Things to avoid doing

Drinking alcohol/using substances

People cope with grief in many different ways, and although all of these coping strategies are equally valid, some will be less helpful to us in the short and/or long-term. These are some ways of coping that are generally best not to rely on:

Drinking alcohol or using substances (including prescription sedatives or sleeping pills) to habitually numb difficult or painful thoughts and feelings.

There is likely to be no shame and little harm in using any of these occasionally and temporarily and if you did these things regularly before your bereavement, it is unlikely that now will be a realistic time to stop. Indeed, some people feel that using sleeping pills, for example, for a short time during their acute grief helped them to get the respite they needed to cope better long term.

Things to watch out for are: using many of these in combination; feeling like you absolutely rely on even one of them for more than a few weeks; using them not so much to occasionally switch mode but to dull your experience altogether as this may become a barrier to you dealing with your feelings longer-term.

If you know that you already had patterns of problematic drinking or substance use prior to your bereavement, it is likely to be important to stay connected with people, groups and activities that helped.

Making significant decisions or changes to your life, in areas such as work or your living situation, if these can wait. People often find that they need some time to reorient to their circumstances now and can regret decisions that were made in haste.

Work and responsibilities

Rushing back to work or to organisational responsibilities if these can be postponed. Accidents are more common after severe stress, so take extra care especially when driving and using machinery.

Avoiding emotions

Consistently bottling up or avoiding your emotions in response to the bereavement. It might be that you need to use some distraction strategies to give yourself a break from overwhelming feelings, but doing this all of the time will be exhausting for you and will unfortunately not take away the feelings.

In fact, they may then leak out at times you would rather they did not (like at work) or when you are not prepared to experience them.

Avoiding people

Cutting off contact with family and friends. Social contact may feel exhausting. You may feel like you are in a bubble where it is very hard to relate to the concerns of the rest of the world and that they in turn, do not get it.