Managing Grief with Sherry Walling, PhD | Elite Performance Podcast #26

Itamar Marani 0:00
Biggest thing for people to recognize that going through grief doesn't mean you're going to be depressed. It is not an automatic thing that if you do this, this will happen. And also what we said towards the end that also if you grief, you're not going to become a victim. If you acknowledge certain things that are painful, it does not mean you will fall into victimhood. And you can give yourself that permission without being afraid to come across as weak or be weak.

Itamar Marani 22:00
Hi everyone, today for the podcast, we're joined for a special episode with Sherry Walling, she is a clinical psychologist, she works with entrepreneurs, and she helps smart people do hard things. And she's also the author of a new book touching two worlds, which talks about grief. And we have her on today to talk to us about basically how grief and actually performance and not just running away from things, but actually internalizing and processing them, how it can actually be a big positive thing. It's not something we need to shy away from, or something that doesn't need to be spoken about. So Sherry, thank you for coming.

Sherry Walling 0:52
I am so glad to be with you. Thanks for having me for this conversation.

Itamar Marani 0:55
Thank you. Alright, so if you could please just introduce us the concept of the book why you wrote it, because that's some. That's some deep stuff there.

Sherry Walling 1:03
Yeah. So this book was written largely about my own experience of grief. As you mentioned, I'm a clinical psychologist. So I've trained to help people through experiences of trauma and grief, all that information kind of lives in my head. But a couple of years ago, I did a deep dive into grief and my own life, I lost my dad to esophageal cancer, and then I lost my little brother to suicide six months apart from each other. So it was this like, sort of this like whiplash experience of being immersed in the lives of people who were falling apart, and then eventually, who died. And I found that a lot of what I had learned about grief or thought about grief, from a clinical perspective, just really didn't match up with my experience. So I wanted to record what I experienced and sort of what I learned or what I observed throughout the process in hopes that it might help other folks who are going through grief.

Itamar Marani 1:59
So what was the big difference from what you observed, then what is taught, quote unquote,

Sherry Walling 2:06
there are a couple of things. One is that I guess the folks that I would end up interacting with, we thought of grief as something to be treated, right, like a problem to be worked out or cured or healed from. And my experience of grief is, is not so much that it is a diagnosis, right, not a not a clinical issue. It's sort of the byproduct of love, the byproduct of all that is like healthy and beautiful in us. And so I found that it's something to be kind of held with reverence and to be learned from more than something that you want to like, get over as quickly as possible, because you might get stuck in some grief reality and not be able to function that that really didn't resonate with me at all. The other big thing that I took away from my grief experience is the sense that grief was very embodied for me. So even though I love words, I wrote a book about it. Like I've been a therapist, I tell stories, listen to stories, I sort of live in the world of words, much of my coming to wholeness or feeling integrated after grief had to do with my ability to really move my body and practice different, you know, things that got me moving, because it was my, like stillness in the body that seemed to be most problematic for me from a grief perspective.

Itamar Marani 3:30
Okay, so I want to get into that later. I have it in my notes, because I have some very, some very interesting hobbies. Physical hobbies. What was interesting to me to hear you say that you think a lot of people are afraid of actually. And again, you're using vernacular is very interesting. But I would say process grief, because they're afraid to get stuck in it. I think that's why a lot of people just don't even want to approach it. This one is over the side, because they're afraid of staying in this kind of loop.

Sherry Walling 3:55
Yeah, I think people kind of equate maybe grief with depression. And so they see it as like a pathology to not fall into. I also think that we as a society are pretty uncomfortable with negative emotions. And so we tend to stay away from them, and treat them as pathology rather than, you know, something that could actually be helpful for us to walk toward.

Itamar Marani 4:19
What do you mean about pathology? Could you elaborate that a little bit?

Sherry Walling 4:23
Yeah, I, I mean, again, this sort of like Doctor part of me thinks of pathology as like an illness to be treated. Yeah. So if you come to me and you're having like, very significant clinical depression, I'm like, Okay, this is this is disrupting your life. Like we should figure out how to do something about that. Let's, let's change that. Let's fix it, quote, unquote.

Itamar Marani 4:42
And grief is different because you feel like it's not something that's disruptive. It's just more of a ebb and flow of life. That's okay.

