Victoria Volk

[00:00:00] Jeffrey Besecker: Morning, Victoria.

[00:00:01] Victoria Volk:

[00:00:01] good morning. Um, my mic, I'm having an issue with my mic.

[00:00:09] Jeffrey Besecker: I think there's something in the I've been dealing with my own issues today. Nothing wants to work, so oh, there we go. Laugh a little bit because I can feel your pain this morning. I've been going through a similar process myself today.

[00:00:25] Victoria Volk: Dan what's you know, I know there's planets that are retrograde.

[00:00:33] Okay. Let me see. Let me check the okay. You can hear me good?

[00:00:39] Jeffrey Besecker: Yes. Okay.

[00:00:40] Victoria Volk: Loud and clear. All right, good. I'm here. Woohoo. Let put my phone on silence.

[00:00:45] Jeffrey Besecker: Well, it is so good to have you here.

[00:00:53] Today's a moment rest into this moment. Yeah. Take a drink. No, pressure's no hurry. He's on my end. So. All right. How are you? I'm good. And you fantastic. It's been a busy couple weeks. things are good. We've had a lot of social activity and I'm at a space where I'm about ready for a little break from the action.

[00:01:22] do you have kids? We have adult kids. We've been going through a cycle of weddings lately. It's been like, you know, the old 20 weddings thing. , just one and it's been great, you know, coming out of COVID having a chance to reunite with friends and family loved ones. It's that moment now where we're like, okay, now we need a moment of peace.

[00:01:44] mm-hmm so it's been

[00:01:47] Victoria Volk: fantastic. So all of your, like kids' friends, they're getting married to,

[00:01:52] Jeffrey Besecker: we've got niece's nephew's cousins. I had a cousin who got married last evening at 43, finally. he's been the lone holdout of that round of cousins in yo the right one finally came along and we had his wedding last night.

[00:02:08] we're planning now for our middle daughter's wedding in September of 2023. So that's coming up next. We've got a, , Engagement party coming up . So it's just kinda like one thing after,

[00:02:21] Victoria Volk: after another. Yeah, , I have a senior in high school and of all of my, my mother-in-laws of all their grandkids.

[00:02:31] Now it's like with his class, he also has a cousin, his first cousin's graduating too. They're in the same class. So after these two boys graduate it's boom, boom, boom. It's all the grandkids one after the other graduating. So yeah. And then I'm sure babies and weddings of the older ones and

[00:02:51] Jeffrey Besecker: yeah, all the joys of life, everything that makes it rich and worth living.

[00:02:55] So , well, we'll celebrate that today and it's, it's kind of, with that mind, we turn our attention toward looking at grief. so we've got those contrasts to look at yeah.

[00:03:09] Victoria Volk: The joy and the pain.

[00:03:11] Jeffrey Besecker: So with that said, we looked at grief a while back and I want to do this kind of as an extension because I love the methodology you bring.

[00:03:20] So looking at how grief is a multidimensional, emotional response, our sense of loss. So often we equate that sense of loss. Simply to the loss of a loved one through, death, through those sorts of losses, as, being one of our more heartbreaking senses of loss.

[00:03:40] But, you know, we started to explore how, we look at loss as a career position, loss of a sense of self, sometimes loss in the sense of trauma, especially abusive trauma, where you have that loss of innocence. So to speak that loss of self again, also, I think one area we missed was that sense of loss or longing of a parent.

[00:04:05] That's no longer present in a relationship I've been pondering that I've had a number of experiences lately where I've observed individuals who possibly are going through that. And I've took a moment to ponder and say, Hmm. I see a connection here. I see where that loss goes. Unrecognized. A lot of times, mm-hmm, a parent that's simply no longer in your life is a loss you're experiencing and maybe not having firsthand connection to experience that parent in the first place.

[00:04:36] So that was a very interesting aside that I'm kind of going down another road today. I'm gonna let this roll as we, jump in today because that's a thought I've been marinating with this morning, say marinate sitting with pondering as I've observed that in a number of ways lately, my own relative having an instance of that and wondering about that, how does that affect an individual when there's an absentee parent in that sense of losses there, or that sense of longing kind of co quakes there co relates and.

[00:05:08] Resides the same to me. So I just wanna earmark that today, maybe bounce that off of you because I can see some relation to our conversation today. So culturally, let's jump in there. If you're ready to roll Victoria.

[00:05:22] Victoria Volk: I am. Cuz I got something to share on

[00:05:24] Jeffrey Besecker: that. great.

[00:05:26] Victoria Volk: And this is a thing. So let's say that person who has a parent in their life, but yet they're an absentee parent. Yeah. Like the person, is living, but they're not in their life and that parent dies and that child.

[00:05:42] Adult, what have you goes to the funeral? Everyone wants to give their condolences and you know, and funerals are often a place where we, , we only share the best about the person, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so for someone who has a really conflicted relationship with the person who passed away in a very unique relationship, compared to those who maybe knew that person as a friendship, or even other family members who had a different kind of relationship with that person, this is where funerals can be really conflicting and really difficult for those people to attend.

[00:06:20] Because everyone around you is speaking so highly of the person. And they're assuming that your relationship was a loving one, potentially, unless they really know the situation. The things that people say can just hurt so much to that person who experienced this loss, but yet has experienced that loss likely for many years and may feel actually relieved that that person has passed and feeling guilt and shame and conflicted about that.

[00:06:56] Because here everybody else is feeling this other way and I'm feeling this way. maybe I'm wrong to feel this way. So then we criticize ourselves and how we're grieving this person. You know, we eulogize people in the brightest light, and yet people do really hurtful things. Not in even intentionally as parents.

[00:07:20] You know, we do the best that we can with what we know. This is why it's so important for us as parents. And any parent listening to address our own stuff because we pass that on to our kids. The stuff that we know, we share that with our kids and especially when it comes to how we been taught, how to grieve.

[00:07:42] And this is why this generational learning about grief and how we grieve. I'm so passionate about it because when adults and parents learn how to grieve in a healthy way, it transforms not only their own lives, but the lives of everybody they know, including their own children.

