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A Fresh Perspective on Grief - The Demartini Show
Episode 23012th April 2024 • The Demartini Show • Dr John Demartini
00:00:00 00:22:46

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How to deal with any form of loss, bereavement, or grief. Dr Demartini shares more about a process he's been using with thousands of individuals that transforms grief into gratitude.

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Transcripts

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If you were to die,

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would you want your loved ones to be

mourning and grieving and affected and

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altered in a depressive way for

any period of time? They go No.

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I want my loved ones to go on and

live their life to the fullest.

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In everyone's life,

somewhere along the line,

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you're going to have some

perception of a loss, a bereavement.

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It could be a loss of a pet, it

could be a loss of an individual,

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it could be a loss of money,

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it could be a loss of just about

anything that you attach to.

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A loss of a friend, a loss of a

client, a loss of a business contact,

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loss of opportunity, loss of a

child that goes off to college.

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Anytime you perceive a

loss and you're having

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grief, I'd like to address the

topic, a new perspective on grief.

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I've been fascinated by this particular

topic for a long time, decades.

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I was in El Salvador many years

ago, back in:

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and I had just come in from surfing,

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and I was walking through the street of

a little town called La Libertad in El

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Salvador. And I came across this

procession, this parade of people,

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probably two to 300 people.

And it looked like a party,

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like a celebration. So I spoke a little

bit of Spanish and I asked somebody,

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qué pasa? What happened?

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And finally somebody said

to me and said, well,

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we're celebrating the death

of our mayor. And I thought,

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what, they're celebrating and

partying about the death of the mayor.

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And in my mind, I was taught that,

you know, when somebody dies,

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there's a little bit of wearing a black

and there's mourning and there's quiet

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and solemn and this kind of thing.

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That was what I was culturally ingrained

with. It's what you see on television.

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It's what you see pretty well

everywhere. And all of a sudden,

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this was a bit of a twist.

So I followed the procession.

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They went down to where they

were burying the individual,

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and they had a party,

and they had celebration,

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and people were having a

completely different perspective.

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And I asked one of the

individuals, you know,

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why are they celebrating ?

He said, the guy said, because,

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their belief, the spirit is freed.

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It's like a bird that's freed

and it can fly freely now,

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it's not constrained by this body.

It's almost platonic in its teachings.

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And that didn't go away from

my mind. I was thinking,

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why is it that this culture has a

perspective of celebration and freedom?

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And they're partying and

remembering the joyful parts of that

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person's life and now their freedom.

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And then if you go to maybe Greece or

somewhere in Europe where you see a death,

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there's mourning and black, and

you know, it's a complete opposite.

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At that moment I started to ask

the question, is bereavement, loss,

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and the grief associated with it cultural?

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Is it because of way we

perceive things, what we expect?

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I started probing into it. That's when

I first got interested in the topic.

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And I went into later

brain research and studying

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the neurochemistry, and I found something.

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And you may want to write this, it

may be a bit shocking to some of you.

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It was a bit of a shock to me initially.

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But now I've had the opportunity to help

probably 5,000 people have the death

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process with people and help

them transition this thing.

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And so I've got it down to a science

now and know how to deal with it,

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show people how to transition

smoothly through it.

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But if you stop and ask people when

they've just lost somebody or a dog or

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something, and ask them, what

specifically is it that you are missing?

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And they'll start to say, well, everything

about them. And I'll say Everything?

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So you missed their arguments? Well,

no. You missed their yelling? No.

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You missed when they were

late to go places? No.

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The dirty sink and dirty

dishes and dirty this and? No.

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So you didn't miss everything. So let's

find out what you actually did miss.

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And when we actually

outlined what they missed,

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I found out that every one of the

things that you think you miss,

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that you're grieving the loss of are all

the things that you were a bit attached

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to infatuated with,

admiring and looked up to.

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In other words, the idea that somebody,

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let's say you're in a marriage

and somebody had an affair,

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you don't miss that part. maybe.

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But you might miss their affection and

their hugging and their special attention

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to you.

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So the first thing I realized is that

everything that we're missing is only the

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parts that we were subjectively

biasing, interpreting as positive,

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more than negative. So we didn't

miss all of them. In fact,

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when I actually looked carefully the

things that they didn't like about the

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person, 'cause if you are

actually married to somebody,

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initially when you meet them,

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you may be infatuated with them and

see only the positives and upsides and

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conscious of those. And then eventually

you discover there's other sides,

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other aspects.

