Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Overcoming blame Gary

Teleclass Transcript
MP:
CM:

Mark Peysha
Cloe Madanes

MP: All right, welcome to the teleclass. Today, we will be continuing our Master Unit
on Grief and as I said in my email to you guys, we didnt expect this to be a very popular
topic but the truth is Cloe pointed out to me the other day that no ones life is not touched
by grief or loss of some sort. Last time we talked about how the central dilemma of grief
is knowing how to honor the relationship with the person that has passed on while still
showing respect for the future as well.
In many traditional cultures, there are specific procedures for doing this, rituals for the
bereaved person to undergo, a certain amount of time to pass for instance but now we live
in a modern society where we hear lots of ways people deal with grief and there are lots
of confusion and conflict on how to actually do that. How to solve that problem? What
can you do? Which you should not be able to do? How long does it take? How long
does it not have to take?
For instance, people often ask, how long is a normal or acceptable period of time to
grieve for someone? We would answer that that question is based on the idea that time
heals but time doesnt always heal. Some people dont recover from grief. I had a
grandmother who was widowed at age 27. When she was 84 and she was talking to me
about it, it felt like it just happened. And so the grief process is really is series of decisive
decisions both conscious and unconscious.
The last time we talked about the five stages of grief that were first described by
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in the 1950s when she was working with the dying. These have
been kind of the standard view in the phases of grief. I will recap those quickly. The first
phase of grief is denial, where you dont really register the loss and therefore you act like
it didnt happen or it isnt going to happen. Now again, these phases of grief are used to
understand many different situations from the person who understands if they are going
to die to the person who has just lost someone and is grieving them and to the person who
has just lost a situation and not necessarily a person.
So I will discuss this in each case, but the reason for denial was that we all have habits
and rituals and identities that are built around certain things in our lives and when we
hear that we are going to lose something or that we are going to lose someone, it takes us
time to truly register it. So the decision here is to accept the fact that basically in terms

Page 1

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

of denial, there is all sorts dangers in life that we encounter on a regular day regular course of the day and we have a denial function which kind of hold those at bay.
So, like driving on the road is the most dangerous thing that we are likely to do in the
course of our life and yet we go on the road everyday because healthy a part of your
human organism is to just say to disregard certain kind of dangers that are normal
dangers. When you first hear about a loss like this, denial is that kind of sparking in other
part of you that says no, no, that is not going to happen, right? That is not happening.
The decision that ends this kind of phase of denial is when the person kind of accepts that
the loss has occurred or they really truly believe that it will be placed that it is a serious
consideration that you cant just get out of it by having a different attitude.
The next phase is anger. This is again a natural human response when we have a lost a
source of significance or certainty. Anger works to restore a sense of certainty so that we
can take action and recover what has been lost. It is like (inaudible 0.03.34) response that
we use in danger.
In the case of loss, it is often used to try to recover what we may be losing, so often
people respond with anger and with blame in these situations. This is the place where
people very often get stuck, especially if there is a feeling of injustice about the loss.
People are very stubborn in general about things like injustice and Cloe was actually
pointing out that there is studies that show that mammals actually respond to the sense of
fairness and injustice as well so it is very, very deep.
So if someone loses something through an unfairness or an injustice, they often focus on
blaming or assigning responsibility to other people and that becomes a preoccupying
focus for a long, long time. This is especially difficult when someone blames like a
supernatural force, like for instance, God, for taking the person away and creates a
meaning where that is the injustice. Basically, people often come to a halt in terms of
their processing the grief at that point because again when we believe that there is
injustice, we dont believe in just cooperating with injustice, we believe in holding out for
something better.
The decision that ends this phase is one where you realize that blaming will not bring that
person back in certain situations we cant presume to know how the world is supposed to
work. So in other words, when Tony for instance works with people who are Christian
and believe in God or anyone really who has a belief system that has been put into
question. You have to just think, well, you know the larger way that the universe works
is not in your control and so you cant presume to know what is the best thing that happen
in every situation.
The next phase is bargaining. Now in the case of someone who is about to die, they may
come up with creative ways that they will not die, and again, this is an important survival
instinct. If someone tells you that you are going to die or going to be sick then that is a
good time to be creative and find everything that you can do. When it is a situation of
loss where you lost someone or a situation that we bargain from meanings, so we want to

