Dealing with Anxiety and Loss in Your Practice |

Business and Marketing for Massage and Bodywork Therapists

Episode 48.

MINDY TOTTEN: Hey hey there. Welcome back to the Do It With Intention podcast!

I’m Mindy Totten, and I've got to kind of an unusual episode for you today. I'm actually recording this at the end of July. And this episode of course, is running on August 19th and I'm recording it so early because I knew that I would have a difficult time.

On August 19th. That is the day. That is the one year anniversary of when my brother Lance died. And I wanted to talk a little bit about grief and loss, not only personally, but collectively, and also in our practices, all of us are experiencing some kind of loss. Right now in the last four or five months.

And whether we have consciously dealt with that or not, it's something that our bodies are trying to process. And so all of us are in some phase of the grieving process and I wanted to talk about it on a personal level, but then also extrapolate that to a. A larger collective level that we're all experiencing.

So I'm sure that many of you probably, most of you are familiar with the five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. And. When I think about my brothers death. So he went into the hospital on August 2nd and he died on the 19th and he had received a kidney transplant a couple of years previously.

And he had something called polycystic kidney disease, which is a hereditary genetic disease that my mom and grandmother also had. And when he got. The kidney transplant, of course was like a new lease on life. And I just knew that he was going to be fine then because my mother had lived with a transplant for 30 plus years and I just knew he was going to be fine.

And it turned out I that the immunosuppressant drugs that he had to take to keep the kidney from rejecting allowed pancreatic cancer to grow very, very quickly. And by the time he went into the hospital, it was in his liver and his fine. Go into the brain as well. So it was not, it was very unexpected. It was very much a shock, even though he had been in and out of the hospital for years, I just always knew that he was going to get better.

And then this time he didn't. So denial was very strong for me in the beginning, especially that last week that he was in the hospital and, and slipped into a coma, there was, I was like, you know, It's going to be okay, this isn't really, you know, somehow he's going to pull through. And then after he died, I moved into anger.

Big time. Not only was I angry that he had died and, and that his sons were not going to have a father. You know, it just, all the things, all the places that your mind goes. I was also angry. Yeah. I found about many other things in my life, you know, wanting just to. Scorched earth approach. Just burn everything to the ground metaphorically, of course, but I was just so overwhelmed with anger and sadness.

And then there's the stage of bargaining, you know, if only I had, if only this, if only that if only he had gotten to the hospital earlier, you know, so you go through all those scenarios and then the stage of depression, I can't even really articulate it. I am not in generally a depression, that's not kind of my fallback emotion.

My fallback emotion is optimism. We can do it. But during this past year, I have found myself in the despair in deep depression. Just about. How sad I am that my younger brother and my only sibling is gone. So I certainly experienced that in this last year. And then the last, the last stage of grieving is acceptance.

And I'm not sure that I'm quite there yet. I'm working on it. It's as I said, it's been about a year still working on that. These five stages of grieving are pretty universally accepted. There is one thing, one stage that is now sort of becoming more well known. And I wanted to share a resource with you for any of you.

Well, as I said at the beginning, we're all grieving something, but now more and more people are beginning to talk about anxiety. That anxiety is also a stage of grieving and of loss. And if this resonates for you while I'm saying it, I want you to check out a book that's called anxiety, the missing stage of grief, and it's by Claire Bidwell Smith who lost both of her parents as a young person.

And she is  a licensed therapist, a talk therapist who works with people extensively through the grieving process. And she talks about how a lot of what we're feeling as we go through these five stages is anxiety. And she gives ideas for how to cope with that and how to, and how to work with it.

So taking those five or six stages from what I experienced. Individually and putting them more out into the collective that we are all experiencing right now because of the pandemic, because of climate change because of economic uncertainty, we're all going through different phases of grieving. So you think about, you know, denial.

Nope. There's no such thing as the current virus. Everything's fine. Everything's going to be good. And then anger. You know, why does this have to happen? Why did this, you know, why people are suffering? People are dying. You know, you get that anger then also the bargaining. Well, if we do this, this, and this, everything is going to be okay, depression.