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But I find that there's actually a relief

of the loss of the parts you didn't

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like. And there's a grief of

the loss of the parts you liked.

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And that was a really

interesting realization.

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So that meant that you're really

judging somebody if you're grieving.

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And you're dividing the individual

up into parts you liked and disliked.

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And because of our amygdala,

our subcortical amygdala,

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which wants to avoid

predator and seek prey,

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wants to avoid challenge and seek support,

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wants to avoid negatives

and seek positives,

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we go into our amygdala upon the death

process, which is a survival response,

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and we tend to concentrate on

the things that are positive,

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and then we fear the loss of the things

that we attach to that is positive,

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and we fear the gain or the things

that we resent about a person.

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So that means we have grief over

the loss of the parts we admire,

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and we have relief over the

parts we despised. Let me

give you an example again.

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When Donald Trump was involved somehow,

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directly or indirectly with the military,

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and they took care of a

particular individual in Iran,

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a general in Iran, and they basically

killed this general in Iran.

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Now he was classified as a

terrorist in America. But in Iran,

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when he was killed,

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I believe it was 5 million people

came out and mourned his death.

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He was a hero there and

a villain in America.

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So the people that saw him as a hero

that admired him, they were grieving.

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And the people that saw him as a villain,

they were relieving and celebrating.

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They literally celebrated.

We got him. Now,

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I'm sure that if we looked honestly at

this general, that he was a hero villain.

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He had things that you liked and disliked.

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It just so happened that

some of the things that he

did one culture disliked and

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another culture liked. If somebody

was to look at me, they would easily,

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if they videotape me and had a drone

watching me for a period of two,

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three months and they

videotaped 24 hours a day,

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they could find and easily edit out with

yellow journalism, a hero or a villain,

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a saint or a sinner. I'm both nice

and mean. You support my values,

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I'm nice as a pussycat. You challenge

my values I can be mean as a tiger.

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So it's easy to see that if you're in

your life, if you're honest with yourself,

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you've got two sides. And when

you're married to somebody,

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you get to know those two sides, and

you really learn to love both sides.

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That's what you're loving. You're

admiring one, you're despising the other,

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but that's what goes with the package.

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So when somebody's grieving

the loss of somebody,

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they're grieving the loss of the parts

that they were infatuated with. Now,

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when you infatuate with some

part and admire some part,

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like some part and attach to

it, you're activating oxytocin,

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which is a bonding compound.

Vasopressin is a bonding compound.

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You're getting dopamine,

you're getting enkephalins,

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you're associating pleasures with

it and the withdrawal symptoms,

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like a drug addiction

if you have withdrawal,

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the withdrawal symptoms of drug

addiction when you don't have the drug,

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is similar to grief.

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So you're having a withdrawal of those

neurochemistries in the brain when you're

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having a perception, a perception

of loss of that which you admired.

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So I developed, starting in 1976,

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a methodology designed to help

people dissolve the grief.

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And I've been using it since. Every time

I teach the Breakthrough Experience,

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I would say not every week,

but most weeks out of the year,

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I do the process. And now I'm

doing that with everybody there,

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everybody that's having any form

of grief in any degree or capacity,

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we show them how to dissolve it.

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And I haven't seen any grief that's

not dissolvable. And people go,

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what do you mean dissolve grief?

You're supposed to grieve.

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Prolonged grief syndrome has got

problems. Cardiovascular, digestive,

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dermatitis, I mean, there

are health immune responses,

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cancers are a lot associated with

prolonged grief. We did a study in Tokyo,

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actually, a few years ago,

five or six years ago now,

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where we took a group of

prolonged grief syndrome people,

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and we did before and after,

they did an evaluation before

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and they found that these people

were grieving and having difficulties

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functioning and not even able to work

everything else for at least six months or

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longer.

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And we took them through a process with

an average of two hours and 17 minutes

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and dissolved it. And they followed

them for a week, a month, a quarter,

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a quarter, a quarter, a quarter, a

quarter, a quarter, a quarter, a quarter,

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a quarter. And they followed

him for 18 months, and no grief.

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And that was something they never

seen before. And so there's,

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there is a way to help people

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rebalance out their perceptions

and therefore their chemistry.

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Pardon me. And dissolve the grief.