Page 2

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

rescue the meaning of the loss, we want to give it a meaning that restores the sense of
purpose and action. The decision that ends this phase is when the person realizes that the
bargaining will not work. Blaming is a way of bargaining. There is a variety of ways
that you can try to create a meaning that you are dealing with the loss.
The next phase is depression. This is different than what is ordinarily called depression
because it is a really specific response, a very specific painful event that occurs to
everyone. This is where the person realizes that they cant prevent the loss. Denial didnt
work, anger and blaming didnt work, and bargaining didnt work. The catch here is that
in depression, people incorrectly conclude that nothing will work. So they draw out a
conclusion which is correct, which is that the person has died or the situation has changed
but they also draw an incorrect conclusion that there is absolutely nothing you can do to
stop it. This is very scary because people really go to learn helplessness at this point and
their lives can come to a total halt because they equate the external reality with their
ability to choose things on the inside. The decision that ends this phase is a spiritual
decision where you see that you cant control the external circumstances; the person
dying, yourself dying, the situation changing, whatever it may be. The concept here is
that there is an acceptance and a peace that comes with that.
And so the fifth stage is acceptance. These are the five stages according to Kubler-Ross.
Now, we dont actually like to stop there. In traditional therapy such as where KublerRoss was working, at the time when Kubler-Ross was working the goal of therapy was to
make people feel better, to be happier. So putting acceptance as the final phase would
make sense then, especially if the final stage of someone who is contemplating their own
death so feeling at peace with your own death would seem to be a healthy process and a
healthy conclusion.
But in strategic intervention true health takes you to another step. That is the spiritual
step where the decision and the realization is that even if you cant prevent the physical
loss, whether it is a death or another situation, or whatever it is that is changing that you
didnt want to happen, you can still control the meanings that you create. So no matter
what happened on the outside, you can still control what happens on the inside and then
in this phase you realize that the physical loss doesnt mean that you dont have the
power to create meaning.
This is where all of us have been very influenced by Viktor Frankl who wrote the Mans
Search for Meaning. He basically said on the concentration camp where none of the
concentration camp victims had any abilities to choose anything in their external
circumstances, Viktor Frankl was able to choose his choices basically and make that
decision. It was an extreme situation but in this phase you realize that the physical loss
doesnt mean that you cant create meaning. In fact, you can
CM: Let me clarify something there Mark because there was a little confusion. Victor
Frankl realized that he could choose what he thought and he chose to study the situation
and to write a book about it, which is still a best-seller in Psychology. So that no matter
what the situation you can still choose the meaning that you give to it.

Page 3

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

MP: That is right.

CM: Even in the concentration camp. So he wrote a book and the Nazis confiscated it
and burned it and he wrote it again on toilet paper in the concentration camp.
MP: And he really focused on his ability to choose even in that situation where he could
choose so little what it seemed but actually he could choose everything because he could
choose what his decisions were going to be.
CM: What his meanings were going to be.
MP: What his meanings are going to be.
CM: What he was going to decide in terms of meaning. That was the only decision he
got left but that is the most important.
MP: That is right. So this is an elevated state where people realize that they can actually
live proactively with love and gratitude or whatever their values maybe no matter what
their physical circumstances and no matter what is to be lost on the physical level.
In the Maggie and the Gary interventions, we see that these folks who have been struck in
one of the grief phases. They have been stuck for many years and what kind of liberated
them to take their lives to the next level was their ability to proactively create a meaning.
This meaning was not to try to force or change what really happened physically and it
doesnt try to deny or push things around of anger or of bargain or just give up. Instead it
was working with the circumstances and they are bracing their ability to create meaning.
Tony helped them answer four main questions that have been dilemmas for them. First
was: What happened to cause the death and who was responsible? So that is associated
with the blaming and assigning responsibilities for the death. The second question is:
How can you make sense of this situation? What meaning do you create? The third is:
What would the deceased person want? And the fourth is: What can you do now to honor
the deceased and the living who are still alive and yourself. These are four places where
people get stuck in this four questions. Tony helped both Gary and Maggie to overcome
those and come up with productive answers to those.
In the case of Gary just to do a quick recap of the intervention itself. Gary stood up to
answer a kind of trivia question. He was at the event and Tony was talking about
something completely different. He was talking about grief. He is asking some kind of
playful questions that Tony asked the group in order to point out the variety of belief
systems that people have. Gary responded that he wouldnt and the question was:
Would you have sex with a stranger for like $10,000 or something like that and Gary
responded that he wouldnt do it and that he would feel dirty.
This caught Tonys attention because when people find it easy to feel dirty, it can mean

Page 4

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

that they are very hard on themselves and that they are used to punishing themselves
mentally. So instead of saying, I wouldnt want to do it because I dont believe in it. or
I just dont like that. Gary said, I feel dirty and that caught Tonys attention. Gary
had revealed eventually that he was mostly Tony asked him whether he feels mostly
happy or mostly sad and Gary revealed that he was mostly sad. Then he told Tony told
the story of his daughter who drowned and then how Gary became an alcoholic and a
drug user and then by use of Tonys products he kind of pulled himself out of that and he
has been burned clean and he has been rebuilding his life.
Tonys next step was to inquire Garys meanings. So Tony asked Gary whether Gary
blamed himself and Gary said, Yes, and Tony asked, Were you responsible for the
death and Gary said, No, I was not. I was not there when she drowned. And Tony
asked, Well, would you believe that you should have been there? and Gary responded,
I should have been there too because how can a father let her let his daughter drown.
So at this point there are two clues about the phase of grief where Gary was at this point.
The first clue was that he said that he wasnt responsible for the death but then he said he
was and the second clue was that he says, How can a father let her daughter drown?
So he has had a slip, right? Basically, he is talking about someone else probably. So you
ask yourself which of the stages of grief was he at? If you were doing an intervention
with someone in terms of grief, it is really important to understand where they are at in
terms of their emotions and whether they are focusing on. So, ask yourself: Was it
denial? Was it anger and blame? In terms of the phase, Gary was at the third phase,
bargaining? Was it the fourth phase, depression? Was it the fifth phase, acceptance?
So it seems to me that another adult was involved with the circumstances, with the death.
Gary probably blamed probably the childs mother but it is not certain but it definitely
seems that Gary was stuck in blame and the way to understand his if it is true and Tony
also observed there is an anger underneath Gary when Gary said I was not go ahead.
CM: Okay.
MP: Oh, did you say something? All right.
CM: Sorry about that. Somebody was interrupting me.
MP: No problem. Tony deduced quickly that because of the amount of anger that seems
to be in Gary and that he was talking about someone else being involved that he wasnt
there, that there was blame involved. The question is: How do you understand someone
who with Garys story. This is just hypothetical, but this is how I would understand it: It
is that when people are filled with blame and indignation about an injustice that happened
and they are not able to do anything about it because when you are in the blame phase,
you cant do very much beyond blaming the person unless you are actually going to take
revenge or punish the person in some way. Sometimes people do that but they often do
that in a way that actually damages the person indirectly. If you suppose that Gary is full
of anger and blame then the substance abuse is probably something that would take him

