Doing something again when grief or another feeling is in the way

Grief after a death moves back and forth

How it works

Starting again is not a straight line, and it does not have to be. One model of grief, the dual process model, describes coping with a death as movement between two kinds of task: facing the loss itself, and facing daily life and what has changed in it. At times a person turns toward each, and at times sets it aside, and the model counts time off from both as part of coping.

That back-and-forth is where the real work happens. A loss brings the feeling of missing what you loved, and sometimes older feelings come with it. Daily life gives you somewhere to stand while you feel them. You do not have to finish one before you start the other.

Why small, wanted steps matter

Why it matters

Motivation that lasts comes from inside: from a step you want, not one you feel you owe. In three samples followed over time, people put more sustained effort into goals that fit their own interests and values.

A plan can carry a wanted step a little further. A large analysis of if-then plans (for example, "if I have had breakfast, then I walk") found a modest average effect on what people went on to do, and a small one after a bias correction. Effects were larger when people strongly wanted the goal, and when the plan linked a situation to a response rather than setting a schedule.

Kindness after a miss is what gets you to try again. In short experiments, people prompted to meet a failure, or a wrong they had done, with self-compassion were more motivated to improve and make amends than people in comparison conditions. Kindness is the difference between a stumble and a stop.

Four places starting again gets stuck

Where people get stuck

1. Waiting to feel ready. There is no set time. In the coping model above, written about a death, time off from both the loss and daily life is part of coping. A pause is not doing it wrong.
2. A step that is too big, or not yours. Pick one you want. Effort lasted longer for goals that fit a person's own values, and plans worked better when people strongly wanted the goal.
3. The fear that doing something means letting go. After a death, you can carry the person with you into what you do next. In an online survey of bereaved adults, drawing on the remembered person as an inner base of support went with what the researchers measured as personal growth.
4. A step that did not happen. A miss can turn into a verdict on yourself. It is information about the step, not about you. Meet it with kindness, and pick a smaller one.

When getting started is worth taking to someone

If grief has stayed as heavy as the first weeks for a long time, or daily life has stopped working, take that to a doctor or a therapist who works with grief. Take any other feeling that has stayed that heavy to a doctor or a therapist too.

Behavioural activation is a therapy built around returning to activities a person values. In one feasibility trial with bereaved adults whose grief had stayed heavy, it went with what the authors report as large drops in grief, post-traumatic stress and depression symptoms, compared with people waiting to start. In a second trial, an online version guided by a therapist lowered grief, and its authors supported a different online treatment instead.

If you are thinking about not being alive, please reach someone now. The help box near the end of this page says how. For immediate danger, contact local emergency services.

Where the research on starting again is thin

Where the research is thin, or disagrees

None of the planning, values or self-compassion studies sampled bereaved people, and the work on bonds offers a model and one survey, not tests, and the coping model, the bonds work and the activation trials are about grief after a death, not other feelings. The two activation trials were in grief that had stayed heavy, and in one of them more than half of those given the online version dropped out. No study here tests whether one small step, chosen near the end of a conversation about a loss or another feeling, makes any difference.

Noticing what comes before a step

One thing you might notice

If something small has been coming to mind, you might notice what is there just before you turn toward it, or away from it, and whether it has a word. Noticing is enough. Nothing has to follow from it. If noticing brings up more than you want right now, stop. That is fine too.

What a session does when a step wants to move

How Feelings Buddy fits

Feelings Buddy is built for working through feelings with self-compassion, toward self-acceptance and self-motivation. A hard feeling is the obstacle, not the destination.

A session is an AI working from written instructions, so it can get them wrong. Its instructions say to:

• stay with the feeling first, and take "Nothing to do today, I felt it" as a complete answer;
• never suggest a step and never praise one; the step is theirs, in their words.

There is no diagnosis, and a session carries nothing about risk into a later session. No one reads the conversation as it happens.

No study has tested Feelings Buddy. How a session works, step by step