Sherry Walling 4:50
It's a natural welcome disruption. That's not permanent.

Itamar Marani 4:55
Yeah. So I'd love to dig into that a little bit. Yeah, you I've heard you also in several podcasts. And your use of vernacular is very interesting. And I feel a lot of times entrepreneurs, they have a depth of vocabulary that allows them to have a depth of understanding inside their business, that they don't just say, Oh, we're not making enough money they have, okay, we have issue with our sales, we have issue with profits, we have issues with our back end brokering. And when it comes to emotions, or that kind of world, they don't. And that's why it seems scary. And that's why it's just like, oh, like how you said, the difference between grief and depression. And I'm assuming a lot of people don't even know that little nuance. So it's scary to approach grief because they think it ultimately equates to depression. And I've heard you say a lot of times using the words holding healing. And in regards to grief, and I'd love to hear like just you elaborate on this. What does it mean to you? And how do you just in general, I do bring more a more rich vernacular to people. So they're not afraid of this stuff?

Sherry Walling 5:56
Do you think language is really important, and I feel like you've picked up on something that maybe I'm not even doing intentionally, but I came to feel the grief was, again, this something to hold something to treat with some reverence and some, like fragility, like a 10, like, almost like you have an injury in your body. And you You're, you're gentle with that shoulder or you're gentle with that knee, while it's healing, you don't cut it off, because it's not serving you or it's like, slightly injured, you wait for it, you let it heal your you go slow, you do your PT you, you know, you have this sort of slow reverence for this part of you that needs to be kind of brought back up to full capacity. And I guess that's maybe the analogy that I would hold with grief in a similar way, or that that language of holding the language of going slow.

Itamar Marani 6:54
That's an interesting analogy and wondering where you came up with it first, because I'm assuming you had to convince them a Thai person, like don't just cut off your arm, you need it in the future? It's okay, let it heal your shoulder. How did you go with that analogy? I think it's, it's a great one.

Sherry Walling 7:08
Well, I spent my career working with military folk and with entrepreneurs, I work with people who are pretty intolerant of any weakness within themselves. And if you are intolerant of something that you don't like about yourself, the tendency is to like muscle through or push through override, or grit and like, practice through the pain. And, you know, maybe there's, there's a place in time for that kind of thought. But generally speaking, when we listen to that thing that we need to work with, and go slow and sort of work with it, it tends to turn out better. But that that does take some convincing, it takes some framing for the folks that I work with, who are like, basically go fast and break things.

Itamar Marani 7:57
Yeah, it kind of sounds like me, I wasn't

Sherry Walling 8:00
gonna call you.

Itamar Marani 8:05
I do want to talk about it, though, because it's very interesting how a big part of the podcasts are trying to do is to give people the permission to recognize that there are there is a time and place for defense mechanisms to put things aside when you got to do things, but just like holding your breath, that can't be a permanent, that can't be how you're doing things always. And always. And I wonder if you have a kind of tool to how can people give themselves permission or to know when is the right time? When is it okay to actually let your foot off the gas a little bit and process this? It's kind of a safe space, you don't have to go? And when is it actually time to go? If you help people distinguish between those two, I feel like it's easier for them to actually go in and solve things than just pushing them aside.

Sherry Walling 8:42
Yeah, I would think about like chronic versus acute stressors. So sometimes there's something that must be done, it's acute, right? There's either a threat or there's a big launch or there's a big project, there's some very time limited time defined thing that you're pushing toward. And I think that's a good time for defense mechanisms is a good time to maybe not be super self reflective. It's not a time for motion, it's a time for action. And I'm you know, that is part of life for all people who were doing really difficult things. But if that becomes chronic, if that becomes your day in day out lived reality, then that becomes highly problematic. So the time between those acute stressors, or those acute bursts of action, is when I think we're wise to take that more introspective, self reflective, do the deeper work slow down, go inside a little bit more. And I think the tendency as you're identifying for entrepreneurs, for folks who may always see a chronic stressor or like a big project that needs doing and I think the danger in never slowing down of course from a physiological perspective is your body never resets and they say It was true from an emotional or from a grief perspective, those are not disparate concepts, right? Grief is embodied emotion is embodied all of that sort of lives in our body in the same way. So there has to be these bursts of energy, and then time for recovery.