Page 5

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

out of that extremely painful state.
CM: Well, it is just that, Mark, let me add something here.
MP: Yes.
CM: The alcohol and drug abuse there is used to blunt the emotion. At the moment
when he is completely drunk or drugged, he is not thinking about the child anymore. And
often this people use alcohol and drugs in that way to stop things.
MP: And they use it sometimes to punish other people in their lives and also to place the
blame
CM: Oh, yes. Also to show look what has become of me. Yeah.
MP: So the reason I am going into this at this point here is just because it is important to
see how Tony quickly navigated where Gary was and what he needed. He saw basically
what was there under the surface and instead of going into like a logical level or
discussing with Gary the details of the death, who is responsible and who wasnt
responsible and in our cases as coaches, if we were speaking with someone and they just
revealed this to us we would probably want to get more details about the situations. We
would and understand who the child is with and what were the circumstances so that we
have more control of the meaning. But Tony at this point saw that there was enough
anger there that he understood. He basically decided to take Gary to an emotional
experience directly because I think he felt that he had a resource that he could give Gary
at that point instead of taking him through the whole story of how things happened and
who is to blame.
Tony asked Gary to invite Chelsea into the room and Tony redefined the relationship
basically by bringing Chelsea into the room in real time. He is reinstating the
relationship except he is giving her more authority than even Tony has in that situation.
He says, feel your connection to her. That is eternal. So that you feel with her, you can
feel her love and love her, and feel a connection that is unbroken beyond this life and
beyond any life and go beyond any pain that has ever existed and something that is
eternal.
And then he asked him, Ask your little girl what Daddy needs to know because she
knows, she is very wise now. And this is the strategy that Cloe yes?
CM: Excuse me one second. It is very interesting to me that he put her at the age that
she would have been in the present. So now Gary is talking to a 14-year-old girl and not
to a little child.
MP: Yeah, it is very interesting and this is a strategy that you have used for a long time
of asking the child to provide a directive to the parents because it is

Page 6

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

[Cross-talking]
CM: You are right. Right.
MP: So, in this case, it is the child and Gary she is the one who provides him with the
advice he needs. Tony asked Gary what he needs to know or believes for certain and
Gary responds and he asks, Am I a good father? Am I good man? Do I deserve to have
a good life? Then Tony had Gary to ask her daughter and she replies that he is a good
man and deserves a good life. Then Tony asked Gary to feel it in every soul of his body
in order to really taken in on the physical experience. Basically this is a strategy that
Tony uses to help Gary to forgive himself and to give himself permission to move on to
the next level of life.
What is amazing about this intervention is it is quite a short intervention and it is not
extremely complicated except and where Tony really catches on where Gary is at the
point. I mean it wasnt a long intervention and the strategy that he gives Gary in terms of
bringing the child into the room is something that he does on a pretty it is just a basis
that other people could replicate.
Cloe, any thoughts on that?
CM: No, it is an absolutely excellent strategy because one of the things that Tony does in
this intervention is that he makes Gary accountable to his daughter. Gary was not looking
at it at all like that he was just focused on this grief and his accountability of the moment
of her death but not his accountability now. Tony was able to take it to the present and
how he is accountable to his daughter now even after her death.
MP: Yeah.
CM: So that he can honor his daughter by having a good life and living like a good
person.
MP: That is probably one of the biggest sources of leverage where Tony used in both of
these two interventions is that people when they are in grief, they tend to focus on the
things that happened to them or the thing that they lost and they totally lose
accountability for how they are spending their days, right? Bringing them back to that
and making that a serious matter as the fact that they lost that person years ago. But Tony
does it in a soft way because he uses the childs voice. He didnt really direct Gary what
to say. I mean Gary had the questions and then he answered the questions.
CM: Right.
MP: So it is kind of amazing how that worked. Anyway so, that was
CM: Shall we?

