344. Reclaiming Joy: Jamie Lee Silver’s Techniques for Healing After Trauma

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Jamie Lee Silver, such a pleasure to have you on today.

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Thank you so much for being here.

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How are you?

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much for having me.

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Yeah, this is great.

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I'm so excited to be talking to you.

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For the audience, Jamie Lee Silver is known as the Grief to Gratitude Guru and is an
expert in utilizing EFT tapping and energetics to bring peace.

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to the heart and peace of mind to people.

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I did not read that correctly.

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To bring peace of being, peace of heart and peace of mind to people who are moving through
grief.

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Whew, that was a little bit of a twister for me.

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All right, so your story's heavy.

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And can you just tell the audience how you became to be known as the Grief of Gratitude
Guru?

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Sure.

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And yeah, you know, you're so right, Sandy.

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My story is heavy, but I'm not.

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Like my spirit isn't.

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And the reason that I do this is to help people to see and to experience and to feel that
they can turn poison into medicine, that they can make meaning from what

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ever it is they've experienced.

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And in my case, my passion, of course, is helping people who have experienced maybe not
exactly what I experienced, but something that really is heavy and to get their lives back

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afterwards.

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And that's the purpose of what I'm doing here.

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And my story is that being a mom was my favorite thing in the whole wide world.

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I had

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two wonderful boys, Aaron, who is in Portland now.

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I'm going to be visiting him soon and he's an amazing doctor and my very, very good
friend.

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And Ben, who was my baby.

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And Ben was my poet and singer and songwriter and just natural comic.

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timing just like we left and he was just delightful and he was delightful around everyone
he was.

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He was with he always had a big smile on his face and he was a star runner.

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And brought his team to state over and over and over again in Downers Grove, IL and he
wanted a scholarship full scholarship to college and an A1 school which he earned.

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But once he got there, it was like his body had run its course.

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Something was wrong with his ankle, which nobody could ever figure out.

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He lost his scholarship and just ended up getting diagnosed with late onset schizophrenia.

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And the next two and a half years are really, they were just the worst time in my life.

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And every morning I woke up, what can I do to keep my son alive?

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What can I do?

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What can I do?

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What can I do?

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What can I do?

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And the thing is, he had schizophrenia and his form of schizophrenia, he was convinced
that they were going to kill him.

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They, who knows?

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They were going to catch him and kill him and it wasn't going to end well.

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So actually every time and there were many times that over a six month period that he he
really wanted to end his life when he finally did.

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Of course, as the human me, I was devastated.

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But as the spiritual me, I could feel that he wasn't in this mental, spiritual anguish
anymore.

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And I, as a 30 -year practicing Buddhist, I had this, I have this way of living my life
that's called turn

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poison into medicine.

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And I had just discovered EFT tapping before Ben got sick.

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I used it throughout his illness.

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And then after, in the aftermath, I moved to Florida from the Chicago area.

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And I really dedicated myself to going to the best school there is around EFT tapping and

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worked on healing my own anguish, my own I wish I hads, my own if only it could have, all
of that.

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And I came out the other side and now I'm dedicated to helping others.

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Wow.

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It's...

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So, my brother died when I was 12.

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It was two weeks before my 13th birthday.

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And I watched my mom, you know, and I just told you I'd take care of my mom today.

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You know, she kind of checked out for a while, you know, for probably 10 years.

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And she had five children.

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And I remember her always being there, right?

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But it was like, I remember her sitting there, she'd have a cigarette in one hand, a cup
of coffee in the other.

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And she would like push the dollar across the counter, because that was my lunch money.

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And like, I didn't know what to do, right?

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Well, fast forward to when my son was born.

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And within the first 10 minutes,

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It was the most overwhelming feeling of love.

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And then came the fear.

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I had the same.

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the fear of exactly what you're talking about.

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And it's like, I just don't know how, you know, I know my mom, she, you know, she's 83.

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She, she moved on.

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I just don't know how it's even possible.

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And yes, audience, I am choking up a little bit here because I'm, I'm a crybaby and that's
okay.

