On Grief and Grieving after Loss, Separation or Endings (Part 1) with Clinical Psychologist Verena Kacinskis

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Show notes (for both Part 1 and Part 2):

• Our sponsor for today's episode: Etsy shop Green and Experience: Natural and Reusable Vegan and Cruelty Free Hemp Dryer Balls - get 10% off your purchase by using promo code: BROWNBLE10
• Verena Kacinskis' website: verenakacinskis.com
• Verena Kacinskis' instagram: @verenakacinskis
• Part 2 of this series of episodes on grief and grieving
• Interview episode: Clinical Psychologist Verena Kacinskis on The Wounds Behind Perfectionism
• The 5 stages of grief and the Elizabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation
• David Kessler and Brené Brown on Grief and Finding Meaning in her Podcast Unlocking Us
• Book: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
• Book: On Grief and Grieving by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler
• Book: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
• Book: Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter
• Book: Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
• Book: When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
• Book: The Light Between Us by Laura Lynne Jackson
• Book: Signs: The Secret Language of the Universe by Laura Lynne Jackson
• Book: With the End in Mind by Kathryn Mannix
• A list of further reading on specific types of grief by Choosing Therapy
• Podcast: Griefcast
• Podcast: Griefcast with Isabel Allende
• Podcast: Dear Sugars 

 

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In our first ever interview in the podcast, we had my dear friend and clinical psychologist Verena Kacinskis as a guest talking about the wounds behind perfectionism. Now she is back with a half interview /half conversation between best friends on grief and the grieving process. This is an episode Verena and I have been plotting and planning for months, and we both come into it without filters.

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This episode, which I like to think of as: two friends walk into a bar and talk about grief, is raw, honest, and it is meant to bring you support if you are grieving, if the passing of a loved one is near, if it has been a long time since you lost someone and have had a difficult and prolonged grieving process, and it is also for anyone grieving any type of loss other than from the death of a loved one. It could be that you are grieving the end of a relationship, are going through a divorce or through the loss of a friendship, estrangement from family members, your kids moving away from home, the loss of a job or business, that you are grieving a dream that hasn’t come to pass or that didn’t happen for you, the loss of youth, the loss that comes from seeing your body change through the years through the process of ageing, the loss of health, and any other circumstance where grieving can take place.

As you know I’ve had a lot of losses due to the death of loved ones, most happened in the span of a few short years at a very young age, and Verena comes to this conversation with the most candid and open hearted vulnerability, talking about her divorce after 13 years of marriage, right before the pandemic. What I loved about this conversation, was that even though I have experienced grief first hand, and I feel I’ve grown to understand it more and more with every loss, Verena explains grief from that perfect intersection between lived experience and her incredible professional experience as a therapist, and I learned so much from this conversation.

We talk about:

• The meaning of grief and the grieving process, what this process is and what it feels like.

• The 5 stages of grief, what they are and examples for each of them.

• Traumatic and problematic grief.

• The wavelike cycle of grief with all its ups and downs.

• What can help if you are grieving and when and how to seek support while grieving.

• Grief due to the passing of a loved one, and grief after divorce, a breakup or a separation.

• Our guest, clinical psychologist Verena Kacinskis shares so many stories of grief and overcoming it from her professional work as a therapist.

• The role therapy and grief counseling can play when grieving and experiencing the loss of a loved one.

• Resources, tools and tips to help support you through grief and the grieving process.

• Much more is coming in part 2 coming next week.
  
  

When I finished recording the episode, I was sitting with my husband Carlos having dinner, and when he asked me how the recording went, the first thing I said was “it was the episode I wish I had had when I first went through this”, and that is exactly what I wanted to give you, a resource, a lifeline, something to grab on to if you’re struggling with grief, or an episode you could share with someone you know who is grieving, because as you’ll hear in this episode, grief has so much to do with a feeling of loneliness, and I wanted you to know, that you are most certainly not alone, in the sadness or the conflicting feelings, or the guilt, or the regret or the anger, or the numbness.

Verena Kacinskis is a clinical psychologist and researcher. For the past 13 years, she has been integrating the concepts and techniques from Psychology and a healthcare system called BodyTalk, seeking to deepen and expand therapeutic results for her patients. 

Currently, she has been splitting her time between seeing patients and developing content to both educate and encourage self-observation, always with the premise of sharing resources that people can use in their own internal organization processes.

You can connect with verena through her website verenakacinskis.com  and through her instagram page @verenakacinskis. She is one of the most insightful, professional, dedicated, sensitive and wonderful people I know, I am so grateful to have her in my life and so grateful you get to meet her in today's conversation if you haven't before.