Itamar Marani 10:17
So I love what you said, I think it's great. And so you said the danger is that you're not going to have this is the danger. So what's the upside that you've seen when people actually do take these breaks? Like, what's kind of a before and after that? Create a picture for people say, I agree, this is worth it. If you do this, there is it's not just okay, things aren't gonna be as bad. But there's actually a really big upside for you.

Sherry Walling 10:38
Yeah. So maybe some of the upside can be defined in the downside, like the nightmare scenarios, or the the problematic scenarios are, you know, the Vietnam era veteran that I've worked with, who has been holding a sense of guilt and grief around a coma, like somebody who died for 40 years, and has never been able to say that person's name has never been able to, like, you know, not enjoy, but like, even tolerate Memorial Day or Fourth of July, like lives in some amount of torture, because of this unprocessed grief. So that's, that's what we don't want. That's a little bit of the edge case scenario. I do think that that's maybe some of the lesson is that heavy things we'll get there do eventually. So whether that's trauma or grief, or some unprocessed pain, it will find a way to trickle up into your consciousness, usually at a time when it's least desirable at a time when you're under stress, or when you have other demands. And you find yourself getting disrupted and dysregulated. So it's much better to have kind of like a clean slate so that you're dealing with the painful, difficult traumatic things in your life as they come up. Rather than storing them up for some time in the future when they can cause cracks in the foundation.

Itamar Marani 12:03
It's great. And would it also be accurate to say that, when you're trying to do something, it's already out of your comfort zone, if you're also have these things bottled up inside you, it just adding friction and chaos. And just it's creating a higher degree of difficulty than what it should be

Sherry Walling 12:17
or baggage, yeah, or baggage. I mean, not to mention all the growth that is possible for us as humans, when we do engage the difficult things. So many of your listeners, lead teams, they maybe run companies or they lead other kinds of teams. And all of those humans that they interact with have their own grief stories. And so for you, as a leader, to be grief literate, means that you're going to be optimally supportive, and really help your team function at the highest level. But that is only going to happen if you do your work. If you don't do your work and you're kind of stunted in your own approach to grief, then, you know, it's incredibly hard to lead people through hard things if you haven't done the work first.

Itamar Marani 13:02
Yeah, I think it's such an interesting point, I'd love to dig into it a little bit. I can see a lot of people thinking to themselves, well, I don't want to dive into grief with my team. Because a it's going to be a distraction. B, I'm not sure that everyone can handle it. And some people will fall like I said, into a depression, because that's their belief that they're associated to how can we ensure that people can give people in the workspace the opportunity to remove that baggage so they can actually function more optimally and have better lives also outside the workplace? And without having also the fear that am I going to cause someone to fall into a depression? And it's gonna hurt performance, bottom line, and so on. So

Sherry Walling 13:40
yeah, probably you're not that powerful. So if you ask the wrong question, I don't think you're gonna be the one thing that like, plummets them into depression. That said, we do want to be careful with folks when they're in a vulnerable state. So I honor the the framing of it. I think one of the things about grief that sometimes we don't realize is that it can be fuel, like, it can create tremendous amount of focus. People get really in touch with with with what is meaningful to them. Sometimes it can spawn a lot of creativity. And so if you are a team leader, I think having a candid conversation with someone on your team about like, Hey, I know that you've recently lost one of your parents, and I just, how's that going for you? What do you feel like you need what flexibility can we offer you? Because some days, that individual may not be great at work, they may be kind of a mess. Other days, they might have tremendous focus. And so you want to create enough flexibility that that there's an open conversation where that person can say, put me in I got this I'm ready for this. This is what is meaningful and driving me right now. And other moments say, hey, just so you know, like I'm not functioning at my full brain today, and I probably shouldn't be, you know, the one leading the sales call or whatever it is.

Itamar Marani 15:01
Yeah. So I have a question for you that you're probably gonna laugh at. But do you put a certain timeline on this? Like, honestly, when you expect? How much are we going to give a certain person to yourself? Like, internally when you went through this process? Do you say, Okay, I recognize like in rehab, for example, there are phases, you're talking about a shoulder, there's phases where you go through and you kind of progress? Do you preemptively say, you know, this is I'm going to give myself permission to grieve for X amount of time? And then I'm going to reassess? How do you go about this? It's kind of just like a winged and kind of see, or is there something pre emptive? Where you strategize how you're going to go through this? How is that process?

