[JOE SANOK] Just a trigger warning before we jump into today’s episode; in this episode, we talk about drug use, we talk about suicide, and we talk about traumatic experiences, just so that you know before what you’re getting into. This is the Practice of the Practice Podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 749. I’m Joe Sanok, your host, and welcome to the Practice of the Practice Podcast. We’ve been doing this series throughout the summer called How I Got Through It and man, we’ve covered some ground. We talked about people who had kids that have ongoing seizures, infidelity, spinal injuries, disclosing an affair, or accidentally dating a married man or sexual abuse, I mean, just big heavy stuff. For me, this is all about seeing the other side of therapists and people that I know in my life, and also to learn from them. Back in episode 736 on June 22nd, I talked about just becoming an unexpected single dad. LaToya Smith interviewed me and asked a ton of different questions that maybe I wouldn’t have even thought to talk through. For me, this series is more about my own personal learning than maybe any other series I’ve done with Practice of the Practice to just hear from people how they’ve been through just big things, and then how they get through it, how are they getting through it, that it’s not this tidy bow that we tie up at the end like a movie and everything works out that sometimes things carry on and that’s okay. [JOE] Today I am so excited to have Ashley Mielke on the show. Ashley is one of our consultants with Practice the Practice, and just such a wonderful, kind soul that has joined our team. Ashley, welcome to the Practice the Practice podcast. I’m so glad that you’re here with us today. [ASHLEY MIELKE] Thank you so much for having me, Joe. I’m so excited to connect with you and share my story today. [JOE] Yes, it’s nice to be able to talk more personal things when most of our relationship is a business relationship, but to hear what motivates you and some of the things that have got you into mental health and things like that. So why don’t we start with who’s Ashley, tell us a little bit about your business, a little bit about your family, and then we’ll dive into your story? [ASHLEY] Sure. So, as you know, I’m Ashley Mielke, and I live in Beaumont, Alberta, Canada. I am married to a wonderful man named Derek, and I have a five-and-a-half-year-old son named Layton. I have been in practice as a registered psychologist since 2012, and I started my business in 2013 called the Grief and Trauma Healing Center. We are a large group practice with 20 clinicians, and we specialize in grief and trauma counseling. People often ask me how I got into this work, how I specialized in grief and trauma and it really was my own story of loss that propelled me into this field. [JOE] Well, where does it make sense to start the story in regards to your loss? [ASHLEY] I like to start when everything started to unfold in my life. I guess we can just start there, 2009, approximately and then see where it goes from there, I guess. [JOE] Tell us about 2009. [ASHLEY] So I was a young graduate student at the time. I was completing my Master of Science in Marriage and Family Therapy and my dad relapsed into alcohol and cocaine addiction. My dad struggled with addiction from my earliest memory. I mean, I have memories as early as five years old witnessing my dad drunk and witnessing some pretty traumatic experiences. When he relapsed, that was really devastating because he was a very impulsive alcoholic and drug user. He wasn’t someone who would just sit at home and drink. He would go out and he would disappear. We would often refer to these times as benders. So he would sometimes be on for a week at a time, and we wouldn’t know if he was alive or what was happening with him. When he relapsed, I remember feeling like he wouldn’t survive this relapse, like this was going to be the last time. So it was a year and a half of absolute hell watching himself destruct and the last time I saw my dad was for his 45th birthday. It was September, 2010, and we had gone out for dinner to Montana’s. After dinner I suggested that we go to a 12 Step meeting. So my dad and I went to an AA meeting, that was the program and the fellowship that he was involved in and he shared at the meeting that he was three days sober then. Very quickly I realized that my dad was not present and really, at least from my perspective, could care less to be there. I began to cry during this meeting with this sense that I had lost my dad. So after the meeting about a couple of weeks later, I called him and told him I could no longer have him in my life because it was too painful to watch him die a slow death. It was two months later when I got the phone call from his fiancé. That was November 26th, 2010, that he had just a bit of a trigger warning, I know you’ve also provided that Joe, around what happened with my dad, he went to take a shower and his fiancé found him in there. He had taken a razor blade from an exacto knife and cut his brachial artery on his arm. By the time she had found him, it was too late. She had called me at this point and said, the paramedics were working on him, but it wasn’t looking good. So I said, “Well, what do I do?” She