[00:08:02] Jeffrey Besecker: I'd like to look at that idea of passing on what we know as parents in that sense when the parent is absentee, might there be that sense of loss from a child themselves.

[00:08:16] Of not having that opportunity to share that kind of relationship, to share that kind of bond, to have that exchange of that kind of knowing guidance of a parental figure when they're absent. also be grieved.

[00:08:31] Victoria Volk: Absolutely. And that was my personal experience. Yeah. My father was diagnosed with cancer when I was six, six and a half.

[00:08:39] And within two years he passed away, but he was sick that entire time. I was, I was the youngest of four. I was bounced around from house to house while my mother was with, you know, my dad at the hospital and doctor's appointments. and then my grandmother was also dying of melanoma at the same time.

[00:08:57] So she had her mother who was sick and her husband, the father of her three of her kids. Um, I have a, an older, half sibling, but I. I didn't have that relationship with my father because he was taken when I was, you know, cancer took him when I was eight. So that is a relationship that I've had to grow up grieving and it's changed as I've grown.

[00:09:23] Like my grief has changed and evolved with me as I've grown. And when we don't have that parental guidance about what it means to grieve in a healthy way. Cause my mom surely didn't know. And she was beside herself cuz she was her mother and her were very close. They talked every day and she did not know what to do about her own grief, much less mine.

[00:09:49] And so I was kind of just cast aside, like someone even said at the funeral, I heard an adult say. She doesn't understand what's going on anyway. Mm-hmm and so no one really sat me down and talked to me and told me what was happening. And so when, especially children, when they're going through a grieving experience too, they'll make up their own stories.

[00:10:11] Yeah. And so I see my dad, he's in a casket. He goes on the ground. Well, I guess that's what happens when you die and that's it. Mm-hmm and why did this happen to me? And then I was molested in the years that followed. And so all of my sense of safety, security, everything stripped away. I had no emotional connection with my mother because she was too wrapped up in her own emotions.

[00:10:44] And so I raised myself really, essentially. I really feel like I raised myself. and it is a wonder that I'm even sitting here having this conversation. And I do the work that I do today because I could have taken a very different path. And I was on that different path with alcohol in my early twenties, but you know, a happenstance relationship, someone moved to my home hometown.

[00:11:10] We connected years later and we've been married now almost 20 years and three kids and my life changed, but that's not always what happens for people, but it still didn't change. The fact that I, I didn't address my grief and I didn't do that until 2019 when I discovered grief recovery.

[00:11:29] So I was deep in my grief and it was affecting my life negatively for over 30 years. And it simply doesn't have to be. That place that you stay in. And I had a guest say to me one time when you lay UT K mm-hmm and I've never forgotten it. And it's so true. If we just give into our grief and the pain of it, a little piece of us dies every day.

[00:11:57] Jeffrey Besecker: I'm gonna sit with that for just one second, cuz I think that's such a powerful statement today where you lay you decay. My heart goes out to you. That had to be such a confusing, trying time as a young person, as a child,

[00:12:19] compounding that there exists in our society and our culture, a whole myriad. Of confusing, conflicting messages. We often receive around grief, how to deal with grief, how to cope with grief, how to manage through it, how to live through it, how to do this, how to do that. It just compounds. Where do we start to make sense of that?

[00:12:42] Where do we start to connect with it? Feel it truly becomes one of our greatest challenges as we approach it.

[00:12:50] I applaud you for finding that path through, as we address those confusing messages, you've identified what you call six myths of grief, which are typically passed down from culture to culture, through preceding generations, influencing how we identify with, can you share with us your perception of these six myths, if you would.

[00:13:14] Victoria Volk: And they're not mine. They were okay. They were developed by that's to clarify yeah, they were, I, I

[00:13:20] Jeffrey Besecker: wish so yeah, let's reel that back

[00:13:24] Victoria Volk: a little bit then. Yeah. So the grief recovery Institute, which was founded over 40 years ago by Vietnam veteran, who was about to, he went on a beach and he was going to kill himself.

[00:13:38] Mm-hmm his young child in infant, um, was born prematurely and, died subsequently his marriage fell apart. So the man had lost everything and he had like a voice in his head that said, what do I wish would've been there for me? And he was working as a contractor at the time.

[00:13:57] John James is his name. He's since passed, but. He started to shift his focus from himself and started to help others in their grief by answering that one question and, and actually really trying to discover what that answer was and the grief recovery method came to be because of what he was connecting between all of the grievers, who he was talking to like himself who had experienced a lot of trauma and loss.

[00:14:26] Again, he was a Vietnam veteran, and there was six myths that were identified that majority of all grievers experience, maybe not all, but most and most times as children, we have our first experience with loss. When we have a pet that dies and parents might say, Who don't know and understand how to grieve, right.

[00:14:51] And how to address a child's loss because for a child that could be their best friend, especially if they, have a hard time connecting with their peers. So their dog dies and the parents might say, oh, don't feel bad. Jeffrey. We can go to the pet store next week. We can get another dog. Mm. So that child is then learning.

[00:15:11] Don't feel bad. And then if they cry and cry and cry and cry about it, the parents might say, Jeffrey, just go to your room and cry. I don't wanna hear you crying about this dog. Okay. So the child then learns to grieve alone. That's another myth. And with going to get the dog, a new dog, replacing the old dog, we learned to replace the loss.

[00:15:32] Yes. Which is another myth. And when adults in our lives. For, yeah, I'll say the adults, the parents, the adults in a child's life goes through a loss themselves and they are the fixer. They are the one that can do it all. And they, you know, think of a typical type, a type personality, but not, not always right.

[00:15:55] Someone that's just gonna come in and take charge and, and has a lot of balls in the air to juggle, right? Yeah. Yeah. They just gotta be strong mm-hmm so they don't let anybody else see them crumble. They don't let anybody else see them cry, including their own children. And so then children get the message that, wow, my mom's really strong or my dad's really strong or the male in the relationship or the husband or the spouse definitely take on that role.

