Beyond the Five Stages of Grief

This episode is “Beyond the Five Stages of Grief” and our guest is Carole Sanek. Carole tells us about the trauma of her husband's death following his stroke.  She also tells us what Complicated Grief is and how ART (Accelerated Resolution Therapy) has helped her and how EMDR therapy can help PTSD victims.  Carole also explains how healing the trauma part of the brain can help you become motivated to help others and have a purpose in your life.

Transcript

Carole Sanek: 0:00

There were so many things that I wasn't. I didn't know who the heck I was.

Michael Liben: 0:11

Welcome to the Fourth Season of "Heart to Heart with Michael", the program for the bereaved community. Our purpose is to empower members of our community. This season, we're looking at grief in its various forms. And we'll be looking at the role of trauma as it affects grief. Today's program is "Beyond the Five Stages of Grief". Our guest today is Carole Sanek. Carole Sanek wants people to know that she can be better, she feels it's important for people to know that life is short, and that we waste too much time ignoring things that we should be dealing with. She's found it's important to share feelings with others. She's a Facebook Live streamer, a freelance writer, content marketing writer, the CEO of Butterfly Boom Productions, published author, winner of three Best Breast Cancer Blogs, public speaker, and breast cancer survivor of over 27 years. She's a mother and a great friend. In the first segment, we'll learn about her husband, Larry, in the second segment, Carole will tell us about accelerated resolution therapy. And in the final segment, Carole will tell us about the stages of grief that people don't talk about, and why Carole feels we need to start talking about them. Carole, thank you so much for coming to "Heart to Heart".

Carole Sanek: 1:15

I'm so happy to be here.

Michael Liben: 1:17

Let's start with you telling us about your husband, Larry.

Carole Sanek: 1:19

He was a great guy. He was my rock, my best friend. Everything in the world to me. And we met online through an online dating service, about 21 years ago, and we had a really great life. We were in Chicago, having an oh, just an amazing marriage. I mean, sure, there were ups, there were downs, there were, you know, in betweens, but all in all, he just was everything that I ever wanted and needed in a husband because he supported me emotionally. And I had well, I had not had that in previous relationships. So he got older as I got older, and as we all got older and started to have some heart issues. And we had to rush him to the emergency room twice. And both times he required having a stent placed. The second time, his cardiologist told us that he could not completely stent the artery because there was a bifurcation in it, and where it split off, he couldn't reach that area. And he told us that if Larry had any more angina, we would need bypass surgery. Larry decided to be proactive, and he went to a cardiovascular surgeon, and he had a double bypass done... March of 2017. It wasn't the results we were looking for, because he had an emergency procedure that needed to be done immediately; he was bleeding internally, so they had to take him back into surgery a second time. And when he came home, he was in congestive heart failure, which was not something he had when he went in. And for those of you know what an ejection fraction is, when Larry went into the hospital, he had an ejection fraction of 65%. When he came home, he had one of 30.

Michael Liben: 3:09

For those of us who don't know what that means, what's a good number?

Carole Sanek: 3:13

Sixty. Sixty is a really good number mine's 72. I have a really good ejection fraction. That's the amount of blood that leaves your ventricle, your left ventricle with every heartbeat. It's the percentage of the amount of blood, you're never going to totally empty your heart. It's you know, but you want to have quite a bit of that blood flowing out of that ventricle. So obviously, at with a ejection fraction of 30%, his heart wasn't pumping effectively. And he went into heart failure and has had been in heart failure ever since that time. So we did everything we possibly could. And we did it right. He did everything with diet and exercise and losing weight. And then one night, you know, he went outside to take care of our rosebushes told me he'd be back in have another glass of wine with me. He walked in the door, his speech was garbled, I realized he had his bottle of Nitro in his hand. I flew out of my chair literally. He tried to speak again and I knew he was stroking. That was it. He died in my arms that night. The only thing that kept Larry alive for the next 13 days was mechanical machinery.

Michael Liben: 4:20

I'm really sorry you had to go through that. Did you find that grieving Larry brought earlier traumatic experiences to the surface?

Carole Sanek: 4:25

I have to explain it this way when when Larry died. I also within a period of several months lost three pets. So I had so much grief going on and so much loss going on. Larry's dog never recovered from losing his master and I had put him down. He was 17 years old. And we had two birds that we had picked up along the way - all of our animals were rescue animals. I feel sorry for something and I bring it home. So over four months, I lost three pets and husband, so I didn't have time. In order for me to answer your question correctly, I didn't have time to have to think about, you know, previous traumatic events, I was dealing with four losses. And I wasn't doing very well at the time, that's for certain.