said, “Meet us at the hospital.” I drove to the hospital and I was just completely numb at that point, and sort of was expecting the worst, but at the same time was still a bit hopeful. When I got to the hospital and entered into the waiting area where they put the family that’s when his fiancé came to me. I still remember her. She lept onto me and put her arms around me and said, “I’m so sorry, Ash. He didn’t make it.” I remember feeling like it was tunnel vision, like the walls were closing in around me. I couldn’t believe in that moment that my worst nightmare had come to pass. There were no tears yet. It was just like complete shock. Then I asked to go see him, and so she directed me to the room where he was laying. It’s that sort of typical scene, he’s laying under this white bedsheet in this very sterile hospital room, lifeless. That’s where I began to cry and, just really in that moment felt like my entire world was crumbling around me because, and I’m sure other people can relate to this, who have a family member who’s an addict, is my dad was not his addiction. He and I are very similar people, we’re people of faith. My dad was a very compassionate, loving, kind, generous person and he was different when he used alcohol and drugs. So I was just absolutely crushed when I saw that my best friend had died. So the interesting thing in that moment for me, so I’m a second year graduate student, I’m surrounded by people who are going to know how to help me. I just started practicing as a young therapist, literally two months before that and I thought, okay, I’m going to have the tools to be able to work through this, and I’m going to be able to talk to the right people. I left the hospital. I really didn’t know what to do. It was such a strange experience. I didn’t know, do I stay, do I go but I really felt this urgency to go and connect and keep busy and connect people at school. So I began to reach out. I reached out to my clinical supervisor at the time and let him know what had happened. His response to me, Joe, was, this will just make you a better therapist. I didn’t feel any sense of compassion just that somehow my dad’s death on that day was going to make me a better therapist, which at that time, I really could not comprehend. My heart was broken and shattered into a million pieces, and I really didn’t know how I was going to survive or move forward. Then I started to hear all of this other advice, like, you just have to get back to school, get back to work, just keep busy and all of these messages that I’m so strong. Like, you’re so strong, Ashley, you’re going to get through this. So I thought they must be right and I need to take their advice. So I did exactly that. I went back to school a week later, and remember, this is a master’s degree, a very intensive program, I went back to my clinical training, was sitting with clients, all of these things now as I reflect that I did not have the capacity emotionally to do and really myself into school and work and avoidance [THERAPY NOTES] Is managing your practice stressing you out? 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Again, use promo code [JOE] to get three months totally free. [JOE SANOK] I want to go back to, so before your dad died, so you’re in this clinical program and your father is going through these cycles and you’re learning more about mental health and all these, what was that like just personally going through a program where you’re learning all this stuff about mental health and you’re watching it unfold with your father before he passes? [ASHLEY] That’s such a great question. There was a lot of, I would say, discovery happening for me. I was making a lot of connections. I was understanding like intergenerational trauma and a little bit about grief and family patterns and understanding why my dad struggled so much with addiction. So there was a lot of connections that were being made, but not a whole lot of change, if that makes sense. [JOE] Yes. So when you say not a lot of change, like not a lot of change in you or not a lot of change in him? [ASHLEY] I think both. Like, I remember having conversations with my dad, and this was so long ago and teaching him and sharing all these concepts and theories and tools and things that I was learning, but not really grasping it on that, like that more emotional level yet. There was still so much learning and growth for me to do, and at that point it was just very high level, very intellectual at that point. [JOE] Then I think there can be that tendency, whether or not your parents are dealing with the issues your dad was dealing with, that when you’re learning all these new things when you go to your parents and you’re like, I’m learning all this stuff, and like, I can help you and change you. Or what your friends are in grad school, all of a sudden, all your friends become potential clinical people as well. And kids are in the worst position to oftentimes help affect their parents even if what they’re saying is brilliant. I would imagine like the stakes were so much higher for your dad than just the average parent child relationship that I would find that really frustrating to be learning these things and then to feel like it’s not resonating. [ASHLEY] Absolutely. I had done like