Dr Monika Wieliczko (00:03)
Ahem.
Welcome to a Guide to Afterlife, the podcast where we explore the realities of grief and life after loss. I'm Dr. Monika Wieliczko, a clinical psychologist and a widow. In this episode, we're diving deep into what it truly means to recover from grief and start rebuilding life after loss. Grief can feel overwhelming and isolating, but is there a roadmap to navigate this journey?
This is the question I'm asking my guest today, Dr. Piedusz-Mitchell, a UK-based chartered counselling psychologist, a founder of the Grief Clinic and the author of The Lost Prescription, a brilliant book that helps people navigate their grief journey. So Chloe has over two decades of experience helping people across the world, healing from trauma, grief and emotional pain.
And in this conversation, we'll explore what makes some grief traumatic, why loss can deeply impact mental health, and how a holistic approach, including nervous system regulation, can support recovery. We will also discuss some of the biggest challenges of rebuilding life, from fear of future loss, to struggle to reinvesting in relationships, including the complex experiences of losing a life partner.
If you're wondering how to move beyond survival mode and move into a place of true healing, this episode is especially for you. So, let's get started. So, I'd like to welcome you to the podcast, Chloe. It's really good to have you here and to talk about a wonderful book and, well, about your, the vast experience you've had in this field.
And yeah, maybe if you could just start by saying a few things about yourself and most importantly, brought you into the field of grief?
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (02:10)
? thank you Dr. Monica for inviting me I'm really really pleased to be here on your brilliant podcast what a important thing that you're putting out there for people. Yeah so what got me into this?
Dr Monika Wieliczko (02:24)
Mm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (02:26)
I guess I was thrown into it like a lot of people are when a friend of mine very tragically lost her sister. We were 16 at the time, I was living in Greece, a very beautiful, comfortable childhood up until then where I lived in the illusion I guess that bad things don't happen to good people, you know.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (02:45)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (02:53)
that sort of sense that everything's fine, bad things don't happen to us and when this tragedy struck my very dear friend not only was I shocked and horrified and devastated by what had actually happened which I will keep private for confidentiality reasons if that's okay but it was a very traumatic event and
Dr Monika Wieliczko (03:14)
Of course, yeah.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (03:21)
What struck me even at the age of 16 was not only watching my friend deteriorate and retreat from the world, but also the absence of acknowledging what grief was like. You know, we went back to school and nobody talked about it. There was no counselling. This is back in the early 90s. There was no holding space.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (03:40)
Mm.
Yeah.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (03:51)
for the sadness and the fear that all of us, think. And my response was to, I guess...
Dr Monika Wieliczko (03:56)
Mmm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (04:05)
How do I put it? Sort of retreat, go in on myself. I started not eating very much. I started fearing the world on an external. You if you looked at me on the outside, none of that was particularly obvious. And it spiked my curiosity to a really profound degree of wanting to study psychology, wanting to see how to help people who are struck by...
Dr Monika Wieliczko (04:17)
Mmm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (04:34)
by tragedy. And that's really the beginning of my relationship with psychology. And I don't regret it. And the more I've done it, the more I feel that this is almost like my soul needs to do this. I eventually ended up working for media. I worked for BBC News as an organisational development psychologist. And because I didn't go into clinical psychology immediately, I went into sort of a HR role.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (04:47)
Mmm, yeah.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (05:05)
And whilst I was there, 9-11 happened and a number of really professional people were traumatized. People that had been really efficient had perhaps been very productive during other wars and other hostile environments, but the unexpected nature of 9-11 back in that day derailed people. And I was asked by the BBC to go and find out.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (05:13)
Hmm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (05:34)
what is PTSD? There wasn't much out there at the time and why is this happening to really brilliant people who are highly intelligent and highly professional and capable? And I guess that was the really significant factor because I went on and I did my PhD. I researched the lived experience of traumatic loss and that is really what I've been doing for the last couple of decades.
diving into helping people who feel overwhelmed, feel hopeless, who feel helpless, who are trying to logic their way through to re-establishing themselves and finding that they can't really do that. And when I was asked by HarperCollins to write a book on my approach to grief, which I felt really flattered and hadn't expected it, it became...
Dr Monika Wieliczko (06:15)
Mmm.
Mm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (06:32)
It's increasingly apparent to me that there is no manual to grieving because it's subjective experience and it's defined by so many individual factors that shape a person's life and a person's story and a person's grieving.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (06:39)
Mm-hmm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (06:55)
But at the same time, we are all humans. We are all in the human condition and we all share certain aspects of what it is to recover in inverted commas and find a way of living life meaningfully. And I didn't feel like the five stages of grief actually encapsulates the complexity, especially the complexity of a dramatic loss.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (07:11)
Hmm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (07:24)
grateful to have the opportunity to put some practical tools, some therapeutic tools out there for whoever might feel drawn to engaging with them.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (07:33)
Hmm.
Yeah, and I think what I really liked about your book, and I've got it with me for our listeners, those who will be able to access the video version of the podcast, and yes, think what I really liked about it is the fact that it has best of your personal story in it and some really thoughtful...
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (07:42)
So, it's nice to see.