Sherry Walling 15:36
I would not laugh at that question. I think it's a really good question. Because it's about like setting expectations. I think the danger in the question is that it becomes rigid, and then we sort of compare ourselves to some norm, like, Oh, I'm seven months in, and I'm still sad, every time I hear this certain song, I must be doing this wrong, or I need help, you know, something's wrong with me. Um, generally speaking, the first six weeks of any major transition is a lot of physiological arousal, right, your body is just like, What the hell happened, I can't sleep, I can't regulate very well. Also, in the case of grief, by death, there's a lot of paperwork, there's a lot of just logistics, depending on how close you are to the person that died. So I would say the first six weeks is just sort of like the zone of refined your bearings. And then a lot of people experience pretty significant sadness in the kind of six weeks following that. So I would say for the first three months, you're relatively impaired in your ability to go about normal life because the your internal resources are devoted to something else. And then for many people, there's kind of an evening out and kind of a finding a new normal, getting back to the pace of life. And then there can be another kind of big dip around the one year mark of someone's bereavement. That tends to be this time where you're aware of all of the last right, the last conversation or the last trip together, those kinds of things. So that timeline is not scientific and not concrete, and not for everybody. But I think it's kind of like a reasonable pacing, given the ways that significant transition and stressors move through our system.

Itamar Marani 17:26
Yeah, do you find that peep, some people move faster if they really give themselves permission to dive into this and accept it and hold it, as you say, as opposed to trying to just go about their normal lives, and it kind of bubbles in the background? As you previously mentioned? Do you feel like that, I think is the timeline or is it's kind of the same thing.

Sherry Walling 17:44
I think more space is helpful, I can't tell you from like, a clinically studied empirical research perspective, because I haven't done that project. But I also think that at the beginning, if you give yourself more space to process and you're more accepting of grief as a part of your life, you're equipping yourself with the tools that you need to work through grief, kind of as it flows, rather than trying to tamp it down or shut it down, keep a lid on it, and then exerting all that energy to just keep it down, if that makes sense. So if you kind of open it up, then it's just open, and it's going to free flow a little bit, but it won't be so effortful to grieve.

Itamar Marani 18:31
So basically, you're saying you're going to have to exert that energy anyway, whether to learn how to deal with it or to try to bottle it down. So might as well use it in a productive way.

Sherry Walling 18:39
Excellent. Yeah, that's a good summary.

Itamar Marani 18:43
I wanted to ask you, how you dealt with it on a personal level, because like, again, I'm sorry for your loss. And it was such an extreme situation where we both lost two family members in such a close amount of time, and both also how you brother, he took his life. Yeah, and I would love for you to share how you walk through your own process, and what you learned there and how it was for you.

Sherry Walling 19:05
Yeah, I I think that my experience of grief, you know, I grieved these two losses differently. The two kinds of death sort of brought about different processes for me. In the case of my dad, I think, in a way it was this sense of like, sad sadness and vulnerability. You know, I really felt a little bit orphaned, right. Like I'm a I'm a I'm a daughter without a dad and walking around in the world without my dad just felt very strange. I felt very young, if that makes sense. And yeah, I was grateful that at least in that case, I did know that he was going to die. That's not always helpful for people. But for me, it was, so I had some time to be with him, I was able to physically be present with him when he died, which mattered a great deal to me in terms of being able to really sort of walk him up to the gate, so to speak, and wave of, you know, like wave goodbye and felt like I could be tenderly present with him. That made the grief a little bit softer. The loss of my brother was definitely more shocking, more traumatic, his death was violent. And that kind of death. means there's some other sort of steps to take, you know, I think many, many people who lose someone by suicide, do a lot of the like, how could I have prevented this? What did I not see? What should I have done differently? There's a lot of kind of, like, cognitive working out of blame and shame and guilt and responsibility. So I had to do some of that. I didn't get stuck there for long, thankfully. But I think it

Itamar Marani 21:04
does require that you were able to not get stuck there. Because it because it's, it's a very serious thing. And it Yeah, before that guilt, shame, and so on. What do you think enabled you to not get stuck there.