I know I've had days of just like, Oh God, you know, get me. I was about to drop an F bomb. I won't, I've had days of just like, I can't even cope. So. I'm going to shut down for a day or two and just have an extra glass of wine or whatever. That's certainly signs of depressing designs of behavior that is in depression and then acceptance, which some of us may have gotten to some of us not, but you know, it's not like these five stages are linear.

We're going to process through and come around and back around and things will pop up again and, you know, but. There's certainly this stage of anxiety that we're all going through right now, because nobody knows what is going to happen next. And so taking that day by day, sometimes hour by hour can be very trying on our sweet kind human spirits. So if you are experiencing anxiety with everything that's going on, please please know that you're not alone. And please please know that the, these stages will shift and change just like the waves of an ocean.

There's also business grief. There's also grief around your business. And I want you to think about it too, dealing with loss and grief around your business. Well, do we really grieve a business? I mean, that seems kind of unusual. Is that really a thing? Well, I've been thinking about it a lot. And I want you to consider these five or six stages again, around your business in March, April, depending on where you live, there is denial.

Well, this, you know, this is not going to be that bad. It's probably won't affect my business. Everything is going to be okay. Then there was anger, you know, dammit, this is affecting my business. What am I going to do? What's going, you know, just that real, real anger about. The circumstances, like what is going on?

And then there's bargaining, well, I could do this, but not this. And if I did this just right, then maybe this will be. And if I, you know, and then depression, I have worked with a lot of students who are processing through these emotions of depression. Like, you know, what's the use, do I even want to still be in business?

Do I want to do this work? And then acceptance? Which again, people are moving in and out of, I know that I am, and then finally anxiety. And I think that it's fair to say that everyone in the bodywork industry has experienced some degree of anxiety with what's been going on with, especially if you run your own business, trying to.

Do what you need to do, apply for programs. You need to apply for follow the laws, follow the rules, figure out the rules. All of that can give you an immense sense of anxiety. So how do you deal with this? What can you do? I think that the main thing is just to be open on an emotional level and to be.

Ready, you know, for these changes to come in these different emotions to come in, to float in and out. I mean, business-wise, that's what every podcast is about. Okay. Here's some things you can do try this, try this, but I wanted to do an episode about the underlying feelings and emotions. That all of these changes and all of these situations are bringing up for us.

I highly recommend anxiety, the missing stage of grief, if you are feeling anxious. I know when I think about my own business and then I think about my brother's death, I also know that I have to be really, really, really kind to myself. And I hope that you are being kind to yourselves as well. Okay. And what does that mean?

That means not beating yourself up. If you don't have the focus or the concentration to do the things that you used to be able to do. That means eating really good foods. That means trying to get some exercise, some fresh air, trying to get as good a night's sleep as you possibly can. Not having really high expectations or unrealistic expectations, but really being gentle and being okay with the way that things are.

It's a really tough time. But I think if you take a moment and honor the fact that you may be dealing with feelings of loss and grief around your business, sometimes just honoring it, just saying the words. And having some kind of a ceremony, you can light a candle, you can play that favorite music and just recognize, you know, whether it's through journaling or speaking it aloud.

Hey business. This has been really, really hard. And I am here for you business. We are going to make it through. I'm not quite sure how we're going to take it a step at a time. That's something that I did that brought me a huge amount of relief. And it's something that you can try as well. I've also got a free PDF download that you can get at www.mindytotten.com/podcast/episode48.

And, in that download, there are a couple of journaling exercises and questions. That you can ask yourself around this whole idea of loss and grief in your business, that might be helpful for you. I would like to end by I'm extending an invitation to anyone listening, sorry. It's still hard. Of course.

Anyone listening, who has a minute or two today to send a thought of love or joy in honor of my brother, his name is Lance. I would love that. And I think, honoring people who have gone before is a great way to connect us and to. To really be in the gratitude of the moment that we're in no matter what is going on in the world around us.

So I leave you with those thoughts today as always, I have huge gratitude for you and for the work that you do and for the wonderful work that you put into the world until next time, I hope that you have a beautiful, thoughtful, Gratitude filled day. And I hope that you fill your day with intention.