Lovely.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (08:04)
moments when you describe the struggles that people go through, some case studies, some information when people can really relate to it. But at the same time, there's just a breadth of knowledge in terms of where those responses come from, and especially when thinking about the context of trauma, which I think it's still a very...
I think I rarely hear people talk about it and I think this is one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you because you know we both have kind of trauma background in our practice and you know to me it seems so natural that I would think about any kind of traumatic and difficult experience as potentially traumatizing and I definitely experienced that myself when my husband died and I think I've really kind of tried to advocate that kind of
approach to dealing with loss, especially with more complex grief, where it's not that just your neighbor dies and you might be upset about it, but you didn't have a close relationship with them and over a few weeks' time, you gradually have the capacity to deal with it. But I'm just talking about losses or experiences that really disturb people at a fundamental level. And as you're saying,
what you were describing about your early experiences from childhood of some of this, some of the levels of disturbance were not visible to people and I think that often is the case with trauma that these things happen internally. They have physiological manifestations but they're rarely kind of acknowledged by the society and that kind of sense of being disconnected from the world around you.
and not knowing how to return is just such a common theme. So I thought that this book really kind of captures some of those elements, but presents it in a way that made me think that this is just a bit of a storytelling, a bit of knowledge to absorb. It just doesn't feel overwhelming. Like sometimes you think about reading some of kind of textbooks, textbooks, when you just kind of struggle to relate to that. So I really appreciate that.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (10:00)
Yeah.
Well, thank you.
Yes.
?
Dr Monika Wieliczko (10:25)
you know, recommend the book because hmm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (10:25)
thank you. that's amazing. I didn't want to write a book that's inaccessible or highly academic. wrote it, yeah, sharing my own story of loss because I think we can feel a traumatic grief or a profound grief to other losses too, not just to loss to belief meant through going through a divorce or having a...
Dr Monika Wieliczko (10:31)
Hmm.
Yeah, absolutely.
Mm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (10:50)
losing your health, is something that I'm dealing with chronically and has been and kind of you discover more impact as you go along because it's chronic or when you, you know, very sadly go through miscarriage, which is another experience I write about very openly in the book. don't, I think we learn through shared, shared.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (10:58)
Mm.
Mm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (11:16)
shared experiences and through stories. So I've tried to sort of, yes, offer some of the science so people can normalise their physical experiences because so often what I see in my clinic is people arriving desperately worried that they're doing something wrong, that they're not coping right, that they are losing their grip on mental health. And in my experience, I think a trauma-informed approach
is the first step is to just develop some acceptance and some awareness that you're having a normal response to an abnormal situation. for those of your listeners that haven't seen the book and I really appreciate your lovely feedback and support of it, it is broken down into sections that are very manageable. The idea being that let's get the nervous system regulated first as simply as we can with very simple
Dr Monika Wieliczko (11:54)
Yeah.
Mm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (12:15)
I call them prescriptions, but they're really just suggestions. Regulate the brain, understand how the brain grieves, and there's a lot of amazing research out there that I've included. Understand the physical body reaction to grief and what it is to be in that state. Understand the emotional impact of grief, but also the impact on your identity. That's what you're saying. There's so much that happens internally.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (12:26)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (12:42)
your sense of self, your social dimension, you you have to reconstruct, I find that quite a lot of social realm, either professionally or in your immediate kind of network, who can you relate to, who really holds space for you, as well as the spiritual dimension. it's a sort of holistic means that, it's just looking at the mental, the physical, the emotional, the personal and the spiritual.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (12:50)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (13:11)
in the hope that people can just dip in and out of the bits that they feel really align with what they need.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (13:18)
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, and I think it's so important that we make it very clear that grief isn't just an emotional experience. And I often think that this is a common misunderstanding in our society that you just get upset or you struggle with, maybe you struggle with sleeping or eating for a bit. I don't quite, I don't think we quite.
talk enough about the extent of the changes that take place in our mind and our brain. we had a few episodes recently about, you know, the grieving body, especially episode six with Mary Frances O'Connor and her brilliant book. So I think there's more and more books coming up and people talking more openly about those different dimensions and how we're
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (14:10)
Yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (14:12)
you mentioned the grieving brain, what goes on neurologically and how many adaptations need to take place. So when you actually look at it from that perspective, it makes more sense why it would take so long to recover from this state of shock. I often think of that what goes on at the beginning in grief or loss is that we're just basically trying to survive. I think that the element, this kind of
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (14:34)
Yeah, exactly.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (14:39)
concept of traumatic loss and traumatic grief is really important. I wonder whether you can say a bit more about how you define that, because you write a lot about that in the book and the difference, because I think that's what makes the difference between maybe more straightforward response to loss. I mean, I definitely can relate to types of losses I've had in my life, for example, when my grandmother died.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (14:49)
?
you
Dr Monika Wieliczko (15:06)
It was, it is still a loss, but it wasn't traumatic. It was, you know, normal, but there were other losses like the loss of my husband when I definitely felt it was a traumatic loss, a traumatic grief. So yeah, maybe we can think a bit more about that because I don't think people quite understand the difference.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (15:25)
Yeah, yeah, thanks. That's a really important question. There's lots of ways to define traumatic loss, a really overarching theme, I think, is it's a loss that sits outside the natural order of life. So it's often an event that happens very suddenly, very unexpectedly, for which nothing could be done to prevent it from happening. So the suddenness and the rapid
nature of it is destabilizing to our usual way of carrying on with life, getting on with our days. it's really important to, I think, normalize. Sorry, keep taking my glasses on and off. can't decide whether I need them or not today. Sorry about that. What was I saying? I forgot what I was saying.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (16:17)
You
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (16:25)
Sorry, we'll have to edit this out. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what I think's really important to acknowledge is that mental health...