Sherry Walling 21:17
Um, I do think that my training as a psychologist was helpful, to be honest. Because I have seen a lot of people get stuck. And I really didn't want to get stuck, if that makes sense. So I sort of sensed when I was going down some trails that I thought were going to be really dangerous for me. And I kind of knew to like, reverse out. I also, you know, I think I got a really special gift in that. The last thing that I ever said to my brother while he was alive, the last phone conversation we ever had. So the last words I ever said were I love you. And it's a small thing, but it mattered very much to me, because it it really solidified how I did feel about him, that I really loved him very deeply. And I did a lot to try to support and help him and at the end of the day, I feel really, I don't feel like I held anything back. And so my own appraisal of how I showed up for him. I feel good about that. And that that's important to me.

Itamar Marani 22:36
Thank you for sharing, and I must be tough also going on all these podcasts and going through the story again, appreciate it.

Sherry Walling 22:44
In a way it keeps them alive a little bit, you know, like, Yeah, I like that I get to tell stories about them. That man, that's, that's cool.

Itamar Marani 22:53
Yeah. So from what I understand, from my perspective, you said the two main things that allowed you not get stuck in the grief and really be able to move forward or one that you sense that you said what you wanted to say to him, and it was left on a good note. And to you said you didn't go down certain paths, when you recognize you're going to as a gloomy path you're able to reverse out of it. And I'm assuming going back to where we started to talk about that that was through some kind of physical practice. Would that be accurate that that was a big lever there?

Sherry Walling 23:26
Yeah, I think the physical practice kept me grounded in my life, if that makes sense. So that likes Yeah, yeah. Some of the pads that I had to go through thinking about what maybe I could have done differently, like that sort of lived in my head. And, you know, I had to sort of circumnavigate those thoughts. But when it comes to physical practices, so for me, I am an aerialist, I'm a circus artist, which is I sort of got into because of all of this grief. And it helps me to feel really anchored in my own aliveness. Because one of the things that's really tricky about grief and especially grief by suicide is this sense of like survivor's guilt, or people who've maybe had experience with the military will be fairly familiar with this concept is that it feels like I should have been me, I should have done more. Like, I wish I could trade places with him. And being really grounded in my own body, and in my own physical practice, helped me to just feel very alive. Like all of the cells in my body were like, we were here, we are still here. We get to be alive. And we can, I can be present to grief. I can think about it, feel it, write about it, be present to it. But also, I want to be really dialed in to the aliveness that I hold in my own self.

Itamar Marani 24:57
It's interesting because I would have expected you to say some think that it gave me an opportunity to be focused on something else, to not have that consume me. And you say something entirely different, which is interesting.

Sherry Walling 25:09
I think they're both true. But yeah.

Itamar Marani 25:13
Why do you think that was a value to do something that was a distraction, almost just kind of not a distraction. It's called, like a more honest, a refuge for a couple of hours a day or the week or whatever it may be.

Sherry Walling 25:24
I think especially having two compounding griefs close to each other, it can feel restless, like my whole life is about like, being sad and people dying, like it can feel like there aren't a lot of other storylines to pay attention to. And so when I'm doing aerial, I'm, you know, 25 feet in the ground. I'm hanging from one hand, like, I have to really focus. It's very, what I'm doing. Yeah, right, you got it. But your brain is all in and your body is all in. And so you get sort of absorbed in the practice. And it lets you have a break from all the other stuff from the reality of death and grief. And because of that part of my life was on pause. I could really feel that aliveness a little bit of lightness.

Itamar Marani 26:15
Yeah.

Sherry Walling 26:16
Do you think it was traction makes possible the lightness? Yeah, yeah,

Itamar Marani 26:20
I was gonna ask, do you think with lightness so you're using that term? Is that why you chose Ariel as well to pursue as a hobby? That was something a bit not just going to the gym for a run but a that you had to be mentally? Like focused during that time and be there's some levity there like, physically literally levity.

