Coaching practices for I've Been Keeping it Together by Staying Busy and Not Letting Myself Fall Apart but the Grief I Keep Shoving Down Isn't Shrinking It's Just Waiting and I'm Afraid That If I Actually Let Myself Feel All of it I Won't Be Able to Stop
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Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I’ve been keeping it together by staying busy and not letting myself fall apart, but the grief I keep shoving down isn’t shrinking
- I keep my head down and stay busy so I never actually feel the loss, and now it ambushes me at random and won’t metabolize
- The grief ambushes me at the worst times
- The missing them comes in waves that physically knock the wind out of me, and when one crests I just need to get through the next few minutes without drowning
- I’m stuck at one of two extremes with hard feelings
Practices that may help
- Task 2: Work through the pain of grief
Allow and process the emotional and physical pain of loss rather than bypassing it.
Worden’s Tasks of Mourning, Made Practical - Deliberately engage loss-oriented work
Set aside dedicated time to directly face the grief — the emotions, the absence, the meaning of the loss.
The Dual Process Model of Grief, Made Practical - Create a deliberate grief window
Schedule bounded time to grieve, protecting both the grief process and the rest of life.
Worden’s Tasks of Mourning, Made Practical - Havening to soften acute grief activation
Use gentle touch and brief distraction to lower the physiological intensity of grief surges.
Self-Havening: Calming the Nervous System Through Touch - Mindful awareness of suffering
Hold painful feelings in balanced awareness — neither suppressing them nor being swept away by them.
Self-Compassion, Made Practical - Task 4: Find an enduring connection with the deceased
Relocate the relationship from physical presence to an internal, meaningful connection.
Worden’s Tasks of Mourning, Made Practical - A — Allow the experience to be as it is
Let what is present be here, without pushing it away, numbing it, or elaborating it.
RAIN Meditation: Tara Brach’s Four-Step Practice - Acceptance (willingness)
Make room for unwanted feelings instead of struggling against them, so they stop running the show.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Made Practical - Oscillate between grief and sense-making
Allow periods of pure grief alongside periods of meaning construction — both are necessary.
Meaning Reconstruction in Grief, Made Practical - Treating grief as a form of gratitude
When something ends and you feel grief, recognise that the grief is proportional to the love — and let it be both.
Mono no Aware: The Pathos of Things
Related concerns
- Engaging Grief Directly
Set aside dedicated time to directly face the grief — the emotions, the absence, the meaning of the loss.
Deliberately engage loss-oriented work
- Havening For Grief
Use gentle touch and brief distraction to lower the physiological intensity of grief surges.
Havening to soften acute grief activation
- Cognitive Grief Processing
Set aside dedicated time to directly face the grief — the emotions, the absence, the meaning of the loss.
- Does Grief Go Away
When something ends and you feel grief, recognise that the grief is proportional to the love — and let it be both.
Treating grief as a form of gratitude
- Emotional Grief Processing
Set aside dedicated time to directly face the grief — the emotions, the absence, the meaning of the loss.
- Grief Containment Practice
Schedule bounded time to grieve, protecting both the grief process and the rest of life.
Create a deliberate grief window
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