Dr Monika Wieliczko (16:25)
That's okay. It's okay, don't worry. You were talking about the circumstances of traumatic loss, yeah.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (16:43)
deteriorates very rapidly or is disrupted very violently in inverted commas or suddenly, overwhelmingly when an event like that strikes and it happens just on a normal day. I was talking to a really lovely client who'd lost his father in an accident, in a road traffic accident and what he kept bringing to words was that it just happened on an ordinary Tuesday.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (16:57)
Mm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (17:13)
And I'll never forget that because it's such a simple but profound acknowledgement that nothing really prepares you for that kind of event, nothing. So if you're struggling with it, if your body feels overwhelmed, if your mind feels dysregulated and you're finding it impossible to anchor yourself in the way that you used to, your routines no longer work.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (17:13)
you
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (17:41)
You can't relax, you can't concentrate, you're not sure what you're thinking or feeling. That's not you failing, if any listeners are kind of resonating with that. It's the absolutely natural response, the human response to a devastating, sudden loss of a loved one. And I think what I often do, which I do a lot in my book, explain that a...
A traumatic loss throws our mental health and wellbeing into a very disorganised state because mental health really is just a subjective measure of wellbeing. That's it. There are certain pillars which I talk about in the book that I think, which I'm sure you'll agree with, of stabilises so very simple things like I feel I can cope with what life's thrown at me.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (18:27)
Mm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (18:40)
or I'm reaching my potential, I get to be the kind of person I want to be. Or I've got meaningful connections, authentic connections with good people and I have that sense of belonging and I have that sense of safety, all that sense of love, know, really important things in life. Or I feel I make a meaningful contribution to my community. I'm good, I'm good with it all. Now, how can we possibly have any of that?
in our usual way if a devastating event strikes us. It's virtually impossible and I'm really committed to raising more awareness, more conversations like we are today on the...
The shared humanity that means finding light in all that darkness and finding a way through to embrace hope and joy and to living meaningfully again is possible but we can't do it if we keep pathologizing it and if we keep thinking that we're failing somehow. Does that make sense?
Dr Monika Wieliczko (19:47)
It makes perfect sense and I'm so glad you're saying this because I think it's something that is about normalizing but also I immediately think of myself and my experiences of loss and thinking well I was a clerical psychologist at the time when my husband died. I knew all of it and yet it still affected me in probably the same way as it would anyone else. So no matter what your knowledge and
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (20:13)
you
Dr Monika Wieliczko (20:15)
set of skills is you are going to experience that kind of traumatic loss because it is what it is, as you're saying. I think the difference is that if you've got those resources, you've got the knowledge and you've got the skills and external resources like friendships and community and stability, at least financial stability or all those kind of basics.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (20:26)
Yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (20:44)
covered you probably more likely to recover from it quicker or maybe not quicker. It's not a bit but kind of have an easier experience. I often think of grief, know, grief is difficult. But I also think that suffering sometimes it's optional, meaning that there are certain things that we could avoid or improve in our journey in grief recovery, which I'm hoping we can talk a bit more about today.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (20:48)
you
Yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (21:10)
You know all those things that we can do so it doesn't feel completely hopeless or helpless because there's a lot of helplessness with grief isn't there?
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (21:19)
Oh
yeah, lot. And some of it I think needs acknowledgement, or all of it actually needs acknowledgement, being met with compassion. And you will have seen in my book that I talk a lot about embracing whatever your internal experience is with deep acceptance and compassion for the experience, for yourself. And you know, when...
Dr Monika Wieliczko (21:24)
Mm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (21:49)
Some losses are not all losses the same. Some losses are unbearable. Some losses do feel insurmountable. Like if you lose a cherished child, how can you ever feel that you're okay with that? And you're never going to be okay with that. I think when it comes to recovery, what we need to be, what I'm very passionate about and in normalizing is.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (21:58)
Hmm.
course.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (22:12)
recognizing that having the sadness, feeling the absence and living in the pain of grief is normal. But as Mary Frances O'Connor, that brilliant, I love her book, The Grieving Brain, says is healing comes from letting go of the yearning for a different outcome, which is a really difficult thing to expect.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (22:34)
Yeah.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (22:39)
yourself when you're so so desperately wanting a different a different reality. The only thing that I think gets us there is self-compassion. Meeting the difficult emotions those negatively charged emotions of fear and despair helplessness and hopelessness with gentleness and grace and recognition that they are valid responses and sharing them.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (22:42)
Mmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Hmm.
