EP 174: Grief Is a Verb: Seven Principles I'm Living After Losing AmadaEP 174: Grief Is a Verb: Seven Principles I'm Living After Losing Amada
The Biology of Trauma™ With Dr. Aimie
Dr. Aimie shares seven practical principles she is using in real time after the sudden death of her dog Amada, focusing on how her body and nervous system are moving through grief. The conversation centres on feeling sadness without numbing, avoiding toxic positivity and finding safe ways to stay connected to life and supportive people.
52:12•19 May 2026
Grief in Motion: Dr. Aimie’s Seven Principles for Surviving Sudden Loss
Episode Overview
- Identify your own grieving style, often linked to attachment patterns, so you can ask for the space or contact you actually need.
- Let your body be fully held with chairs, pillows and weighted items so it can soften, reset to safety and allow feelings to rise.
- Anchor yourself to life and aliveness during shutdown through warmth, gentle movement and small living details around you.
- Feel grief but don’t feed it with sad triggers, mental stories or endless scrolling through memories; come back to the present sensations instead.
- Choose not to numb with food, alcohol, shopping or screens, and reach out only to people who can stay with your grief without trying to fix it.
“Your body knows how to grieve. It knows how to move through this and not get stuck in grief.”
What drives someone to seek a life without shutting down emotionally after loss? This episode follows physician and trauma specialist Dr. Aimie as she walks through her own raw grief one week after the death of her dog, Amada – her “only family for eight years” and constant companion.
Instead of theory, you’ll hear the day‑by‑day reality of grief in a nervous system: the shock of sudden loss, the coldness in the body, the waves of sadness, and the urge to escape. She names seven principles she is actually using at home to keep moving through grief rather than getting stuck in it.
These include knowing your grieving style (“My primary default is avoidant attachment style”), creating physical safety and softening by being fully supported in a chair or bed, and “anchoring to life” with warmth, movement and small signs of aliveness like fire, flowers and birds. Dr. Aimie talks honestly about choosing not to numb with food, screens or busyness, even when comfort foods and distractions are right in front of her.
She shows how she notices thoughts like “Why did this have to happen?” and lets them “float down the river”, then comes back to the sensations in her body instead of spiralling in stories. She also calls out toxic positivity, the pressure to jump to silver linings, explaining how it bypasses the sadness the body actually needs to feel.
Finally, she shares how to “ride the waves with the right person” – someone who doesn’t try to fix, cheer up or rescue, but can simply stay present while the wave of grief moves through. For anyone facing bereavement, attachment loss or big life changes, this honest, practical conversation may help you ask: am I stuck in grief, or am I actively grieving?
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