[00:16:21] Most likely to be strong, be strong for their wife, be strong for their family. That's another myth. So then children learn this because it's emulated from their parents.

[00:16:32] And we all know when people say time, heals all wounds, and that's another myth that time heals and it doesn't time just passes, but it's the action that you take in time that heals not time itself.

[00:16:49] Jeffrey Besecker: Mm. I wanna look at that from a couple angles. First, it's coming to mind to me to look at how that act of let's replace the grief.

[00:16:59] Let's find something to fill that void, so to speak, to heal that pain, to move beyond it. I can see that pattern where that would repeat throughout life. And you kind of find that replacement thing. You find that sense that this is gonna. Validate that pain I felt rather than feeling and validating it for what it was.

[00:17:21] I could see how that would surface. As you mentioned in that drive for achievement that drive for fixing or correcting, I could see how that accumulated trauma just keeps rolling around, building up in that energy, storing in our central nervous system and just resurfacing. Every time we

[00:17:41] experience anxiety, stress, and pain.

[00:17:44] Victoria Volk:

[00:17:44] Yes. Grief is cumulative and it's cumulatively negative. And here's another, like, here's a story just to illustrate, like for me personally, so going into my teen years, yeah. I go to parties and I drink occasionally, but it wasn't something that I leaned on to numb out or, you know, it wasn't something for some reason I had.

[00:18:07] This knowing between right and wrong, even though it wasn't like necessarily emulated or taught to me. But I had a good friend who was her parents had gone through a divorce and she was the opposite. She, couldn't take a shower without having a beer. And she was 13, 14, and really struggled with that divorce.

[00:18:29] And that's a story that I guarantee you is repeating today many times over in many households for many kids. And so going into adulthood, you know, like I said, our grief changes with us. We evolve with our grief, our grief evolves with us. That pattern came to my life, right? Like then I started. I had more things happen to me, more grief happen.

[00:18:58] And it was like the tip of the iceberg, right? If we think of our, you know, when you come into a relationship with someone, they always say, you bring your baggage with you. You literally bring your baggage with you. Think of every grief experience you've had as a suitcase. And if people just dump their suitcases of all of the trauma and the grief that they've experienced in childhood, you are bringing that to your relationship and it's impacting your life in all areas.

[00:19:26] It impacts your ability to make money, to make sound decisions, to trust yourself, to not rely on others for love, affection, affirmation. Like this is where I think self-love and self care has really become like buzz terms and really. Top of mind, especially after COVID, but it's absolutely true that we always tend then to look for someone else to fill that need or something else.

[00:20:00] In grief recovery, we call them sterbs - short term energy, relieving behaviors, things that we resort to, to feel better for a short period of time, because the pain is painful, the emotional pain is painful. So it might be shopping. It might be gambling. It might be pornography. It might be relationships. alcohol, any kind of drug or substance achievement success.

[00:20:30] Like just this, just this drive.

[00:20:33] Jeffrey Besecker: Yep. Yeah, yeah. That itself often then. Produces that side impact of burnout. A lot of times, as a result, the coping mechanism from the uncovered grief, being that sense of achievement that drive that endless pursuit of success. Sometimes that's not to marginalize then the value in our successes, but realizing unconsciously or subconsciously what might be going

[00:21:00] Victoria Volk: on.

[00:21:01] What's motivating that behavior.

[00:21:03] Jeffrey Besecker: Yeah. What is the real drive behind it?

[00:21:06] Victoria Volk: yeah. Feeling a lack of self worth growing up, being told that you aren't worthy of something, you know of, especially if you grew up in a, like a, a lack mindset household, you have to work hard for everything that you get.

[00:21:22] Nothing comes easy. Right. Yeah. I think so many of us have those money, similar money stories where we grew up in a whole with lot of lack. Yeah. And here's the thing it's like, that's the perception, right? It's the perceived lack.

[00:21:37] Jeffrey Besecker: Yeah. I can see we're also, you know, that back to the absentee parent equation comes in that coping mechanism for that unresolved sense of loss, that lack of a guiding force to say, you know, these are healthy methods of building your life. Building career may be absentee along with that. And you are finding that replace.

[00:22:03] Victoria Volk: Well, and think of all the situations that happen in people's lives, where that occurs, you can have, you know, imprisonment of a, of a parent. Yeah. You can have a parent who is struggling with a substance abuse disorder. Um, you could have a parent that is struggling with a mental health challenge.

[00:22:20] Yeah. And they just don't have the capacity to, or ability yeah.

[00:22:26] Jeffrey Besecker: To a truly narcissistic parent. You know, a lot of times I feel that's mislabeled perhaps, but when a parent truly is narcissistic, they've pretty much checked out of everybody including themselves.

[00:22:39] Victoria Volk: Yes. And, that's a difficult one because,

[00:22:44] Jeffrey Besecker: because believe it open, I feel, you know, I can see those patterns.

[00:22:47] I feel I can see how that interacts

[00:22:50] Victoria Volk: at times. Well, and you have to come to terms as the child of a parent who is a narcissist. You have to come to terms with the fact that that parent is never going to be the parent that you hoped wished and needed them to be. That's where it's so conflicting grief can be so conflicting for people.

[00:23:09] And you can have, you know, four siblings in the same household who all experience the same loss and they will exhibit their grief very differently. Why? Because the relationship to that person who died was very different. Every relationship is individual and unique. And so what I see happening oftentimes, especially, you know, adult siblings who, when a parent starts to get ill or a parent passes away.

[00:23:36] Well, you're not showing up as you should be, or you don't seem as upset as you should be. And, and then one child, one adult child is maybe a wreck because that was, they were, had a really close relationship with that parent and maybe the others didn't. And so it really just creates a, another layer of grief, right?

[00:23:57] Because then this is where we learn to grieve alone. Yeah. Yeah. We don't share in the emotional loss, the emotional grief and this, because every child in a home especially if there's an age gap, experiences that parent in a different phase of that parent's life mm-hmm . Yeah, no, I often I've not often, but I've told my sister, she was nine years older than.