Hmm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (23:09)
I don't think we make it okay for people to share their dark emotions. I really don't. I really don't. I I am at the moment going through a peculiar time, which I'm happy to talk about because I had a very bad accident in the summer, led to an extremely serious chronic pain syndrome, which has led to me not being able to walk.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (23:10)
Yeah.
No.
Hmm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (23:37)
for months and months and months and months and some people who have this condition never recover because if you go online that is what it tells you but I choose not to believe that I'm working on putting all my skills to practice and trying to sort of work with a mind body spirit connection but what I wanted to say sorry I don't want to go off topic is nobody really wants to sit and talk about the despair and the sadness and the frustration and the loneliness of
Dr Monika Wieliczko (23:49)
Hmm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (24:06)
losing your health and losing your mobility which actually feels like a huge grief. No, not really. People want to send a text message to say how are you doing. I hope you feel better. I hope you feel better soon. And part of me gets really angry with those messages because I think, well, I don't really want to tell you how I feel on a text message because what I feel is too complicated and too big and too personal to find words to fit into your busy.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (24:15)
I hope you
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (24:36)
busy life. I think there was a lot of that going on. I don't know whether you found that in your own experience.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (24:37)
Hmm.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a really brilliant point about the lack of capacity in society. I think just the fear around connecting with what is it like to live with chronic condition, but also with terminal illness or anything, know, anything to do with mortality. think we're unprepared as a society to...
think and know how to deal with it and me, I think invest so much energy in keeping that, you know, I think this, I call it the best kept secret in the world.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (25:26)
It doesn't take much, don't think, for people to feel comforted. what I do do quite often is go into a workplace environment in the city, in London, and hold grief circles or grief spaces for bereaved employees to attend. It's a sort of dropping space and they can come and talk and share, or they can come and just listen.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (25:40)
Right.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (25:56)
and it always amazes me that a lot of people do show up for those, which you might not have expected, but they do. And at the beginning of every grief circle, there's quite a lot of, hello, I'm so-and-so and that's my job. And by the end of the grief circle, pretty much everyone has opened up. There are a lot of tears and there's a lot of...
this is what I'm living with, this is what my grief is like and I'm so relieved that I'm not alone. I see that there are other people in this building who are sharing in what I'm going through who recognise and can just acknowledge that. And that in itself, the shared humanity in that nobody's gonna leave the session feeling like their grief has gone away, but they leave the session feeling that their grief has been shared. And it makes a massive difference. I think it makes, we've lost that.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (26:47)
Mm. Mm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (26:53)
feel like we've that and it takes.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (26:55)
And I don't know what you think about it, but I often think that that's one of the reasons why people's mental health is more likely to deteriorate and last is because we have nowhere to take it, nowhere to absorb, process, contain those feelings. And whenever I look at different kinds of presentations throughout my career in secondary and primary care mental health,
in NHS and in private or third sector, wherever I worked, it's the same story. It's that really when you look beyond those layers of distress, what you find is that the lack of containment, the lack of capacity to deal with feelings is usually what pushes them into those different, know, uglier versions of distress. And if only we had a way of helping our communities to grieve.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (27:48)
you
I don't know.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (27:52)
better.
think it would, I reckon it would reduce the cost of physical health services and mental health services hugely because, you know, that's what often drives the illnesses in our body physically, mentally, in any aspect. And yet we kind of pretend as if it's not happening.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (28:10)
it.
Yeah, I totally agree with you and it's so interesting hearing you say that because you've reminded me of when I worked in the NHS in primary care in psychological services and very often, this is quite early on in my training, what I noticed that very often a person that would have been referred to me for a serious mental health illness like an OCD or an addiction or a severe depression or anxiety, know, one of the...
conditions that they had been referred to by their GP. Actually, if you did a little bit of exploring and a little bit of digging into their personal history, I found that often there was a trauma that hadn't been processed, that hadn't been quite navigated in such a way so that they can hold it with compassion and insight about how to...
move through to the other side of it and it had just stayed in their body and it leaked out. It leaked out as a mental health condition and I totally agree with you. We're missing that. We're totally missing that.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (29:24)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And
I think often that the same thing happens with unprocessed or unaddressed grief. mean, that's a form of traumatic experience, especially early on, and we see it time after time. And I think I must say that after the loss of my husband, I definitely see it more and more in my clinic, working with patients who refer for...
refer for different reasons, but maybe it's just the way I start to see experiences differently as well, but everyone lost something in life, whether that's a grief of losing a loved one or some other form of loss. There's always loss somewhere at the bottom of our experience, isn't there?
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (30:00)
I'm great. Yeah.