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Most of it's hormonal.

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Exactly.

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But it was hard for me not to start crying just as you were talking about it because the
courage, I just look at you and I'm like, the courage that you have to come onto a podcast

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and talk about this.

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And thank you for what you're doing because we need people like you because for me, I
would feel like my life would be over, right?

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I don't know, because we don't know what we don't know, but.

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God forbid anything happened to my son who turns 24 in two weeks.

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I just don't even know if I could just, I just don't know if I could keep going.

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I honestly don't know.

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It's so devastating.

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So thank you for being here and thank you for being so vulnerable and sharing your story.

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Let's switch gears and make this more positive because I do, you know, obviously your son
is now,

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is not in pain like he was.

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And I know that's most horrible thing to say, right?

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When somebody passes, they're not in pain anymore.

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But in some cases, it's really very true, right?

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How do you use your spirituality to help you be okay with this and to be able to say that,
to say that, you know, like,

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Well, for me.

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And many of you out there who have lost loved ones, and first just let me add about your
mom, Sandy, is that when this happened, and I thought because I was such a spiritual

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person my whole life, I literally thought nothing bad was gonna ever happen to me.

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Like this was unfathomable, it truly was.

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Right in front of me, there opened up this hole in the ground, this chasm.

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And I knew that there were probably many people who just slipped down that hole.

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And I knew many of those who may be parents might have other children.

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And I've always seen my work

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as my hand reaching down into that and just saying, no, you can live in hope and
happiness.

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And I've proven that over and over with my clients.

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And I have great compassion for what you and your mom have been through.

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So in answer to your question, so when Ben, as I say,

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gained his angel wings of his own accord.

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He got his way.

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He'd been working on this and he got his way.

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I could feel him.

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And I knew that the love, the complete and utter, we adored each other.

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And I knew that love hadn't gone anywhere.

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That love, that essence of who he was, is, was right here, right here.

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So I did what, you know, any writer

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and believer of the spiritual life might do is I sat down and wrote to him and I said to
him, you know, you got your way, you ended your torturous road and you will have all of us

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praying for you and chanting for you.

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And I asked him, write through me, laugh through me, live your happiness all around me.

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I know you never meant to hurt me, not ever.

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Maybe you're sitting next to me right now.

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What do you have to say?

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And I kept my, and this is our forever Ben, our book of poetry from our first year.

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And I kept my pen on the paper and listened for his voice.

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And I just heard him really clearly say, mom, I did it.

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I meant to do it at the time.

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and I knew it would make you sad, but somehow I still had to do it.

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I could not say no.

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And this story is not yet written, is not yet told, but will be.

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My life and death have meaning, not had.

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It has meeting.

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Yeah, it has.

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Yes!

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Dearest mom, my closest friend, my absolute love, don't despair.

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I know you, you, you will create a life of meaning, of love, of warmth and creativity.

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Together we will live on.

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Together we will always live on.

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Enjoy the sun.

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Enjoy this day.

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Enjoy your life.

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Your forever Ben.

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And then every other time I sat down to write to him,

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I just listened and trusted that the words that I were hearing through his voice were
words that he meant to say and they're universal.

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They're not just for me, they're for everybody.

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so I had a conversation recently with someone and I'm trying to remember who it was.

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It wasn't on a podcast.

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was it was I was talking with someone and I and I said, you know, I've always kind of felt
that suicide is a very selfish act and the person I can't remember who it was.

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They're like, no, it's not.

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And it was really interesting.

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Do you want to explain that?

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Yeah.

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And at one point that came up after Ben died, that somebody said that it was a very
selfish act.

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And, actually somebody who knew Ben countered it and said, you know, no, in many ways, if
a person wants to take their, their own life, they may feel that they're a burden to their

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family.

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And

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they may be so scared, so unhappy, so sad that they really do not feel that they need
hope.

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putting selfishness into that equation, it doesn't compute, it should not be there.

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Well, and as this person said.

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I think it, geez, this is really bugging me.

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Because I normally remember who I'm talking to in conversations.

