.png)
My Grief Plan
When someone we care very much about dies, it is important to consider what coping strategies we can help us manage our feelings and emotions. The 'My Grief Plan' resource helps people to explore the feelings felt following the death of a special to them, and identify the coping strategies their could use to help them manage their feelings and emotions felt during this difficult time.
What are the benefits of using this resource?
Coping strategies are anything we do to consciously make the effort to help improve and manage difficult experiences, thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Coping strategies help us to make improvements to our lives, establish and maintain boundaries, calm and relax ourselves, improve our health and wellbeing, and focus on making plans and setting goals.
There are two forms of coping strategies- problem-based coping strategies and emotion-based.
Problem-based coping strategies-
Problem-based coping strategies are helpful in situations where change is needed, and could involve removing something stressful from our lives. Imagine having a friend who isn't being helpful for your wellbeing, you emotions may feel sad and lonely about the thought of removing them from your life, however, you know that your relationship with them is unhealthy, so know that ending your friendship with them would be the best thing for your wellbeing.
​
Emotion-based coping strategies-
Emotion-based coping strategies are helpful when you don't want to or are unable to change the situation, so instead you do things that help you take care of your thoughts, feelings and emotions, rather than removing the thing that is causing the stress. When someone close to us dies, as much as we want to, we are not able to change these circumstances, so adopting the use of emotion-based coping strategies can help us to manage our feelings and emotions at this difficult time.
Its Good To Talk!!!
If you are struggling with your thoughts, feelings, behaviours, and/or difficult experiences, we recommend that you talk to one of the trusted people in your life, and seek professional help and support. Sharing our experiences can be empowering, as it can help us to take back control of our lives by allowing us to identify and manage our difficulties, and take positive and proactive steps to overcome these. However, we can sometimes find it hard to talk about our difficulties and how we feel; in such cases, writing these down can feel easier and less painful and can serve as a great method of communicating when words are too difficult to speak. If you are struggling to talk, we encourage you to use written word or this resource to share what has happened to you and how you are feeling.