Michael Liben: 5:15

Well, let me ask you a slightly different version of the same question. A lot of times we talk about a traumatic experience, calling up previous traumatic experiences, which is why I asked you that, but here you had several all at the same time. So how did you find a way through to deal with them in some kind of orderly fashion? Or could you make order out of that chaos?

Carole Sanek: 5:35

When he first died, I was so busy doing everything that had to be done, I had to close a real estate company down in the state only gives you two weeks to do that. I had to close an office, I had to clean out an office. Oh Lord, I had to clean out a garage, I had to clean out so much stuff, I didn't really have a lot of time to think about how grief was affecting me. And then one day, I realized I had nothing left to do. And I didn't know where to turn. And I remembered that hospice had told me they have free bereavement counseling. So I contacted them. And I started going to bereavement counseling weekly. I tried group, it didn't work for me. It was too soon for me to listen to other people's grief. I'm better when I do one on one talk therapy. So that's where I started finding some, some salvation, you know, in my life, some some way to find out, what am I going to be now, who am I now? Because when you lose your spouse, you lose part of your identity. You know, suddenly I wasn't a wife anymore. And I wasn't Mrs. You know, wasn't Larry's wife anymore, and I wasn't his real estate associate anymore. There were so many things that I wasn't, I didn't know who the heck I was, and what that left me with. So obviously, it made great sense to me to look for answers. And unfortunately, I know that many people don't. They're afraid to go to therapy. I don't know why I haven't figured that one out. Because I have to say that when it's free, you know, it's something maybe you should take advantage of. And, you know, I want to make it a point to say right here and now, that many hospice organizations will allow people to come in for counseling, even if their loved one didn't die in hospice. They offer it to communities. And so when I have people who tell me why can't afford therapy, I say, have you looked at that, that maybe your hospice organization, your local one, offers it for free to community. Might be group, but at least you're getting some kind of help.

Michael Liben: 7:52

I want to ask you about that. The difference between group and one on one because we hear one of one of our catchphrases here all the time is grief shared is grief lightened. Can you share the same way one on one as you can with the group? Or is it different? Because I would think that group therapy, I guess it's not for everybody, but the idea of sharing is a real big lightning.

Carole Sanek: 8:13

I find comfort in talking with other people who are grieving of my choice. When I went to group therapy, there was a man there who did nothing but cry. I couldn't handle that. That was just not something that I wanted to have to go and sit through every time we met. It was too much for me. You know, it just was it was too much for me. And I just everybody's story was too much for me. I was too new. You know, I was too new. I wasn't I wasn't ready for it. Maybe in another three to six months I might be but I'm still not there yet.

Baby Blues Sound Collective: 8:50

"Home Tonight Forever" by the Baby Blues Sound Collective. I think what I love so much about this CD is that some of the songs were inspired by the patients. Many listeners will understand many of the different songs and what they've been inspired by. Our new album will be available on iTunes, Amazon.com, Spotify. I love the fact that the proceeds from this CD are actually going to help those with congenital heart defects. Enjoy the music -"Home Tonight Forever".

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Anna Jaworski: 10:05

You are listening to "Heart to Heart with Michael". If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on Michael's program, please email him at michael@hearttoheartwithmichael.com. Now, back to our program.

Michael Liben: 10:20

Carole, we were talking about how you were in therapy before the break. Can you tell us about accelerated resolution therapy and why you wanted to take part in this kind of therapy?

