You Can Get Through It: How to Handle the Hardest Things That Will Ever Happen to You | Dr. Lucy Hone
Dr. Lucy Hone, an adjunct fellow at the University of Canterbury, discusses why the five stages of grief are a myth and offers a three-step recipe for navigating any major loss, including "living losses." She shares evidence-based tools for healing from hardship and rebuilding identity after life-altering events.
Deep Dive Analysis
16 Topic Outline
Introduction to Dr. Lucy Hone's Work and Personal Loss
Defining BFTs and the Spectrum of Loss
Living Losses and the Shattering of Assumptive Worlds
Common Questions During Life-Altering Events
Debunking the Five Stages of Grief Myth
A Three-Step Recipe for Navigating Loss
Grief as a Full-Body, Full-Life Experience
The Role of Support Networks and Asking for Help
Pets as a Primary Source of Grief Support
Rebuilding Identity: What Still Remains True
Balancing Attachment with Impermanence and Wisdom
Resilience as Adaptation and "Ordinary Magic"
Re-experiencing Happiness After Profound Loss
Practicing Self-Kindness and Lowering the Bar
Challenging Inaccurate Thinking Traps
Addressing Disenfranchised Grief and Open Communication
8 Key Concepts
Assumptive Worlds
Deeply held, often unconscious, core beliefs about how one's life will unfold and how others should behave. These are shattered by significant life events, requiring a painful process of rebuilding one's life schema.
Living Losses
Non-death losses that people grieve, such as job loss, breakups, or the loss of a desired life trajectory. These can sometimes hit as hard as, or even harder than, death losses.
BFTs (Bloody Effing Things)
A family saying for big life events or vexing situations, encompassing a spectrum from profound losses like death to transitions like graduating from college or enduring a breakup.
Five Stages of Grief Myth
The widespread but inaccurate belief that everyone must pass through a linear sequence of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance when grieving. Grief is actually highly individual and unpredictable.
Grief Hierarchy
The unhelpful tendency to rank different types of grief or losses, which the speaker advises against. It's important to acknowledge that all losses are valid and individual.
Prolonged Grief Disorder
A recognized clinical condition affecting around 10-15% of people after a major loss. This highlights that most individuals naturally adapt and get through hardship without developing a disorder.
Real, Not Perfect
A self-compassion heuristic that encourages individuals to accept their imperfections and struggles rather than striving for an unrealistic ideal. It serves as a reminder that everyone 'stuffs up' and suffers.
Thinking Traps
Common human propensities for inaccurate thinking, such as catastrophizing, mind-reading, or magnifying negatives while minimizing positives. These are particularly prevalent and harmful when stressed or stakes are high.
12 Questions Answered
BFTs, or "bloody effing things," are big life events or vexing situations, ranging from profound losses like death to transitions like graduating college or breakups.
Grief is defined as the gap between where your life is and where you thought it would be, encompassing a wide range of experiences beyond just death loss.
Major losses smash apart your "assumptive world," which are deeply held core beliefs about how life should unfold, requiring you to rebuild your understanding of reality.
The most common questions are "How will I ever get through this?", "Why do I feel so physically exhausted?", "Why do I feel so lonely?", "Will I ever be happy again?", "Who am I now?", and "How did this happen to me?"
No, the idea of five set stages of grief is a myth; grief is as individual as a fingerprint, and there is no right or wrong way to experience it.
Grief is a full-body, full-life experience that hits you in many ways, including physically, socially, and existentially, smashing your assumptive world and causing profound exhaustion.
Surprisingly, research indicates that pets provide the best support for grievers, surpassing spouses, family members, friends, counselors, and community support.
To rebuild your identity, sit down and write a list of "what is still true" in your life, focusing on what you still have and can count on, rather than what you have lost.
Yes, most people do re-experience happiness and joy, though it takes time and often involves breaking down "happiness" into smaller components like moments of pride, serenity, or curiosity.
Being kind to yourself means accepting that it's "real, not perfect," lowering the bar on expectations, and prioritizing your own needs to conserve energy and get through each hour and day.
You can increase mental agility by checking your thinking for accuracy, asking how a friend would dispute your pessimistic interpretations, or completing sentences like "that's not completely true because..."
It's important to "feel the weird and do it anyway" by talking about disenfranchised grief, such as family estrangement, with an open heart and humility to dismantle the inability to discuss these topics.
10 Actionable Insights
1. Accept Loss, Don’t Fight Reality
Accept that a loss has occurred without condoning it or liking it, as this is the first step to getting out of a difficult situation and not being at war with reality.
2. Practice Self-Compassion
Treat yourself with the same kindness and understanding you would offer a friend experiencing similar hardship, lowering expectations and focusing on what helps you get through each moment.
3. Understand Grief’s Full Impact
Recognize that grief is not just an emotion but a full-body, full-life experience that impacts physical, social, and existential aspects, which helps navigate the overwhelming and discombobulated feelings.
4. Identify What Remains True
When identity is shattered by loss, write down a list of what is still true in your life to anchor yourself and prevent losing what you have to what you’ve lost.
5. Tailor Your Support Requests
Understand that different people can offer various types of support (emotional, practical, informational, memory) and explicitly communicate your specific needs instead of expecting others to mind-read.
6. Engage with Support, Even Reluctantly
Make the effort to respond positively to offers of help from kind friends, even when you least feel like it, as these ‘ordinary processes’ contribute to rebuilding your life.
7. Interrupt Negative Rumination
If stuck in a loop of negative thoughts at night, get out of bed, turn on lights, and make a hot drink instead of passively lying there, to break the cycle of rumination.
8. Challenge Inaccurate Thinking
Actively check your own thoughts for accuracy, especially when stressed, by asking how a friend would dispute your pessimistic interpretations or by completing sentences like ’that’s not completely true because…’
9. Prioritize Self-Care in Early Grief
In the immediate aftermath of a significant loss, lower the bar on expectations, conserve energy, and prioritize your own needs over people-pleasing, as you are in the driver’s seat of your experience.
10. Talk About Disenfranchised Grief
Believe that it’s important to talk about all types of losses, even those not commonly acknowledged like family estrangement, to dismantle the inability to discuss grief openly.
8 Key Quotes
I like to think of grief as the gap between where your life is and where you thought it would be.
Dr. Lucy Hone
I hate that definition or summary of resilience as bouncing back, because A, you don't feel bouncy, and B, you never go back.
Dr. Lucy Hone
grief is as individual as your fingerprint, you have to find what works for you.
Dr. Lucy Hone
don't lose what you have to what you have lost.
Dr. Lucy Hone
frankly, shit happens to us all, that nobody gets out of this because that prevents that kind of passive stuckness of going, the why me wallowing?
Dr. Lucy Hone
we are hardwired for attachment and love. And yet we live in a world of impermanence.
Dr. Lucy Hone
you can live and grieve at the same time. There's so much duality involved in relearning to live in the world, doing both.
Dr. Lucy Hone
it's better to be real than perfect.
Dr. Lucy Hone
1 Protocols
Three-Step Recipe for Navigating Loss
Dr. Lucy Hone- Accept that the loss has occurred (without condoning or liking it), as this is the first step to moving forward.
- Practice self-compassion, understanding that suffering is a universal part of life, which connects you to others and prevents 'why me' wallowing.
- Develop an understanding of grief as a full-body, full-life experience, not just an emotion, to navigate the overwhelming and discombobulated feelings.