this while they're keeping busy, and they're they're just trying to look fine on the outside. And I think for myself, I eventually just kind of learned that grief doesn't really go away when you ignore it. It it will it like will wait for you. And that realization became the foundation of everything that I'm building right now. So I'm a so I'm a grief coach and I also host a podcast called Unparented, and I'm also finishing a book for grieving teenagers. And so that's kind of like really what led me into this was just, you know, I spent 20 plus years of my life carrying the grief quietly, and you know, something kind of clicked in me where I was like, you know what? I'm I'm tired of running from my grief. I really want to face my grief, but I want to do it in a non-clinical way. And that's really where I where it got to me, where I am today.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

So I mean, okay, so I I definitely want to also love to bring the misconception part. Like you named something in the way that you framed I mean today's conversation that I think it's very, very important. And you said that unprocessed grief is something most people don't see coming. And I think that's true because most of us have a very narrow idea of what grief is, and we associate with it uh it with the death, with funerals, with with a defined period of sadness. So, what is the misconception here that keeps people from kind of recognizing their own unprocessed grief for what is actually I mean, what it actually is?

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Yeah, so I mean, when you when you really look at it, you know, unprocessed grief rarely looks like sadness, right? So I think when we think of grief, we we think it's just people crying, you know. I mean, which it can, of course, 100%, but I think it rarely looks like sadness. And I think that's the thing, right? Is that unprocessed grief can show up as anxiety, it can show up as numbness, it can even be like having a short fuse, right? Like just you fly off the handle, right? It could also be difficult being present in relationships, right? And so I think a general feeling that something is off, but you can't quite name it, that's to me what unprocessed grief looks like. And so I've talked to people who who had no idea that their irritability or their disconnection, their inability to even feel joy, that all of that was really rooted in a loss that they've never fully sat with. So to me, that's what it, that's really what unprocessed grief looks like. And to give you a good example, right? And you know, you I had mentioned this earlier, right? I lost my dad at 14. And for years, years, I functioned totally fine on the outside, right? You know, I went to school, I had a job, I had relationships, but I never really learned to carry grief quietly, or I had to learn to carry grief quietly, right? Because nobody around me knew what to do with it either. And that's a thing, especially for for those that might, I mean, I I'm not sure if your listeners are, you know, 14, 15, or 16, but even for adults, right? It's like even as adults, we don't really know how to deal or how to help somebody who's grieving. So, so like, you know, this the silence became a pattern, and patterns like that don't just kind of stay in one corner of your life. They they kind of tend to spread. And so they kind of go into different aspects of your life, your friendships, your job, your mental health, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Correct. Exactly. What does that grief look like when it surfaces in ways that people don't connect to loss, the anxiety, the numbness, the reactions that seem disappropriate to and what's happening in that moment?

SPEAKER_01 7:13

So I I think it's a good question, right? I and what maybe with the way I can flip this is maybe like what does what does like healthy grief look like? Like, how is it what does it look like to grieve healthy, right? And so I just I want to be totally clear with with with your listeners, right? Is that healthy grieving doesn't mean grieving faster or cleaner or better. It just means grieving honestly. It means like stopping the performance that we put on, like of like it's it's okay. Like people put on a performance of like, I'm okay, but you're but you're actually really not, right? And so I think healthy grieving means finding at least one person or a space where you're allowed to say what's actually true. And I think for me, it was it was just being able to say to people, I'm not okay. I'm not okay. I've been carrying around the death of my parents for decades. I'm not okay. It means like moving toward the grief instead of running around it or running away from it. And and that's really something that I've been doing, right? The podcast was really the start of that. You know, I remember telling my wife, I just I did, I did, you know, talk therapy. I did the clinical talk therapy and it and it was great, you know, and and it has its own place for it. But what it can't do for you is it doesn't really help you moving forward. So when you sit and you do therapy, you're kind of like healing yourself from the past, but it's not really helping you in the present or the future. And so what I did one day is I I remember just going downstairs talking to my wife, and I said, I think I want to start a podcast and talk about my dead parents. And she thought, that's a great idea. And then I went upstairs and I started putting together this idea. And then I came back downstairs and I said, I think I'm gonna try to find other people who've also lost their parents and maybe talk to them about their parents and their parents dying, you know? And so it's really, it's really about how can we take the grief and run towards it versus running away from it. So that to me is really what like healthy grieving looks like.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

