On this episode I dive into the experience of processing 'little g' grief by sharing a personal story from my childhood—missing out on a fifth-grade skating party. What seems like a small, insignificant memory on the surface is actually a powerful example of how unprocessed grief from early life can still impact us today. I walk you through my six-step grief process, showing how old emotions, like shame and inadequacy, can linger in our adult lives if left unaddressed.

The episode highlights how reclaiming power from past memories is possible through intentional grief work. Whether you’re working through small childhood disappointments or other unresolved emotions, this episode offers a practical guide for anyone wanting to heal past hurts and move forward in strength. Listeners are given tools to navigate their own 'little g' grief and reclaim energy lost to these old wounds.

Here are links that might be helpful:

• Free Download - 7 Ways to Reclaim Energy From Your Weekend
• ⁠⁠⁠Schedule a free coaching session with Erin⁠⁠⁠
• Personal Growth Sucks on⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠ and⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠

Some resources that helped me with content for this episode:

5 Ways for Adults to Heal Their Childhood Grief

Delayed Grief: When Grief Shows Up Later

When Will I Stop Feeling Sad About My Childhood

The Many Masks of Unresolved Grief

Welcome to Episode 3 of Season 5, where we are exploring “little g” grief, a process that helps us honor our everyday disappointments and frustrations. My goal for this season is to help others with managing their expectations and their energy so they have more capacity for living a joyful life. Having unprocessed grief steals our energy and keeps us stuck in denial, and so I’m excited to dive into this season and share tools and resources to help you get unstuck.

On this episode I’m talking about grieving the loss of the ideal - both the internal ideal (our ideal version of ourselves) and the external ideal (ways we wish people and circumstances would be ideal).

As part of the episode, I walk through a recent way that I had to grieve the loss of the ideal and I take you through my grief process. I shared this process in depth in the last episode, and I hope it will be helpful to hear it again with a real world example.

Here is the grief process in writing:

1. Name what you are hoping for. Think about the experience or the thing that you want. What is the view of reality that you wish would happen? What would it mean for you if that were true? What would perfection look like?

2. Name what you are actually experiencing - what is reality? What are some specific ways that you've experienced this reality? What does it mean for this to be your reality?

3. Name what has happened in the gap between what you hope for and what you are experiencing. What is the loss? What are all the ways this loss affects you? Naming these helps you see the real impact so you can honor what you've lost.

4. Name what you are feeling as a result of the loss. This can be difficult if you are used to suppressing and ignoring your feelings. You may need to practice awareness and presence with your feelings. Something that might help you identify your feelings is looking at a feelings wheel. Once you identify what you are feeling, you actually need to spend time feeling the feeling. :) Try to get out of your head, where this is simply an intellectual exercise, and allow yourself to experience the pain and discomfort of difficult emotions.

5. Now, we move to the parts of this process that allow you to reclaim energy and power, which includes creating a statement of acceptance. This will help you let go of the things you can’t control (including other people’s attitudes, beliefs, decisions, and actions) and take power over the things you can control. Write out your statement of acceptance with these four parts:

6. 1. Your hopeful statement - how you wish it would be

   2. Name the actual reality - the way it really is

   3. Express what you are letting go of. especially acknowledging what you can't control)

   4. Give a statement of acceptance, especially acknowledging the reality of what this means for you

7. The final step is to decide how you will live in light of reality. If your statement of acceptance is true, then how will you decide to move forward in power?

Here are links that might be helpful:

Free Download - 7 Ways to Reclaim Energy From Your Weekend

⁠⁠⁠Schedule a free coaching session with Erin⁠⁠⁠

Personal Growth Sucks on⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠ and⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠

Big Rocks Video

Self-Compassion Exercises from Dr. Kristin Neff

Welcome to Season 5, where we are exploring “little g” grief a process that helps us honor our everyday disappointments and frustrations. My goal for this season is to help others with managing their expectations and their energy so they have more capacity for living a joyful life. Having unprocessed grief steals our energy and keeps us stuck in denial, and so I’m excited to dive into this season and share tools and resources to help you get unstuck.

Today I share some of the reasons why grief is important, talk about ways this has impacted my life, and walk you through the grief process that I created for myself and my clients.

Here is the grief process in writing, be sure to listen to the episode for examples and info on how to apply this:

1. Name what you are hoping for. Think about the experience or the thing that you want. What is the view of reality that you wish would happen? What would it mean for you if that were true? What would perfection look like?

2. Name what you are actually experiencing - what is reality? What are some specific ways that you've experienced this reality? What does it mean for this to be your reality?

3. Name what has happened in the gap between what you hope for and what you are experiencing. What is the loss? What are all the ways this loss affects you? Naming these helps you see the real impact so you can honor what you've lost.

