➡ The speaker discusses their experience rescuing animals during a disaster and how they chose to focus on the positive aspects, such as the selfless people who came to help, rather than the horrific scenes. They argue against the tendency of people to share and focus on traumatic stories, suggesting it’s an unconscious attempt to feel better by comparison. They advise against this, as it fuels anxiety and fear, and instead encourage observing without absorbing and having compassion with boundaries.

➡ The speaker encourages avoiding sensationalized media and focusing on positive, lighthearted things instead. They believe that obsessing over negative images and information can harm us, and suggest that staying informed doesn’t mean becoming obsessed. They also recommend protecting oneself from negativity and focusing on what is honorable, lovely, and peaceful to cope with grief.

Hey friends, Peggy Hall back with you to offer some positive words of encouragement for you and me for all of those that are going through some tough times right now. What I want to offer to you is a better way to cope. On the show last week, I talked about grieving and I talked about how grief needs a witness. I do want to talk about ways that you can consider to cope with your heartache and your sorrows in a way that really works. So I would recommend that you review last week’s video about grief needs a witness.

And then for today, I want to talk about something that might seem out of place when we’re talking about grieving. And in fact, I’ll just get to the punchline right now and then I will backtrack a little bit and fill in the gaps in terms of why I believe this is so helpful. So in times of my life when I have had some traumatic losses and some sequential losses, meaning one and then another and then another where they just kind of pile one on top of another. That can be very, very overwhelming. Many of you have told me that you have had those sequential losses as well.

Sometimes you’re not even able to grieve the first one, and then you’re hit by another one. So, in my finding a witness for my grief and having somebody that could listen to my sorrows without trying to fix them or telling me to keep my chin up and it will all get better because, as we know that doesn’t really help as much either. Let me just make sure that the comments are enabled here as I’m streaming. Okay, great. Thank you for being on board, everyone. So I want to tell you about the advice that I got and then I want to talk about things that in my opinion, make the grief and the sorrow and the pain even worse.

So, right from the get go, everybody grieves differently and what might work for me might not work for you I understand that, but I know that you’re tuning in because you want some of my advice and input and perspectives. So that’s what I’m about to give you. So this person that was helping me with my grieving said, Peggy, you need more sunsets, more puppy dogs and more funny movies, and I’m like, What are you talking about, I am going through some life changing experiences here that are leaving me unmoored and feeling completely like I’ve lost my life I’ve lost important parts of myself.

How can you tell me to watch a funny movie. That seems so insensitive. How can you tell me to go watch a sunset. What do you mean I need more puppy dogs that when I agreed with right we all need more puppy dogs, and what she meant was this. When you are grieving and injured and deeply in anguish. More than others, you need to take a break, even more than the others. You need to take time and watch a sunset. And if you don’t have an area where you can watch a sunset you can watch one online.

These were metaphors for doing something that is going to lighten the load and make you feel better. So it might be listening to music, it might be getting a massage, it might be going out for a meal instead of preparing your own. It might be taking a bath and closing the door and just spending, you know, time when you’re not with other people or it might mean spending time with other people getting out of your own individual pain and sorrow. The point that she was making that I think is so important is to find a way to give yourself a break in the midst in the very midst of your pain in anguish and sorrow.

So she was using an example such as watching a sunset, such as watching a funny movie. You may be saying Peggy, this is not the time for laughter and humor. And that this is something that I may want you to consider is taking a break from the river of pain, so that you’ll have the strength and the ability to grieve again. And then the idea of the puppy dogs is to have something that brings you joy. It may mean cuddling a baby, spending time with people where they are a little bit more lighthearted and uplifted and this can give you a break from your grieving, because if you are grieving nonstop without any breaks, it could lead to your own physical, literally physical ills.

A lot of people have, and let me know if this is true for you, a lot of people have physical setbacks after they’ve been grieving. Often, people will have accidents or other episodes when they’re grieving because they simply are not paying attention. I remember after my dad died driving to the university and my husband calling me saying, sweetheart, you left your wallet on the floor of the carport, you know, out in public. I’m like, what? How did I leave my wallet on the floor of the carport out in public? Because I wasn’t paying attention, and that’s because I didn’t give myself any time to take a break from the grieving.

So finding another way to cope that could include a little bit of levity, a little bit of beauty, a little bit of pampering. This is not denying what happened. This is not denigrating or demeaning or minimizing the level of your loss. In fact, it actually helps you grieve that loss, in my opinion, without having a negative impact on yourself. So I’ve had to take a break in order to keep myself strong and renewed and refreshed in order to continue to do the deep dives, to do the digging, to do the research, the investigative reporting, to kind of take one for the team and watch some of these news reports that I really don’t like to news.

I really don’t like to watch the news, but I encourage everyone to watch my video from last week because I give you some specific tips about grieving and about getting support so that you’re not grieving alone. Today’s is a little bit different. I want to talk about how to cope in ways that really work. Let me tell you what doesn’t work, all right, in my view. And I have noticed this pattern for many, many years of my life. And it started when I was doing Animal Rescue. And I’ve been involved in Animal Rescue and animal shelter work and all of that from, oh my gosh, the age of, whoops, the age of 18 or 20, something like that, because I used to volunteer at the animal shelter doing educational tours for the public back in the day when the shelters were not so overrun here in Southern California, it’s really gone downhill, sadly.