[00:24:25] So when my, our dad passed away, she was, she graduated high school shortly thereafter and she joined the air force and she was gone and she was like a second mom to me. So I had that loss, but, you know, she got the best of our mom because she grew up with my mom having her mother and having her father.

[00:24:46] Right. She grew up with her. Yeah. Same person, different

[00:24:49] Jeffrey Besecker: experiences, different different experiences. Yes. Variables to compare and contrast, you know, so often, you know, we say that, well, I'm a different person. Is the person simply just changing and evolving with those experiences? Mm-hmm sometimes is that person regressing sometimes is that person stuck in not moving into growth with those experiences, both the parent and the child, you know, and as we move into adulthood, are you still that wounded child?

[00:25:17] Victoria Volk: What often happens too, when we have a, I'll just call it a big loss, right? Someone we're really close to close relationship with and they pass away. What often happens when we experience a loss like that, you know, it shakes everything up in our world, but it can also bring up old wounds and old losses too.

[00:25:39] And so things can come to the forefront that you may not have thought about for many years, it's especially true trauma. You have another traumatic experience and let's say you just even get in a car accident. And the last time you felt that way felt so scared or felt that way. And that, that. Fight or flight that energy in your body, you know, like, am I gonna die?

[00:26:03] You might think of other instances where you felt fear and that anxiety, and it brings up just everything else to the surface so many times. And so it can feel very confronting. And so this is where grief can be so overwhelming too, for people it's like, I don't even know where to begin. I got all this stuff just coming up.

[00:26:24] It's like 30 year old stuff. I don't know. I don't understand why this is coming up now. Like I thought I buried that. I thought I stuffed that down. you know,

[00:26:31] Jeffrey Besecker: that's the problem. So yes, yes. We're repeatedly stuffing it down. You know, I like to call it rather than our baggage, you know, or that suitcase our stuff drawer.

[00:26:42] That's essentially what we do is we continue to stuff, things in there, we continue to stuff. The thing that's been there. You think about that one drawer we often have in our house? You know, I know I do. I know I do in life. catchall drawer catch all. Then it's like, yeah, this shit's coming back up again there in and of itself, you know, you start to see it as shit because you don't process it.

[00:27:08] You start to relive it, you start to avoid it. And those avoidant things start to annoy you. I, uh, there, what do I do with them? You know?

[00:27:18] Victoria Volk: yeah, there is. There's a, I heard a term, I had said this before on the podcast, but I actually there's someone that actually has a program called this, but, where people, you know, you just get to the point where emotionally constipated.

[00:27:31] Yeah. Uhhuh , you know, , it's like you mention shit and it's like, yeah, it's we get so backed up with our own stuff. And we can go into the energetics of this because I'm a certified biofield tuner, which is all about addressing the energy that is in our field, around us. That extends five to six feet out from us.

[00:27:55] So when you are come into a room and you know, even getting on the call with you, right, you can feel the person's energy. Like you can feel what energy they're bringing to, to the table. , you know, so if you come into a room and you meet somebody for the first time, or maybe you haven't seen them in a long time and you, you get a sense of, Hm, something's not right.

[00:28:20] Or something's off, or, or I'm not sure if this person is, you know, I'm not vibing with their energy, you know? Yeah. Like, because our antennas are always on our energetic antennas are always taking in information and. I never understood this about myself until probably two, two to three years ago that I take in all of the information in the room of everybody.

[00:28:49] And I have learned how to kind of put this barrier between my, my personal space and personal space of others so that it doesn't drain me. But especially with grief and trauma as a kid, there's so many pictures of me sleeping. I would, first of all, I learned the whole grief alone. So I would go hide under my bed to cry.

[00:29:13] Mm-hmm I would never cry in front of people. And what happens when you do that and you learn to stuff it, and you learn to hide it, you get very angry, you can get very angry. And so I grew up into an angry adult. And took everything to heart and thought the world was out to get me and really just surrender to this idea of, you know, to the way you decay peace to speak to that is I felt like I was just meant for a life of suffering, but learning about energy and ener the grief, the energy of grief itself and trauma and all of that, it's really opened my eyes to really, truly how much our cells store from our emotional experiences when we allow ourselves to become emotionally constipated,

[00:30:10] Jeffrey Besecker: that energy, as you mentioned it, you know, we're stuffing it back there, putting it to collect sometimes that energy bubbles over.

[00:30:20] As that space gets overly full and we don't process it through, we don't allow it to pass beyond us in a productive way of less adverse way. Let me put it that way because productivity itself can be an expression of that can lean back toward that overachievement mode, that hyper

[00:30:39] INSERTBREAKSINSERTBREAKS

[00:30:39] let's look back at those short term energy relieving behaviors, if we will, perhaps, as they surface as that bubbling over, can you give us a little more in depth understanding maybe of what exactly we define as those short term energy relieving behavior.

[00:30:59] Victoria Volk: Okay. Again, there are behaviors that we resort to, to feel better for a short period of time. That can be even be Facebook scrolling. Mm-hmm that can be social media use. Yeah. That could be, you know, binging on Netflix for days at a time. anger can be STERB..

[00:31:18] Jeffrey Besecker: What about passive aggression?

[00:31:20] Victoria Volk: Yeah.

[00:31:20]

[00:31:20] So example, like bringing up the energy piece again.

[00:31:26] So if we are someone who is stuffing stuffing stuffing, we might be more likely to resort to anger or substance use to numb out to forget. To become more like society wants you to be right. You it's more acceptable to be happy than it is to be an angry person or than it is to be a sad person or depressed person.

[00:31:56] So we use these things to feel better and if we don't do that, though, right. If we try to just put on this I'm fine front, which we say in grief, recovery is feelings inside not expressed is what fine is. And how often do we say that? Hey, how are you doing?

[00:32:18] I'm fine. Yeah.

[00:32:19] This is where we see disease. So dis ease. in the body creates disease. So if you're not someone who's using those STERBS, you might be someone who is internally angry and it's making you sick. Mm-hmm which at 16, I was diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome

[00:32:43] and I, I, at 32, I had polyps removed. My dad died of colon cancer. Yeah. And interestingly, just to illustrate this point, both my father's parents had colon cancer at some point. And his brother was a lot of grief and a lot of trauma in his life in that whole family's lives. And none of his sibling.