Page 7

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

MP: Yeah, do some questions.
CM: (inaudible) Shall we go on to answer questions? We have a whole lot of questions.
MP: Yeah, we have a ton of question so we are going to focus on that and also if you
have any questions live, press star two and raise your hand. Cloe, you have some
questions that are lined up from the last session as well.
CM: Okay, so one question is: When you know that someone will die how can you
prepare and help the people around the dying person? I know a 41-year-old father who
knows that he will die of a brain tumor. His children are ten and thirteen years old and I
would really love to help them through the next long time and of course the father if I
can. The parents got divorced when the father found out that he was gay.
Well, what you can do for the father and for the children is to help him and encourage
him to do everything that he can for the children until the moment that he dies. The
moment when he is going to die is unpredictable so whatever the childrens challenges
are, I would keep the father absolutely busy and not let him have any excuse for not
taking care of the children. I remember one case that was in my institute a long time ago
where the father also had a brain tumor. The child had school difficulties and learning
problems and the father was in that school and with the child, helping the child, talking
with the teacher, helping tutor the child till the day that he died; he was busy with that.
And of course, do everything you can to help the father to organize his financial situation
so that the children will have as secure a future as possible. With the children, help them
to find out as much as they can of the fathers beliefs and values and what he wants for
them. Maybe for the father to write a will that is not only a will about financial matters
but a will about what his beliefs and the familys beliefs are that he would like to transmit
to the children, that he would like them to keep, to live by. It could be in the form of like
a book.
Actually, this was a project that I was going to have with a lawyer somewhere in Florida
and somehow I got too busy and it never happened. This was a lawyer that specializes in
wills and trust especially for the wealthy. He felt that it was so important to have a will
that was not about money and property; that was just about values and beliefs. This is
something that everybody should have and so that is my answer to that question.
MP: I have one question for you, Cloe. If there is a lot of I guess this is going to vary
from case to case but there are some case where people have a disease and they are going
to have trouble managing their estate at the end. I know that you have spoken to
numerous people who had someone like their parent died and the parent was in a lot of
pain towards the end. I guess basically you help the parent to be as present as possible
but then
CM: As present as possible when it is possible and also to let go. It is a pity that the
experiments on this had stopped. I remember this was what in the late I am trying to

Page 8

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

remember it was probably in the 80s that here in the States a lot of research was being
done on LSP and MBMA and how the altered state of consciousness when it is guided.
In a hospital setting when the patient is dying the experience with LSP or MBMA can
help the patient to come to terms with their death. It helps them to see a higher meaning
to the situation and then they can talk with their family and give them support and
reassurance and help them to come to terms with the death. But all those experiments
were interrupted and never resumed. I am hoping that they will come back because those
drugs not only ease the pain but can give when they are guided can give a clarity of
thought and a clarity of spirituality that the person would not normally have.
Okay, shall I go on to the next one?
MP: Absolutely. Go to the next one.
CM: Okay. What is the persons belief system is challenged after a loss? That being no
certainty that God exists and there is no meaning any more, that life is only selfish and
has lost its meaning therefore in the end it is only suffering so why even be selfish and
exist if there is no point as loss is too painful.
Well, the person that feels like that it really is a selfish point of view because they
focused on their own pain. The belief in God is not necessary to believe that the meaning
of life is to contribute to other and to help others. There is always someone that is in a
worse situation than ones self or someone that is in a more fragile situation or someone
that needs to be guided and you dont need to believe in God to believe that we are here
to help others so that is the belief that I would encourage.
MP: Yeah, I agree. I mean people it varies from person to person that I think when
people take up a position like they are going if they are believing in God and they have
lived their lives in the face of God and then they decide that God is not doing what they
wanted God to do, it doesnt make sense. I mean it is kind of part of the deal that if the
person has faith and they cant suddenly decide to judge the superior power from that
point of view.
CM: All right, so here is a more mundane question. Could I begin to use a URP
Educators Kit right away before I finish the INP Program? Yes, you can.
MP: Yes.
CM: Okay, so here is another one. What is even the loss of the love one and the strong
feelings associated with the loss or the connection? How do you replace that with
something healthy?
Well, that is very similar to Garys situation and actually to Maggies situation. The dead
children had become the most important thing, the most important connection to them
and it was important to replace it with something more meaningful and Maggie
immediately did that and she became very devoted to charitable causes and Gary the last
time I heard was going in that direction also. So that the idea that

Page 9

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

MP: You also open up to relationships.

[Cross-talking]
CM: Right. Asking the dead person what would they have wanted for one is the one way
to come out of that type of connection.
MP: Yes, I think it would have as the people get they are attached to the loss. They
have become attached to the loss basically. What they are focusing is the person that they
dont want to let go and they dont want to let them exist either. So you are holding on to
this person who died and you are not acting like you still have access to that person. You
no longer have a relationship with the person. You used to have a relationship with the
physical person that was there before and so when Tony brings people these deceased
people into your presence where you actually have that real time relationship with them
that is the way to counteract that pattern in people. You actually do have access to that
person.
CM: Right. So here is another one: This is a mother of a 9-year-old boy who is very
close. She is very close to him and she runs a tape in her mind about the child being in
danger of dying and how she could not live with that pain. What this is that you are not
living in the present. I think that fear and the fear of dying is a very healthy fear when
there is a clear and present danger but if there is no danger at the moment, you are
imagining things from the past and projecting you imagination into the future. It prevents
you from having the joy of life that you need to have with your child. You have got to
practice being in the present and realizing that when you are in that fear, you are in an
imaginary world. You are in a schizophrenic world. You are not in reality. Come out of
that because you dont want to teach your son to also be in the past or in a fearsome
future in the imagination.
MP: Yeah, I mean the fear is there.
CM: Every parent has that fear but you have to bring yourself back to the present.
MP: That is right, very good.
CM: All right and the other question: I have been discussing this with his mother who
after having several children lost a child in childbirth and cannot switch off the said
feeling.
Again I think that that is transmitting to your children who are very much alive and to
your husband that it is okay to be grieving for something that cannot be changed. If you
could begin to believe that you can control your emotions, you would also understand
that grieving is a choice and you can choose to be in depression and to be with the ones
you can take care of and that you can teach joy of living instead of teaching grief and
practice everything that you can to bring yourself to the present: meditation, yoga,

