Here are four effective steps for easing the pain.  

Can You Choose Not to Grieve? 4 Surprising Steps to Yes

Key Points

• Grief affects everyone differently, and its depth depends on how central the loss is to your identity.
• You grieve the loss of an emotion, not a thing, person, or ability.
• Time rarely, if ever, heals your grief.
• By seeking new ways to experience positive emotions, you can move towards happiness and rebuild your life.

When you suffer an identity-changing loss or one that prevents you from reaching a significant goal, grief can envelop you like a damp fog.

You lose a loved one and believe your life is over. Your health deteriorates, and you feel transformed from a person who exudes vibrancy to someone whose life is defined by a disability. Your love is rejected, and you wonder if life is worth living.

The Depth of Grief

The depth of your grief is determined by how central it is to your identity. A client with limited interactive skills always depended on his wife for even the most basic daily living requirements. For 50 years, she did everything for him—from selecting which operas to attend to choosing the condiments for the Christmas dinner. Overnight, his identity changed when she died.

Everyone who lives long enough will experience grief. For some, it will come from the loss of a partner; for others, it is related to a health issue that prevents them from doing something that is an integral part of their identity.

Grief visited me when I could no longer do solo wilderness fly-fishing. While not as important as being a “father,” “husband,” or “brother,” it was significant enough that it left what I thought was an unfillable hole in my heart. Instead of trekking several times yearly to fish remote locations, epic battles with wild trout became memories.

When catastrophic losses occur, you face a choice: living with constant grief or regaining control of your life. Some people choose “talk-based” therapy, while others, because of finances, circumstances, or preferences, search for quicker and more direct methods. For this latter group—those who prefer self-therapy—here are four effective steps for easing the pain.

Step 1: Stop Waiting for Time To Heal

How often have compassionate people tried to reduce your grief by saying something like, “You’ll see; time will help you heal.” And how often have you cringed at the advice? Years after a good friend lost her son to violence, I asked her if time healed the pain. “No,” she said. “It just transforms it into something else. Instead of being happy when I hear of someone’s good fortune, I wonder how well my son would be doing in the same situation if he were alive.”

She paused, then said, “My grief throws a cloak over everything I experience or do.”

For many people, there isn’t enough time left in the universe to wait until their grief spontaneously vanishes. It is the rare person whose grief dissipates just by waiting.

Step 2: Don’t Confine Your Search for an Exact Replica of What You Lost

For simple losses, like a treasured object, a direct replacement makes sense. You crash your classic “muscle car,” and you can usually find an identical one online. But a life-long partner is not a “muscle car.” They shared your life when you were searching for meaning in your 20s, stood by you during financial difficulties in your 30s, supported you through a midlife crisis in your 40s, and helped you confront health challenges in your 50s and 60s. Finding an identical replacement is impossible. Searching for one will only set you up for disappointment.

Step 3: Understanding the Nature of Your Loss

When someone asked me why I was grieving when I could no longer go on wilderness trips, I initially replied, “Because I miss standing in the middle of a stream stalking wild trout.” It took me several years to realize that I wasn’t grieving the act of selecting the right bait, stalking a fish, presenting the fly, and gently unhooking it. Rather, I was grieving the emotion the event created—serenity.

Not everyone who grieves grieves the same lost emotion. But anyone who grieves, grieves an emotion that is no longer felt.

Step 4: Searching for Grief Relief

You are better positioned to replace the lost emotion when you first identify it. You no longer search for a specific “thing” or person identical to what you lost; instead, you create a “Costco list” of opportunities available to replicate or come close to recreating that lost emotion. Given my health-related limitations, nothing in the fishing/backpacking world could directly substitute for solo wilderness fishing.

The Takeaway

We are constantly faced with choices—choices for goals and the paths to achieve them. Less discussed, however, are the choices we make about our emotions, like grief. Although it can be argued that we do not choose to be overwhelmed by grief, we can choose behaviors that either lead us to dwell on it or help us move away from it. By using these four steps, you are choosing happiness—or a close approximation of it—rather than waiting for grief to magically dissipate.

References

1. Stan Goldberg, Preventing Senior Moments: How to Stay Alert Into Your 90s and Beyond (Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield, 2023).

This article originally appeared on psychologytoday.com.