That's interesting. That's interesting. I mean, obviously, like, so it's not always a feeling of sadness. Sometimes it shows up in anger or kind of let's say flatness or a kind of low-grade uh restlessness that someone has just learned uh to live with. I mean that's such an important thing to name. So uh I mean if if if you have also think like in in the root calls or the deeper patterns, you specifically mentioned that grief habits we form as teenagers. And that framing really caught my attention because uh adolescence is already such a kind of re-establishing time emotionally, and when loss arrives then, whether it's the death of someone close, the end of a family as it was, a friendship, or sense of safety, uh what does a teenager typically do with the grief? Like, why do those early responses tend to become patterns that follow us for the decades?

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Yeah. So I think the way that I think about it is teenagers need more than more than anything. Teenagers need permission. Because you have to you have to think, like, we were all teenagers at one point, right? And so, you know, teen, I mean, I grew up in the, you know, I'm from was born in the 90s, so I grew up, you know, in the in the the early 2000s as a teenager. But like you have like teenagers are very angsty, you know, like they they're they're very temperamental. But what you what I've learned is that teenagers, more than anything, is that they need permission and they need permission to feel exactly what they actually feel, not the version of grief that looks appropriate or acceptable. And I think that that's the thing is teens are incredibly perceptive, right? They know when adults are uncomfortable. And when nobody names the thing, they learn that the thing can't be named. And so I think that that's quite, I just think it's quite it's just very interesting for for when you think of teenagers and how they grieve. A lot of teenagers will just sit and be quiet, right? Because they don't even know what they're feeling. So it's very difficult to what I've learned, and again, from experience, is you can take a child or a teenager to a therapist, but they don't even really know what they're feeling. And when you when you meet a teenager who has no idea what they're really feeling or how to name it, and you bring them somewhere that only wants to work with them in a clinical method, a clinical way, they end up they end up closing themselves off. And then they they bury it, you know. That that's what I've that's what I'm really learning when it comes to grief and teenagers specifically. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

I got it, yeah. And uh and as adults carrying those buttons, maybe someone who learned as a teenager and disappeared into work, or maybe make themselves useful to everything else rather than feel, how do those habits compound over time?

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SPEAKER_01 12:35

Well, what do you mean by compound over time? Like what what what do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Um, I mean, so suppose like a teenager who got into uh this this pattern who understood and then time when when time moves on, he or she also with the work and everything else in the life, it started to I mean used to that. So I mean, how do these uh habits tend to show up, tends to come up over the time?

SPEAKER_01 13:06

Yeah, so I mean, I think the way that I like to think about it is grief will affect our mental health long term significantly. And I think that maybe this is what you're trying to get to, Avic, is is how how does this really, what does this look like long term? And I think in in certain ways, right, people rarely connect back to the original loss or whatever the original thing is, right? But I like to think that long term it can look like chronic anxiety, depression. It can affect your relationship. You now have relationship struggles, emotional numbness, not being able to feel any emotion. And I can tell you that all those things have happened to me where I even like significant things in my life. When I we had our first daughter, my my or my oldest will be five years. So almost five years ago, right? I remember we had, you know, we're at the hospital, my daughter, you know, was born. And I don't really remember feeling like I don't really remember feeling like this overwhelming sense of happiness. Now, of course, I was extremely happy that my daughter was born, but what I remember feeling was like anxiety, like struggle, that emotional numbness, right? And I think when teenagers are not able to deal with their grief as teenagers, there's a lot of downstream effects that that that end up like moving along with them, right? There's there's these downstream effects of grief that that was never processed. And so the mind, the mind will find ways to cope, you know. Believe me, we all we all have coping mechanisms, right? But coping is not the same way as healing. And over time, long term, the weight of carrying something completely unaddressed really will take a toll. You know, I've talked to people in their 40s and their 50s who are still running from loss that happened decades ago. You know, the body keeps score is something that they say. And and I think grief is absolutely no different. Grief 100% keeps score.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Exactly. Exactly. So uh so there's something uh really, really uh compassionate in understanding that the teenager who shut down was not being avoided, they were surviving with the tools they had. The problem is those tools don't always retire when the emergency does. And that's I mean, I I I I think that's not a character flaw. I mean, that's uh just how humans work. So yeah. And if we talk about like how it shows up in the real life, like let's uh make this a kind of real moment. Let's think of it. Like, suppose someone is listening right now and they haven't lost anyone recently. Touch it. I mean, nothing bad goes on for anyone, but still, I mean, just for the discussion, like nothing dramatic has happened, so life looks fine on the surface, but something feels off. There's a weight that they cannot name it, a numbness that they can they they have almost gotten used to, a way of being slightly disconnected from the things that used to matter. So is that the grief or or and if it is, then how would they know?

