Practices for Those Experiencing Early Grief

Grief is not easy. It never is easy.

The weight of loss can be unbearably difficult to carry, and this is especially true of early grief. Early grief is referred to as the time period that immediately follows a loss and is often the hardest to navigate since your brain has only just begun to process the impossible. This pain is only worsened by the lack of understanding in our larger culture; we just don’t seem to get how best to help.

In the book, It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand, Megan Devine uses her own experiences to break down the societal misconceptions about grief. Equipped with this understanding of how our own culture has failed us, she seeks to assure readers that they are valid in their pain and provides realistic exercises to help the bereaved live within their grief.

Listed below are some examples of these exercises she recommends and can be used in any stage of grief, though they are primarily aimed at early grief. Take a look through, make note of which practices seem the most helpful to you and try some out. There’s no pressure to do them all and there’s no right answers here. I hope at least one of these exercises can help guide your healing process and can remind you that even in these darkest moments, you still deserve love and care.

Gathering Daily Data

For a week, take short notes on how you feel throughout your day in different scenarios, places and social interactions. Things to think about and include are maps of social interactions, what you’re eating, how much you’re sleeping, where you’re going, what you’re doing, etc.

What do you notice is an additional stressor coming in the way of rest and stability? What were some of the smaller outbursts leading to any larger ones? At what times do you feel more stable, grounded and able to exist within your loss? What activities or interactions contribute negatively or positively to your mental state?

After evaluating the trends you may find, try choosing to avoid those “things that don’t help” to decrease your suffering, which will give you the space to tend to your pain.

Tracking the Evidence

It can be helpful to make a list of signs you’re really suffering compared to signs you’re caring for yourself.

What are examples of suffering for you (ex. not sleeping or eating, short temper, anxiety)?
What are examples of you doing the best you can to tend to your pain (ex. feeling rested, emotional evenness, validation)?

In times of intense grief, it can be difficult to differentiate between doing relatively well and making things worse. It can be hard to separate pain and suffering. Gathering this information can assist you in recognizing signs that will let you identify what will help you and what doesn’t, especially in tandem with the last exercise.

Wellness or Worseness

Using what has been established in previous practices, create a side-by-side list of things that make you feel saner and what makes you feel crazy. Write this out when you are feeling relatively calm, so when your pain feels too immense to handle, you can easily refer to this list rather than exacerbating your own suffering.

What are the thoughts, ideas or images that are on the worseness side? Think of things that take you away from love, makes you feel unstable and results in you being unkind to yourself. Some examples could be spending time with certain people, spending too much time online, eating poorly.
What are thoughts, ideas or images that are on the wellness side? These things you just know, you know when you feel centered and when things just feel right for you. These things should make you feel calmer and more rooted and can be highly individualized.

Often, one of the most prevalent causes of suffering in grief is the self-harm done to yourself with your own thoughts. The mind processes everything, from every nuance to every word, so it is important that you keep track of your mental state in order to prevent the cycle of cruel and judgmental thoughts.

Support through the Storm

Trying to find out what you need to support and sustain yourself within grief requires some form of companionship, which is often the heaviest work to survive this grief. To explore your own needs, it can be helpful to respond to some of the following questions:

What would you need so you can feel more supported inside your pain? How can the people in your life make this impossible situation more gentle and easier on your heart? What changes would need to happen to make you feel safe or strong enough to soften into your pain?

This practice can be especially beneficial if there is a meaningful anniversary or difficult event coming up. It is often much easier to get through these times when there is an end point in sight, you can do this by planning an activity with a close friend after getting through whatever it is you need get through.

Manifesto of Self Care

Being gentle and kind with yourself can be difficult to actively practice, especially due to unfounded feelings of guilt after your loss. It is incredibly important to have daily, realistic reminders that you need to put yourself first.

Write out your own “self-care manifesto”, what are the things you would include? Put it up anywhere and everywhere. It doesn’t matter how many times you find yourself suffering or allowing your mind to torture you, it is always possible to return to warmth and gentleness within yourself.

Creating a “roadmap” for your own personalized self-care needs can help encourage you to stay true to what you need, despite what the outside world is trying to tell you is “best for you”. Making space for what may make this time just a little bit easier is absolutely critical.

Recognize the Side Effects

Grief is a full-body experience, it’s not just your brain that becomes exhausted by processing these thoughts and feelings. This doesn’t mean you are failing or are not strong enough to handle your loss, this is completely normal. People often experience insomnia, weight change, memory loss, time loss, confusion and seemingly “random” bodily pains. Try to recognize the physical and mental symptoms that are accompanying your grief.

How has grief altered the way your brain works? If you’re outside of the initial shock of early grief, what changes have you noticed in the way your mind operates as you become more accustomed to the weight of your grief?

Processing is hard work, and it will take time, but eventually this loss will be absorbed and integrated. While your mind and body do the heavy work in these early stages, remember that your brain is trying to reconcile the impossible and it is trying its best. Be kind and be patient with yourself. You are not flawed; you are just grieving.

Track Your Anxiety

There is a lot of shame associated with anxiety, due to societal pressures to seem “put together” at all times and this still applies to those who are grieving. Pretending to be okay does nothing to help your processing, and only harms your personal relationships and causes that anxiety to bubble to the surface at any given time.

Try to break down what you notice about your anxiety. Are there any patterns? When is it more noticeable? What are your early signs of exhaustion that can lead to more anxiety? What needs are you potentially neglecting to the point that it produces anxiety?

If you’re not sure what causes your anxiety to surge, try to log the circumstances or situations that make you feel worse? Equally important, take note of what happens on days where you feel that your anxiety is reduced or nonexistent. Being honest with yourself, and those around you about your needs and fears is an important piece of self-care. If you need to exit a situation and return home because you’re too overwhelmed, then do it, there’s absolutely no shame in it. You may not always be able to get exactly what you need, but the practice of checking in with yourself and taking the best course of action to get to some relative peace is incredibly important to building a sense of safety in the world.

Get Creative

From time to time, it can be difficult to express your complex feelings with words, especially when your experience with grief can defy any written language. While writing out your own words can be helpful, it can be taxing on the mind. Instead, try tapping into your creativity and use pre-existing things to create new meanings. This can be done by ripping up old pictures and magazines to make a collage or take a piece of writing and highlight the words that stick out to you and create “found poetry”. There are no rules, expectations or goals. Just create.

You can use these activities as a check in for yourself, to understand your current headspace or just a distraction that might just allow you to stay connected to your creative self. It may not be the most revolutionary technique to help you carry your grief, but it may make things not suck as much, even just for a bit.

Visualize Your Healing

The most important part of processing your loss is to give yourself a goal to strive toward. This time in early grief can be incredibly disorienting and overwhelming, you can try to ground yourself by embracing any and all progress as an act of love and kindness to yourself. You can either think or write your answers to the following questions in order to imagine what recovery would be for you.

If I set aside cultural norms of “rising above loss”, what would living well look like? How will I care for myself? What kind of person do I want to be, for myself, and for others?

It’s important to remind yourself this is not about improvement. You never asked for this loss or needed this loss. You are more than valid to be feeling this pain. Recovery and healing inside your grief are about staying true to who you are and learning how you will approach your mind and your heart in this life that has been thrust upon you.