Managing Grief Without Substances

Feelings of grief due to tragic events may occur at any point throughout our lives. Often, these events occur when least expected.

When a tragic event occurs during your recovery journey, it can be extremely difficult to manage your emotions. It can be especially difficult to process the grief you feel while keeping your primary focus on recovery. However, it is possible to manage grief well.

Using the following techniques, you can work to manage states of grief. This can help you avoid falling back into the habit of using substances as a coping mechanism.

What Is Grief?

Grief is a common set of feelings associated with loss or trauma. These feelings can include sadness, disappointment, heartache, and confusion.

This set of emotions often follows the experience of a traumatic or high-stress event. The event could include the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, the experience of a natural disaster, or many other scenarios. Having the ability to recognize grief when it sets in is extremely useful in coping with this emotion.

For example, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a period of grief for many individuals. COVID-19 grief was a response to many things, including the loss of loved ones, the loss of a former way of life, and fear of the unknown regarding the virus that was rapidly spreading.

How to Manage Grief Without Substances

Previously, when you experienced grief, you may have relied on substances to avoid these feelings. However, as you know, substance use is an unhealthy coping mechanism. In addition to the physical side effects of addiction, substance use disempowers you. It takes away your ability to process what you feel and move forward effectively.

Fortunately, you can manage anything that comes your way without falling back into substance use. The following coping mechanisms can help you manage grief without substances.

#1. Talk About It

When you experience grief, you may be tempted to bottle up or stuff away your emotions. After all, during tragic circumstances, you are likely not the only person feeling grief. Because of this, many people tend to hide their emotions and pretend that they are okay out of courtesy to others.

While this can be maintained temporarily, holding your emotions in eventually leads to an emotional outburst. This can lead to relapse or other negative behaviors affecting your recovery progress.

By talking about grief with trusted members of your support system, you can get the emotions out of your system. This can help you release the pressure of emotions before they build up. Utilizing your support system is a great coping mechanism in recovery. At times, you may simply need to vent and release your emotions. This is a great opportunity to do so.

You may find that, as you talk through your grief, you can also create a plan for moving forward. Supported by others, you can brainstorm different ways to cope with grief.

#2. Work Through the Stages of Grief

Grief often flows through five different stages. These stages of grief are:

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

When the news is first heard or the trauma is first experienced, you may be in denial of the truth. After some processing, you may start to feel anger. This anger may arise toward yourself, others, or the situation in general. You then may try to bargain through relationships or spirituality, trying to alter or undo the situation.

After working through these stages, you may feel sad or depressed. This often occurs once the reality of the situation truly sets in. As you work through this overwhelming sorrow, you may begin to accept the situation. This involves acknowledging the situation and moving forward as you can.

These stages do not always occur in order. Additionally, they may not all occur for everyone. However, understanding what these stages are can help you to see the endpoint in this stage of grief. Utilize your treatment team to help you assess where you are currently at in the healing process and work through each stage.

#3. Avoid Impulsivity

During moments of high stress or high emotion, you may feel the desire to make a rash decision. Often, these decisions lead to negative outcomes in the future, when your emotional state is calmed.

Before engaging in any important decision-making when you are grieving, take the time to process your thoughts. Calm yourself down before making an important or impulsive choice. Avoiding impulsive decisions can help you stay on track to success and avoid self-sabotage due to an overly-emotional response.

There Is Hope

When dealing with grief, you may find it easy to burrow yourself into a hole of depressive thoughts. Engaging in these thought patterns can lead you to feel that there is no end to the emotions you are feeling.

While the hurt from the circumstance may never fully go away, you will not be stuck feeling only this way forever. There is hope and life after grief. Using your coping skills can help you process your emotions and move forward from them.

Everybody has their way of grieving. It is important to address the emotions you are feeling while still working to process those emotions. The way that you choose to grieve may not be the same as your peers or others you are working with. Address your emotions in the way that you need. Then, work to implement proper coping skills to help you move forward.

Our team is here to assist you in overcoming periods of grief. We want to help you utilize strategies to avoid these emotions from negatively affecting your recovery.

Grief can occur during some of the hardest times of our life. You may find that you encounter an event that causes you grief during your recovery journey. These strong emotions can easily disrupt your ability to recover if you let them. Addressing grief properly and effectively can help you stay on track with success in recovery. Utilize the outlined coping skills and take advantage of our treatment team to help you overcome periods of grief. These emotions may feel never-ending, but they can be addressed and managed over time. To learn more about managing grief in your recovery, reach out to Dream Recovery today by calling us at (657) 216-7218.