SPEAKER_01 16:24

Yeah, I mean, I think everybody has to take an internal that they have to kind of they have to to to really think and maybe do like an internal MRI or an internal body scan, right? A mental body scan. And and I think they really, if if something has never really, if they never really experienced this any kind of traumatic loss in their life, but something is something feels off for them, I think they really need to take a look inside and think, what what could it, what could it possibly be? Because something is 100% affecting them. Now I don't know, I I personally would not I personally would not say that that's grief per se. But what I will say though is anything that has affected them that has changed them, if if you've been changed from if if you have been changed, you feel that you've been changed from something, it doesn't matter what it is, you can grieve that 100%. You can 100% grieve a previous version of yourself. So maybe they haven't experienced a traumatic loss. Maybe it's something it could it could have just been, I mean, I'll just it could be anything like maybe like they lost their job, you know. Like that's not that's not like a loss or a death, right? But if it's if it's changed you or changed you, or if it was, if it's if it's affected a previous version of you, that's grief, right? We should name that. That can that is 100% grief.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Correct. Okay. And the people around someone who is carrying unprocessed grave, maybe children, partners, close friends, or anyone. I mean, what are they uh experiencing that the grieving person often cannot see it from inside?

SPEAKER_01 18:09

So the question is the question, what is somebody what is what does somebody see who's who's who's with the grieving person? Is that is that the question?

SPEAKER_00 18:17

I mean like someone who is carrying actually those uh grief. What they experience, uh what the grief how do I process? Like suppose that grieving person is with someone like their friends, family, or someone who are close. So what they are experiencing that the grieving person often cannot see it from inside.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

What does the ex what does the the person with the griever experience?

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

Yeah, that's a good question, Avaka. I don't really know, to be honest. Uh, I could put myself in in my situation. I've had fri I I I've I have friends who who a couple years ago, like they they lost a child, and and we me and my wife, we we grieved alongside with them. And now again, like this didn't it didn't affect me in the in the same way, like I didn't lose that child, but because I love my friends, right? We love our friends, we're very close with our friends, we walked through them with that grief. So, you know, I remember you know hearing the story and and crying with them. And and I think even even now, there's plenty of times where or where maybe we we think of him, their their child, you know, we think of that child, and and I'll start crying, right? Because I feel so close. When you're so close to somebody, doesn't matter, it doesn't, they could be family, they could not be family, right? But if you're that close with somebody and they lay you in on the grief, right? They want you to, they're asking you to walk with them, or or you just decide, hey, I want to just walk with you with that grief, you will feel what they're feeling. It's not the same, right? Because you're you're not you didn't lose that child, but you are you are affected by that grief from the ones that you love, if that makes any sense.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

If I if I also say, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, like that's such a the person who is most affected by their own processed grief is often the last to recognize and the people who love them are living with the impact like without always having the language for what's happening. I mean, it is is it right, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:41