Carole Sanek: 10:29

Oh, yeah, that was a no brainer. I had been at a session with my bereavement counselor, and she said to me, that the University of South Florida had been doing accelerated resolution therapy with victims of PTSD for eight years, working with veterans and that they'd had great success, and they had received a grant to work with people who are grieving. So they had approached hospice, and asked if they had anybody in mind who might be having complicated grief. And my therapist was a little bit concerned that I might be leaning towards complicated grief, which is grief that goes beyond a year, and a lot of times, it just cannot be resolved. Because I was stuck, I was stuck on that PTSD moment in my life with Larry, which was the moment when he went outside, came back in and died in my arms. You know, you don't expect that that was such a big shock. And every time that I thought about it, or tried to talk about it, I would break down, and I would be just a mess, I'd be a puddle on the floor. I couldn't talk about it, I couldn't deal with it, that was my PTSD moment. So when I got the diagnosis of PTSD from another licensed mental health care worker, when I had gone on a retreat in New Mexico, I knew that I might be perfect for this program when she brought it up. So I went out and I took some tests and, you know, got asked a lot of questions. And because it's a medical study, I had to have an EEG while they were talking to me, and they find one at a baseline EEG. And it is four sessions long. If you look up accelerated resolution therapy, you will find that many people get results like I did in one session, good results in one session. Some people take four some people take six. It is the most amazing therapy, and what they're doing now is they're looking at it for all kinds of different disorders, including depression. It's covered by a lot of insurance, it's a valid therapy. It's actually, I don't know how you quantify or qualify therapy as being affordable. But my therapist charges $100 per session privately. So if you're looking at one session, two sessions, four sessions, that can be very affordable for a lot of people, especially if your insurance would help out even if it was only 50% pay. So I was very excited about this, because for me, it's free. And yeah, I know! The very first, the very first session I had again, I had to be hooked up to an EEG. And I had to visualize that entire traumatic experience. But that meant I had to go from the night that he stroked and died in my arms to the next 13 days, you know, in the hospital, the tests, the MRIs, the CAT scans, the doctor's opinion, see, everything that I went through, I had to visualize while we did EMDR. And don't ask me please don't ask me what that stands for. Because there's a whole bunch. It's it's the one it's the therapy that they use PTSD where you're using rapid eye movement. So yes, it's eye movement D something or other I you'd have to look that up. I'm

Michael Liben: 14:03

So that's a whole bunch of letters. It's, that's sorry. fine. But I want to go back, before you continue too far away from it, I want to, you touched on complicated grief. One of the things that we like to talk about here is that there's no right way or time that you should expect grief to end. So I'm a little taken aback that somebody has decided that it's complicated after a year, either grief is always complicated, or timing really shouldn't be that important.

Carole Sanek: 14:31

You know, that a psychological diagnosis book isn't actually psych, it's a psychological diagnosis. Because when you don't deal with complicated grief, they have found that there are people who have committed suicide if they haven't come out of complicated grief. It has nothing to do with an exact timeline. And I do understand that everybody grieves differently, but because they're medical, you know they're psychol, they're psychologists and psychiatrists, they put the timeline on there, they restart, they did the studies, they were looking at people who were grieving beyond a year. And when I say grieving, I'm talking about like I was grieving on the floor, in a puddle, unable to work, unable to do anything, not eating, not sleeping, all of that. That's complicated grief.

Michael Liben: 15:17

Okay, now that brings you into the therapy.

Carole Sanek: 15:20

So I, in my first session, I came home, and I was unable to trigger myself. And that's when I knew it worked. It's very difficult to explain, you know, you're doing the rapid eye movement for about 60 seconds with a therapist where she's using her hand much like a metronome in front of your face. And then they bring you out of it, and they ask you to take a cleansing breath, and then you assess what you feel in your body. And if you have any kind of pain or discomfort or anxiety, then you go back into the EMDR and you do it again, and now you're only paying attention to the pain, the anxiety, the the physical feelings that you were feeling until they are released. Then you go back to telling your story again. The ending of the session is when you go back in, and you rewrite your story, you rewrite your trauma, with a positive, and I want to use the word happy ending, but that's what comes to me happy ending. And you change your memory. And I know this sounds like way out there. I know it does. But that's what your brain is doing. When your eyes are going back and forth, with this eye movement, you are changing that memory in the trauma section of your brain.

Michael Liben: 16:42

Mm hmm.

Carole Sanek: 16:44

It's amazing therapy. I listened to a veteran tell how he was ready to put he had a gun to his head when he changed his memory, and saw himself having a birthday party for a young boy in Afghanistan and giving him a soccer ball as a birthday gift, only this never happened. It never happened. That was the story he created. So then you can go back and you call on that memory when you're feeling terrible. And suddenly, you're feeling a lot better. You can't trigger yourself. It's amazing how it works. And it lasts. I asked that question. It lasts.

Michael Liben: 17:17

When you say to yourself, that's you like you test yourself. You go in there and you think about Larry, you think about those terrible days and you're still standing and that's that's not triggering it.

Carole Sanek: 17:28

I came home and tried to bring myself to that point. I said out loud, "I cannot believe that Larry died the way he died" and nothing happened. And then I felt guilty because I didn't feel anything.

Michael Liben: 17:43

Well, that's my next question. What have you done?