I agree and
one of the things that I'm really struck by is I do do social media but only to just keep sharing tools and ideas and normalizing grief responses and putting out some tools on how to recover and some of the the TikTok or little Instagram reels that I've had
massive, mean really big response for me, are the ones on traumatic loss. And I'm always struck that people will send me messages to tell me, you know, my husband was murdered, my child was killed, my partner suddenly died, I've just lost my mother, I'm living with, you know, just so much trauma out there. And it's like people don't have anywhere to put it, so they'll put it on their socials.
and yeah, I was hoping that my book might do a little bit, just a little bit to bring more conversations and more awareness out there.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (31:17)
Hmm. Hmm. But
that's the nature often of traumatic experiences that it's very difficult to put into words and which is why talking about it, naming it can have such a profound impact. And maybe that's what you're seeing on social media is that once it's mirrored in other people's experiences, it's much easier, much safer to connect with than
actually thinking this terrible thing happened to me and I don't know what to do with it, I'm just going to push it out, try not to think about it or channel it into my body because it's sometimes safer to feel your pain, your distress physiologically through different organs malfunctioning and trying to kind of deal with unprocessed feelings which is often, I think is often the case in grief rather than
talking about it because you need support. I think a lot of the time people just, the reason why we are traumatized by our loss is because it overwhelms us beyond the point of coping and that in itself means that we need help. It just can't do it. Your nervous system can't regulate itself. You need the presence of others. You need the resources to cope with that.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (32:24)
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (32:33)
And, you know, like I mentioned at the beginning, I think your book is really good at kind of bringing those kind of holistic approach to dealing with loss. And the fact that we are extremely dysregulated, nervous system is dysregulated. And I have to... And that's normal. Yes, that's what you would expect. And I also try to raise that awareness.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (32:50)
And that's normal.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (33:00)
through the tool I've developed, the grief emoji, where I talk quite a lot about this process and I really wanted to bring that up through your book as well because I think this is something that the majority of people don't realise is that this is something so overwhelmingly powerful, what goes on in your body, in your brain, in every aspect of your cellular system, like everywhere, every part of your body.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (33:04)
No,
Dr Monika Wieliczko (33:28)
is experiencing this regulation, it? And it's something you can't control. I mean, initially, it's just happening to you. It's like being hit, you know, always compare it to an airbag, you you're driving in the motorway and you have an accident and the airbag kind of expands in the car and it hits you. It's a bit like what happens in your nervous system.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (33:35)
happening.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (33:53)
But
it's better than hitting another car. So it's a protective mechanism, isn't it?
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (33:58)
Yes,
Dr Monika Wieliczko (34:08)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (34:27)
And if you don't go through this five or seven stages of the linear progression in grief, you may be developing a mental illness. I think frightens people, really frightens people and isolates them more and sends them down that faulty thinking perspective that I am doing something wrong. And actually the problem isn't with doing it. I think it's with being.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (34:37)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, just sitting
with it.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (34:55)
Yeah, just learning to
be with it, but also learning to be with with awareness, with stability, with a sense of psychological safety, with a kind of understanding of how it's impacting your choices with kind of...
the reflective capacity to...
discover what life means now. What I always see, because I couldn't do this job if I didn't see it, which I'm sure you're the same, is there is a turning point, there is growth that can come through immense suffering, there is appreciation of the gift of life, there is capacity to live with profound sadness, but also to live really, really deeply and to be present in the here and now, to grab onto every moment that you have.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (35:21)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (35:48)
and see it as an immense privilege. And we can do it, we can do it all at the same time. We don't need to be just one or the other. We can be all of it. And think process of recovery is sort of just, it's like giving yourself a massive hug and just saying, look, you're just, you're gonna be able to get through this. But you need support and you need space and you need time.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (35:56)
Yeah.
Mm.
Mmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think what you're describing is this process of integrating those different aspects, isn't that? Because often we just try to get rid of something that is uncomfortable or painful, it's too much, and we just kind of push it out.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (36:25)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, well we judge it, we judge
it. I was talking to a client recently who lost her mother about 10 years ago and dealt with it very well but it was a very sudden loss and now has become a mother herself and her grief has risen straight back up to the surface and she was in devastating sadness and finding that her tears are leaking out every day.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (36:38)
Right.
Hmm.
Hmm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (36:54)
in all sorts of different ways, which she wasn't expecting. She's needed a little bit of time and support to acknowledge that, now you're seeing, you're seeing that loss through the mother's eyes. you're, it's unfold, another layer of it is unfolding. And that doesn't mean that she's done something wrong. It's just, she's just gone a little bit deeper with it because we're forever evolving, aren't we? And I think so.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (36:58)
Mm.
Mmm.
And then grief takes forever to evolve and whenever
something new happens in life, even if it's a good experience, often when it is a good experience, like getting married again or having a child, especially when you're talking about adults bereaved as children, I think they often start to grieve more actively when they're adults. Yeah, we actually have a brilliant episode with Mandy Gosling on...
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (37:24)
I think so.
? totally.
Absolutely.
I am...
Dr Monika Wieliczko (37:47)
what happens to adults bereaved as children and that trajectory
and she speaks about her own experiences. So I really encourage all the people who've experienced a loss in childhood to go back to that because it has such a profound, mean, it's about relationships and relating and disturbance in our attachment system. So it's powerful. So it's very likely to happen. And as you're saying, you know, these things just come and go and you never know when it's going to come up.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (38:00)
Mm.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (38:17)
and how you're going to deal with it. I think there's something about, as you're saying, we're really appreciate and I hope our listeners can take that in, is this openness to those experiences and having the capacity to perhaps just acknowledge that it's going to happen. I think it's a lot about observing what's going on and noticing and trying to make connections, which kind of happens quite naturally, I think, when we're in the right environment.
when we've got the support we need. And I can't stress it enough how often the reason people struggle with grief is because they haven't been supported enough. You know, it seems so simple, but yet we've got those, you know, we build those ideas in our minds that we're not doing it right or we're struggling for too long or are we not acknowledging our grief? I mean, we all just cope the way we can.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (38:47)
Yeah.
you.