And when I was in graduate school doing my master’s degree in international law and policy, I was living up in the beautiful Monterey Peninsula, and they had an excellent animal shelter there that was on a few acres, at least it seemed like that to me at the time, and they had not only dogs and cats, but they had bunnies and they had horses and turtles and all manner of animals and they would bring children from the local schools, and I would give them a tour, and I would teach them about animal care. So I’ve been doing this for a long, long, long, long, long, long, long time and I love it.

The harder work is actually out there rescuing the animals from the street, nursing them back to health, taking them to the vet, finding homes for them, doing the fundraising networking. I’ve been involved in all of that for decades. I went to Hurricane Katrina and this is where the story connects to the grief. While I was doing animal rescue in Hurricane Katrina and I met people from all walks of life from all different states. It was really like a cultural exchange and here I was somebody from the west coast flying out to New Orleans, they had closed the city, and I had to sleep in my car for several days, living on like protein bars that people had donated.

They actually had a FEMA camp set up, I have a video on while I stayed in a FEMA camp, all the crazy things that happened to be there so I ended up staying in my car instead. But the lack of sleep, the lack of nutrition, the high level of anxiety and adrenaline and cortisol and the urgency of getting these animals out that had been locked in their homes, I was able to go because I had credentials from the Humane Society. And it literally was a locked down city with the National Guard with the Marines, and you had to have your badges in order to go in and out to try to rescue these animals from the homes.

So what happened is I met people that actually were like animal control officers from Connecticut and Pennsylvania and Ohio, and there were people that were working for animal shelters from every state that had literally gotten in their car, they saw the disaster on the news, they drove to New Orleans and they said, what are they doing leaving these animals in the homes, I’m going to go in and rescue them. But what I wanted to say was that at that time, I met people who had the strange habit, let me know if you’ve seen that and maybe even online now with everything we’ve gone through, they had the weirdest habit of telling me horror stories, and they were all trying to like out, horrify each other with the most unspeakable kinds of tragedies related to animals and I’m looking at him going, why are you even telling me this, all you’re doing is adding trauma to the already trauma that I’m experiencing.

All right, that doesn’t help me at all. We are faced with getting these animals out of these homes right now. I don’t want to talk about other animal incidents that you’ve been on or things that you’ve seen or, or cases that you did or whatever. Don’t tell me. So I would be like, I don’t want to hear it. I’m the same way. That’s why I don’t watch movies. I don’t want to be traumatized by murder movies. I don’t want to see people being raped and murdered and shot. Why in the non-spinning world? If you haven’t heard that expression, I don’t have any evidence that the world is spinning.

If you can provide that for me, my observable reality shows me that I am on a non-spinning plane. Anyhow, I’d like to say that to also get people’s curiosity going to question what we’ve been told. But why in the world would I expose myself to these types of traumatic images when I personally can do nothing about it? Well, Peggy, it’s so that you’re informed. I’m already informed. I don’t need to see the traumatic images or hear the horrific stories in order to be informed that there is evil in the world. It damages and worse conditions you to be less sensitive to the real whores that are out there.

Now, here’s where that example fits into what I’m talking about because I’m talking about coping and finding ways to work. I realized that this tendency of people to one up each other with more horrific images, with more horrible ideas and visions and concepts and reporting, here’s what I think is going on. Because I don’t do it. And I’ve guarded against doing it. And I’ve taught for three going on four years for you to guard your heart, to take every thought captive, to push out those thoughts that are horrifying, and you replace them with something better. Because with all those horrific things I was told and all the unspeakable horrors that I saw personally in New Orleans, like a war zone, literally, I could still turn my attention to something good.

And I could say, you know what, in the midst of all this loss, look at all these amazing people that came here to try to help. That’s what I’m going to focus on. I’m going to focus on the animals that to this day I have Elsie is still here with me 18 years old that I brought back from Hurricane Katrina, along with itty bitty who passed away last year, along with Dixie who still is living with my best friends. I, I encourage them to adopt her and all of the other animals hundreds and hundreds, maybe even thousands I don’t know of animals that were saved their lives were spared because of these selfless people that put their own lives on the line left left their jobs their livelihood their family to drive to New Orleans to rescue these animals.

That’s what I focused on. Why would I focus on the horror and the loss and the, the unbelievable heinous things that I, why would I do that. It doesn’t serve me, or my ability to actually grieve what I saw, it makes it worst worst is worse than worse. So here’s what I noticed. I noticed it all throughout the hogwash that people would talk about all the horrible things that they were seeing and, and hearing and reporting, why are you doing that. Here’s why, because some of you, and my heart goes out to you have experienced somewhere along the line in your life maybe very early.

And it, it created a type of perspective for you to see the world, and you saw the world as scary and dangerous and you saw people that that were harmful and hurtful and you couldn’t trust that betrayed you that harmed you. Maybe even later through your life. As an adult, you were betrayed by a boss or somebody that you, you loved or they thought they loved you they lied to you they cheated. Maybe you saw something maybe you experienced a loss. Stick with me because I’m going to get to the main point. And the main point is this.