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Because if you look very carefully,

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every trait that you perceive

in somebody that you admire,

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it also has a downside, but you're

unconscious of it. For instance,

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you meet a guy, let's say you're a

woman, you meet this guy and you think,

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oh my God, he's so

intelligent, I like that,

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that's an aphrodisiac and it turns me on.

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And then you end up dating him and you

find out that that intelligence is also

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their argumentative, they want to be

right, they don't want to listen, they

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outwit you, they try

to manipulate you, they

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are sometimes condescending

'cause they think they know.

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There's downsides to that.

And you think, oh my God,

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they're so attractive.

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But there's downsides to that because

they're sometimes preoccupied with their

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beauty. They're not

focused on other things.

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Sometimes they're focused

on themselves more than you.

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Sometimes everybody

else is focused on them,

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and they're used to the social

things. They're sometimes entitled.

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There'sre's downsides to every

trait and upsides to every trait.

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Really no trait is positive or negative

unless you limit it to being so.

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So if you see a trait that

you are admiring and you're

still infatuated with it,

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you're unconscious of the downsides,

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and all of a sudden you ask a new

set of questions to help you see the

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downsides, and you change

the neurochemistry in there,

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you can change the grief because

you only fear the loss of that which

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you are infatuated with.

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Just like you only fear the

gain of that which you resent.

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But when somehow you're infatuated

with somebody and you gain it,

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you get relief.

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If you're hungry and you're really

wanting food and they finally bring it to

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you, oh, what a relief I can eat.

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And if somebody is a real irritating

individual and they're hanging around with

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you and they finally leave,

you go, oh, what a relief.

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So these are all perceptions.

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I can take the person that you despise

that's now leaving and you're relieved

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of,

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and I can go in and ask questions to

help you see the upsides and benefits of

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them. And then I can

actually help you see, oh,

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there was two sides to that individual.

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And then the perception of relief

or grief when they come or go is

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dissolved.

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So we have the power with our perceptions

to change our chemistry and change our

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neuro physiology and even our

epigenetics and our symptoms.

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'Cause I've been doing it

for, since:

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I developed a methodology that's

very concise, guarantee it,

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I've done it in every imaginable thing

from television to be on spot with a

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university study. I've not

had it fail yet. It works.

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And if for some reason you want

to grieve, the question is,

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prolonged grief syndrome

causes health problems,

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and it's associated with various

illnesses. So the question is, is why?

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Is it only because the culture

says you need to grieve?

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Remember El Salvador didn't

show that you had to grieve,

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but Greece does . So are you

wanting to subordinate to a culture?

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Is that why we're doing it?

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Are we doing it because we think that's

going to show more affection and more

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respect? I ask the question, I've asked

thousands of people this question,

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if you were to die,

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would you want your loved ones to be

mourning and grieving and affected and,

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you know,

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altered in a depressive way for

any period of time? They go, no,

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I want my loved ones to go on and live

their life to the fullest. Well, to me,

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it's more respectful to actually

honor that and when somebody passes

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honor their life while they're

alive and honor their passing.

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We sometimes compare the passing or

the loss with a comparison of what

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we thought it should have been.

They should have died later,

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or they should have disappeared later,

or they should have gone later. Well,

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who's to say? We don't know that.

Nobody knows those questions.

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But if we compare what's happening to

a fantasy about how what we think it

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should be,

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then we're going to end up being angry

and depressed and have this grief.

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So I developed a methodology,

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I teach it every time I do

the Breakthrough Experience.

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I do it in the afternoon on Sunday

in the Breakthrough Experience,

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the second day.

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And we find out individuals that are

grieving or everybody we find the most

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grieving thing that they have a

loss of, and it could be money,

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it doesn't matter what

the grief process is,

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you can follow the process and clear it.

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And we go through there and

we clear it and I ask people,

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I demonstrate when they're done,

there's no grief. And people go,

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their mind is blown sometimes, they

don't believe that's possible, I mean,

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I've had all kind of people

be skeptical and I said,

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you can be skeptical all you want,

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but come through the process

and watch what happens.

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So if you have somebody that's

grieving, if you have grief yourself,

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and that might be economic grief,

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it may be a loss of a boyfriend that

just dumped you, it could be, you know,

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somebody that's died, a cat that

died, a dog that died, a pet,

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anything that you perceive a loss

of, there's a way of dissolving it

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so you're not intrusive with

your thoughts and preoccupied,

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'cause anything you infatuate or resent,

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occupies space and time in your mind

and runs you. So if you're infatuated,

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the fear of loss of that will run

your life. And if you're resentful,

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the fear of gain of

that will run your life.