Page 10

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

mantras, incantations that you say to yourself, in a certain way to grieve for a lost child.
You are going to see that in the next module about Carol. When there are other children,
to grieve so intensely for the one that died is to take away something from the ones that
are alive. It is showing an incredible favoritism towards the one that died. Does that
make sense?
MP: Absolutely. I mean we all have a part of us where there are things that we dont
want to happen and we focus on things that we dont want to happen. But in the cases of
a death or a loss or something this grief process or the five stages are about letting go of
the level of yourself where you think that you can control the world with your grief
whether it is through your beliefs or your reactions or your fears. Sometimes you have to
just realize that it is a larger world and we dont have control on every percentage of the
world and just to recognize that so that you can direct your energy towards the things that
you can make a contribution.
CM: Yes. All right, here is another question: What guidance might you provide for
coaching teens who are grieving the breakup of a family through divorce?
I will just explain to them that in todays world, divorce is a normal stage of family
development because it happens in more than 50 percent of families. Divorce is no
longer the exception, it is a norm. People have to adjust to family situations where there
are several parents, many relatives and just many more resources that become available.
Not to think not to get into the idea that they are victims in some way because the
parents divorced, or that they are bound to suffer always, or be pulled and divided among
the parents. Just take it as a normal stage that they can make the best of. They will have
two homes. Maybe they will have four parents instead of two parents and it can be seen
as an enriching situation.
MP: Yes. They still keep their relationships with all of the people. That no one has been
cast out, no one ceased to exist.
CM: No one has been lost.
MP: Yes. No one has been lost. When you are in a family, it makes it convenient
because everyone is in the same house and it makes this tidy unit where people are in
physical proximity with each other. In the post divorce family each person needs to work
a little bit harder in keeping contact with all of their relationships but all of the
relationships are still there.
CM: Exactly. Okay. Here is another one: I know this is purely hypothetical, but how
might one alter the process if a person did not believe in God, did not believe in the
afterlife. Would you instead maybe talk about that persons memory of the person they
have lost? Get them to connect with the part of that person that continued living inside of
them?
Definitely, totally, it is the same process to work with someone that does not believe in

Page 11

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

God or in the afterlife. You just say that you continue to carry that person inside of you.
If it is a relative, their genes are inside of you whether it is a parent or a child, the
memories are part of who you are. That person will always be alive inside of you and you
always listen to them and imagine what they would say to you. A belief in God or the
afterlife is not necessary. Another part of yeah, go ahead.
MP: It is also about taking some more conscious control of your ability to create
meanings. So if you are remembering that person, people in grief, they tend to go into
the situation where they are remembering only meanings that are painful to them because
it is part of their grief pattern versus thinking about times that you had great times
together, or funny moments, or loving moments or what it may be. With the person who
does not believe in this supernatural force, I think you have to emphasize that they have a
memory and they have this ability to call back experiences using these facility of their
mind.
CM: Absolutely. Okay. Perhaps you could address how one might apply the process to a
more general loss. Tony mentions the lost of inner sense or control with whom would a
person have the inner dialog to hear the answer they need to hear in those kinds of
situation. What kinds of questions might we ask to reveal their inner resource for those
situations?
I do not know whether this question comes from someone who has not done yet the
module on the archetype because one thing that you can call upon is the Jungian
Archetype. The idea is that we all carry within us universal archetypical figures such as:
The Warrior, The Magician, The Lover and The King or The Queen or the Goddess and
you can ask those archetypes inside of you. How would they guide you? You can also
imagine someone like your grandmother. What would your grandmother say if she could
see you or she could talk to you? What would she say to you? Or what would the first
grade teacher that loved you so much what would she say? We all have access to many
resources like that.
MP: That is great.
CM: Okay. How to overcome loneliness even surrounded by people I feel alone? I just
realized that I have been operating this way since I was a kid. Now that I have lost the
biggest love of my life, which one I did not feel lonely at all, now I feel completely
lonely even that there is people around me. Could you suggest something?
I think contribution is the answer. You need to contribute to others who are really alone. I
suspect that you are not really physically alone. So if you can contribute to others, you
will gradually come out of the loneliness because you will feel that you are helping other
people. Go ahead, Mark.
MP: Yeah. When we come up against losses like this we tend to come up against kind
of the nature the world a little bit or the nature of life and it is somewhat beyond the kind
of the human experience that we are used to. When we have someone die, we realize it

