What We're Reading Now

Write to Help Yourself Cope with Grief

9 December 2014

Allison read To Get Over Something, Write About It on HBR.org and was happy to have another tool to share with people who are struggling to cope with any kind of grief.

Tags: allison read, balance, courage, grief, happiness, self-compassion, writing

While HBR.org is one of my favorite resources, I don't usually turn to the Harvard Business Review two Tuesdays in a row. However, this week's inspiration for my blog post is very different than last week's topic, Leaders Should Do Less. It's also pretty timely for a lot of people I know and especially for me.

I live in a town that's struggling with more community grief than usual. We’ve had so many truly terrible things happen in the last three months including this past weekend. Additionally, many people I know are grieving about national events and others are sad about things beyond our borders. And then there’s that personal pain that can show up any time in our lives, but is often even harder to manage during the holidays.

Normally, I thoroughly enjoy the holidays from Thanksgiving to Christmas and through New Year’s. Then the fresh start of January always makes me feel like anything is possible. However, this year has been harder for me because I had some hopes for myself and my family during this time of year that just didn’t work out. It’s a loss I’ve been dealing with since August so in many ways I’m doing a lot better, but the holidays seem to have poked at some remaining tender spots. I'm still finding joy in the season, but I sure would like to help myself keep healing.

Whether you’re dealing with holiday sadness, other personal grief, or struggling to cope with things happening in the world around you, I think you may find Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries’ advice to be helpful. His post starts with a story of enormous tragedy from one of his leadership development workshop participants.

“On an assignment in Nigeria, Simon and five colleagues visiting one of the company’s oil rigs had been taken hostage. Two of the other hostages were killed in front of him almost at once and he was only released after long and drawn-out negotiations on the size of the ransom. He told us that he had never been able to put the experience behind him and was still plagued by nightmares.”

Don’t let yourself think, “Well, my thing is not that serious!” Our tendency to try to weigh our grief compared to other people’s struggles is well intentioned and even a way that we try to cope by leaning into the, “It’s not so bad,” strategy. However, when you’re sad, you’re sad. It doesn’t have to be a contest. I think anything that’s causing you to struggle and not feel like your best self is a good candidate for Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries’ technique.

Basically, he wants you to write about what you’re struggling to get over. Talking to people about our loss is an incredibly important part of the grieving process, but “reflective writing” engages your brain in a different way than venting. While no one completely knows exactly how this works, I think you’ll find the research in this post including evidence from University of Texas psychologist, James Pennebaker, that writing has positive long-term effects on several diseases to be compelling. Additionally, writing about what’s happened seems to prepare us to have more meaningful conversations with the important people in our lives which is an important part of the healing process as well.

I’m a long time believer in writing first thing in the morning to help me have the kind of day I want. I also regularly encourage people to write to help them prepare for difficult conversations or to regroup when they’re feeling overwhelmed. Additionally, when you’ve got to deal with your grief enough to keep functioning, I find wailing on the page in the moment can be helpful, too.

However, this idea of writing “twenty minutes a day for three to four consecutive days (preferably at the end of the day)” one to two months after a difficult event is new to me. (Pennebaker cautions that this exercise can trigger more pain than you can manage if you try to do it too soon.)

Read To Get Over Something, Write About It and I think you may be persuaded that this technique is worth trying. I’m going to do it for the next four nights and report back next week.

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