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That's why if you're highly infatuated

or resentful, you can't sleep at night.

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So anything that has intrusive thoughts

and it's running your mind and keeping

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you from being present

and poised and empowered,

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and you're fearing the loss of it or

have lost it and you're feeling grief of

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it, everything else, all

of that is dissolvable.

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And it's just the quality of your life's

based on the quality of the questions

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you ask and in the Demartini Method,

which is a method I developed,

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I have very precise

questions that dissolve it.

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And I've been doing it for, you

know, many decades now, 76,

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really formally since 1984.

And I haven't had it not work.

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It's a science and it's hard to

comprehend because for thousands of years,

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we just assume that's normal.

Animals do it, well, that's true.

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We have an animal nature in our brain,

our subcortical area of our brain,

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the amygdala that is involved in that.

But that doesn't mean we have to.

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We also have a super cortical area that's,

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that's the executive center that can

govern those and transform those by

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changing perceptions with a

more reasonable perspective.

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So if you would like a fresh

perspective on the concept of grief,

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please come to the

Breakthrough Experience. I'm

certain, and I mean certain,

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that that can be dissolved and I've

proven that over and over again

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for thousands of people

and there's no reason.

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So if you don't have it and you

want to have grief, that's fine,

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that's your business.

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But just know you are affecting your

physiology and you are possibly putting

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burden on other people by

hanging in there with that,

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unless you're using it as

a strategy to get things.

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Sometimes there's unconscious

motives to stay grieving.

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I had a female that her son was

killed and she was grieving,

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but found out why she stayed with the

grieving is that she was afraid that her

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husband and their parents were going to

now want to divorce her since she didn't

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have a child. Is a very interesting thing.

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There was a lot of tension between

the family, his family and her,

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and they didn't want her in his

life. And they, when the baby died,

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their only child,

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their pressure on for them to now let

him divorce her and get out of there.

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And so she didn't want to not grieve

because that means that that might happen.

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So she didn't want to lose the

positioning, it was a wealthy family.

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So there's sometimes unconscious motives

why we stay staying in the grief.

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But anyway, all that I show people

how to dissolve and work with.

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And so if you are in any way burdened

by that, just know there's a solution.

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And I love sharing it with people and

watching the transformation right in

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front. You do it, you get to

experience it, it's right there.

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You can't argue with your own experience.

And if that's of interest to you,

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then please come to the

Breakthrough Experience.

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I keep telling people whenever

I do these programs about it,

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because it's a life

trajectory change. It's,

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your perspective on life changes.

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It's not just a little self-help

program that's, you know, entertaining,

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you know, jump up and down on

chairs and all that stuff. No,

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this is a deep exploration on

how life works on human behavior.

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I've been doing it, you know,

teaching it for 35 years.

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I've been teaching for 51 years.

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I've been focused on any information I

can to help people master their lives and

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maximize their human

potential and awareness.

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And I know that this tool that I've

been blessed to develop is going to be a

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value to you the rest of your life,

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'cause you're going to have possibly

when you're 50, 60s and 70s,

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you're going to have more people passing

and you're going to have more probably,

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you know, perceptions

of loss along the way.

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If you don't know how to handle them well,

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then you've added more

burden to your life.

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If you'd like to have a tool

you can use when you need it,

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please come to the Breakthrough Experience

so I can show you how to do that,

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it's eye-opening, it's

life-changing, you leave it there.

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I got letters from this last weekend

doing it already two letters of people

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about the grief process saying

I'm not grieving. I said, no,

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you won't be grieving. And they go, I

can't believe it. I've been doing that.

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It's been lasting for months, and

then now it's gone. I said, exactly.

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So if you would like to be able to

have a change in perspective and

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see that there's a new

alternative out there,

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please come to the

Breakthrough Experience.

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I really love watching transformations

and seeing people's lives change.

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So this is the presentation

about a new perspective on grief

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and hopefully that

stimulated some thinking.

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And if you know somebody that's in that

situation or you in that situation,

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please take advantage of the opportunity

and I look forward to seeing you at the

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Breakthrough Experience.

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