I I think it I think you're I think you're definitely on to something. I I mean I the way that I I think is is it it is it's like secondary loss, you know. Like it if my friends lost their child, right? But but we're so close with them, like that's secondary loss for us, right? It's not we're not the primary, like we're not the primary grievers, but we we process it as well because you know, I mean it's also very it is also very sad. Like it's also very sad, right? If if if your best friends lose a child, like that's a very sad that's a very sad thing. So like we're so like we're also we're also feeling that, but also we we're walking alongside them with their grief.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Go ahead. Go ahead, yeah. And also if I have to say that grief is not linear, most people know that intellectually, but there's a particular kind of discouragement that comes when you think you have moved through something and then you know, a smell, a date on calendar brings it all flooding back. So, and how do you help someone understand that that's not regression? That it that that it doesn't mean the work they have done it didn't count.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Right. No, a hundred percent. So we like to call those grief ambushes, right? And those are totally normal. Though it isn't matter whether you're five days or five months out from the loss, or you're five years out from that loss. Yeah, all it takes is is one smell or one song or one memory, right? For all of that grief to rush back. That's again, those that's called grief ambush. That's what I like to call them. Grief ambushes. I mean, you could be, you could be in the park the target parking lot, you know, you're just about to walk into Target and all of a sudden you just have a quick memory that pops in your mind, and boom, there you go. Grief will overtake you. It will flood in. And that is not like what you're saying. That that that does not mean that you've you're you're not prop processing your grief correctly or or you're doing anything wrong, right? That those things are totally normal. And that's okay. Again, it doesn't matter, it does not matter how far away you have been from that grief. Again, I'm I'm 20, 21 years out from losing my dad. And and there are, I'm in the middle of writing a book right now for grieving teenagers and you know, writing about stories about me, my dad that I remember. And the I just reading them back, I I just start crying. My wife, you know, she comes running over, she's like, oh my gosh, are you okay? What's what's wrong? And I'm like, no, it's it's it's okay. Like they're not, they're not like these sad, they're not like these sad, grieving tears, you know. They're they're they're I'm I'm grieving it, but but it's it that like I'm I'm also kind of happy in the same in the same side, right? Because I remembered that, that, that story or that memory. And I'm like, oh, like I'm very sad because I miss my dad, but I'm also like I've also processed it, and I I'm glad I remembered that memory, right? I want I can relive that memory. So so yeah, I mean it it it's it's twofold. You're it does not mean that you're you're backpedaling or you're moving backwards in grief, right? It it's totally normal to have a grief ambush.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

Got it, got and uh also like what is it? Like for the listeners, like if you have to say, let's suppose for anyone who is listening who recognizes something in today's conversation in themselves or in someone they love, where can they find you and what's the best way to take a step in your world?

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Yeah, so the best place for anybody is to start at robertdelfave.com. So everything that I have lives there. My my coaching offerings live there, my podcast is on there. I also offer a five-day, it's a free five-day audio series. It's called, it's called Not Alone. So it's really for anybody who isn't isn't ready to talk to somebody yet, but wants wants somewhere quiet to begin, right? It's just one short audio a day that's deliberate. Right, it's just it's just a place to start for people. And then I'm also on threads. You can find me there too under Robert Delphave.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Amazing, amazing. And Robert, like if we have to give one advice to all the listeners today, what that could be.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

Yeah, that's yeah. So I I have three things, right? That the first is to name it out, is to name it out loud. Even even if it's just to yourself, right? You could just say, I'm still grieving this. That's that's that's one, right? Grief that's named has less power over you than grief that's hidden. So I want people to remember that. The second thing is find one safe person, not someone who will fix it or rush you through it, just someone who can sit with you and they could do it without flinching, right? That one person can change everything. And then the third thing is stop measuring your grief against a timeline. So there is no correct amount of time to grieve someone or something that you loved. The question isn't should I still feel this? The question is, am I carrying this in a way that actually works for me? So that's the advice I would leave for the listeners.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

Amazing, amazing. So, uh dear listeners, what I'll do is I'll put all the links and the details into the show notes for your easy reference. And I have to share with you, dear listeners, that if I could carry one thing from this conversation, it would be a grief that goes unnamed, it doesn't disappear, it just finds other ways to speak. And the most courageous thing that you can do is finally learn to listen. And I guess that's the wrap for today's episode of Healthy Man, Healthy Life. And if this conversation brought something up for you, even just a quiet recognition, please don't rush past it. That recognition is the beginning of something, I would say. And Robert's details, as I mentioned, it will be there in the show notes. And if someone in your life is carrying a grief that they have never had space to name, then this episode might be the thing that you share with them. With this hope, this is your host, Avik, and this is Healthy Man Healthy Life. Take good care of yourself today and of the parts of yourself that have been waiting a long time for some gentleness. So see you next time. Thank you so much.