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But it was put in the context of something like, because we were talking about a specific
person that they knew that had recently taken their life.

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And it was kind of like that when a human reaches the point where they want to take their
own life, they are in so much pain.

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Yeah, exactly.

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they just want the pain to stop.

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And they're not thinking about their mom or their boyfriend or sister or girlfriend or
family.

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They're just thinking about, they just want this pain to stop.

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And it's the only way they know.

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And that really was so helpful for me because I honestly, know, I, thankfully, God,
thankfully, I do not have anybody close in my life that has ever taken their life.

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My older brother attempted.

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And sadly, my mother found him and called the ambulance.

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That would have been just like, come on.

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Like that was one thing.

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My brother is listening to podcast and I don't care if he hears it.

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That was really upsetting to me because I was like, how dare you?

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Right?

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Because I was like, you left yourself where mom can find you?

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And she already buried her other child like five years ago.

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Like, come on, right?

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But yeah, but he was in a lot of pain too.

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He was diagnosed with bipolar.

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He is now doing phenomenal.

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Has been on medication.

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Well, he was homeless for decades.

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I mean, my older brother died in 1978 and my older brother just could never, you know.

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just couldn't move forward with his life and was homeless and all of that.

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But he's great today.

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But it was just, and I think maybe that's where I get that from, that it was selfish
because I was like, how could you do this to mom?

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And she found you and you were almost dead.

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you know, so anyway, it is mental health is such a, it's such a terrible thing.

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And thank you again for being here.

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Yeah.

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Thank you.

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You bring up such a good point.

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And EFT, emotional freedom techniques, what it helps do is like there are people who have
lost loved ones to suicide who are angry as all get out, right?

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There are people

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who are angry at themselves, which of course was my problem.

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I really had to tap on all the things I wish I could have, but honestly it was out of my
hands.

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And what Ben tells me is that this was the plan, 22 years was it.

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And my work that I'm doing now to help other people, that was the plan.

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I don't know.

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You know, but that's what he tells me.

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And with EFT tapping, what we do is we take those emotions and what we do is tap on
certain parts of the body.

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And this is what I do.

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I teach people how to do this and I do it with them via Zoom all over the world because
what it has the power to do

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is take that emotion, whatever it is, guilt or anger, and as we're tapping and voicing it
and saying, giving it a voice and saying, deeply and completely love, honor, and respect

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myself or whatever version of that feels best to the person who's tapping, that emotion
just starts lifting like this.

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And what happens and definitely happened for me was that I started thinking more clearly.

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And there may be some of your listeners here who have experienced how that kind of a
traumatic death and death can be traumatic in various different ways, as can divorce, as

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can accidents.

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I work with people in all those realms and

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you get your thinking capacity back because that kind of trauma then it sends the hormone,
suddenly it's gone out of my mind, but it's like it takes your brain offline.

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And when you start tapping, you get your brain back.

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And mine came back better than ever despite the fact I couldn't remember that word.

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It's okay.

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You know, the thing is that, you you call yourself the grief of grad, the grief to
gratitude guru.

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Okay.

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And the thing is, is grief comes in many different sizes, shapes and sizes and forms, and
it doesn't have to be a death of another person.

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You know, you can grieve, you know, I left corporate America last year and that was a
grieving process, right?

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after being at a company for seven and a half years and I left to be an open time
podcaster.

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You you grieve in so many different ways.

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So can you just dive in a little bit deeper as to how the tapping works so that people
understand?

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I mean, I understand what it is, but yeah.

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Yeah.

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So what happens when we have, and I'm going to use the word trauma here, when we have
emotions.

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Gary Craig, who was one of the first people who really worked with tapping and set the
protocols many of us use right now, he said that any negative emotion is a disruption

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in your body's energy system.

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So what we do by tapping is take that disruption, call it by its name, identify where it
lives in our body, which was a revelation to me.

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Until I started tapping, I did not know that emotions live in our body.

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And what we do is we tap, say, this anger in my stomach.

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and name the specific time that we're thinking about that anger in our stomach.

