Resilient Grieving: Strategies for coping with loss and change
Eudaimonic Resources
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Managing Change
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Stress & Anxiety
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Team Effectiveness
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WHAT
There are many ways that we cope with loss. Whether we experience loss because someone has passed away or because something else important has been taken away from us due to a change, we can apply strength-based strategies that help us be resilient through grief.
WHY
The bad news is that adversity happens to all of us - sadly death and loss don’t discriminate. But the good news is that there are evidence-based ways for people to adapt more constructively to loss. Research from positive psychology, neuroscience, disaster management, and bereavement point to strategies that allow us to play an active role in our journeys through grief. Unlike the five stages of grief, which cover what we are likely to feel and experience after loss, resilient grieving focuses on what we can do, providing a toolkit of ways to think and act that can help us cope with sadness and loss.
HOW I CAN USE THIS
There are many strategies that can help us navigate grief. Here are a selected few:
Understand that humans are hard-wired to cope with loss and that the normal response to loss is resilience. Most people eventually get through tough times without requiring any kind of outside intervention.
Ask yourself, is what I’m doing, the way I’m thinking, and the way I’m acting helping or harming me in my quest to get through this tough time? Try to see yourself from a distance and be as objective as possible - this will help support good decision making.
Choose where you focus your attention. Humans are biased towards negativity and we all know that negative emotions are plentiful in grief. What we understood less is that deliberately evoking positive emotions can be very beneficial during hard times. It’s vital to remember what’s still good in your world when you are going through grief.
Build a legacy: Reflecting on all the positive ways what we’ve lost has contributed to our lives helps grow a legacy. It also helps us create a new relationship to what we’ve lost. Whether it’s a loved one who’s no longer physically here, or some other aspect of ourselves or our world that’s been lost, we can still keep the memories fresh in our daily routines and the way we live our lives.
HOW I CAN HELP OTHERS
Don’t expect the bereaved to be mind-readers: If you know someone going through grief, ask them how you can help. Consider multiple ways: physical help (mowing the lawns, cooking a meal, babysitting, helping them grapple with technology or online banking for example); emotional help (a shoulder to cry on, listening to them tell their tale or reminisce about their loved one); and social support (talking, watching a movie together, or taking them out for a walk or coffee). Especially when we must practice physical distancing, being there virtually to support the bereaved is even more important.
Let them tell their story: Listen, listen, listen. When we lose something or someone we love, it can smash our view of the world into pieces. We have to re-learn to live in the world, a process that involves us making sense of what has happened. Letting the bereaved tell their story over and over again helps them integrate what has happened into their bigger life picture and make sense of it.
Seek hope: Ask them, now that all hope is lost for _______ (the person who has died or the thing that is lost), what are you hoping for now? Asking this demonstrates that we don’t just have one hope in life, but that our lives are made up of many smaller hopes, and that these are important too. What else is important now? What new smaller hopes do you have?
Resources
Resilient Grieving (Book)