[00:33:10] Made it beyond age 65, not one, my dad was 44.

[00:33:15] So it's very important that people understand that not addressing your grief is killing you. And if it's not killing you, it's killing your relationships slowly.

[00:33:26] Jeffrey Besecker: There again, it's important for our longevity down the long haul that we process those emotions, whether those be feelings from the past present or of the future

[00:33:37] The central nervous system doesn't discriminate.

[00:33:40] Jeffrey Besecker:

[00:33:40] I'd like to look from your perspective, if we might at where you align with the idea of that grief, passing from person to person, that idea of emotional energy passing from person to person and how that then at times is thought to become, like you said, that irritable bowel syndrome, is that a relationship that you view and have a perspective.

[00:34:04] Victoria Volk: I have two different perspectives of this. Yes. And one from each different parent. So one of my biggest ahas, when I went through grief recovery, myself and I worked through the relationship with my father, which well, how do you work on a relationship with your parent if you only knew them for eight years?

[00:34:22] Right? You've got lots to say. You're emotionally incomplete in a lot of areas when someone isn't in your life, just as much as if they are in your life. Right? One of my biggest ahas for me was that I was caring grief. That was not mine.

[00:34:37] I, especially when I became a parent and I had my own issues with my own gut stuff, I just, it was a lot. Oh, my gosh. I can't imagine what my dad experienced, you know, knowing he was going to die knowing that this, you know, he, he was sick and watching our birthdays go by and wondering if you'll see the next one.

[00:35:00] And, what he experienced in Vietnam. I'm a veteran, too. What he experienced in Vietnam. He came home and he slept with a knife under his mattress, all these different things. Like I, I, because I'm so empathic that I was at taking on emotion, putting myself in his shoes and it was affecting me.

[00:35:19] Like I was feeling his grief as if it were my own. So that was a big aha for me in my grief recovery. Secondly, coming back to the energy piece in biofield tuning and how we work in the energy field, cuz our biofield again, which is. The energy that extends five to six feet out from us. The theory with biofield tuning, which is. The biofield informs the body and the body informs the biofield.

[00:35:48] What I have personally found with clients sometimes is I can pick up on a traumatic birth or a traumatic gestational period. Wow. Of when they were in the womb or at their birth based on their mother. So, especially as mothers, right. Who carry the child, just like we, if we drank beer, the beer would then be passed on to our child.

[00:36:16] Right. we are emotionally stress. Anything that we are experiencing while pregnant. Impacts the child just as if you drink a can of beer, right? So this emotionally stress impacts the child's development. It can, right? I can't say it always does but emotionally though, emotionally.

[00:36:39] Yeah. These, these let's say the mother is in a constant state of fear. Let's say the she's in a really terrible, abusive situation, scared for her life. Right. That's traumatic, that's trauma. And if we agree that trauma is stored in our body, what do you think is happening to that fetus to that child?

[00:37:00] So this is why I can pick up on. In someone's biofield because the theory is, is that our memories are stored in our biofield in our energetic field. It imprints us leaves an

[00:37:15] Jeffrey Besecker: imprint. That's something I've always been fascinated with is that idea of a passing that generational energy as I'm kind of pondering it now.

[00:37:26] So often we look at that stress from the post traumatic aspect of it. How much of that trauma might be Pretre now I don't have data right here in front of me. I don't have that direct relationship. I'm going to admit my own, perhaps unknowing ignorance of it in air quotes today, but I feel that's an area worth looking at how much of that is pre traumatic looking from that combat veteran.

[00:37:56] Aspect. I have some experience working with individuals, fought PTSD, post combat. Couldn't quite get over some of those humps, so to speak where they kept experiencing that prolonged PTSD. Through some past regression work, we were able to uncover some childhood traumas that were already PTSD, that they took into combat and compounded some of their experiences with children in the combat scenario.

[00:38:27] Really tipping that back to when they were a child and mirroring it and seeing trauma in a child, there was an unconscious knowing in some of that trauma that played in regressing back, we were able to pinpoint where some of that childhood trauma had originated. In their own experience and opened that doorway, that then went back and bridged some of those gaps, the trauma that was leading up to the trauma that become another trauma, so to speak and finding those patterns and pathways.

[00:38:57] I think that's an area we could pay more mindfulness to, as we all go forward, what's happening pre we so often neglect. So often we say it's all behind us yet. We've never allowed it to pass through us to begin with. And we're constantly running. Bingo.

[00:39:17] I think that's one of our key aspects today to kind of leave out there and let others marinate. Find the value and purpose So you've mentioned as we're moving through all of these aspects of grief, the important role forgiveness plays, that's kind of a broad jump in point. Let's look at some of those advantageous and beneficial roles that forgiveness plays in our cycles of grief.

[00:39:47] Victoria Volk: Well, I'll jump into the idea of substance use and how that cycle continues. And you might have an experience where you're using alcohol. We'll just use that for example, and you start hiding it, you're hiding it. What does that do? Creates more shame and it perpetuates. The problem, because you're not being honest about it with yourself first.

[00:40:19] So therefore you're not honest about it with others. Yeah. So that cycle continues. So this is where I've read and I believe it's true that connection with other people can help break those cycles and patterns of addiction. That connection is the anecdote. Yeah. And forgiveness for yourself can be very powerful in that experience.

[00:40:44] So if you feel like though that you hold shame or guilt, guilt is a huge one too. Yeah. Yeah. Perhaps then you need to apologize for something. And the act of apologizing can reduce that shame and guilt, not just like a passive, you know, I'm so sorry. I, you know, genuinely meaning it, right? Yeah. Like coming to a place where you want to heal this addiction, you want to get over because an addiction is not who you are.

[00:41:16] It's not, I actually just was listening to Dr. G he was, I kind of love how he reframed this whole addiction thing, but he was talking about how, like, your addiction is not something it's like, I have an addiction. It's not something you cuz when you have something you can just give it back, right? Yeah.