Page 12

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

goes beyond our ability to stop or prevent them from dying or you may be in a situation
where suddenly feel more alone than you ever did before or you may feel for instance
that there is more danger in the world if you have for instance someone die through an
accident or through an illness or something that you might feel that there is more that you
need to prevent. These situations we live in such a comfortable society where we do not
have that experience very much; much of the way that we live our lives and our basic
needs are met very comfortably, so it is shocking when that happens. I think there is an
attitude that needs to be brought to those that you are being lead into another level of
understanding what the universal and life is about.
When people do die, danger is there. People are in some ways alone and some ways are
not alone. If you can have an attitude of opening up to that and especially having
compassion for other people who are having these experiences much more often than
yourself rather than thinking, Oh this is a bad thing, I cannot have this, people cannot
be alone. People thinks, It cannot be out of my control. Things cannot be dangerous.
but they are sometimes. But if you can open-up to that and realize and appreciate the
experience of millions of other people, billions of other people who have those
experiences and it is part of the human condition then you can kind of not embrace it but
accept it as something that happens to the people and put a good intention into it so that
when you experience it you realize, Oh, this how the world is. This is a new thing. I
had not really understood it but millions of people, millions of my ancestors have gone
through this and I am going to honor it now.
CM: Yeah, very good. Here is another one: How could a coach help people that are
atheist or stoicist to overcome grief? I have not heard of someone who is a stoicist and I
do not know how long? That is very interesting.
Well, with a stoicist it is really easy because you are supposed to stoic so you just face up
to it and handle it. Being stoic is great and that is it. You just go on about your work. All
right.
If you an atheist, it applies what I said before. The person is still inside of you. We are
all related. We are related to everyone in the world who is alive and we are related to
everyone who is dead than most especially to someone who is dead, who has the same
genes that we do with whom we have memories and experiences. In that sense, no one
ever dies. They are inside of us.
Alright. Here is another question: I have not finished watching the films, but from one
I have seen in the videos on both cases Tony worked with the persons spiritual belief
particularly the belief that the child lost is now somewhere else still alive, vibrant, etc.
How can we help people from whom this assumption is not a reality?
Well, it is the same answer that I just gave. What can we do for people to whom the
question what would he want you to do with your life because there is more pain, since
there is no point in it because the child no longer exists and cant possibly have any
wishes or desires anymore?

Page 13

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Yes, they do exist. For example: The baby that died at child birth has the same genes as
the mother and has the same genes as the siblings. When that child want to be favored to
the point that the mother is grieving so much that there is transmission to the other
children that life is sadness so that is how you handle it. That does not make sense,
Mark?
MP: Yeah. It is still a wish even though the person may have been deceased. You can
look at what Tony is doing with Gary depending on your belief system as a metaphor
where he brings a person. You can believe that Gary is actually bringing his daughter
there in his presence or you can believe that it is a metaphor for him. Either way, there
are wishes that the children have for their parents. Children wish their parents to be
happy and have good lives. The children also wish parents to show them how to be
happy and have good lives. In this case, if the person is an atheist these are the wishes of
the people who are deceased. What you do is you respect those wishes. I mean if I pass
on I hope that my family respects some of the wishes of how I believe that life should be
carried on and it does matter where I go after I die. I hope that they respect that. That
does not really it is spiritual dimension but it is a metaphysical question. You can take
it on that base level.
CM: Okay. Here is another one that is very similar: What if the grieving person was
very religious and now has lost complete faith or trust in God and now doubt her child is
in heaven but instead only believes the child is but a memory.
It is not but a memory. The memory is a huge thing and the memory is that it is alive or
almost as alive as a real person. That memory has to be respected and the wishes have to
be carried out. Another thing that you can advise people to do is to do something
meaningful on the anniversary of the birthday of the person that died. For example:
Create a special fund to help people with a certain kind of problem. For example:
Somebody if it is a parent who died the kind of charitable thing that that parent would
have wanted to happen. If it is someone that died of murder to do something for the
prevention of violence on a certain date every year in order to the person who died. If it
is a baby that died in childbirth, to do something special to prevent childbirth death in the
future or to help mothers who have gone through that so that you keep the memory alive
by doing something in honor of the person who has died.
MP: Absolutely. Yes, it is. People get sometimes very hang-up on their personal loss.
This is obviously understandable. One way is to reach out to other people who are in that
similar situation. The other thing is to...
CM: To change it into a contribution.
MP: Yes, and the other thing is to meditate sometime on tradition and not on the
(inaudible) but on the past of all the generations of people who have made similar
sacrifices or have had similar situations who have respected the wishes of the people
who have died before them and therefore had been able to help others. Atheist should be
able to understand that there have been generations of humans who have been gone