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And when we start, we stay close to the here and now.

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Like, you know, what was it in the last few days that might've made you frustrated?

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And it may be a boss, it may be a car.

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And then we start gently working with your nervous system.

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And as we tap your sending signals,

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that it can calm down, that it can get out of fight, flight, or freeze.

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Great.

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And as we work with the nervous system, just you start to come back, which is why I say
you can get your life back through tapping.

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And it's such a joy to watch people do.

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And it is actually, I'm not sure if it sounds fun when I'm talking about it, but it
actually is really fun because in each session, there's a release.

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And as that release happens, many of my clients are like, wow, I didn't know I could do
that.

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Yes, you can, working with your body, release negative emotions and then of course bring
positive emotions in.

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gosh, that's amazing.

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And I want to share when you talk about the body storing it.

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And I think when we talked yesterday, I think I was telling you about this, that for years
leading up to like from the beginning of September, my brother died on September 30th,

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1978, leading up to that, I didn't know what was wrong, but I would kind of go through a
little bit of a depression.

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And it was probably...

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It was probably three decades went by and I didn't connect it.

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You know, and I've since worked through it and now I'm aware.

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And once you're aware of it, you're like, that's what that is.

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You know, now like it's fine.

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It doesn't affect me anymore because I'm aware of it.

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I'm aware of that's what's going on.

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But yeah, for years I was like, why?

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Because it's right before my birthday.

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And I'm like, why do I get so sad before my birthday?

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I just never put the two together.

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But your body remembers a trauma.

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you know, speaking of trauma, no matter when somebody dies that's close to you, that's
traumatic.

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It doesn't have to be a tragic death.

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It's still trauma.

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mean, trauma comes in so many shapes and sizes.

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And I'm bringing that up, Jamie Lee, because

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I had PTSD from experiencing my brother dying.

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And for so long I would minimize it.

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I'm like, well, I have a form of PTSD because I felt like PTSD was reserved for only our
soldiers who were overseas fighting.

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that, so my PTSD is nothing compared to what they went through.

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And I learned that no, trauma is trauma.

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It doesn't matter.

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It comes in all shapes and sizes.

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And if it's the first time you've ever felt it, it's real.

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And it's a big deal.

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yeah, and it lives inside your body.

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I didn't know there was something called the freeze response.

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I thought it was just fight or flight.

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But then, of course, as I've learned to become trauma informed in the various courses that
I've taken, and I once worked with a woman whose daughter died in childbirth.

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So every time.

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was giving birth or.

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Yes, and the child lived.

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So every time it was time to celebrate her grandchild's birthday, she would kind of go
offline.

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It was very difficult for her to go through those motions.

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And we worked together and we worked what I call future tapping.

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So it's like imagining what it was like kind of each step of the way and taking each one
of her fears and tapping before it happens for anticipatory grief.

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And she told me it was the best birthday she'd ever had with her granddaughter.

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Yeah.

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That's so beautiful.

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All right.

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Well, the last thing I want to talk about is that you founded a nonprofit called Ben's
Memorial Mile, and you've raised more than $150 ,000 for the National Alliance for Mental

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Illness and the Body and Brain Behavior Institute for Brain Research to Cure
Schizophrenia.

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That's incredible.

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Tell us a little bit more about that and how people can find you to donate.

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You can go to BenzMemorialMile .com.

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The pictures of our last race, which was just August 10th, just happened, are on there.

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And first of all, I want to say that I take very little credit for this.

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mean, the first couple of years, was really...

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But now the committee that creates it...

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They're the ones that really do the lion, the huge amounts of work.

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But it's so much fun.

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It's in Downers Grove, Illinois, where I raised Aaron and Ben.

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And it is this warm, fun family festival that kids come out to walk or run with their
parents.

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And then we had music all day long at the band shell in Fishel Park.

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We had National Alliance of Mental Illness, Hope for the Day.

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kids booths, all this stuff.

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And it's just so Ben, it's just so Ben.