[00:41:35] it's not your identity. It's not who you are. So that can be shifted. That whole idea can be shifted. Now, if you, especially in the case of abuse, trauma, someone else inflicted on you, I personally had a really difficult time with this. Yeah. But in grief recovery, we do have a way to address forgiveness if you're not quite there yet.

[00:42:01] Um, but I will say that it is very it's for you, the person who experienced that trauma or that experience because of someone else at the hands of somebody else, forgiveness is for you. It's not for them. And you know, we say in grief, recovery too, resentment is a poison that you take, hoping the other person dies.

[00:42:27] And how often are we waiting for an apology that we'll never get? And so while I'm waiting for an apology from this person who did this to me, Where does that leave me? I'm stuck in emotional jail. I'm stuck in limbo. That's very disempowering.

[00:42:44] Jeffrey Besecker: Do we perhaps put ourselves in that jail with some of those guilt and shame mechanisms?

[00:42:51] I wanna look at that aspect of tiptoeing back a little here, lying to ourselves. If we reference that for ourselves as lying to ourselves, might we be instilling some of those concepts of guilt and shame ourselves? Can we reframe that to simply say, be more transparent with ourselves and remove some of that guilt and shame that doesn't necessarily have to be there.

[00:43:20] Right. Yes. There's energy in that we don't often, I feel from my personal perspective as individuals do that for ourselves to reframe that perspective, just catching yourself, saying, putting it in that shit drawer of shit, feeling shitty emotions, you're constantly shitting on everything. I'm gonna put it out there, bold and blunt because it carries that kind of bold blunt, unconscious energy for us.

[00:43:50] Victoria Volk: Can we project it? Yeah. yes. We project it out just simply

[00:43:55] Jeffrey Besecker: vomit calling it out and saying, that is what it is if I call it that. But if I'm just being transparent about it, I see it. I acknowledge it without projecting that guilt and shame, we let it go in that sense that we're not holding onto that. Hot goal of resistance, that hot goal of wanting to be kind of vengeful about it.

[00:44:21] Sometimes

[00:44:21] Victoria Volk: the hot goal of the story. because we get so tied to the story and, you know, there are people who can recount what happened to them. Like, so let's say something traumatic happened right. And many years ago, and you just find yourself repeating that story. And I, you know, this happened to me and that happened to me and this happened to me and that happened to me and then this, and then that, and this, you know, it's like, I see this in grief, the people, the clients that I work with, we start out with the story of what happened and then, and then, and then, and then, and then I.

[00:45:00] How did it make you feel?

[00:45:02] That's a very different story.

[00:45:04] Jeffrey Besecker: I'm gonna relate to that. For me, it was anger. Mm-hmm anger. I held onto that hot cold for years. Mm-hmm

[00:45:13] Victoria Volk: me too.

[00:45:14] Jeffrey Besecker: Till I went through the past regression with Marissa and went back and literally forgave my inner child, forgave myself for not feeling those feelings and processing what was going on then till then was I able to move on, not moving on and allowing those feelings to pass through was not rejecting them.

[00:45:37] Not saying I would never be angry again with simply saying when the anger arises, you recognize it. You think it, you feel it, you process it in a less adverse way. A way that's not hurtful and projecting to others, simply saying you're angry should be a beautiful blessing, expressing it in an outburst in hurtful harmful manners by no means.

[00:46:03] But finding that outlet to say, you know what, I'm angry. Being able to look someone transparently in the eye and honestly say, this upsets me. This hurts me. This does become overwhelming and stressful. And I can acknowledge that. I can recognize what you're doing is irritating me. Why then is it irritating me?

[00:46:26] Because it's my feeling. Mm-hmm, , it's my experience. It's my process, my emotion. And that's all right. That's fantastic. That's a wonderful thing to love and nurture. You change the energy around it. You don't ignore it. You don't run from it. You just say, we're moving with it, we're feeling it. And we're just finding a new relationship and meaning to it,

[00:46:50] Victoria Volk: changing the meaning to it.

[00:46:52] . And that speaks to this aspect of grief recovery too, which was transformative for me with my own anger. And it's taking 1% responsibility, just 1%, because people might say, especially in cases of abuse, child abuse, why do I need to take 1% responsibility?

[00:47:12] This wasn't I didn't ask for this. Right? Mm-hmm okay. But I'm the one that's holding onto this anger. I'm the one that's holding onto this, this resentment, so. It is my responsibility. Not anybody else's to take ownership of how I'm feeling and then decide what to do about it. So this is where people can get really stuck in that victim mindset.

[00:47:35] And that's where I was for over 30 years, I viewed myself as a victim and that was the story I told this happened to me. This happened to me, this happened to me, this, this, and this. And then, and then, and then, and then, but I never spoke to how it made me feel. Yeah, we become so emotionally incomplete with everything that happens to us throughout our lives.

[00:47:58] At some point we are like a tea kettle and we either implode or we explode and we can explode by using those STERDs where we implode with disease. Or both.

[00:48:11] Jeffrey Besecker: We think of those. I know myself when I was in that cycle when I still tiptoe and I experienced that cycle when those moments of anger still arise. Cause you know, they happen

[00:48:25] Victoria Volk: and it's valid. And how many times has parents do we shut children down when they're angry, right. When they're having

[00:48:32] Jeffrey Besecker: temper tantrum, mm-hmm that short outburst, you very forcefully want to reject that hurt and pain away rather than sitting with the hurt for a moment and saying, why might this hurt?

[00:48:48] And how might I approach that story now? How might I allow that story to pass through me to become whatever it becomes. Hopefully you can allow that to pass through and start to guide or follow the current and allow it to flow in a more advantageous, beneficial manner. If you wanna label that growth label, it growth.

[00:49:12] If you wanna label it evolution in its beneficial advantageous label, it that whatever energy creates value and meaning for you to me is how I've changed that relationship. I'm gonna own it for whatever I experience it, because it's the only way I truly can experience it.