the ACEs scale, the adverse childhood effect scale with my dad, which by the way, he is a 10 out of 10 on the ACEs scale. So he really had all odds stacked against him throughout his life based on his childhood experiences. To be honest, I’m shocked my dad made it as far as he did in his life and how successful he was in his life and how great of a dad he was in many, many ways based on these horrific childhood experiences that he had. So I felt so much compassion for my dad, and I had this like deep, deep longing and desire for him to get help. Like the biggest fear of my life was my dad dying. He was so erratic and he was so impulsive and so unpredictable that that worry like hung over me like a dark cloud literally until the day he died. [JOE] So take us through those next six months or so after your dad dies, so the school and people there, like, you’re so strong, this is going to make you a better therapist. What else did that look like in those handful of months after your dad passed? [ASHLEY] It was a lot of busy behaviors. Like I said, I really overcommitted myself to anything that kept me distracted. So a lot of projects and my clinical training. I was doing a lot of assessments with the clinical director. I was obviously very immersed in my schooling and just keeping very busy, so distracting with exercise and a lot of isolation as well. So I started to pull away from my friends and spent a lot of time alone. That’s when all my grieving happened. If it did come to the surface, it would be crying myself to sleep at night, crying in the morning when I would wake up, crying in the shower, crying on the drive to work, and then I would put on my happy face and just do what I had to do to get through another day. But it never escaped my mind. I mean, it was always top of mind and I felt so much fear about how I was supposed to move forward, how I was supposed to reconcile or heal from this loss. [JOE] So as you maybe step outside of that initial first three to six months, I mean the things that you described of what people were advising you, to me sounds like not super helpful, not super healthy, what most therapists would say typically, when did you start to realize that the overworking, over exercising, that wasn’t a healthy pattern for you? [ASHLEY] So it’s a really interesting story, and this is sort of the transition I guess into how I started the business and how I found healing after my loss. So a couple of years had passed, I had now graduated with my master’s degree. I jumped right into the registration process to become a psychologist here in Alberta and I very quickly buzzed through that program. This is a program that that takes provisional psychologists sometimes up to five years, and I did it in 12 months. So you can see Joe, I was just like, how much work can I do and how quickly can I get it done? I think that was a part of the avoidance. So this had all happened and now I’m a fully registered psychologist. I’m working for a private practice at the time, and all of these grieving people started to be referred to work with me. It wasn’t something I asked for or anything like that, but I just almost became the grief person and I really came alive sitting with those clients. I felt like I finally was connecting with people who knew the pain that I felt and I could listen to their stories. I felt such tremendous empathy for them, and I just wanted to hold space for them and remind them that they were not alone. Now with that said, I could do those things and hold space, but I didn’t have any tools to help them. I was still trying to figure out how to help myself at that time. So I went on to Google and I started to research grief programs or grief certifications available, and I came across this program called the Grief Recovery Method, which is the only evidence-based grief support program in the world designed to help grieving people recover from loss of any kind. I came across this program, it’s a US based program. I absolutely fell in love with the eBooks and the philosophy and the values behind this work, and I really appreciated that it was both heart-centered and action oriented and really honored a grieving person and the uniqueness of their loss and really debunked a lot of the myths and misinformation about keeping busy and intellectualizing grief and the stages of grief and all of that stuff that many of us are taught in grad school. So I signed up for the certification training, which was a four-day program. That was in 2013, so that was almost exactly three years after my dad’s death. The program was so transformative for me that four days, I think I cried for four days straight and took the actions of this program to complete what was emotionally unfinished in my relationship with my dad. It was incredibly permission giving. I felt heard, I felt validated in my pain, and I said goodbye to a lot of the, sort of unfinished business in my relationship with my dad. I was so inspired Joe, that the next day I went to the business registries and started my business, the Grief and Trauma Healing Center. [JOE] Wow. So when you think about habits, mindsets, anything that for you really helped you get through such pain, what were things that really helped you? [ASHLEY] I would say the initial