I think sometimes people feel like they shouldn't be in grief. So sometimes if you've lost a best friend or a really close friend and that can sometimes be incredibly lonely. People don't acknowledge that you might be in deep grief, deep deep grief, devastating grief, but you're kind of expected to just get on with it because they weren't a family member, they were a friend. There's so many aspects to...
Dr Monika Wieliczko (39:16)
Mm-hmm.
Mm. Mm. Mm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (39:39)
talking about loss and grief. I feel really, really honored that I can do the work that I'm doing. And I feel really, really grateful that you've invited me to talk about it. And I'm grateful for what you do as well, creating this space.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (39:54)
Likewise, it's so, yeah, I think that's what makes this
job really meaningful is actually reaching people at the level of the most vulnerable stage of their lives or those times when really nothing feels like it's helping sometimes or nothing feels right. And I think just the fact that we can talk about it and we can reflect and go back and think, okay, I...
I was a very different person a years ago than I am now. And it happens with grief in the same way. When I think about how I coped with my loss and what happened, the process I went through, I mean, that was very intense experience. And I had so much help from so many different people. And I wouldn't have been able to do it by myself. And despite all the knowledge, I mean, it goes through the window, really.
A cute state of grief.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (40:52)
It's a being with grief, it? Rather than fixing it. We can't fix it, we have to meet it and we need support for that. I think it's totally understandable that some people are overwhelmed, they're living in stressful situations, they've got competing priorities, they've got to keep the show on the go, you know, get to work.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (40:57)
Mm. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (41:18)
get the kids to school, deal with elderly parents, milestones for families, you know, it all has to just keep going and if people don't have the opportunity or the awareness to kind of normalise their grieving process and to do the regulating of the body and the mind and the processing the emotions and the sort of transformational nature of grief, they can retreat, they can become...
Dr Monika Wieliczko (41:23)
Mm.
Mmm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (41:48)
isolated because earlier
Dr Monika Wieliczko (41:48)
Mmm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (41:50)
they're in survival mode it's it's it's really important to have podcasts like this that maybe somebody can listen to you know when they when they're doing a supermarket or they're doing the ironing or you know what I mean sort of like simple simple tasks that allows them to just maybe connect and
Dr Monika Wieliczko (41:52)
Yeah.
Mm.
Yes.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (42:14)
Create that kernel of hope that there are people out there and the resources to help.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (42:16)
Yeah.
Absolutely. There's so much. And I think the problem is that there are too many and sometimes it's really hard to pick what's right. And I think we had this conversation before, especially with social media, where there's just an overwhelming amount of information. None of it, some of it is not that correct or maybe not through reliable sources. actually knowing who to trust or what kind of information to absorb sometimes is in itself a real obstacle.
And, you know, especially when you think about regulating nervous system, it's such a complex process in terms of, you know, what needs to happen for you to be able to eat normally, to sleep normally, to have that kind of routine, going back to that kind of normal functioning of your whole system. It's really hard. And I wonder, you know, I think there's a lot in your book about that, you know, those different prescriptions.
But I wonder what is it that you feel is kind of like the most important or the good starting point for people to maybe be thinking about how you start and regulate the nervous system or you start to, I mean, I you mentioned obviously talked earlier about understanding the process, what goes on. We think it is really important too, isn't it? But I wonder what's your kind of favorite tip maybe.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (43:27)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Well, my favourite
tip, that's a really good question, quite a difficult one as well. I think a really important starting point, especially if somebody's going through a very traumatic event in life, is to...
Dr Monika Wieliczko (43:47)
Mmm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (44:01)
come up, if possible, with a symbolic image that represents safety.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (44:08)
Hmm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (44:08)
that's
practical tip and one that I will often do in therapy with my clients or in workshops as a tool to visualize in as much detail as possible so a mental image of a place that represents safety because until we've got that sense of some self safety on a mental and physical level
It's really difficult to get online to do the recovery work, the grieving work. So a very simple, simple, simple thing to do is to just give yourself permission to take two, three minutes to come up with a symbolic safe space and go and hang out there for a little bit and see what's up. I don't know, what do you think about that?
Dr Monika Wieliczko (44:53)
Yeah,
I definitely use that as well, especially when I work with trauma and I think it may be used EMDR as well. I move mainly sensitization and reprocessing, which kind of uses the kind of stabilization techniques, which are really good for just making you feel safe. mean, I know that some people really struggle with.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (44:59)
?
Yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (45:19)
thinking about what that safety would look like and sometimes you need to be very creative with places you can think of or it could be your favourite holiday. People often talk about being on the beach or having something nice exposed to sun or a lot of places or some childhood places when they feel really safe and contain, often think about this kind being hugged by someone.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (45:20)
Yeah.
