Real Talk with Life After Grief Chris
Real Talk with Life After Grief Chris
The Two Faces of Grief
Grief doesn't come with a roadmap, but understanding your natural grieving style can help you navigate the journey. In this revealing episode, host Chris Dale breaks down the two primary approaches to grief: analytical and intuitive.
Analytical grievers tend to compartmentalize emotions, focusing on practical tasks while storing feelings away. More common among men, this approach often means going it alone without seeking support. Meanwhile, intuitive grievers process loss through emotional expression, connection with others, and active exploration of their feelings. This style, more typical of women, usually involves seeking counseling, joining support groups, or finding other outlets for emotional processing.
Drawing from personal experience, Chris shares how he embodied both styles at different points after losing his parents and grandmother. When faced with managing his parents' home during the 2008 real estate crash, he had no choice but to store his grief and handle the immediate practical concerns. Only months later did the emotional impact catch up with him. When his grandmother passed away later, he discovered his naturally intuitive grieving style, seeking understanding and connections with others who shared similar experiences.
For financial planners and advisors working with grieving clients, recognizing these different styles is crucial. The most damaging misconception Chris encounters is the belief that clients should "get over" their grief within a specified timeframe. As he powerfully states, "There's no getting over the loss of someone, it's just learning to live life differently." Advisors must adjust their expectations—analytical grievers may move through financial decisions more quickly, while intuitive grievers often need more time and emotional space before tackling practical matters.
Whether you're navigating grief yourself or supporting someone who is, this episode offers valuable insights to understand why we grieve differently and how to honor each person's unique path through loss. Ready to better understand your grief journey? Listen now and discover the knowledge that might just transform your perspective on healing.
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Welcome to Real Talk with Life After Grief Chris, where we talk about relevant issues as it relates to individuals in grief as they navigate finances and the advisors who help them. We help clients in grief navigate financial matters. We also teach advisors how to emotionally and financially work with clients in grief through an unparalleled process. This week's podcast is sponsored by Life After Grief Financial Planning and Life After Grief Consulting.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to another episode of Real Talk with Life After Grief. Chris, I am your host. I'm Chris Dale. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about how do I grieve. In my experience with grief my personal experience with grief I have nailed down that there are two styles of grief analytical and intuitive. I think it's careful to note that they are not mutually exclusive of each other. For instance, they can often overlap. I had the personal experience where I shared experiences of both For our purposes. I'm going to give you some very specific examples of how I shared examples of both. I'm also going to give you in detail what analytical and intuitive means.
Speaker 2:An analytical griever, more often than not it's a man, and men are often taught to kind of store their grief and kind of do away with it. It's not manly to show emotion to stuff it. You can kind of get the impression and more often they go it alone. They don't seek help for their grief. They store their emotions, they're very stoic and they just kind of feel that channeling into their emotions is not going to be positive and is going to prevent them from moving. You know along, from a financial planner's point of view, it's important to know that an analytical griever, you can have the expectation of them to move faster. An intuitive griever is someone who is more emotional. They're going to tend to move slower. They're also going to assimilate with other like-minded folks. They want to find other people that have been through some of the same things or similar to what they've been through emotionally or kind of what their expectations are. They're also, more often than not, going to seek out some sort of grief counseling. Not always, but you can have kind of a high level of expectation that they are going to seek out some sort of grief counseling. Not always, but you can have kind of a high level of expectation that they are going to seek out some sort of grief counseling. They're also going to write about their feelings. They're going to seek help and read about their grief. They're going to tell folks about their experience. And again I'm going to connect the dots by giving you some specific examples and intuitive grievers. If you can say that grief is healthy or non-healthy in regards to getting through the formalities of grief, someone that is emotional gets their grief out and that is healthy. It's better not to store your grief.