key pieces for me were sharing my story and really feeling heard. I think that is so key for grieving people, and it certainly was for me, just being able to share my story without any judgment, without any criticism, without someone analyzing, someone intellectualizing or minimizing my feelings and really feeling heard. Because I think that’s what grievers want and need is to feel heard. So sharing my story was very cathartic. Then the actual program itself, going through the grief recovery method and really deconstructing my relationship with my dad, seeing what was unfinished, delivering those undelivered communications and moving forward with all of the sweet stuff in my relationship with him was super key on setting a foundation. Then just like understanding the misinformation that we’re taught in our culture about how to deal with grief. So realizing, gosh, it’s actually really normal to have feelings. It’s normal to miss your loved one, it’s normal to talk about them, that my dad is going to be a part of my story and my legacy every day for the rest of my life and there’s no shame in talking about him, thinking about him, having feelings, wishing you were here. That the grief, it changes, but it doesn’t necessarily go away forever. That there’s always going to be those feelings of loss throughout my life because he’s no longer here. Those were really huge for me in just giving myself permission to embrace like the full experience. [JOE] Now, when you think through, if you were to go back to any age and to give yourself some advice, what age would you go back to and what would you say to yourself? [ASHLEY] Oh, that’s so good. There’s like various time periods, but I would say like, such a vulnerable time for me was probably around like 13 years old when I was very lonely, very confused, very ashamed of my dad’s addiction, and just a whole lot of other things that I had gone through in my life. I think what I would say to my 13 year old self is that God is always working for your good, and everything that’s going to happen in your life is going to shape your character and it’s going to give you a depth of compassion and empathy for others, and that you’re going to be called to a life of service. So just to hang in there through these darker seasons, I think that’s what I would say. [JOE] As you think about people that are currently grieving or experienced loss what other advice, mindsets, tips, ways to get through it would you say to them? [ASHLEY] I would say give yourself permission to feel your feelings, honor your unique experience. Know that there’s nothing wrong with you, you are not broken, that you’re having a human experience and if you’re needing a bit of support or you’re wanting to reach out for support, to reach out to someone professionally or talk to a friend, someone who’s earned the right to hear your story so that you don’t have to journey through your grief alone. [JOE] So amazing. Well, thank you Ashley, so much for sharing your story today and how you got through it, how you’re getting through it ways that people can just think about grief and think about loss. I just so appreciate you being a part of our team, but also just for being another human that’s sharing how you’re getting through this. [ASHLEY] Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me to share my story today. [JOE] Yes, thank you so much for being on the show. [JOE] As I hear these stories, there’s just like more throughout that are just reminders just that idea that yes, we have feelings. It’s tough. You want to talk about your dad when he is not around. That’s a part of Ashley’s story. Any of these stories that we’ve heard over the last month or so talking through aspects of it is part of that processing. Even when I find myself talking about my divorce, becoming an unexpected single day at times I’m like, oh, I should be over this. But no, it’s a process. It was less than a year ago that all this blew up in my life. Talking with those trusted friends and debriefing it and sharing frustrations and all that is just part of it. That a great reminder from Ashley. Also, I mean, over and over we’ve heard people talk about unhelpful things people have said, and just a reminder to just sit with people and not necessarily say. This is going to be great for your career. I mean, that’s definitely not a helpful statement. So I’m just so thankful to have Ashley on our team and also for what she shared today. Also, we couldn’t do series like this without our amazing sponsors. Today Therapy Notes is our sponsor. Therapy Notes is the premier electronic health records out there. They also include teletherapy as part of it so you don’t have to get a Business Associates agreement with Zoom or anyone else. They integrate really well with your billing, and if you’re switching from another platform, they will help move all of those clients over so you don’t have to deal with all that logistical nightmare of switching platforms. Check out therapynotes.com and use promo code [JOE] at checkout to get your free months to try it out. Thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have an amazing day. I’ll talk to you soon. Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. 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