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We welcome everybody with hugs if they're huggers and people look forward to it year after
year after year and it's building in momentum.

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I love that.

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my gosh, that's incredible.

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Well, Jamie Lee, this is awesome.

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Is there anything else that you'd like to share before we finish up?

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asked me to share some happiness tips that your audience could use.

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And I want to take a moment to mention a couple of them that have really served me.

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One of them is, and you're going to say, I've heard this before because you have heard
this before, but it really works, is writing

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a list of 10 gratitudes in the morning when you wake up.

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Even if it's things like, I feel grateful that I opened my eyes today and that I can see
and that I can talk.

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It can be fundamental about your life, but it will start your day on a pickup.

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It really will.

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Music and dancing.

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put on some music and dance.

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Moving our bodies helps to unstuck the stuck energy, plus music makes us happy.

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So I would recommend that.

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and dance like nobody's watching.

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do it, I do, I dance like nobody's watching all the time and usually people are watching,
but I don't care.

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You know, I could tell that about you.

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You're so free in your body.

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Yeah, I love that.

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That's great, Sandy.

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And if you have an emotion that you are uncomfortable, first of all, it's really, really
important to work with a practitioner.

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As an energy healer myself, I feel the energy that's going on with my clients.

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And I know exactly where we need to go and what would best serve them.

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So I really recommend if it's not me, you find a practitioner.

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And the other thing is when you're tapping to just say, even though I feel this way, even
though I feel this anger, it's okay to feel the way I feel.

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And it's okay to release it.

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you know, so many.

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thank you, Jamie.

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Those were incredible.

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And I hope everybody found value in that.

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And these are amazing things that you can apply in your life right now.

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And I just want to add on to that, because I think that society and I don't know if it's,
you know, school or parents or just culture.

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I don't know what it is, but somewhere along the line, I know I was told and I feel like,
you know, it's not OK to get angry.

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You can't be angry.

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No, folks, it's okay to be angry.

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It's okay to feel sad.

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It's okay to have grief.

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It's okay to get frustrated.

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You are human.

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We are all human.

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Unfortunately, we're humans that are just doing instead of humans that are being, right?

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And we want to get back to that being, that human being by using methods like Jamie Lee
offers.

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with the EFT tapping because that's another way to just learn how to when you, because
we're going to get triggered.

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The triggers are never going to go away, right?

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We're going to keep getting triggered multiple times a day.

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Yeah, it's going to happen.

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And it's what you choose to do with it that matters.

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But I like to throw that in.

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just, people just let yourself off the hook.

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It's okay to experience.

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And on one of my episodes here,

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I had somebody who wrote the book, Science of Happiness.

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I can't remember his name.

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I've interviewed like 370 people.

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But he talks about how science has proven that the happiest people are those that
experience the full range of emotions.

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And you got to feel it.

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And I know that that just gave me so much grace because it's like, you know what?

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It's OK.

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It's OK.

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So beautiful.

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It's so important.

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Yeah, so important.

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00:31:59,973 --> 00:32:02,346
Jamie Lee, this has been such an amazing conversation.

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Thank you so much for the work that you're doing.

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00:32:04,658 --> 00:32:08,031
Everybody check out Jamie Lee Silver.

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Her website is tapforhappiness .com.

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On LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, she's Jamie Lee Silver.

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And all of those links are in the show notes as well.

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00:32:19,664 --> 00:32:21,325
So thank you.

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00:32:22,047 --> 00:32:22,664
Yeah.

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00:32:22,664 --> 00:32:29,368
send me an email at tapforhappinessatgmail .com, I'll send you a PDF of our poetry.

374
00:32:29,368 --> 00:32:32,370
It's really beautiful, of my book.

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00:32:32,614 --> 00:32:36,198
Jamie Lee sent that to me yesterday and I can't wait to dive in.

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00:32:37,620 --> 00:32:38,772
Thank you, Jamie Lee.

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Thank you so much.

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And everyone have a great day and may you always have lasting peace and happiness in your
life.

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00:32:48,354 --> 00:32:49,925
Thanks everyone, bye.