Sherry Walling 26:38
I think so. I mean, I didn't sort of do it on purpose. During these this period, I was also training in the gym like more traditionally doing hit training, and I would go in and use the battle ropes, you know, the big heavy ropes that are in the gym and just slam them with every like, ounce of strength in my body. And that felt really good felt sort of like aggressive like, let me get this shit away. Like, I just want to whip it out. But I think Ariel because it is. We talk about aerialist as artists, athletes, because obviously it's a ton of strength. It's very, very physical. But it's also pretty emotionally expressive. It is a little bit like dancing. And so the pairing of emotional expression be it levity, be it playful, be it light, or even, even things that are sad, or creepy or weird, you know, any of that can be depicted through an aerial practice, which is pretty fun.

Itamar Marani 27:38
Do you think that's a big would that be a recommendation that you give to people that are going even, let's say not on a macro level, like grief and emotions of that magnitude, but just stressors to take up some sort of physical practice, that also requires them to be mentally engaged at the same time not just running on the beach, where you can go with your thoughts and all that, but something we have to actually be zoned into that. That's something that

Sherry Walling 28:01
100% Yeah, 100%. I mean, neurologically speaking, it's, it's neurological diversification. So you're using different circuitry, when you're doing that kind of a physical practice compared to like what I do all day, which is sitting in front of the computer and talking to people. So when you are using a totally different part of your brain, obviously, it's really good for robot robust brain health anyway. But I think it is really, really important under times of stress to give that sort of default circuitry, a break, and lean in to these other parts of your brain. And when we talk about something that's absorbing another maybe concept that's similar, maybe not exactly the same, but a cousin concept is the state of is a concept of flow state, where you're so in something you lose track of time, or you lose track of your place, you know, you're outside of like your cognitive awareness and completely in an activity. So surfing is often like that. kite surfing. I don't particularly like swimming, but I think some people experience that with swimming. So this space where you're sort of zoned out, but you're actually zoned in to something different than your daily thoughts.

Itamar Marani 29:17
For me, it's personally Brazilian jujitsu and swimming. Like when I'm either in the water or when I'm training that intensity with somebody that's complex. It does that. And I wanted to talk to you about this because it's interesting. You said, give yourself a break. What do you think about using it as a pre emptive tool? To say okay, no, about to be in a very intense place again, either because some macro thing that happened in my life or just the chronic stress of it, but really using it as a preemptive tool. What is your opinion on that?

Sherry Walling 29:45
Excellent. I mean, I think anything that we can do to play prevention is great. And I was lucky that Ariel was in my life before these losses happened. So I had a foundation I can drop into. But when you don't have a foundation, and you're starting something from scratch, so let's say you have a catastrophe happened in your life, and you're like, Oh, I heard this podcast and I need to, like, get a hobby. That's, that's a difficult time to start something new, because it's frustrating, and it's irritating to be totally new at something. So having some kind of physical practice that really gets you in your body is part of overall mental health, I would argue. And it does help protect you, when you experience these seasons of increased stress.

Itamar Marani 30:37
Yeah. Okay, so I wanted to kind of talk about, I've been alluding to it a bit through the podcast, who was really interested in me your perspective on it? Yeah, I feel like a lot of people give themselves permission to address their mental health, grief, and so on and so on. When events of a high magnitude happened, like macro events, like a death in the family, something really extreme. But when it's something a bit more micro that happens to them. They don't give themselves that permission. But like you said, it's still there and still boils up. And I'd love to hear your opinion of how would you recommend people understand that this micro is something that you give yourself permission to work through, because it does have a residue that it leaves?

Sherry Walling 31:19
Absolutely. I mean, one of my favorite mental health practices is, is just recording the highs and lows of every day. And it's not very profound, I guess. But it is actually pretty profound. Because every day for the last, probably almost 12 years, I've recorded one sentence, the high point of my day and the low point of my day. And what it does, when I write down the low point, for example, it gives it gives some attention, it gives an acknowledgment to that moment sucked. That was hard, that was painful. I didn't like that moment. And so I have this little bit of like an emotional acknowledgement of the low point. And over time, when you see those low points to maths that actually really interesting data, sometimes people make great life decisions based on seeing these trends and their low points over time. So to get to your question, this sense of micro griefs, I mean, we're grieving all the time, especially if you're a business owner, like you're grieving, you know, launches that didn't go as you expected, you're grieving employees that leave you're grieving, a global recession that's messing with your plans. You're, you know, there are many, many griefs. And I think the the framework of grief is to simply experience the emotions associated with an event that involves loss. And sometimes that's, most times, that's just acknowledging. I had this and I lost it, I hoped for this and I lost it, then I've got feelings associated with that.

