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Grief support and helpline
Cruse Bereavement Support
If you want to talk to somebody who does this every day, this is the first place to look.
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Tool 68 · Develop yourself
What are you carrying, and what does it need?
A guided as long as you need conversation, here in TAIU. Space and language for a loss, without a process to complete.
You do not have to be further along than you are.
There is no timetable and nothing to complete.
Saying it out loud is enough for one session.
What you'll look at
- 01Who or what
- 02What is hardest
- 03Where it catches you
- 04Who knows
A note from Mark
I am not going to pretend I can help with this in the way a person who knows you can.
What I do know is that grief tends to get tidied away. Other people find it uncomfortable. Life carries on demanding things of you.
This session is not here to move you through anything.
It is here so that what you are carrying gets said. It is here so that somebody real hears it too.
What you'll get
This will not sort you into a personality type.It will give you answers about your own life that you can test.
01
What you are carrying
02
What is hardest
03
What is still here
04
Who to speak to
+
Your TAIU handover: a summary of what the conversation found, written so you can take it with you.
See everything included ↓
- 01Who or what you have lost
- 02What they were to you
- 03What is hardest at the moment
- 04Where it catches you
- 05What is still here
- 06Who already knows
- 07What you are carrying for other people
- 08What deserves protecting
- 09What remains unresolved
- 10Where this goes next
When you finish
Bring it back to your tree.
Your tree is where TAIU keeps a picture of your whole life, in parts like work, money and health.
This session works on the whole of you, not one part of your life. Nothing is scored. At the end, you are asked once which part of your life this touched most. You can answer none.
The conversation writes this summary for you. Keep the sheet, print it or paste it into My Tree. Nothing from the conversation is stored by TAIU.
- Session
- Date
- The part of life this belongs to
- What we found
- The alternative we tested
- What deserves protecting
- What should change, if anything
- Next actions
- What to notice or find out
- What remains unresolved
What now?
01 · Save it
What you are carrying, in your own words.
02 · Test it
Tell one more person than currently knows.
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What I would do
- 01
Say it out loud to somebody, in whatever form you can manage.
- 02
Let the ordinary moments be as hard as they are.
- 03
Keep what is still here rather than trying to put it away.
- 04
Tell one more person than currently knows.
- 05
Expect nothing of yourself on a timetable.
Test it
- 01
Who already knows how you are doing?
- 02
What is still here?
- 03
What is already helping, even slightly?
The alternative
The common assumption is that a calm account means somebody is avoiding it. Often it does not. Most people are more resilient after a loss than the culture expects, and an unremarkable account can simply be an accurate one. The opposite assumption is equally worth resisting. Somebody who is functioning perfectly well at work may be finding the ordinary domestic hours very hard indeed.
Think about this
- Who or what you have lost.
- What they were to you.
- What is hardest at the moment, practically as well as otherwise.
- Where it catches you when you are not expecting it.
- Who already knows how you are doing.
Take this to Ask Mark
You have done the exercise. Now look again at what it found.
This looks at what you found and helps you understand it. It is not another exercise to repeat.
Take this to Ask Mark →If something else would help
There is no right amount of this to read. These are here if you want them.
READ · GUIDE
Bereavement support for family and friends
Marie Curie
Steady, practical and written for people who are currently managing a great deal at once.
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LEARN · 24 HOURS
Samaritans
Samaritans
Here because some of these subjects reach further than a written exercise should.
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Recommended by the TAIU community
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Further thinking
The Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement
Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut
Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief
Dennis Klass, Phyllis Silverman and Steven Nickman
The Other Side of Sadness
George Bonanno
See the thinking ↓
Article
The Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement
Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut
Describes grief as oscillation between facing the loss and getting on with life, rather than as a sequence of stages. It is the reason this session never asks anybody where they are up to.
Book
Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief
Dennis Klass, Phyllis Silverman and Steven Nickman
The collection that replaced the idea of letting go with the idea of an enduring relationship that changes form. It removes the pressure to reach closure.
Book
The Other Side of Sadness
George Bonanno
Bonanno's data shows that resilience is the most common response to loss, and that prescribed emotional processing can sometimes make things worse. It is a corrective to the assumption that an unremarkable account of a difficult event must be avoidance, and it is the reason nobody should be pushed to describe the worst part.