Collective Insights - Home Grown Humans - BJ Miller, MD - Death - Hosted by Jamie Wheal

BJ Miller, hospice and palliative care doctor at the University of California, San Francisco Cancer Center and the co-author of the book "A Beginner's Guide To The End: Practical Advice For Living Life And Facing Death, joins us today to discuss a topic that is often avoided at all costs: death.But BJ is here to reframe the stigma associated with end of life experiences. By sharing his near death encounter, learnings as a hospice and palliative care, and the very raw feelings associated with a personal loss, BJ leads us on a journey where death can be embraced as a pursuit of life.For the full show notes visit: https://neurohacker.com/reframing-the-stigma-surrounding-death-and-end-of-life-experiences-an-interview-with-bj-miller-md (https://neurohacker.com/reframing-the-stigma-surrounding-death-and-end-of-life-experiences-an-interview-with-bj-miller-md)

Duration: 1h 16m
Broadcast on: 11 Aug 2021
Audio Format: other

But BJ is here to reframe the stigma associated with end of life experiences. By sharing his near death encounter, learnings as a hospice and palliative care, and the very raw feelings associated with a personal loss, BJ leads us on a journey where death can be embraced as a pursuit of life.

For the full show notes visit: https://neurohacker.com/reframing-the-stigma-surrounding-death-and-end-of-life-experiences-an-interview-with-bj-miller-md

I used to think the goal was comfort, the goal was peace, to keep the negative stuff out of the room, to keep the pain out of the room, all that stuff. No, no, that's like keeping life out of the room. So no, no, I think it's much better. Yes, let's turn down the noise with morphine to some degree so that we can maybe be a little more present. Sure, I'm all for symptom management to a point, but that's that's step one. That's not the goal. Collective insights is a voyage through topics and technologies, revolutionizing human well-being. We explore the fields of neuroscience, integrative medicine, anthropology, optimal psychology, systems thinking, and existential risk. Groundbreaking approaches for a better world and a better life await you. Welcome to Collective Insights. I want to welcome B.J. Miller, MD, hospice, and palliative care specialist who has, I think you've, you know, you're definitely one of the clearer voices advancing the conversation around rethinking our relationship to death. And your beginner's guide to the end, your TED talk that has had lots of views and clearly has struck a chord. You know, welcome to Homegoing Humans. I'm really excited to explore this with you and, and ideally, I mean, you know, just personally and sort of and selfishly, I'm super psyched to get to explore a topic that most folks are squeamish about, right? But we can actually explore the physical experience along with the metaphysical experiences, along with the physiological. So, so, you know, we can kind of start really just sort of taking, you know, death writ large across all categories of, you know, from the mythopoetic to the two hospice and to see what's what the first obvious question I had for you, which was after reading in, you know, in your bio that you had born witness to and and facilitate the transition in over a thousand deaths.

What, what is your perspective? What is your experience on fundamentally, you know, one of the great mysteries of the human experience? So as happens, maybe, you know, as you get farther into a subject, I have felt this way towards tea. I have felt this way towards music where the pattern as you get into it, as you learn more, as you experience more blah, blah, blah, you know, I found myself getting very particular and wanting things a certain way and finding a way to love the subject by manipulating it and getting very, what do you mean by that? That's a fascinating phrase. Well, by sort of taking death on, if death is something that happens to each of us, it's this, it's this, it's this wonderful mix of universal and totally particular. And so if I embrace the particular of it, and so I had my own relationship to it, it forced me to do things. It made me take time seriously. It made me take, it made me let go of taking time seriously. It has this way of like compelling you and allowing you to forgive yourself at the end of the day, which I love. It's got both sides of just about every coin I can imagine. And wanting deaths for people that I worked with patients, families, to go a certain way. I think this is a good thing. I think this is a healthy thing. And I have, like I said, some care comparisons in the rest of my life that we could talk about. But I find myself now after many years of this work, letting go of all sorts of projections, expectations, personal sort of stake in this thing, because the personal stake in this thing is pretty ego driven is self driven is there's a story to it. I'm much more interested in what's underneath the story, the pre verbal stuff, and surfing it where it will take me in a way submitting to it rather than trying to make it bend to me is another way of putting it. And I have found so now where I am is death has arrived at this sort of mundane place that I think it deserves to be. So, it is a you could label it with any just about any adjective sacred profound. Sure, it is those things too, because it's everything. But it's also daily and hum drum and to be expected and probably not the end. In fact, we know it's not the end in some important ways. So, you know, as I come full circle, I'm much less particular about it. I'm much less shocked by it. And I have it's settled into a relationship like you might settle into an old friend or an old blanket or something that you know pretty well, even though you don't know it totally well and that's compelling. So, I did it at a sort of mundane place for me, having toward the planet toward the cosmos and toward the sacred. I am back to seeing maybe there's no difference between the sacred and mundane. Maybe it's all just one and we keep trying to label it tease it out and name it engineer it. And there's plenty to say about that. Personally, sorry, going on here, Jimmy, but to answer your question for me, what I have where I have arrived is essentially that it's just part of life. It's like, like an need for air or water or any other need or compulsion that we have. It's on that sweet list of fundamental things that humans do. Now, so I don't mean to say it's boring, it's an amazing subject. It's just, I guess I've come to a place of some familiar familiarity with it and I'm less shocked by it. But even as I say that I'm one of just when we can open any of this stuff up brother of course but I do think as even as I say what this make that statement I am very much aware there's a little asterisk next to it, which is still death of me as a person is still an abstraction as close as I've come to it in my own life, working with others in their death or my own brush with death. I don't, I'm very careful to remind myself that I don't ever really know this subject and I should not seduce myself into while it may feel familiar to a point. It's just to a point. And so I leave a little reserve like when I'm actually standing at the edge of my horizon. And it's really actually my time and I'm not just imagining it. I may freak the hell out. I mean I'm who knows what I'm going to do. So I like to, I like to say that out loud to myself and others can just make space for. I don't know there's plenty I don't know and we'll see. But that even that has become a source of love and curiosity and sweetness. I'm, I guess it's also Mac mirrors my own maturity in life I don't feel the need to know everything on some level. And maybe that I don't know if that's resignation or maturity or who knows what but it feels feels pretty good to me. I always notice whether it's some fictional retelling or something more historical of like Spartans, Vikings, Lakota War, it's like basically warrior societies where, or any community that where death is a clear and presentation could be it could be the mountaineering community big wave surfing like that there is there is a sort of it almost feels well for one. There's the Valhalla thing of like today's a good day to die like my question isn't can I avoid it we know you know we live way too close to the shop and to kid ourselves about that the question is can I navigate that transition with honor and that's the victory not cheating that not Botox and fillers and you know and endless life support you know right on right back back and I and there's a degree of relief and satisfaction and gratification Oh okay my number came up and I did it with dignity. Mm hmm which is it feels so weird and so fundamentally different than our contemporary whistling past the graveyard kind of right on right on and from where I said I don't know how you feel about that statement to me it's not just different what you just described I think is a maturation I think it's one of the ways you can tell that the US as a country per se not skipping past the native history in this country but the US of A kind of last 200 and however many years I think it's a tell how we treat aging and dying that we try to whistle past the graveyard to use your good phrase that if I don't you know if I put on my critical hat. I think that is an incomplete problematic take on death that doesn't do the subject justice and doesn't do yourself justice and sets you up for a spectacular fall when death finally does come calling and there's no more whistling

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