Page 14

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

through those experience and they have been able to make meaning out of even hard
things that happened or losses.
CM: Right. Every religion has rituals for that.
MP: Yes.
CM: Here is a question that I answered in private but I want to answer it anyhow. That
is: What is the best time to start helping someone who has lost a love one? How much
time should pass before starting to help?
I had once a brother who was killed and he wants to help the family. I think your help
immediately as soon as possible.
Related to this the questions, I just want to mention how long does it take to grieve and
that I believe that the Jewish grief time is a year and that is what most of the mental
health field believe is the normal time to grieve for someone. A whole year of feeling sad
at times and thinking a lot about the dead person is completely normal and should not be
considered a depression or anything like that. Okay.
MP: Yeah. I would also say that, if you are approaching someone it sounds like the
question is: When would be a good time to help someone who is going through a grief.
Sometimes this is the time this is the time where you need to be extraordinarily
understanding and compassionate and very very tolerant of whatever reaction they
have. There maybe people who are angry for days on end but if you want to help them,
you have to go into that conversation. You do not have to change anything to be able to
be tolerant that the fact that they are angry or upset for instance or they maybe bargaining
in one of these five stages where they are thinking about different ways of thinking about
or they may be stuck in blame. Whatever phase they are at, it is important that you are
there and you are present to the person in whatever phase, whatever emotional experience
they are having. In other words it is not a situation where you say, Oh, you are angry
now, I will come back and help you with your grief when you are feeling better. You
kind of have to come in and be with the person wherever they are at and do not try to
change them. Just being present and just being available to them is enough.
CM: Okay. Here is one last question in writing: How does it work when losing part of
yourself or a person in a relationship? How quickly can this kind of procedure be used?
Is there a normal time of grief, a year or so?
Yes. I think it is a year or so. For example: I have a lot of experience with immigration
and the immigrant losses in a sense losses the whole country, many family
relationships, a whole part of their identity and it takes at least a year to adjust, probably
more. I do not know if you want to add
MP: That is in immigration?

Page 15

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

CM: Yes. In immigration in many situations or when you simply lose a relationship
through divorce, there is a grieving process that takes at least a year. It is similar to the
death of a person but it is different in the sense that you can still maintain the connection.
So it is a partial loss. It is not a total loss.
MP: Would you give people advice on how to spend that time? How to best process
that?
CM: Well, you have to salvage the best from your past relationship. So for example, if it
is a divorce, turn it into friendship. If it is an immigration problem; have frequent
telephone calls, emails, letters, presents; keep the ties going. In todays world, we live in
a situation where so many relationships are in fluctuation and you have to make an effort
to sustain them. We do not live in a little village anymore with generations in the same
town.
MP: Because of internet you dont really leave people behind anymore on their own...
[Cross-talking]
CM: That is right. Everybody can find you. And it goes on and on. Alright, do we have
any live questions?
MP: We have some live written questions and if anyone wants to get on the phone press
star- 2 to raise your hand. To the written questions: If angry at God the blame phase?
Yes, I would say that is the blame phase. That is where you are basically trying to restore
justice, restore certainty and significance by assigning responsibility to someone. It can
continue throughout the phases the next phases of bargaining. People can be
preoccupied in trying to communicate with God and bargain with God and see whether
there are some other options for instance. The depression phase where people are
depressed, they can actually conclude that God hates me or that God does not favor me,
or the God has forsaken me. The phases can be pre-occupied with the religious or
metaphysical questions all the way through. But the anger phase is definitely where you
try to defy something and blame, assign a responsibility.
I have a question here a statement it looks like: I think that I am in acceptance,
however, when creating new meanings I have a hard time so when you have to make a
decision whether to keep everything trying to keep everything to keep someone alive or
just let them go peacefully; what are the new thoughts that you could have. When my
first son was born, he did not have his lungs well-developed; in fact, they were not all
well to keep him breathing. The doctors did all they could to try to push his lungs;
however, the lungs could have exploded so we decided to stop the pushing them.
Questions that come are: What if we have chosen differently? What if he had a chance?
CM: I am sure that you chose the right thing and you got the right medical advice and

Page 16

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

what you do not want is to prolong the suffering. I think you have to let the person go
peacefully, definitely.
MP: Yes. Okay, I have another question here: Can you work with people who have lost
their husband; that are older and suffering dementia or Alzheimers or memory loss?
CM: I know it is hard. You have to do everything that you can. There is a wonderful
movie but unfortunately it is in Spanish. It is from Argentinean movie. The son of the
bride where this man has a mother who is suffering from dementia and the film is very
beautiful, showing all that he does to help her. I think that we now know that people with
dementia and Alzheimers have moments of lucidity. She has to capture those moments
and all you can do is to remind them of where they are now and what is happening now
and help them with their fears because I think the most painful thing about dementia and
Alzheimers is how frightened the person can become.
MP: You would not be working with them cognitively in the sense of taking them to
phases but you would be working with them to help manage their rituals and their
environment.
CM: Reassuring them. I was just talking with a young woman who worked with
dementia patient and she is working with this woman whose husband died eighteen years
ago and still once in a while this woman was saying, And where is my husband?
Painfully the caretaker has to say he died a long time ago and you know that he died.
Sometimes she cannot even dare to say that so she says, He is away, he is gone away.
Then the woman says, Where? and she said, I am not sure, I do not know where he
is. It is very difficult. You just have to be sensitive and answer whatever is the kindest
thing.
There was a very interesting article in the New York Times just two or three days ago by
Justice Day OConnor of the Supreme Court asking for funding the research on
Alzheimers because there is going to be more than a billion people with Alzheimers in
the United States very soon. There is very little money for research and it is hard for
aging condition. What we know so far does not take you anywhere because even
president Regan in top physical shape and with all the mental stimulation that he had, had
Alzheimers. But that is an aside, alright.
MP: Yeah. We have another question here: Any suggestions on how to help people to
forgive themselves. I find that most of the time the biggest source of pain is the inability
for self-forgiveness. Do you have any techniques?
[Cross-talking]
CM: You just have to remember excuse me, go ahead.
MP: I think first of all you have an intellectual discussion about what the real
responsibility that the person could have had; if they are blaming themselves for

