• an Aim For Breakthrough x Erasing Shame collaboration!
Dr. Audrey Davidheiser of Aim For Breakthrough and DJ Chuang of Erasing Shame have this conversation about Dr. Audrey’s book, Grieving Wholeheartedly: Bringing Healing to Every Part of Your Soul, one chapter at a time on each episode.
Grief touches 100% of us. That’s why we need this book and this conversation. This episode discusses Chapter 1, “Grieving: Unwanted, Yet Unavoidable.”
Drawing on Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, Audrey explains why grief is messy rather than linear, why even one person can carry several “parts” that grieve in conflicting ways, and why repressing loss only lets the debt pile up until it resurfaces — sometimes years later as depression.
We talk about the cultural pressures to “be okay” too soon, as well as the shame & stigma around psychotherapy in faith and people-of-color communities. Dr. Audrey notes the double standard that people welcome a dentist or surgeon to treat illnesses, but reject a mental health professional.
Whether your loss is a death, a divorce, a home lost to fire, or organizational upheaval, this episode is an invitation to stop rushing your grief — and to let every part of your soul be heard.
Show Notes
- Aim For Breakthrough, official website of author & therapist Dr. Audrey Davidheiser & subscribe to her substack substack.com/@draudreyd
- Book– Grieving Wholeheartedly: Bringing Healing to Every Part of Your Soul (Buy at Amazon)
- Download & read Chapter 1 for FREE at the IVP book info page)
Transcript
Host: DJ Chuang Guest: Dr. Audrey Davidheiser
DJ: Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Erasing Shame podcast and Aim For Breakthrough. We’re doing a collaboration, so DJ Chuang is here with Dr. Audrey Davidheiser. So happy to do this with you.
Audrey: Yes, what an honor. We’ve been talking about doing this for a while, and I’m really happy that here we are, doing it.
DJ: We’re going to have a chapter-by-chapter conversation about your most recent book, Grieving Wholeheartedly: Bringing Healing to Every Part of Your Soul. For those of you watching on video, Audrey just held up a copy, and we’ll add a link in the show notes so you can purchase it. Is it available in audio or Kindle as well?
Audrey: All of the above.
DJ: Did you get to record the audiobook yourself?
Audrey: No. I talked it over with my agent, and the decision was that a pro would record it.
DJ: That’s great. I haven’t heard it, but listeners will get to hear the author’s voice in a very dynamic way as we talk through each chapter. Every episode will cover one chapter, and we’ll drill down on it for about 25 to 30 minutes. We’d love your feedback, and the best way to give it is on Dr. Audrey’s Substack. Do you have a special URL, or is it just “Dr. Audrey”?
Audrey: If you go to Substack and search “Dr. Audrey D,” it’ll bring up my page.
DJ: Very good — Dr. Audrey D, spelled D-R-A-U-D-R-E-Y-D. And of course there will be a link in the show notes if you’re listening or watching at ErasingShame.com.
[02:01] DJ: So let’s get into the book. There are many books about grief — perhaps one of the most popular is Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and her five stages of grief. I can’t name all five offhand, but I’ve heard them many times. I haven’t gone through the grief process recently, though my mother-in-law passed away two years ago and my dad passed away thirteen years ago. So I’ve had close relatives pass, and I tend to go through it very quickly. I’m looking forward to this conversation, because grief isn’t something you just go through once and you’re done — it can come back and revisit you. So tell us about this book. What’s unique about your perspective compared to the other grief books out there?
Audrey: I’m sure every author thinks their book is special, but for me it’s this: because I practice Internal Family Systems therapy — that’s my therapy modality — I realized that not only does everyone grieve a little differently, but even within one person there are different parts that react differently. We can’t really compare experiences. You mentioned losing your father — I’m sorry for your loss; I also lost my dad — but if we compared notes, your experience wouldn’t be 100% like mine. And that’s okay. That’s normal.
