You Survived the Crisis. So Why Does Everything Feel Harder Now? S1E3

You made it through. You kept leading, kept executing, kept showing up for everyone around you. And now, months later, something feels off and you cannot explain it.

This episode names what nobody in your leadership circle has given you language for. It is called Post-Crisis Lag™, the gap between when loss happens and when grief finally catches up to the leader who never stopped executing. It does not show up during the crisis. It shows up after, when everyone around you assumes you have already handled it.

Leadership strategist and behavioral consultant Brigitte Brown Jackson breaks down exactly what Post-Crisis Lag™ is, why it hits high performers hardest, and what it actually looks like when it shows up in your leadership. If you have been more irritable than usual, creatively flat, withdrawn, or questioning your purpose without a clear reason, this episode was recorded for you.

The book Grief Has a Personality by Brigitte Brown Jackson is available for pre-order now. Visit griefhasapersonality.com to get your name on the list and take the free Grief Response Profile to discover your grief leadership style.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, Bridget, I'm not a right. I'm your host, Bridget Brown Jackson. It's the three at the personality.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Hey everybody, it's your girl Bridget Brown Jackson. And listen, you're in episode number three of our new podcast, Grief Has a Personality. You survived the crisis. So why does everything feel harder now? Well, I want to first open up with this disclaimer because I want you to understand the content of this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional mental health therapeutic advice and definitely not a diagnosis or treatment. All right? All right, so let's get in. Let's get in, let's get in, let's get in. Um, you made it through. Yeah, you made it through. Whatever that it was, the loss, the crisis, the transition, the thing that everybody around you might have been watching. Some people might have been waiting for you to break, but you didn't. You made it through. You kept showing up, you kept leading, you kept performing at a high level that probably even surprises yourself. And now, months later, uh years later, year, two years later, something's wrong. Something's off, and you can't explain it. Well, you might be a little bit more irritable than you used to be. Your creativity might be off. You know, it might be flat where it used to be vibrant. Um, decisions that came easily for you might feel weighted now. You might be even withdrawing from people you love. Ouch. Uh, you might be going through the motions of your own life and wondering why nothing else feels the same. It doesn't fit anymore. Everybody around you though might think you're fine. You handle it, you moved on, you were strong. So why does everything feel harder now than it did when it was actually happening? Well, I have a name for what you're experiencing. It's called post-crisis lag. Yes. And once you name it, guess what? You can understand it. You will never ever look at your own resilience the same way again. Again. Post-crisis lag. So let me explain it so you understand it. It's that gap between when what you lost happened and when the grief finally catches up to you or whoever that person is that stopped performing, right? So I want to say it again because I want to make sure that you understand this. It is definitely, definitely needed. Post-crisis lag is the gap between when the loss happened and when grief finally catches up to the person who stopped, just stopped trying to just outperform it. It doesn't work. So here was what that means in practicality. When the crisis hit, high-functioning leaders they do what they're wired to do. Yeah, we activate, we manage, we hold the room together, we do all of the stuff. But guess what? While we're moving, things are falling apart. Um, but falling apart is really not an option because people are counting on you, and so it's an internal thing. Yeah, people don't see it. So I want you to understand this because I want you to understand how this is affecting you and everything, right? Grief doesn't disappear just because you're busy, it needs um, it needs help because it doesn't respect your calendar, it doesn't respect your deadlines, it doesn't care about your title. Grief is gonna show up. And what happens sometimes is it goes underground and it waits. And while you're producing and you're performing and you're telling yourself everything is okay, hey, yeah, that's not it. So one day, sometimes, months later, even a full year later, that's what it was for me. It can be even more than that. It catches up, and when it does, guess what? It doesn't announce itself as grief, it shows up as irritability, it might show up as fatigue that I don't care how much rest you try to get, it doesn't happen. It can show up as a personality shift that's so subtle that even you don't notice it, but maybe the close people around you might notice it. It can show up as disconnection from work, it can show up in many different facets. But here's the thing leaders who experience post-crisis lag almost never connected to loss.