Speaker 2:So with me personally, I had the experience of both. After both of my parents passed away, I had their home to deal with. So, in that regard, I had to store my emotions. I couldn't focus on my emotions because I had this home that had a pending debt obligation on it that was not going away, and this was at the bottom of the market the real estate market in 2008. And so I had to just focus on removing the contents of my parents' home, preparing it to either sell or to rent it out, and renovating it, and so, you can imagine, I had a lot of pressure on me financially to make those decisions, and so I had to store my grief and I just went it completely alone. I got no emotional help from anyone, I got no financial help. I just had to get through, and that's how I felt. I just had to get through the time and I had to get to the point where we ended up renting my parents' home. So I had to get to that next step.
Speaker 2:After that point you know, it was probably six to eight months, and I was starting to come to grips with what was going on and the emotions hit me. And I was starting to come to grips with what was going on and the emotions hit me and I didn't know how to deal with them because it was nothing that I'd ever dealt with before in my life, and then fast forward, probably a year or so, maybe a year and a half, after my parents passed away, my grandmother passed away and I really had no idea what to do, and I've talked about this in an episode before. I channeled my personal priest. At that point, when my grandmother passed away, I realized that my natural style of grieving was intuitive. I really wanted to understand why I was feeling the way that I was feeling. I really wanted to find some other people that were like me and had my experience. Also, it was very important to know that at my age, at the time and when I started kind of the grief counseling process, there weren't very many people that went through what I had gone through, and so that was important for me to know. I had to channel people that were significantly older than me to assimilate and feel very, very comfortable, and so that's something very important for you to know.
Speaker 2:As the financial advisor, I commonly get advisors that come to me and say hey, chris, my client is moving too slow through their process with grief. When someone comes to me with that information, I quickly know that they have no idea how their client grieves. And I remember the first time an advisor said that to me. An advisor sought me out at a conference this was probably three or four years ago and said that I had been working with a client for about a year or two and she's not getting through her grief and she's not getting over the death of her husband. And sometimes when I encounter situations I have to take a step back because it kind of stabs me when someone says they're not getting over the loss of a loved one.
Speaker 2:And it's very important to know when you're an advisor there's no getting over the death of a loved one or some sort of traumatic grief, it's learning how to live life differently Very important. I'm going to say that again, there's no getting over the loss of someone, it's just learning how to live life differently. In my case, I have learned how to live a different life. I no longer have the counsel and the tutelage of my parents, my grandmother, and it's not that I forget, it's that I again, I've learned to live life differently and I've you know, look at this and I've said this before I look at it as a gift.
Speaker 2:So very, very important for you as an advisor to understand that if you have a client that is an analytical griever, it's feasible to have the expectation that they're going to move faster. There are some instances where the client may not miss a beat, and if you have an intuitive griever like I was as well it is highly possible that they are going to take a very long time to move through your financial process. So it's very careful to understand that, and I'll give you an example of a client that I had that was an intuitive griever. I assessed her upon our first meeting and she said to me I know I'm going to move very slowly through our financial process. And I said to her I reassured her you're right on track with where I think you should be. And it gave her some peace because she didn't want to feel like she was dragging me on Generally said you're okay, what you're going through is completely normal, and so I think it's very important for clients to understand, because when you're going through grief, you have no idea what's going on.
Speaker 2:Things are going so fast and it's important to understand. Okay, are you suppressing your emotions or are you outwardly expressing your emotions? It's not good, bad or indifferent either way. It's just important to understand that that is how you are grieving at this moment and I think you know from a griever or a client's perspective. It is important to know that as you kind of move forward, so you're just aware of what's going on. As always, I appreciate you listening and please feel free to share this episode Again if I can help anyone. That Advisor's Guide for Grieving Clients and there's a whole realm of information that's there that is pertinent and, frankly, goes hand in hand with this podcast. It is also important to note that intuitive grievers usually tend to be women. I appreciate your time today and I'll see you on the next episode.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to our podcast. If you are a client and are looking to work directly with Chris and or our firm, head on over to Life After Grief FP. That is Life After Grief FP. The FP is for financial planning. That is Life After Grief Consultingcom. Any related information referenced in this week's podcast will be located here in the podcast section.