Carole Sanek: 17:46

I know I had to deal with that. Oh, no, I still cry. And I still grieve. I mean, that's all still there. I'm still sad. It's Christmas, Judas Priest, you know, it's Christmas. Of course, I'm sad, I'm having a terrible time getting through this season. But at least I'm not a puddle on the floor anymore. And I can function and I can eat. You know, and I sleep well.

Michael Liben: 18:10

Well, that's, that's truly amazing. I think so many people I know, in different stages of grief could really use that. Use that therapy as a boost.

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"I was five hours old when I had my

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Michael Liben: 19:48

Carole, we've talked about this before and you've told me that grief goes beyond the stages that Elisabeth Kubler-Ross made popular. Tell us about the stage of grief that deals with cooking and with eating and tell us how that relates to the need to feel needed?

Carole Sanek: 20:03

Yeah, when I was first going through this, I didn't even realize I wasn't eating. And I wasn't cooking, mainly because Larry had torn my kitchen apart. The weekend before he died, he tore my kitchen apart down to the studs. So the kitchen was a non-functioning kitchen. But beyond that I had no appetite. So before I knew it, I had lost 25 pounds. And people people were starting to say things to me, like, "Would you please eat some pizza?". I was getting concerned that I would continue to lose weight, and that's when I saw an article online that had appeared in The New York Times that talked about the fact that some people are starting grief support groups where they cook together. And I thought, boy, does that makes sense. Because we have suddenly gone from cooking for two or more to not wanting to cook at all. Larry was my sous chef, he was next to me in the kitchen every night from four thirty to seven thirty- that was our time. That was the time where we made dinner where we had the glasses of wine, where we laughed, and we joked and we talked about the day, and we'd sit and enjoy a meal. You know, I'm in Florida, so we enjoyed our meals outside quite often. And you know, all of a sudden, this was gone. And I didn't want to cook anymore. I mean, I just couldn't bring myself to do it, I didn't have anybody to cook for. I, I'm one of those people who wants to cook for somebody, rather than just cook for myself. And I thought this makes perfect sense to have support groups that get together several times a month, and they cook together. I thought, wow, what a great idea. And then, you know, when you talk about feeling needed, I think that's another stage that we don't talk about enough, because suddenly you don't feel needed anymore. And it's such a wake up call to realize that people have forgotten about you maybe, you know, that kind of feeling like you probably stops ringing, emails don't come in, you know, all those things that happen after a certain period of time, you know, you often see people write about how everybody's there for you through the three days of funeral and morning, and then they go home and and you have casseroles in the freezer. But you know, it's like, everything comes to a quick stop.

Michael Liben: 22:22

You know, it's, I can absolutely relate to that. In the Jewish faith, we have seven days of mourning. And we're completely surrounded by friends and family who do all the cooking for us. And like you said, so there's tons of frozen food in the freezer waiting for you. And people would would sometimes ask me "How you doing?" during that week? And I'd say ask me on day eight when there's nobody here, then I'll tell you how I'm doing.

Carole Sanek: 22:45

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And then one day, you know, I woke up and I said, I just don't feel needed. Yeah. And when I, when I realized that, that was a turning point for me. Because that's when I said darn it, I'm going to do something, and I'm going to make myself needed by people. And that's when I started coming to the other side. That's when all my therapies started to work. That's when the healing started to happen.

Michael Liben: 23:10

Being needed again, or feeling being needed, again, is what brought everything into focus, that was the trigger that made everything work?

Carole Sanek: 23:18

I made it happen. I made it happen. I realized it had to happen. You know how you say that everybody grieves differently? Not everybody's gonna want to make it happen. I just happened... happen, happen, happen - how many times am I going to say "happened" here? I'll just be one of those people who said "Enough already. I want my life. I want to know my "why" I want a purpose. And I want to feel needed again". And you know, all of a sudden, it's happening.

Michael Liben: 23:49

You know, that fits in so well with last season, we talked about a lot about post traumatic growth, that after the stress that everybody gets it, but comes a moment where you power forward into all kinds of new fields and new areas and things that you find strength that you never had. And that is it's the flipside of post traumatic stress that people don't talk about. Was that part of your therapy was to lead you towards a post traumatic growth like that?

