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When a Memory Hits You Like Fear

Grieve That Sh!t

Release Date: 11/28/2025

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Grieve That Sh!t

Episode Description “Your life isn’t broken. Your heart is.” In this episode of Grieve That Sh!t, Sharon Brubaker, grief specialist and founder of The Grief School, breaks down why so many grievers stay stuck in pain for years… even while trying everything they can to survive it. After losing her nephew Austin, Sharon realized the problem wasn’t that grievers were weak. The problem was that nobody taught us how to grieve. So we stay busy. We avoid the pain. We push it down. And we keep trying to “get over” something our body is still trying to process. In this episode, Sharon...

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Episode Description “You’re not broken. You’re trying to heal something you don’t even understand.” In this episode of Grieve That Sh!t, Sharon Brubaker, grief specialist and founder of The Grief School, breaks down the real reason so many people feel stuck in their grief. After losing her nephew Austin, Sharon learned that grief isn’t just about loss. It’s about what happens when you’re left trying to survive something no one ever taught you how to process. No one gave you the language. No one gave you the instructions. And now you’re trying to figure it out while...

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Episode Description “Grief is already painful. But the way you’re trying to survive it might be making it harder.” In this episode of Grieve That Sh!t, Sharon Brubaker, grief specialist and founder of The Grief School, breaks down what most people unknowingly do in the first year of grief that increases their suffering. After losing her nephew Austin, Sharon learned that grief is not just about loss. It is about what happens when you’re left trying to survive something no one ever taught you how to process. The first year is the most confusing. The most painful. And the year you get...

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Episode Description “Your brain is not trying to hurt you. It’s trying to understand what just changed your entire life.” In this episode of Grieve That Sh!t, Sharon Brubaker, grief specialist and founder of The Grief School, breaks down why your mind keeps replaying the moment your person died. After losing her nephew Austin, Sharon learned that grief is not just emotional. It is a full body and brain experience that records life-altering moments with intense detail. The phone call. The hospital room. The last words. These moments stay vivid not because something is wrong with you, but...

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Episode Description “The part of your grief that hurts the most is often the part you never say out loud.” In this episode of Grieve That Sh!t, Sharon Brubaker, grief specialist and founder of The Grief School, talks about the stories grievers carry but rarely share. After losing her nephew Austin, Sharon learned that grief is not just about missing someone. It is also about the moments that changed everything—the phone call, the hospital room, the last words, the unanswered questions. These are the parts most people don’t talk about. Not because they don’t want to. But because they...

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Episode Description “Grief doesn’t feel confusing because you’re broken. It feels confusing because no one ever showed you how to understand it.” In this episode of Grieve That Sh!t, Sharon Brubaker, grief specialist and founder of The Grief School, breaks down one of the biggest gaps in grief support: no one actually helps you understand your grief. After losing her nephew Austin, Sharon learned that grief is not just sadness. It is a full body experience that affects your sleep, your thoughts, your memory, your identity, and your daily life. And yet, most people are never given the...

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Episode Description “You’re not stuck because you still love them. You’re stuck because of the attachment.” In this episode of Grieve That Sh!t, Sharon Brubaker, grief specialist and founder of The Grief School, sits down with a narc recovery coach and author of Toxic Charm to break down one of the most confusing and painful relationship dynamics people experience. After losing her nephew Austin, Sharon learned that grief is not just about death. It shows up anywhere attachment is broken. And when narcissistic patterns are involved, that attachment becomes even more intense,...

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Episode Description “Grief does not get louder because you are weak. It gets louder because it has nowhere to land.” In this episode of Grieve That Shit, Sharon Brubaker, grief specialist and founder of The Grief School, talks about something most grievers never receive after loss: a true witness to their grief story. After losing her nephew Austin, Sharon learned that grief is not just sadness. It is the mind and body trying to process something life changing that the world around you quickly moves on from. While everyone else returns to their normal life, the griever often finds...

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Episode Description “Unprocessed grief does not disappear. It shows up in the way you attach, the way you fear, and the way you love.” In this episode of Grieve That Shit, Sharon Brubaker, grief specialist and founder of The Grief School, sits down with Sean Walker, a faith-based relationship coach who helps men and women understand attachment patterns, regulate their nervous systems, and stop repeating the same painful relationship cycles. After losing her nephew Austin, Sharon learned that grief is not just sadness. It is what happens when love has nowhere to land. And that same injury...

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Episode Summary:
This episode cracks open one of the most frightening and misunderstood parts of grief: when a memory hits your body like a shock. You’re sitting still, lost in a moment with your person, and suddenly your stomach drops, your breath tightens, your heart races, and you remember all over again that they died. It feels like you’re grieving in two places at once.

Sharon Brubaker takes you inside the neurobiology behind that jolt. She breaks down how the hippocampus pulls old memories like scenes from a movie, why the amygdala tags those memories as danger, and how your brain fires survival signals long before you can think. This isn’t denial and it isn’t weakness. It is your nervous system trying to protect you from emotional injury, and it moves faster than the rest of you can keep up.

Through real-life examples and clear teaching, Sharon explains why certain memories hit harder, why they cycle over and over, and why it feels like the loss is happening in real time even years later. Most importantly, she shows you what it takes to calm the system that’s been stuck on high alert and how real healing begins when you learn to process the pain—rather than waiting for it to fade on its own.

Key Points Discussed:
• Why your brain drops you into old memories without warning
• How the hippocampus and amygdala replay emotional pain as if it’s happening now
• Why the body reacts before the mind understands
• What reconciliation shock is and why it feels like losing your person twice
• How unresolved emotion keeps your nervous system stuck in survival mode
• Why memory jolts soften once grief pain is processed
• What Processing the Pain of Grief teaches your brain to finally settle

Journal Questions:
• What memory pulls your body into a sudden drop
• What part of that memory still feels emotionally unresolved
• How does your body respond before your mind catches up
• What does the second wave feel like when the truth hits
• What would change in your life if your brain learned to soften these jolts

Conclusion:
These memory shocks don’t mean you’re going backwards. They don’t mean you’re in denial. They are the biology of grief doing what it was never taught to do differently. When you learn how to process the pain, the brain finally stops hitting the danger button every time you touch the past. Your system settles. The memories soften. The grief stops feeling like an ambush.

This is the work. This is the shift. This is where healing begins.

Contact Us:

Ready to calm your grief brain and learn how to process the pain, not just survive it

Join Sharon Brubaker inside Processing the Pain of Grief, her live classroom where you learn what your brain is doing, how grief works in the body, and how to move the pain out instead of holding it in.

Learn more and get support inside The Grief School community.

Website: thegriefschool.com

Contact: info@thegriefschool.com

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