When you see something that is even worse than what you went through. There’s something in your being that is trying to find a soothing state, you are trying to make yourself feel better. So when you see someone else that is suffering more than you, and I think this is unconscious I don’t think it’s like a conscious thing that you’re seeking. And when you hear about an event, or you see images, you’re like, well at least that didn’t happen to me. Oh my gosh it’s horrible what happened in Maui but at least my children were safe at home, and at least my house didn’t burn down.

So I am using this as an example to not allow these things to grab your attention, and for you to use them in an attempt to cope better. It doesn’t work it actually fuels and I’m using that word on purpose, your own anxiety, your own dread, and your own fears, leave it alone, set it aside. One of my lovely subscribers said you can observe without absorbing so you’re observing without absorbing. You have compassion with boundaries. That’s how you do it. Stop looking for more and more horrible things in an attempt to make your own situation look better in comparison.

Years ago, I did a show called America now. This was over 10 years ago, and I was the health and wellness expert on this daily lifetime magazine show. All right, there was a guy that taught you how to train your dog there was somebody that talked about money, somebody else was a Mr fix it, and I was the one that talked about health and wellness. And I wanted to present the information such as make sure that you, you know, take a look at your shampoo bottles and make sure you don’t have any of these toxic chemicals in your shampoo.

That’s how I wanted to say it. And the producer said, Oh, no, no, no, Peggy, that’s not scary enough. You have to come out and say, Your bathroom is trying to kill you. Like, you know, I don’t even go for that kind of hype. And the producers would produce my segments, so that they started out with fear, because fear is what draws people’s attention, it fuels their adrenaline, they get a hit of nervousness and excitement. And, you know, that, that hit of adrenaline of cortisol, that makes you kind of feel alert in a part of things.

So that has been in this wasn’t even like a hard hitting news show this was like a magazine afternoon kind of. That’s what they were called. It was called a magazine show. And even then they wanted this information to be scary, so that they could grab people’s attention. So I’m here to tell you that does not help. Later, we were replaced by a, what do they call them? A reality show. And I’m like, I can’t believe we were replaced by a reality show. How could that be? We had, we were not, you know, I don’t even watch TV, but it was like we were nominated for Emmys and all of that.

And I did it because I wanted to share my health and wellness tips from a natural perspective with people. And it was funny because I never even really watched the segments because I didn’t have a TV. And they said, yeah, the reality shows are, are much more popular. And I said, how could these reality shows be more popular? They’re so obviously scripted and fake phony and false. And the producer said, because it helps people feel better about their own lives. I never forgot that. When you’re watching these ridiculously scripted events with these characters, and it’s called reality, you’re, maybe not you, but the masses are looking at their life going, well, at least I don’t have a neighbor like that.

Or at least I’m not doing that. And this didn’t happen to me. So when you are looking at these horrendous images and narratives that are pushed, and you’re not even challenging them. And not only are you not challenging them, you’re forwarding them. You’re sending this to other people and you haven’t even vetted it. That really bothers me. Why are you adding? And I’m not you, but the masses. Why are you adding fuel to the fire? And I’ll tell you why. In an unconscious, unknowing way, you’re trying to make yourself feel better by comparison. Well, at least I didn’t lose my home.

At least my kids weren’t left home alone. At least I still have a job, even in your grief. So here’s the coping that really works. Stop with the sensationalized hogwash. Turn it off. Take a break. Stop it. You don’t need to watch all those movies. You don’t need to expose yourself to this stuff. Half of it, I don’t even believe. You will never hear me on this channel or any other channel telling you to watch those movies that are blockbuster hits. You will never hear me doing it. I don’t want to be exposed to it. You don’t need to be exposed to it.

There’s nothing personally you can do to change that by watching those images. It only damages you. And I believe that it is intentional. I absolutely do. I can’t hold back your friends, but a better way to cope is to expose yourself to more lighthearted things. And you’ll say, Peggy, I have to stay informed. Informed is different than obsessed. You have a beautiful vessel that God created. He does not want you to damage it with junk images, junk food, and everything else. See what you are sharing here, everybody. Thank you so much for being on board. If you are new to this channel, take a moment.

And actually, even if you’re not new, would you please resubscribe? YouTube has a habit of hiding my videos, of unsubscribing the subscribers here. Let me know in a comment how you cope in ways that don’t require upping the ante with worse and worse and worse horrible things. Give it a break. Protect your pristine vessel. I like how Rhonda said it. Raise your vibrations higher and higher. Get the negativity out of your mind. There’s a beautiful Bible verse. It is Philippians 4, 7, I believe, 4, 6, and 7 that says, just put your mind on the positive things.

Look at what is, I’m paraphrasing greatly, but it’s basically focus on what is honorable, lovely, peaceful, and that is going to help you cope with your grief. All right, friends, big shout out to the moderators and to all of you for being on board, and I’ll see you in an upcoming broadcast. [tr:trw].

See more of The Healthy American Peggy Hall on their Public Channel and the MPN The Healthy American Peggy Hall channel.