4. Name what you are feeling as a result of the loss. This can be difficult if you are used to suppressing and ignoring your feelings. You may need to practice awareness and presence with your feelings. Something that might help you identify your feelings is looking at a feelings wheel. Once you identify what you are feeling, you actually need to spend time feeling the feeling. :) Try to get out of your head, where this is simply an intellectual exercise, and allow yourself to experience the pain and discomfort of difficult emotions.

5. Now, we move to the parts of this process that allow you to reclaim energy and power, which includes creating a statement of acceptance. This will help you let go of the things you can’t control (including other people’s attitudes, beliefs, decisions, and actions) and take power over the things you can control. Write out your statement of acceptance with these four parts:

6. 1. Your hopeful statement - how you wish it would be

   2. Name the actual reality - the way it really is

   3. Express what you are letting go of. especially acknowledging what you can't control)

   4. Give a statement of acceptance, especially acknowledging the reality of what this means for you

7. The final step is to decide how you will live in light of reality. If your statement of acceptance is true, then how will you decide to move forward in power?

Here are links that might be helpful:

Free Download - 7 Ways to Reclaim Energy From Your Weekend

⁠⁠⁠Schedule a free coaching session with Erin⁠⁠⁠

Personal Growth Sucks on⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠ and⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠

The Feelings Wheel

Welcome to Season 5, where we will be exploring “good grief.” Today’s episode is an introduction to the type of everyday grief I’ll be talking about, like what happens when a flat tire ruins your day. I also introduce some of the concepts associated with it including the “power process,” open grief loops, defensive hope, and protest mode.

My overall goal is to help others with managing their expectations and their energy so they have more capacity for living a joyful life. Having unprocessed grief steals our energy and keeps us stuck in denial, and so I’m excited to dive into this season and share tools and resources to help you get unstuck.

Here are links that might be helpful:

⁠⁠⁠Schedule a free coaching session with Erin⁠⁠⁠

Personal Growth Sucks on⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠ and⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠

Learn more about Relational Nutrients

Welcome to a bonus episode of Personal Growth Sucks! I finished up Season 4 on the last episode and I’m not quite ready to launch Season 5, so in the meantime I’ll be sharing some bonus episodes on one-off topics.

Today I’m talking about the difference between emotional intelligence, empathy, and emotional over-functioning. I’ll share the key components of empathy, how empathy is different from emotional over-functioning, and six tips for staying out of the trap of emotional over-functioning.

Here are links that might be helpful:

⁠⁠⁠Schedule a free coaching session with Erin⁠⁠⁠

Personal Growth Sucks on⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠ and⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠

Learn more about Relational Nutrients

People Fuel book by Dr. John Townsend

Brene Brown empathy video

Emily Sherwood joins me on this episode to wrap up Season 4 on the topic of friendship. She shares her thoughts and insights on friendship, and then I give a preview of Season 5.

If you want to dive deeper into the concept of being intentional about your friendships, check out my free download, “7 ways to get more energy from your relationships.” See below for the link to download your free copy.

If you enjoyed this episode and find my podcast helpful, please consider leaving a review so others can discover the podcast and gain new insights for their personal growth journey.

Here are links that might be helpful:

⁠⁠⁠Schedule a free coaching session with Erin⁠⁠⁠

Personal Growth Sucks on⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠ and⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠

Free download - ⁠how to get more fuel from your friendships⁠

The Art and Science of Connection by Kasley Killam

Platonic, by Marisa Franco
How Your Relationships Affect Your Health, Greater Good Magazine

On this episode, Becca Berghorn is back to talk with me about friendship. We are tackling the topic of conflict, which has been hard for both of us as Enneagram 9s because we are naturally conflict avoidant. And, we also tend to think things are conflict when they really aren’t - for example stating our opinions very directly when we know they are opposite the opinions of someone else. So most of our lives have been centered around avoiding conflict and now we are passionate about helping others do conflict in a healthy way, because we see it is an integral part of a healthy relationship. I hope you’ll discover some new perspectives and tools about conflict from our conversation.

In two weeks, I’ll be back with an episode to wrap up this season and give a preview of season five.

If you want to dive deeper into the concept of being intentional about your friendships, check out my free download, “7 ways to get more energy from your relationships.” Go to PersonalGrowthSucks.com and click the link for the free download to get your copy.

If you enjoyed this episode and find my podcast helpful, please consider leaving a review so others can discover the podcast and gain new insights for their personal growth journey.

Here are links that might be helpful:

⁠⁠⁠Schedule a free coaching session with Erin⁠⁠⁠

Personal Growth Sucks on⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠ and⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠

Free download - ⁠how to get more fuel from your friendships⁠

Learn more about Becca and her practice - ⁠Becca Berghorn Counseling⁠

Learn more about Relational Nutrients