[00:49:30] Find the meaning that works for you and question why you might try to puke it back on somebody else. If it's not

[00:49:39] to me, it's become that. Essential. I'm gonna say essential. I'm gonna be meaningful with my words today. It's that essential of a value and asset, a tool, a trait, a characteristic. We create labels simply to identify with things and try to have some understanding about it. Try to see the angles, try to grow and evolve with it.

[00:50:04] Hopefully we're not trying in a way where we force it itself rather than allowing it to pass through us and follow the tide, follow the current, follow the flow.

[00:50:16] Victoria Volk: A lot of resistance in that process for people,

[00:50:20] you know, and that's you have to ask yourself, what is the cost. Of resisting, looking at your childhood with a microscope and it's not to blame or shame our parents, but it's to bring an understanding to why we as adults do what we do, respond, how we respond.

[00:50:44] And it's because of this pattern of thought and beliefs that are passed down. So how we combat that is we challenge our beliefs. Is this really mine? Is this what I believe about this? Is this what I really think about grief? do I really believe that I am meant for a life of suffering because I saw that emulated for me.

[00:51:07] Or can I challenge that belief by learning new tools, learning new information, integrating and implementing it and taking action, because information is useless. If you don't do anything with it, you know, we've got, we live in a time where information is at your fingertips, 24 7 podcasts, YouTube books, audible like courses.

[00:51:32] We can learn anything about anything for the most part for free, but all of this advice too, and all of this information out there, you have to learn how to discern what's for you and what you're going to implement and integrate into your life. Because all advice at the end of the day is based on that person, what they value as well.

[00:51:57] That's another topic, but people always give advice based on what they value, right? Yes. I value growth. I value growth. Right. But if I'm talking to someone who doesn't value growth, they're not, they have earmuffs on. They're not listening. They're not taking anything. No, we

[00:52:15] Jeffrey Besecker: all define that by our perspective.

[00:52:18] Yes. I like to look at life from my perspective, like a pair of shoes, you know, when you go to buy a pair of shoes, what do you do? A lot of times, I know what I do a lot of times is try on a pair, walk around in. 'em see how it feels. I'm not quite falling in with these. They're not quite the pair that I want to go down that journey with.

[00:52:43] Do you throw the shoes aside and curse the shoes? Uh, these shoes were not for me. Da, da, da, da. I'm gonna throw them aside or do you simply say next shoes, please? Thank you for the opportunity to test it out. Mm-hmm and step into that pair. Perhaps these pair didn't get you to the next step. Do you set them aside, tidy them back up for the next individual to experience and simply step into the next pair till you find the pair.

[00:53:12] You step into that journey with who's gone back and listening to some Allen Watts today. You know, Alan Watts can be out there and challenge us. Watts come constantly was saying, what you do is right now, and right now becomes the next day tomorrow and everything after. So right now, what are you doing with the shoes?

[00:53:33] What are you doing with life? What are you doing with the opportunities and experiences, challenges, whatever you have before you, are you casting them aside and saying, eh, I'm gonna thumb my nose at it. Where do you say? Yeah. Simply thank you for the opportunity next, please.

[00:53:49] Victoria Volk: The interesting thing, I love that analogy.

[00:53:51] And the interesting thing though, about opportunity is that when you are dismissing your own grief and not feeling into it, you don't, it's really difficult to see opportunity. Mm-hmm I don't personally, that was my experience. Like it was really, you, you don't have a sense of hope for the future, right?

[00:54:15] You don't see. And because you don't really see yourself clearly, you don't see other people clearly. There's such a greater cost.

[00:54:25] Jeffrey Besecker: That is a great point today because in our optimism, we turned a blind eye perhaps to that present moment for another let's reel it back to that moment. How then might we embrace that moment?

[00:54:39] Inform a new light when we find ourselves

[00:54:42] in that spot?

[00:54:43] Victoria Volk: I think it comes back to experimenting. Right? Kind of what you were saying is experimenting with what, in order to discover what feels good for you. Not what everybody else says should feel good for you. You have to experiment and you have to, like you said, try on the different shoes, try on the different books, read the different books, listen to the different podcasts or what have.

[00:55:08] Resonating with something is a cue that, that feels aligned for you. And if we follow that curiosity, bring that curiosity into our grief experience. It feels more like a journey rather than this suffering.

[00:55:26] I don't know if that answered your question. Yeah.

[00:55:28] Jeffrey Besecker: I think it took us up to an edge where others can form their own view of it. Is it the shoes themselves that are taking us on that journey or ultimately, is it still our own two feet that get us there? We've went real esoteric today and it's kind of divested somewhat from grief, but as we look at grief, we see where life is interconnect.

[00:55:51] Where all things eventually connect to everything

[00:55:54] else.

[00:55:55] Victoria Volk: Yes. And I can elaborate there because what I, what I found personally for me and what I've seen for other people too, even people I know, or grievers I've worked with everything leads to the next thing. So once we've addressed the grief, however, and for me, it was, you know, my, I would say my personal growth started.

[00:56:21] My journey started in 2014 when I had had enough was enough. And I got Tony Robbins program and I got this other program and I started reading personal development books and just, I started to take in information and I started to just, I was taking every personality test because I didn't know who I was.

[00:56:44] I think that's where we start. Like, get to know you. what do you value? what is important to you? Who were you before grief came in? What lit you up as a child? Do you play anymore? You know, we've lose the sense of play as adults. We disconnect from our own inner being. So it's really coming back to home within ourselves and utilizing the information and the tools to slowly chip away at all the stuff that's in the way.

[00:57:24] And when you feel alignment, it feels so. When, like you have ease when you feel at peace within yourself. And I think that's, for me, what I've learned is I was not at peace and I think that's true for anybody. So many people in grief, you just don't feel a sense of peace within yourself. And so it's rediscovering you the 2.0 after grief because grief changes you, but who you were as a kid, you're still there.

[00:58:00] You're still in there. Yeah. And so it's bringing aspects of that back to life. That sense of play that curiosity and letting one thing lead to the next thing. And so for me, it was grief recovery. That I found, and then it was Reiki. And then it was UMAP, which is all about holistic approach to, um, where we learn your values and our strengths, how we're wired, because once we deal with the grief, it's like, we ask ourselves the big question.