Ew.
Yeah, yes, yes.
?
well.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (45:48)
So there's so many things you can think of and that kind of resonate.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (45:51)
yeah. Yeah,
if it's impossible to think of a place that exists, I often encourage people to think of an imaginary one. Come up with a magical space that makes you feel safe. And people come up with all sorts of things. But on a felt sense, I think it's just about reframing your perspective on your grief.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (46:03)
Mm-hmm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (46:19)
and just sitting with it, just as you would with your best friend, how you would meet them in their darkest hour and how you'd reassure them. And just notice how strict or how judgy or how inflexible you're being with yourself. And would you be like that with a loved one? Would you be like that with your own child or like that with your best friend? Probably not. So sometimes it's just about...
Dr Monika Wieliczko (46:38)
Exactly.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (46:47)
shifting the perspective a little bit to be a little bit more open and a little bit gentler and think about what in this moment is going to give me a moment of grace and often I think what it means is just recognizing that your grief is a profound profound expression of your love and the deeper the grief the greater the love and it's love that rescues us in the end isn't it it's love that gives us that energy to
Dr Monika Wieliczko (46:53)
Hmm.
Hmm
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (47:17)
heal and recover.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (47:19)
Hmm, hmm, yeah, and I think, I think what you're just describing is, this process of almost like mapping out those different aspects of grief that are problematic for us, you know, and kind of like, why is it like sometimes I ask myself, why is it so annoying? Why am I annoyed with myself for having this feeling or having that kind of reaction in my body? Because it usually tells a story, know, more.
complicated story behind it and why we might be struggling so intensely with accepting that something is something we can't control. Like we're talking about your chronic pain. And I really liked what you said actually there because you use this kind of, you the way you kind of described your chronic pain right now is like you try to approach this as something you can actively engage in.
and try to heal despite the fear that some people might be incurable. But it doesn't mean, because I think it assumes, I think what you just described there, and I think it's really important for everyone to get that, that I think it's about accepting the uncertainty that, don't know, I don't know what's gonna happen, I don't know if I'm gonna feel like this forever, but it is what it is right now, and I have to focus on here and now.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (48:39)
? my goodness. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (48:48)
And it might not be able to shift how you feel, but you might develop the capacity to adjust, to grow your ability to tolerate certain distress or certain losses, because I think ultimately that's what happens. Whatever loss you experience in life, it's about accepting that this happened. It doesn't mean...
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (48:56)
and
Yeah, yeah, it's difficult, it? I think
what I'm learning with my pain syndrome, so I suffer from a condition called CRPS, chronic regional pain syndrome, which is incredibly horrible. And instantly what you want to do is try and disconnect from the pain, try and dull it with as much medication as you possibly can, as I possibly can.
and try and avoid stepping on my damaged leg because it's too painful and that's of course the brain doing it to, you know, it's a normal response, pain, danger, I won't pull away. But actually recovery is the opposite to that. It's about trusting the pain. It's about trusting I can tolerate the pain. It's about going into the pain, which is really difficult to do and unravels me every time. But through that, it connects.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (49:40)
Mm.
avoid pain,
Hmm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (50:06)
The pain represents my unmet emotional need. And it's really brought it to life to me that actually everybody has needs, everybody has emotional needs, and sometimes we can forget, sometimes we can leave them unmet. And the body reflects that, it's a mirror for that. And in this particular syndrome, which I think applies to grief, is grief represents your unmet need.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (50:11)
Mm, yes.
Mm.
Yes.
Yeah.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (50:37)
So it's
important to be friendly with that, to be kind to yourself about that and to go into it. Like I'm having to go into the grief of the pain that I'm feeling. It's okay, I go into it, I go through it. I cry a lot, I realise a lot, I express a lot. I discover quite a lot of what I need to, you know, what I need to give myself. I come through to the other side and that's a process that happens almost every day.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (50:52)
Hmm.
Mm.
Mm. Mm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (51:05)
I'm here, I'm chatting to you, I'm running my clinic, I'm busy with my life but you know, you can do it both.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (51:08)
Yeah. Yeah. So you
can grieve your loss and you can live. And that, think it's, And I think what you mentioned there, obviously, is about the emotional states that we struggle to tolerate because those unmet needs, emotional needs, obviously took a very intense emotional reactions. you know, I can imagine
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (51:16)
Perhaps you could do it Yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (51:37)
You know, if I couldn't move and I had this experience before and this idea of being dependent on other people and needing other people, the same with grief is huge. mean, and that in itself means always been a struggle. know, do you mean I'm dependent on people? actually, illness and loss really brings this to the forefront of our existence. And you kind of have to just deal with it. So it's a real chance, isn't it?
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (52:04)
Yes, yes, it's true. It's true.
It's true. And also, I think you probably like me, we probably find quite a lot of purpose in giving and help people recover and meeting, having those authentic connections with lovely friends, family and clients, you know, but actually sometimes the greatest gift is to just give to yourself and ask for help. And I have been very good at that.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (52:28)
That's the hardest.