unknown 5:26

Nope.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

It's far from it. So you think that you handled it, so you think it has nothing to do with that. Well, that's until grief runs out of a room to hide. And so, therefore, there comes post-crisis lag, right? So the reason why um it hits high performers hardest is because we are the most skilled at outrunning our own grief. Now, let me just stop for a second and explain grief. Because when I talk about grief, I am not talking about grief related to death. I'm talking about grief of any loss, right? So that competence is uh the greatest way for us to be able to get through it. So you spend years, decades developing the ability to work and function under pressure. You compartmentalize, you push through it, right? That's what we do as high-performing leaders. But guess what? We weren't designed for that. We weren't never designed to replace the work of grief. I hope you caught that. So while we're functioning and we're high-performing leaders, we have to always remember the fact that we can't outrun it. It's gonna eventually catch up with us. And here's why this conversation is so important because the lag is what happens when the gap between the performance and the pain finally closes. Well, you can do something about it if you name it and if you absolutely understand it. I hope that absolutely makes sense to you. So, post-crisis lag has specific signs. So it's gonna show up. And I want you to recognize what those signs are. So one of them could be decision fatigue. So decisions feel disproportionate from your actual decisions that are being made, right? So the leader who used to be very, very decisive, suddenly start second-guessing themselves. You might be consuming uh uh it just might be overwhelming to you with cognitive and emotional, your cognitive rather and your emotional bandwidth might like be just off. And you're like, where is this coming from? Another area might be relational withdrawal. Leaders that used to be connected and you're wired to help other people, support other people, be there, have those connections. Yep, you are not, and then here's the thing that that is harmful. Most people read that as it's disengagement when it's not. What about the personality shift? That's another one, and I can actually uh connect to that one because for me, uh the soul sharer, I'll disconnect, right? And then we have the strider, we have the insight seeker, and we have the anchor. And we want to understand how all of them, how their personalities might change, right? And then another area is you might lose your purpose clarity. You know, sometimes leaders who've always known exactly what they want, then suddenly everything seems confusing. The mission that they had that was very, very clear becomes fuzzy. And that's not a calling crisis, that is post-crisis lag. And it's disguised. And when you know how to name it, then you can help it. So here, I want to take you out. I want to make sure that I give you some applicable ways of using this. And so here's what I want you to do. I want you to think back. Think back on that year, think back 18 months ago. Was there a loss that you moved through quickly? Was there a crisis that you handled well? How did you navigate that? Did anything slow down? Now I want to think up, want you to think about where you are today. Is something off that you haven't been able to explain? Are you operating below what you know the capacity for you? Are you very fatigued and tired in a way that rest is not fixing? If you answered any of those as a yes, I want you to consider maybe you're going through post-crisis lag. Now, I need you to understand that you did not fail to grieve. You grieved the way that you were able to grieve, but you kept moving. And guess what? That catches up with you. So post-crisis lag definitely is not a character flaw, but it's just a consequence of what's happening and what you're going through. The great thing now is though, you have language for it. All right. I want to just share a little bit because personally I know about post-crisis lag, and I know it from the inside. When my son Jesse died, I kept moving. I spoke, like literally, I was powerfully speaking. Um, I spoke powerfully at his funeral. I completed speaking engagements, I wrote, I published a book six months after his death. I stood on national stages. I mean, I was functioning at a high level. And it looked like strength from the outside, because it was strength, but it was not wholeness. Like 12 months after I lost him, the lag caught up with me. And I mean, my personality shifted. The part of me that processed through connection and expression was completely silent. What I have been calling resilience finally showed me what I was carrying the whole time. And that was again post-crisis lag. That experience um did not just break me, but it absolutely built the framework that I'm explaining to you today. And so this concept actually exists because of the fact that I had to go through that. And I didn't have a tool, I didn't have this, what I'm sharing with you to go through. And that's why I've developed it because I want other people to be able to name it. I want you to be able to name it. And so here's what I want you to do this week to help you with naming it. First of all, I want you to go to griefhasapersonality.com and I want you to take my grief response profile. It's free, and it's gonna show you your grief style, it's gonna help you understand your specific wiring and how it may be contributing to that lag, right? And then, second, I want you to get the book. So the book, Grief as a personality, will be hitting the stands in just a few days, right? And so I want you to go to that same website and I want you to get on the pre-order list. So go ahead and pre-order and buy your book. It's gonna go into more detail than we talk about on this podcast, and it's really going to help you. So, again, the link uh to the pre-sale is on my website, and that website is griefhasapersonality.com. Again, it has been a pleasure to be here with you. My name is Bridget Brown Jackson. I am the host of Grief has a personality, and I am glad that you were here with me today. Can't wait for you to come back for the next episode where we dive in even more. So I hope you enjoyed learning and understanding about post-crisis lag. What are those indicators that you're seeing? And even I would like to even add, what if um with the lag that you're dealing with is compounded? Mmm, we're gonna talk about that soon. What if the lag that you're dealing with is compounded? What if that lag is something new that might be even minor, but because there was something major in the past that was not dealt with, that right there is causing the lag to show itself even more. We'll talk about that later. Again, I'm Bridget Brown Jackson. Thank you for considering grief as a personality, being here today, and taking out time out of your busy schedule to be with us. See you on the next episode.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

I'm your hope, Bridget Brown Jackson.