Welcome to Nobody Told Me. I'm Laura Owens. And I'm Jan Black. We are excited to welcome Dr. Guy

Wynch back to the show to talk with us about healing from the loss of a pet.

Guy was here previously talking about his book, How to Fix a Broken Heart, which aims to

help people cope after a breakup or death of someone they love. That someone can be a pet,

and we wanted to talk more in depth about how devastating the loss of a pet can be and what

we can do to move forward from it. Guy is a licensed psychologist and in-demand keynote speaker

who's a leading advocate for integrating the science of emotional health into every aspect of our

daily lives. Guy, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for having me back.

Talk to us more about why you became so interested in what happens to people

grieving the loss of a pet.

I became interested because in my private practice, I would see people who lost pets

and who were absolutely devastated.

And I would look at the research and see that, according to the research,

the grief that people feel is really similar in many cases to the grief they feel from the

loss of a first degree relative. It can take months up to a year to recover from the loss of a pet.

The pet can be interwoven into their daily lives

in a much more embedded and fundamental way than almost anyone else. And yet it's something that

we don't take seriously as a society in almost every situation when somebody would come in

clearly devastated, they would always say,

I know this is silly, but I feel like such an idiot that I'm so upset, but, and there is

nothing silly about that level of grief, and there is nothing silly about that kind of loss.

And so it was important for me to write about, you know, why this is something we

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