Carole Sanek: 24:16

I think what happened is that when I started in this therapy, which I started back in November, when I started doing the ART, and I started reading about it and started learning about EMDR from a psychiatrist who's written a book on it, and it started to all make sense to me. I started to have, these ideas would form in my brain. And I asked my therapist about that today because I had a session today. And she said, "Oh, yeah, once you heal the trauma area of your brain, things start to happen. You accelerate and you want to do more and you want to be a better person and you want to have purpose and you want to help people". Now that's where I am.

Michael Liben: 24:57

That's exactly it. Let's talk about some of the other stages of grief, because clearly you're telling me there are more than five. How many of you got and where do you go with them?

Carole Sanek: 25:08

Oh, goodness, I no longer have anger.

Michael Liben: 25:11

Okay.

Carole Sanek: 25:12

I was furious with Larry for leaving me.

Michael Liben: 25:15

Yeah, sure.

Carole Sanek: 25:17

Absolutely furious. I went to New Mexico to a retreat, to a healing retreat. And I was able to leave my anger out there. I did a lot of work in the Native American medicine circle, which is a wonderful place to sit and think, you know, and meditate. I did a lot of meditation, I think meditation has helped me greatly. So that the anger dissipated, I'm not angry with him anymore; I tell him every morning how much I love him. You know, and how happy I truly am that he was ever in my life. My therapist, you know, my therapist even said to me, "You know, he's always with you. Always". And he is because he's in my heart, he lives in my heart, he lives in my head, he is in my gut. You know, he's everywhere. He's, he's, and I see him leaning against a wall looking at me, I see him sitting in a chair, looking at me, I have the most incredible visions of him, because I allow them in. I welcome them and I want them in my life. So the anger is gone. I would say, acceptance followed that one pretty close. Because once I was no longer angry with him, you know, I could accept the fact that this wasn't going to be reversed. This is the way it is, you know, he's died. I'll tell you, one thing I don't allow anybody to say to me is, I don't allow anybody to say, "When did you lose your husband?" I didn't lose him. He's not wandering in the woods somewhere, and I can't find him. I look at, I know, I looked at them, and I say, "I didn't lose my husband, my husband died". And I correct them. And they're kind of taken back by that. And then I explain why. I said, "We have to use the word people. We're not using the word enough".

Michael Liben: 26:57

I've always had trouble with that word. I've always had trouble - so she passed, she's gone, she left us. But the truth is that and if you listen to all the things that I've been saying, for the last seven years, she hasn't left me. I take her wherever I go, and I see things for her and with her. I go to all kinds of things and experience and experiences that I have for her, or with her or through me for her. I think it's beautiful and it's very, very healthy, very healthy attitude. And I suppose, I mean, we all think we invented the wheel. I suppose that everybody gets there at some point?

Carole Sanek: 27:38

I hope so.

Michael Liben: 27:39

Well, I do too, just because I believe everyone should find peace and find healing. And there are ways to do it, that enable you to go on with your your loved one with you, no matter what happens. But I was curious, you talk about other stages. How many are there? You know, tell me about one or two of them.

Carole Sanek: 27:58

We were talking about Kubler-Ross. I mean, you know bargaining and denial, were not part of anything for me because there was nothing to bargain over at that, or barely anything to bargain over. Because I looked at the MRI. I'm an RN. I knew that this was not a case that he was going to return from. I could see it I could see the location of the infarct in his brainstem. I knew where the dead tissue was. I knew how large it was. I knew this was a hopeless case. So bargaining and denial just didn't didn't really happen for me. We could shake him, we could apply sternal pressure and he would wake up to and respond to the pain, he would stay awake for maybe a minute or two. And I'll tell you something else that he did, that I will always be so very grateful for. I crawled into bed with him one day, I put on the music from our wedding. The nurse put his arm around me because he was paralyzed on his right side from the stroke. He put his arm around me, Larry managed to put his hand into my hair and caress my head while he was listening to the music. And I know that was his way of apologizing, that we couldn't bring him back this time. That he just didn't have the strength to do it.

Michael Liben: 29:21

Carole, thank you so much for being with us.

Carole Sanek: 29:23

You're so very welcome. It's my pleasure.

Michael Liben: 29:25

That concludes this episode of "Heart to Heart with Michael". I want to thank Carole Sanek for sharing her stories and experiences and so much more with us. Please join us at the beginning of the month for a brand new podcast and I'll talk with you soon. Until then, please remember, moving forward is not moving away.

Anna Jaworski: 29:43

Thank you again for joining us. We hope you have gained strength from listening to our program. "Heart to Heart with Michael" can be heard every Thursday at noon, Eastern time. We'll talk again next time when we'll share more stories.