As an IFS therapist, I recognize that I have parts, and that doesn’t make me crazy or abnormal — it just makes me human. Everybody has parts to their soul, and my parts react differently. As of today, for the most part my parts are healed from the grief, but the younger ones that are still missing their dad — it wouldn’t take much for them to start feeling weepy. Depending on how much pressure there is, I can cry on the outside. So even within one person, grief can be expressed in different ways.
Here’s another example. Father’s Day is coming up as we’re taping this, so let’s say one of my younger parts feels, “Oh great, Father’s Day is coming and I’m fatherless.” I can envision a part of me saying, “Okay, we’re going there — if you’re going to ruminate on the fact that he isn’t here and all the differences his death made, then we’re going to cry, and I’m going to feel sad. And I don’t want to feel sad — I need to be productive, I’m busy, I have to do XYZ.” That’s an example of a manager part. When I say “manager,” I mean the part that wants to keep me productive and not bogged down by emotion — in this case, grief. But then there’s the part that’s missing her dad and is so aware that Father’s Day will bring a lot of triggers.
So I wrote this book as a nod to every griever out there: it’s okay if you don’t have the same face of grief every time. Sometimes you weep, sometimes you don’t. But if I can put in one word — don’t avoid your grief, because repressing emotion has a way of backfiring, and I wouldn’t want that for anybody.
[05:43] DJ: Thank you for introducing how you’re bringing the book together — your perspective as a therapist, as a human being who has gone through grief with your dad. So give us the title of chapter one and how you set up the book.
Audrey: People can actually read chapter one for free online.
DJ: Super.
Audrey: Chapter one is titled “Grieving: Unwanted Yet Unavoidable.” Isn’t that true?
DJ: It is. I was recently at a mental health conference, talking with some psychology grad students, and one person said they were focusing on grief — because it affects 100% of people. I thought, “Wow, yeah.” My own focus, as an advocate and someone with lived experience, has been mental health, which is the lived experience of maybe 20 to 25% of people. But grief is going to come to all of us — or it’s already happened — and even when it has, there’s still more to process from time to time.
Audrey: I couldn’t agree more. And let’s not limit grief to death. In my case my father died, and your dad too — that’s definitely grief-inducing. But a year ago this past January, people where I am, in the San Gabriel Valley, lost their homes, and the Palisades basically burned down. That’s deep grief. Or someone who has to bury their childhood dog — that’s a wrenching loss. There are so many forms of loss: divorce, whether wanted or unwanted, is still loss, because you’re losing not just a spouse but potentially that spouse’s family, the extended relatives. Some people have to move, make new friends, find a new place of worship. Loss comes in many colors, but I agree — it applies to 100% of humanity, bar none.
DJ: And in one book, how much of that kind of grief can you possibly cover?
Audrey: That’s what’s unique about this book. When you read it, you’ll realize it isn’t just me talking as the author — it’s me talking to the reader, but there are also sections where the reader can sit with their own parts. By “parts,” I just mean parts of the reader’s soul. It’s up to each person what kind of loss they want to deal with — any of the examples we just named. In my mind, whatever the loss, when someone picks up the book, either the most significant loss or the most ancient one is going to loom in front of them. So when they do the exercises, that’s the loss that keeps coming back, saying, “Hey, you haven’t really processed me yet.”
[09:57] DJ: As we talk through the book, let’s use a couple of concrete examples from our own lives — I think that’ll help people connect to their own experiences. The one that comes to mind for me is organizational change. I have four different contract jobs, so it’s quite a variety, but one in particular has gone through a lot of organizational change over the past three years, and it’s still a fast-changing culture. That’s been challenging and emotional — not just for me, but for a lot of people. So that’s how I’m going to approach this book and notice how it affects different parts of me at different times. How about you — a current loss?
Audrey: My dad is still pretty fresh. He died eight years ago this July, so that would be my number one.
DJ: Now, why do you think we as a culture hold on so tightly to the five stages of grief?
