Change your identity after bereavement

Grief is part of the human experience. If you love, you will lose. And when you do, the pain is inescapable. It can be disorienting, overwhelming, and in the case of acute grief, the symptoms can even resemble something like psychosis.

In this episode of Office Hours, I explore what grief actually is, how it is lived and felt by those who are bereaved, and why these reactions—however unsettling—are not signs of dysfunction. They are, in fact, evidence of something profoundly good: the depth of our love and devotion to one another.

The aim is not to eliminate grief—that is neither possible nor desirable—but to approach it with understanding. In doing so, we can move toward our suffering rather than away from it, extend compassion to others walking a similar path, and begin to discover meaning within our loss.

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Where to find Arthur Brooks: 

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• Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠officehours@arthurbrooks.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro  

(05:13) The story of Itaru Sasaki’s wind phone  

(07:26) What grief is  

(09:33) Grief vs. bereavement  

(10:03) Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief and newer research  

(14:42) The brain’s response to grief  

(18:24) How long does it take to get through grief  

(20:45) Post-traumatic growth and the five areas that often improve  

(23:45) #1. Look for meaning  

(26:56) #2. Change your identity  

(29:15) #3. Adopt rituals  

(30:53) #4. Let yourself be happy again  

(32:10) #5. Help others with grief  

(34:10) Q&A: How failure helps your career  

(35:24) Q&A: Getting married in a church after leaving it  

(37:24) Q&A: Breaking the cycle of self-blame

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Referenced:

• The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness: themeaningofyourlife.com

• Meaning Membership: https://hub.arthurbrooks.com/the-meaning-membership 

• Arthur’s newsletter: https://www.arthurbrooks.com/newsletter 

• The Happiness Scale: https://learn.arthurbrooks.com/the-happiness-scale 

• The Pursuit of Happiness with Arthur Brooks: https://www.thefp.com/s/the-pursuit-of-happiness-with-arthur

• My Wind Phone (wind phone directory): https://www.mywindphone.com

• Treatment of complicated grief: a randomized controlled trial: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15928281

• ...References continued at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.arthurbrooks.com/office-hours⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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