If only it was that simple.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (52:33)
It really is. It really is. I'm always very humbled
and really, really inspired by all my clients who have the courage to ask for help because I think we all know how difficult that is, you know.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (52:49)
Yes, I couldn't agree more. I think that's often what's driving all those complications to deal with grief as well. And I don't know, like I just, if I had to think of it, I think there's such a fear that your needs won't be met or that if you ask for it and you won't get what you want, and it kind of reinforces this often early childhood trauma of unmet needs in whichever way and form.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (53:11)
Bye.
Yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (53:19)
that came about that's
then you kind of hiding from your emotions, emotional states. And I suppose I think one of the questions I wanted to ask you in terms of your book and the kind of the, when we on this topic of emotional experiences and dealing with emotional states and regulating our emotional states. So what's your prescription for that? You know, how do you connect or kind of deal with grief?
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (53:23)
Thank you.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (53:48)
the wave of grief or whatever feelings are coming up because I think I mean you mentioned a little bit about that but I was just if we were to kind of give our listeners some kind of like a very simple step-by-step guide I mean there's so many new books I can't really pick.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (54:00)
Yeah, okay, okay, yeah, there are. It's all right.
Yeah, what I want to say about that is your grief, emotions are gonna be difficult. They're gonna be perhaps overwhelming. People often feel like once they go into them, they're not gonna be able to function or if they start.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (54:18)
Mm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (54:29)
start feeling their feelings they may be overwhelmed by them they're not going to be able to stabilize themselves especially if the feeling bottled up or compartmentalized for a really long long time it can feel like it'll be a tsunami of devastating emotion that they're not going to be able to withstand and I think that's a very natural fear it's a very natural reaction a little bit like my pain reaction I don't really want to feel it but the only way to heal and recover
grief is to trust that you're going to be stronger than you realize, that you can tolerate your emotions, you're designed to, you're going to be okay with them even if you feel disheveled and unraveled and raw, you're going to feel the relief of having allowed that emotion to travel through your body to come up through you and out and you might need to do that quite a lot but
Dr Monika Wieliczko (55:04)
Mm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (55:28)
It's only through that process that recovery and some kind of sense of agency can happen. And when it comes to a process for doing that, it's...
I felt sorry, I've taken a pause there because I'm trying to think what do I really want to say? mean, I've got so much I could talk for another hour. found journaling really important. So allowing yourself to write it all out, cry it out and discover what your emotions are really expressing. But recognizing that your unmet need
Dr Monika Wieliczko (55:55)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (56:19)
It's not about wanting that person back.
It's about accepting that you can't have that person back. what do you, given that reality, what do your emotions guide you towards? And it's often to kind of find a way to honor them, find a way to express your love, find a way to tell the world how special they were and keep living or to live in their values. There'll always be something that your emotion is really.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (56:44)
Mmm. Mmm.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (56:52)
guiding you to. So it's about reconstructing your relationship not only with yourself and your life but with the person you've lost to. So I don't know if that made any sense at all but I hope it did.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (57:01)
Mm.
It's brilliant.
It's actually a really brilliant way of kind of bringing it together towards the end of our conversation because I think this ability to tolerate reality, which is what you described just now and kind of coming to terms with it, you know, as you're saying, it's the turning point, I think, between this kind of dysregulated state of physiologically and emotionally.
to then moving towards mourning the loss which is this kind of more adaptive kind of response when we are just kind of processing emotions, we're able to take them in, riding through those waves of grief and I really appreciate that you take on it and this kind of gentle very kind of driven by the need to, I suppose to just accept
what's been given to you because I think that's what you've been kind of, I suppose, teaching us today is that, you know, these things do happen and this is all part of life, but you've been able to integrate those elements, painful elements of life and that really allows you to live more fully and more profoundly in terms of, you know, the sense of satisfaction in life. And I think it's all really worth the pain, you know, that's my kind of
that feeling instead of numbing yourself. It's all about just embracing it, trusting yourself.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (58:37)
Oh yeah, yeah, trusting yourself, trusting yourself. Doing it
with grace and gentleness I think is the key, isn't it? And sometimes people do need to get, listen to a podcast or talk to a loved one, go to a therapy session, to find a way to navigate that. And that's really courageous and important.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (58:51)
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's a beautiful way to end and I just wanted to say that we put the links to your book and your social media handles in the show notes so whoever wants to reach out to you, they obviously can and obviously you're encouraging to everyone to have a look at the last prescription, the book that I think it's just so full of very helpful, very simple strategies that we can use.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (59:11)
Okay.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (59:30)
some ways of kind of just understanding where you are in your grief journey. So we really encourage people to do that as well as going to take part in the grief emotive, which is again, that very simple strategy that people can use to just understand their grieving journey and get some tips around managing distress. So that could be accessed on my website, guidetoafterlife.com. It's completely free and it helps people.
of normalize some of those experiences on so many different levels. So I really appreciate today's conversation Chloe and I'm so glad we connected and that we sharing the passion for talking about traumatic loss and just normalizing this terrible misconception that's circling around. So I thank you so much for today. It's been a real pleasure to have you.
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell (1:00:18)
Okay.
You're welcome.
Thank you so much.
