Things to avoid doing

Things to avoid doing

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.

• 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 and be more careful work and your home. • 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 (e.g. at work) or when you are not prepared to experience them. • Cutting off contact with family and friends. Social contact is constrained during the pandemic and may feel exhausting anyway; 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”. However, being alone all of the time cuts you off from any support that people might be able to offer you (albeit remotely), and this can increase feelings of sadness and loneliness.

You may feel hurt or angered by the response of those around you who may say insensitive things or avoid you, perhaps particularly if people are afraid that you may have coronavirus. Family conflict is not uncommon during a time when everyone’s emotions are high. Whilst withdrawing from people temporarily is very normal during grief, be wary of isolating yourself completely or reactively breaking off relationships with people who have been important to you until now.