Audrey: I’ll answer for my planning part: because it’s neat and tidy. If we can say, “Oh, stage one is denial — you’ve gone through denial, so now you’re good, on to stage two,” it feels containable. If you can label it and say it’s linear — one to two, two to three — then it’s like, “Okay, once I hit five, I’ll be good.” That’s much more comforting than the discombobulating reality, which might be one, three, seven, two-point-five — wait, when will it end? Sorry, but grief isn’t like that. Grief is messy. It can hit you even when your loved one, your divorce, or your pet’s death was years and years ago. Something happens, you wake up, and you’re still thinking about that person, that relationship, that dream, that house you lost. So that’s one reason we hold on to the five stages — it’s tidy, neat, linear, containable.
DJ: It gives a quicker timeline — get through it within a year, maybe. One of the things people insensitively say to those who are grieving is, “Why aren’t you over that yet?” — and there are other versions of unhelpful things to say.
Audrey: I remember when my dad died of a heart attack — it didn’t “just happen,” but it was sudden. Afterward I moved in with my mom, because she was in shock, as you’d imagine. Theirs was a marriage made in heaven; they loved each other, never any real problems. For the first six weeks she couldn’t go to church at all. If I read the Bible and you asked me, “Audrey, what did you just read?” I couldn’t have told you — reading past one verse was too hard. So why go to church? After six weeks we finally showed up — she’d gone to that church my whole life; that’s how loyal she was — and a woman greeted her and said, “But everything’s okay now, right?” Six weeks after she buried her husband, with no warning he was going to pass.
Sadly, that’s some of the culture we face — sometimes in the church, sometimes outside it — this pressure to say everything’s okay, life is back to normal. But life will never return to “normal.” Here’s the thing: lots of deaths happen every day, but we don’t grieve them, because those people are strangers to us. We grieve because the person who died means a whole lot. So to say, “One year and you should be good” — or, as with the organizational loss you mentioned, “What’s the timeline? Am I supposed to function, to be okay again after three months?” Who’s to say?
[15:01] DJ: But sometimes it seems people take too long, and they need help to process — rather than not paying attention, which may be one way to grieve but doesn’t bring the person to health. I don’t know when you get to this in the book, but it’s something to bookmark if it’s a future chapter.
Audrey: That’s a good point — but again, who’s to say what’s “too long”? I can think of several scenarios. If a person has never grieved any loss, then by the time a recent loss strikes, it’s like sleep debt: if you haven’t slept enough, at some point your body demands that you sleep longer than usual, because the debt has to be satisfied. Grief is a little like that. If we never grieve, we pile debt on debt on debt until the pyramid topples, and then the person says, “I can’t function. I’m depressed. I can’t get out of bed.” From the outside it’s easy to say, “You’ve taken too long to grieve this loss.” But who are we to say that — when it’s actually thirteen other losses, or however many, that the person has never processed before?
DJ: We’ll come back to that, because it may be an issue some people deal with — or that we see in others who are stuck in life and don’t want to get help. They’re either ignoring it, or something’s unhealthy for them, but they don’t know what to do or don’t want to do anything about it.
Audrey: I used a biblical example from the Old Testament and showed that because this person did not grieve, their future was literally at stake — almost a one-to-one correlation, which was scary when I saw it.
DJ: Which story is that?
Audrey: Moses. Again, anyone can go to InterVarsity Press’s website right now and read chapter one for free.
DJ: Super — we’ll add that to the show notes so people can click right through.
Audrey: The point is exactly what you said: if we don’t grieve, the cost is steep. In Moses’s case, it actually affected his future, and I don’t want that for anybody. So if someone feels stuck — “Yeah, I’ve been carrying that” — and the other thing is, if grief is years old — ten, twenty, even further back — and you haven’t really grieved it, it can show up today as depression. It shows up in many ways.
DJ: It’s not so clear-cut as, “This is because I didn’t grieve when I was hurt as a child.” It’s fuzzy — we don’t really know why. It just shows up in many forms, like depression.