[00:58:32] what now? What do I wanna do with my life now? Especially if you have like a loss of a spouse and maybe they were the breadwinner, who am I without this person in my life? Mm-hmm, , you know, I have these kids, I gotta feed, you know, what do I do? Well, you address the grief and then you discover a path forward and that's where your values come in and how to make decisions.

[00:58:54] But we lose ourselves in our own grief. We forget who we are.

[00:58:58] If all of that was taken away, who are you? Are you compassionate and kind, you know? But then those moments, when someone says something hurtful, you probably weren't compassionate and kind back. Right. Can so

[00:59:11] often be the case.

[00:59:13] Yeah. It brings out aspects of ourselves that we may not be proud of. Right. And so just think about the cost of not addressing your grief.

[00:59:22] It's so much more than what people even probably have given any thought to

[00:59:28] Jeffrey Besecker: putting that one foot in front of the other. I know we often say, just move on, but putting that one foot in the front of the other, perhaps keeping us from staying in that one spot and decaying, as you mention.

[00:59:41] Victoria Volk: Yeah, but people say that, right?

[00:59:43] Yeah. We'll just move on. Just get over it. It's like been a year. You should just, you should be over it by now. People say that, but they don't tell you how. Yeah. And the people that are saying that haven't addressed their own stuff. Mm-hmm , you know, so it's, you know, you have to learn how to tune people out too.

[01:00:02] It's easy to recognize. It's easier to recognize who here's. I'll say this. If you are deep in grief, you don't go to the support group asking for the advice of the person sitting next to you who is deep in their grief, right? you maybe go to a different support group where they're taking action and they're doing things to move people forward.

[01:00:29] and I'm not dismissing the fact that support groups offer connection. But I will say the caveat that if you leave feeling worse about yourself and your own grief going home after that support group, or if you're in a support group with people who've been going there for 10 years, do you want that to be you?

[01:00:49] When I work with grievers one on one, I tell you in 12 weeks you'll be a different person and I don't want you to need me after 12 weeks. Mm-hmm , that's the goal to be able to stand on your own two feet, to feel empowered, to have the tools and the knowledge to know what to do when life smacks something else in face,

[01:01:10] Jeffrey Besecker: standing on those two feet of your own.

[01:01:13] Are you putting the shoes on the feet to kind of protect and pad that journey, being the steps and actions to address that grief, to feel it, to move through it. But by the same token, not putting a rock in your own shoe, that's gonna make that journey more uncomfortable. Mm-hmm what might be that rock that gives you the li that's hindering that journey.

[01:01:37] I think that's a great insight sometimes perhaps to look at, from my perspective, because I can be guilty at times, throwing a rock in things, putting it in my own shoe, catching yourself and saying simply correct the course without the guilt and shame without beating yourself up over it.

[01:01:55] Victoria Volk: And that's the clue, right?

[01:01:56] That something isn't aligned. Either, you're not speaking authentically about how you're feeling about a situation or you know, how you're feeling about something. And so you're holding it in. You have that rock in your shoe right.

[01:02:11] Jeffrey Besecker: Or throwing it at someone else or throwing it at someone else that hot, cold back to that hot cold.

[01:02:16] Yep. Of the story of the story in that great proverb. Ultimately, that story is the underlying thing that's causing you to take the action.

[01:02:25] Victoria Volk: And how many times though, in our lives, do we have a situation that we perceive completely wrong? we come to this conclusion in our own minds. If this person meant this, when they said that or did that,

[01:02:40] oh, you weren't talking about me. No, I wasn't talking about you. You could have been pissed and sad and angry for weeks for nothing, right? Yeah. Because you perceived that that person was saying it about you.

[01:02:56] Jeffrey Besecker: Right. A great example. I've set this morning. I have a dear close friend of mine. Who's also in the self-help space, the coaching space, talking about that.

[01:03:07] Very same thing about how you view story, how you view your interactions with others and how it's a reflection of what you believe. You know what you're bringing to light. I'm listening to that, relating that to some of my own experiences over the last couple weeks and say, that's exactly the point is you project that belief a lot of times, and that person might have experienced something completely different.

[01:03:32] And it's very illustrative of how we make those connections. Sometimes. Do you make the meaning one that benefits you or do you throw that rocket things?

[01:03:43] Victoria Volk: Here's the thing too. I just wanna throw this out there because sometimes there is, it's not like you let's just say, for example, this, this in your scenario, if I'll be, I'll play him, right.

[01:03:55] It's not you, it's an aspect of you that reminds me of somebody else who did this thing to me,

[01:04:03] Jeffrey Besecker: simply the mirror, it's simply the mirror to you. Throw the rock at the mirror pretty much shattering your own reflection.

[01:04:11] Or do you just simply look and view what might I learn? What might I gain value from, with that reflection back at me,

[01:04:20] Victoria Volk: I have an open and honest conversation. Yeah. On that note, when it comes to grief recovery, the beautiful thing about it is that you don't have to have a conversation with the person. I don't have to have a conversation with the person who sexually abused me.

[01:04:38] I can work through that relationship, relationship and air quotes without ever confronting him.

[01:04:47] I can work on a relationship with someone who's still in my life. Maybe it's a less than loving relationship without ever confronting. I can work through forgiveness. I can take 1% responsibility. I can make apologies and I can make these significant emotional statements that have things that I've wanted to say.

[01:05:10] And I've never been able to because either they a they died or B, they would just get defensive and that's not a person I can have a conversation with. Right? Yeah. So there are those people, right? We just can't have a conversation with because they are where they're at in their journey. And so that's the beautiful thing about grief recovery too, is that it's all for you at griever.

[01:05:31] Jeffrey Besecker: I wanna thank you for this lovely conversation today. It truly has been a joy to share your love, light and energy today, Victoria, I am so grateful for this opportunity

[01:05:42] Victoria Volk: and I am as well. Thank you so much for letting me share.