Coping Strategies for Managing Grief and Loss
Grief is a fact of life, but that doesn’t make it easy to deal with.
We will all feel grief at some point in our lives, because life involves change, and change activates grief. You can grieve for many reasons, including the death of a loved one, but that’s not the only source of grief in life. Grief commonly comes up around experiences that involve a lot of change, like moving, changing jobs, becoming a parent, struggling with infertility, dealing with chronic conditions, changes in relationship status, and more.
To our brains, change is loss, and loss means grief.
Grief doesn’t follow a timeline.
Grief doesn’t even always have stages. We commonly hear that grief has 5 stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance, but those stages were actually developed to describe what people go through as they face death, not to describe grief itself. While many grievers will feel like they relate to these stages, they’re not the only way grief shows up. Sometimes people have a hard time connecting what they’re experiencing to their grief, because they’re expecting grief to look the way it does on TV. In reality, grief is different for each person.
For some things, the grief never goes away. We tend to imagine that grief lessens over time, and while the intensity can often decrease, many people who grieve have to find ways to integrate their grief into their new life. Instead of grief lessening over time, it’s more like your life grows and expands around the grief. Even this process can bring up grief, because it marks a change, and change often feels like loss.
The truth about managing grief
Managing grief successfully means finding a way to accept that grief is a part of your life now. Acceptance doesn’t mean that you have to approve of the way you’re feeling, just that you don’t let yourself struggle against it anymore. Struggling to accept reality can cause a lot of distress that can be alleviated with acceptance.
Learning how to ride the waves of grief is like learning how to manage any other intense emotion. It takes time and effort, and often the help of a professional to support you through it.
In our culture, grief is a topic that’s often avoided.
We assume grief should be private, or that there’s nothing that can be done when someone is grieving. Our cultural inability to talk about loss and grief leads to people feeling like they can’t share what they’re going through, which can make the distress of grief feel even worse.
Thankfully, there are ways to help you feel less emotionally out of control when you’re going through grief. If you’re trying to find ways to manage grief, try these coping strategies:
Release your expectations of yourself
Grief is different for everyone and everyone responds differently, so there’s no “right” way to grieve. Don’t beat yourself up for what you’re feeling as you grieve. Try to notice when you have expectations for yourself (often you’ll notice them when you start a thought with “I should…”) so you can become aware of how these expectations are making you feel. Grief is hard enough without giving yourself unreasonable standards to meet.
Grief is one of the most intense emotions that we can feel. It’s going to take a lot of time and self compassion to cope with your new reality. You’re not going to be able to function the way you did when you weren’t grieving, and that’s okay.
Ask for support to meet your basic needs
An important part of managing grief is finding ways to meet your basic needs. If you’re not taking care of yourself, everything else will feel so much worse. However, when you’re grieving, it can be hard to do even “simple” things like get out of bed, or finding something to eat. That’s why calling in reinforcements can be helpful.
Is there someone in your life who can help make sure you’re getting enough to eat, taking your meds, and getting lots of sleep? It’s okay to ask for help when you need it. Lots of people want to be able to help, but don’t know where to start so making specific requests can actually be helpful when calling in extra support.
Bring in a professional
Grief is complicated, and it has a far reaching impact in our lives. Sometimes, that means it’s best to get professional support as you navigate this experience. Whether it’s one on one therapy with a counselor who’s experienced in treating grief, or a group therapy session with other grievers, bringing in a professional to help you through this time can make a world of difference.
A therapist who is experienced in grief counseling can help you make sense of your new world, cope with overwhelming emotions, and be more compassionate with yourself.
Find ways to express the intense emotions you’re feeling
Emotions are intense, and they can lessen in intensity when we find ways to express them. Grief might leave you with less energy than normal, so you may need to adjust some activities to meet yourself where you are in this moment, but there are ways to express intense emotions, such as:
Exercise
Somatic techniques, like breathwork
Mindfulness
Making art or using your creativity
Crying
Journaling
Talking it over with someone you trust
Exploring spirituality and deeper meaning
Distract yourself
Finally, grief is so hard, and it’s okay to distract yourself in moments when it’s particularly distressing. Distraction is a perfectly valid coping skill that can be a big help in times of intense grief. Here are some distractions to try:
Play a game (board game, video game, puzzles, etc.)
Read a book
Take a nap
Get into a new show
Make a playlist for someone you love
Go see a movie
Play with a pet or child
Clean your space
Bake or cook something
Creating art of any kind