Audrey: Right. But the first step, especially for people who haven’t dealt with their grief — well, hopefully this book helps. And also: how is your attitude toward seeing a therapist? If someone stuck in grief or trauma has strong opposition to therapy, that’s harder, because a therapist knows how to help in situations like this.
[19:01] DJ: There’s so much to explore there. The stigma and shame around seeing a therapist is practically universal, and it’s more accentuated in some cultures — particularly for people of color — because much of our psychology and psychiatry was developed in a mostly white Western world. So there’s that layer. It’s hard to figure out why one person experiences grief one way and someone else experiences it another. I have a relative with two daughters. The older sister went through it one way — she saw a therapist, worked through whatever came up over a couple of months. The younger sister refuses to see a counselor; she’s just moved on with her life, but once in a while things come up and she has no explanation. How can that be? They grew up in the same family, with the same relationship to their mother. What’s coming up differently in their parts?
Audrey: I’d say the younger sibling probably has parts that are really adamant about not seeing a therapist. As for why, it could be the reason you mentioned, or it could be church culture — there can be so much resistance to seeing a mental health professional.
DJ: Let me add the faith element. The one who did see a counselor has left the church — she grew up in a Christian home, and now, as a non-Christian, she’s gone to counseling. The faith person refuses, partly because of her faith, because some people believe faith is all you need — you don’t need psychology or psychiatry, just pray and read your Bible.
Audrey: Which I think is a message that has hurt a lot of people, maybe unknowingly. But here’s the thing: most churches — if not all — are fine if a member sees a dentist for help, or a surgeon. But for some reason, if it’s a mental health expert, then suddenly “the Bible is enough.” Suddenly, “If you see a therapist, why are you saying Jesus isn’t enough?” It’s a double standard.
DJ: You should be a preacher.
Audrey: [laughs] We could go in a lot of directions. My heart goes out to that younger sibling, because having done this work for two decades, I know the power of Internal Family Systems therapy in particular — which is why I moved my practice to focus on just IFS. I used to do other things in therapy, and honestly it was more hit-or-miss; with IFS, it’s really effective. If I could talk with that person, I’d want to sit down and understand her objections — I’d just want to listen, even if I suspect some of it is church messaging. I’d want to hear her fears about talking to a therapist, and whether, say, a faith-based therapist would make any difference. I’d love to dialogue and listen carefully to why she doesn’t want to see one.
[23:20] DJ: I really appreciate the posture you’d approach her with.
DJ: In your own life, you experienced the sudden shock of unexpected death when your father passed from a heart attack. What was your first response, and how did you begin to face the grief process?
Audrey: My first response was shock, because I did not see it coming. I won’t put this on every Christian or person of faith, but for me, I believed the Lord was my good friend. And if you and I are good friends and I know something bad is coming your way, I’m going to alert you — especially because the Lord knows my system; he knows I like to be prepared. So when this happened, I was filled with disbelief: “This isn’t the script.” I thought my parents would grow old together, retire together, live forever — okay, maybe not forever, but for a long, long time. He violated the script, and I thought, “Lord, you didn’t alert me.” That was the biggest deal for me. I didn’t know why, and I wrote in my book about how, over time, I kept pressing — I wouldn’t say I was angry at God, more confused: “What happened? What did I miss? I thought I saw you as a God good enough to tell me ahead of time if something big like this was coming, and you didn’t.” I was disappointed. I finally resolved it, but that was the biggest thing for me.
DJ: Thank you for sharing that. I’m glad you’ve made progress over the years in your grief process, and we’ll learn more as we turn the pages of your book and go through each chapter — continuing to learn what grieving wholeheartedly looks like and how it can help every part of your soul. So again, the title of the book is Grieving Wholeheartedly: Bringing Healing to Every Part of Your Soul. Dr. Audrey Davidheiser, thank you so much for this conversation, and I look forward to the next one.
Audrey: Thank you. Likewise.