Itamar Marani 32:59
What do you say to someone who's afraid that that means you're falling into victimhood, they're having some victimhood career by doing that, and that's the concern of why they're not willing to lean into it.

Sherry Walling 33:09
victimhood is where you build an identity around those losses. Right, because I've lost things, therefore, I am entitled to certain behavior, or I'm entitled to treat people a certain way, or I'm entitled to certain, I don't know, privileges. So the entitlement is the issue with victimhood, not the emotional expression, the emotional expression of I had this wonderful plan, and it fell apart. And that's a bummer. And I feel it, and I'm going to acknowledge it, and then I'm going to move on, I think is actually the opposite of victim, because you're, you're just letting it sit there and then moving on, you're not like holding it into your chest to save for forever.

Itamar Marani 33:52
And I think it's also you're saying this happened, but I'm strong enough to not let it define me. Okay, you're saying about that identity? It's great what you said it. Okay, so the last question I really want to ask is, what would you say to someone who's struggling to give themselves permission to grieve or to deal with their mental health? And when would be the right time for them to actually address this?

Sherry Walling 34:15
Well, the answer is now. I really feel like the conversation around mental health is not so much around crisis intervention, as much as it's about mental health maintenance all the time. Right? you brush your teeth every day, at least I hope maybe twice a day. It's just maintenance that you do to protect your body and your health. And maybe you stretch everyday, maybe you meditate, but mental health is part of your daily practice. And that could mean working with a therapist once a week or once a month. It could mean just really attending to your exercise. It could mean journaling, it could mean the high low practice that I mentioned. But it's the attention toward this part of you that is important and significant and does need to be tended, like every part of you. Like we tend our relationships and our bodies.

Itamar Marani 35:15
Yeah. So I kind of give a summary of what am I the main takeaways were from, I'd be interested to hear if you feel like you're among the right spot, or if I've missed something. Okay. So first off, the biggest thing for people to recognize is that going through grief doesn't mean you're going to be depressed. It is not an automatic thing that if you do this, this will happen. And also what we said towards the end, that also if you grief, you're not going to become a victim. If you acknowledge certain things that are painful, it does not mean you will fall into victimhood. And you can give yourself that permission without being afraid to come across as weak or be weak. That's number one. That'd be accurate. Absolutely. Right. And when you're going through something that's a bit more on the on the more the higher level of magnitude side as far as grief is to one, that especially you said about the the loss of your brother, do it hopefully, you can say what you need to say. And don't hold anything back that you might regret later. And to, if you can be aware of not going down into the defense that you don't want to go and having some kind of physical practice, that's also that's really, you're really involved in that. It's not just something that you can run on the beach and have your thoughts but something that you really have to engulf yourself in. It can be an amazing both tool to help you recover from things and also as a preventative tool, how you call it maintenance.

Sherry Walling 36:36
I agree.

Itamar Marani 36:38
And finally, that you're saying the time is now the way I look at it from what you said the time is now because these things happen anyway, that you're going to spend energy either trying to hold these things down as they bubble up. Or you can spend energy more intelligently learning how to process these six. So you have a kind of cleaner slate to work with, you have less baggage to carry up that hill that you're trying to climb. That'd be accurate as to kind of what will be the three main takeaways from this one.

Sherry Walling 37:02
Excellent. I feel like you're listened really well.

Itamar Marani 37:07
So Sherry, I want to say a big thank you for coming on guys. She's out with her new book touching two worlds. It talks all about this and much more in depth. It's highly recommended also a lot of my previous clients know of sherry and have read her books and have spoke very highly of her. So I recommend that very much as well. And Jerry, thank you again for being on. Is there anything else you'd like to say any parting words?

Sherry Walling 37:29
It is, it's just really delightful to have the conversation with you. Thanks for having me on. And I really appreciate your openness to thinking about mental optimization and just like performance by going in through the hard things and out the other side. That's a beautiful framework. Crispy. Yeah.

Itamar Marani 37:51
Appreciate you. Likewise. Thank you very much. You're till next time. Yeah.