Ep #317: The Pressure to Be Productive in Grief

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, Episode 317: The Pressure to Be Productive in Grief.

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, the only podcast that offers a proven process to help you work through your grief, to grow, evolve, and create a future you can truly look forward to. Here’s your host, Master Certified life coach, grief expert, widow, and mom, Krista St-Germain.

Hey there, welcome to another episode of the podcast. Today we’re going to talk about something I see all the time in grief coaching, and that’s the pressure to be productive.

So here’s what we’re going to cover in this episode. First, we’ll look at where this pressure comes from, why so many of us feel it, especially after the loss. And then I’ll help you identify how this narrative might be showing up in your life, even if you don’t realize it. And finally, we’ll talk about how this pressure affects your grief and what you can do instead.

So, if you’ve been judging yourself for not doing enough or feeling like you have to earn your way through grief by getting things done, this episode is for you.

A little update on my life before we jump in. House prep mania continues. Pictures are scheduled for this Friday. I have cleaned all of the windows that I can reach from the inside, which is actually a lot of windows. They mostly open up from the inside and I can reach them on the outside, but there are some that I can’t reach, so those will be cleaned later this week. 

I have been still power washing. Power washing, power washing, power washing. The driveway, I learned, once you start power washing your driveway, you really are fully committed. I kind of accidentally power washed part of the driveway after finishing power washing the brick on the front porch because it really needed it.

And then I did a spot on the driveway by accident, and it looked so different then I had to do the whole rest of the driveway. It actually looked like that concrete there had been replaced, which is wild. So, power washing is fun and also, once you get in there, you’re kind of committed. We also have a little drainage thing in the back where water that splashes out of the pool can go, and it just got so backed up with mud. 

So I’ve been power washing that. Yesterday, I looked like I had played a full round of mud volleyball. I was covered because you spray it and the mud just squirts everywhere. So, that’s been fun. Dad and I repaired and painted part of the front face of the house, looking so much better.

And I found a house yesterday that I like. Don’t know if it will end up being mine, but fingers crossed. It ticked most of the boxes. I left really excited about it.

And then of course, over the weekend, after a storm, the internet went out. And that’s fun. So, no video today. We’re doing audio only. But that’s what’s going on in my neck of the woods. So, I hope that things are going well for you. And with that, let’s talk about productivity in grief. So, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but it’s becoming increasingly more clear to me that we really do live in a culture that worships productivity.

We are taught from such a young age to measure our value by what we produce. Grades, trophies, right? And it gets so much worse as we get older. Clean houses, promotions, checked boxes, do all the things. And that mindset doesn’t go away just because your person died. In fact, for a lot of widows, the pressure to be productive actually ramps up because it’s like we feel the impact of grief slowing us down, and we live in a world that values speed and performance.

So slowing down can actually feel like failure. We start to worry that we’re going to be lazy. It feels like such an undesired label. And people say things to us like, “I’m glad to see you staying so busy.” “You seem to be getting so much done. I don’t know how you do it all, right?” Or, “I’m impressed at how fast you went back to work,” as though that’s some sort of accomplishment. All of these very subtle, and some not so subtle, reinforcements that productivity is important, that it’s valuable.

And maybe you’re seeing it around you, but maybe you don’t think you’ve internalized this pressure. And so I want to tell you that it can be quite sneaky. And it can show up in thoughts, maybe you’ll notice these from your brain, like, “I should be doing more. If I don’t stay busy, I’ll fall apart. I need to get back to normal. I’ve wasted so much time.” Or maybe you’re measuring days and deciding that the good days were days where you got stuff done. Maybe you think about resting and then you feel guilty about that or you worry that it means you’re lazy.

Some of us try to turn our grief into personal development projects, right? It’s like we have to do something with our grief and make ourselves better and therefore, because we did something and made ourselves better, somehow we’re more valuable. Or maybe, and I see this in almost every client I’ve ever worked with, you’re telling yourself that you should be further along than where you are.

If any of those things sound familiar, that is productivity seeping in to your internal narrative, and you are not alone. I did it too. I still struggle with it. And most of my clients don’t realize that it’s happening to them. They don’t really see it until we start coaching on it. They think they’re just being realistic. They think they’re just doing what needs to be done. But really, most of us have absorbed a belief system that says, “My worth is tied to my output.” And it’s just not true. I really want you to hear me on that.

Then, think about the impact of this in grief. When we’re trying to be productive in grief because we’ve decided that our value comes from our ability to be productive, it gets in the way of actually processing your grief. When you’re constantly doing, there’s no space for feeling. When you judge your days by how much you get done, by your output, you’re reinforcing the idea that rest or stillness means that you’re failing.

And when you avoid your pain by staying busy, that pain doesn’t go away. It just gets shoved down, and it builds up, and eventually, it will resurface in surprising ways.

So you are not a machine. Grief is not a job. You do not have to earn your way to worthiness. I promise you, your worthiness is fully intact. It cannot be taken away from you. It’s just innate. Resting is not lazy. Processing what happened is incredibly important. Processing how you feel about what happened and what continues to be present and alive for you is important. Your to-do list has zero to do with your value. All of these things feel important to me to say because we do live in a culture that says your value is tied to what you produce.

A couple of questions I want to leave you with that you can ask yourself. What do you believe about yourself when you’re not being productive? And where did that belief come from? What would it feel like to give yourself permission to rest without guilt? And lastly, what are you afraid will happen if you stop pushing and just let yourself feel? What if you stop pushing and you just notice what’s happening in your body?

And maybe as I say these questions, you notice some resistance coming up, and that’s totally okay. It just means that you’re waking up to a story that you’ve probably been told your whole life, and it feels uncomfortable to question it. That old part of our brain that likes to seek pleasure and avoid pain and be efficient doesn’t like questions that challenge the things that are unconscious. It doesn’t want to change. 

So that’s okay. Resistance is normal. It’s always a part of the change process. Don’t worry about it. And asking yourself questions like this is important work. It’s valuable. It takes you toward what it is you want next.

So, here’s what we talked about today. The pressure to be productive in grief is not your fault. It comes from a culture that links your value to what you do. And you might be carrying that pressure without realizing it. It’s very subtle. You might be judging your grief, your days, your worth, based on your output, and you wouldn’t be alone in that. And that pressure to produce isn’t helping you. It’s not helping you process your grief. It’s just adding another layer of suffering to the pain that already exists.

So you don’t need to get through grief faster. You don’t need to prove anything to anyone. And your worth is already fully intact, whether you get anything done today or not. Grief is not a race. Life is not a race. It is not a checklist, and you are not behind.

If this resonated with you, if you’re tired of feeling like you have to perform your grief or prove that you’re okay, I’d love to support you inside my Mom Goes On coaching program. You can learn more about it by going to CoachingWithKrista.com, clicking on the Work With Me tab. You can learn all about it there. All right, that’s what I have for you this week. Remember, I love you. You’ve got this. Take care, and I’ll see you next week. Bye.

If you like what you’ve been hearing on this podcast and want to create a future you can truly get excited about even after the loss of your spouse, I invite you to join my Mom Goes On coaching program. It’s small group coaching just for widowed moms like you where I’ll help you figure out what’s holding you back and give you the tools and support you need so you can move forward with confidence. 

Please don’t settle for a new normal that’s less than what you deserve. Go to coachingwithkrista.com and click Work With Me for details and next steps. I can’t wait to meet you.