Page 17

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

something. Very often in the case of loss, people create when people lose something, it
is so confusing and bewildering that people want to simplify it. You can simplify it and
figure out whose fault it is. If you say it is my fault, the impulse is to simplify a very
serious situation, an unfamiliarity kind of brush with the nature of reality, which is that
people die.
On a logical level, you can really pick apart and work with the person to understand
whether it makes any sense with blaming themselves. On the emotional level then you
have these other things that we talked about where you have to think about what you can
really do. Even if you this is the weird thought I just had, Cloe. If you have someone
who is in grief and they are blaming themselves, I know that if you are working with
someone on another situation, you will give them a reparation to do. So if someone is
completely determined to be blamed for something that has caused the grief situation
would you sometimes just go with that and give them reparation?
CM: Yes. That is a good idea. I would say whether you are responsible or not an act of
reparation will help. If not you, it will help others.
MP: Yeah.
CM: Then I would plan the acts of reparation or the act of contribution.
MP: Yeah. It is a funny thing because sometimes when people are so stuck on injustice,
they are so stuck in the blame frame that it is very hard to talk them out of someone being
responsible for what happened. In this case, there are situations where you can actually
have them accept responsibility for something even if it is on a metaphysical level so that
they can actually do something to repair it.
This is a kind of a kind of a tangential story: There was a guy a neighbor of mine who
had a quarrel many years ago. Another neighbor of ours was damaging this guys car on
a regular basis and we had no idea why. My neighbor went over to this other guy and
basically gave him a long apology for whatever he may have done to offend the person
and he had not done anything but he made a very extensive apology and that happened
again and then he came and did another apology at the guys door. He kept coming back
and apologize whatever happens to whatever he may have done he apologizes with the
guy. And the guy stopped. The funny thing is he was totally nuts. I mean he had nothing
to apologize for. Sometimes an apology or reparation will work even if it does not make
sense. Sometimes that is the only thing that will make sense of the situation.
CM: Absolutely. Alright.
MP: Okay, so let us see if there is any more live questions. Okay. So we got no phone
questions today.
CM: Alright.

Page 18

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

MP: Let me see if there is one more. I just want to make sure that I havent lost any.
Okay, I have a question. This is from Henny and if you have a follow-up, please type it
in.
This is someone who is having trouble studying. This is not a grief-related question.
She has trouble studying for their exam and does not want to take action about it and
study. I have heard from another question from the past that there are some family
relationships that are involved where the father has some opinions about this persons
exam and their studies. So he has it sounds like there is a conflict between studying
and parental relationships getting involved in that.
CM: Just remember that you are studying for yourself not for your father and create
rewards for certain accomplishments like for example: If you concentrate for an hour
then you get a special reward for ten minutes or if you have learned two chapters, you
will reward yourself with something. But it is really bad to make it about your father.
You have to get completely out of that framework. It is about you, it is about your
contribution, it is about your life.
MP: Yeah. It is very important and also you can just make it just boil it down to the
actions that you need to take. Sometime we get stuck when we are thinking about our
motivations and what we want and what we feel like we can do so much and we forget to
think about the actual concrete steps of doing what needs to be done. I have thirty pages
that I need
[Cross-talking]
CM: Break it down into segments, yes.
MP: Break it down into segments so there are 30 pages and then tell yourself, Okay, I
need to do these pages five pages a day, because I have six days to study or whatever it
maybe. And then you have to give yourself a consequence for not doing those. If you
do not do that this has nothing to do with any other family member or any other
relationship. This is a promise you made to yourself to do this. Then you can what
would have been a good consequence for that be, Cloe?
CM: You mean to punish yourself if you dont?
MP: If you do not do something that you promised to yourself to do because you decided
to do it.
CM: Well, then do something else that would be good for your health like 50 pushups or
jog three miles something like that.
MP: You have to just set up an accountability system for yourself because you cant
control the relationships with the other family members, but this is your life and this is
your career.

Page 19

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

CM: Exactly.
MP: So you need to set up the concrete steps just to jack up the concrete steps of what
you need to do to succeed in that endeavor. Put it on a schedule. Give it how many
what is the time of day, when you are going to do this and if you do not do this, you need
to go do something else that is physically difficult for you to do such as going for a three
mile run, or doing a hundred push-ups or something else. If you do not do then you need
to bring up the accountability and do 200 pushups or 300 pushups.
CM: Exactly. Alright, I think it is time to say goodbye.
MP: Okay, everybody. We are unmuted now so we will talk to you guys later. Thank you
very much for coming.
Audience: Thank you.
CM: Bye-bye. Bye, everybody. Thank you.
Audience: Bye.

Page 20