When Memories Hurt: Emotional First Aid for Writing Through Grief

Photo by Jan Kahánek on Unsplash

If you're familiar with my work, you've heard my motto, "Every Pet has a TAIL to Tell."  To read more about the power of writing, and find writing prompts, check out the Tell Your Tail page,

To put it simply, I believe in the power of writing to heal.

To process. To give the heavy emotions a soft place to land outside our heads. To preserve the relationship. The connection. To capture memories in a tangible form – kind of like a photo expressed in words. 

Yet, I think it needs a warning label.

Sometimes writing can hurt: Handle yourself with care.

When a loss is raw, remembering can feel too painful. By forcing yourself to “go there,” you risk re-traumatizing yourself – but just being aware of this potential side effect serves as a protective factor.

At first, you may find that at first you only have the emotional capacity to jot down a few memories in short increments of time. If you start and it doesn't feel good or safe, stop. When the memories feel too heavy, returning to your writing days or even weeks later is not only normal but can be necessary. That’s just grief doing its thing.  Listen to what your body is telling you and don’t override your gut.

Before you get lost in the process, consider setting a timer to check in with yourself.

Our emotional strength to remember can shift with the passage of time.

The good news is that the same memory can evoke different responses at any given time in your process. You may be in a different place tomorrow, next week, or next month. And still, know that there may always be some level of pain that comes with remembering – it’s part of our emotional experience of being a full-feeling human who loved deeply. Just monitor how much it hurts and know when to take a break.

Bring an Emotional First Aid Kit into the writing process.

Pack your bag in advance.

When we’re in a flustered state, it’s harder to think clearly, and our coping tools aren’t as accessible.

Identify your emotional neutralizer.

An neutralizer is something that can shift the energy around us and gently reduce the emotional intensity. After watching a scary show, I semi-joke with my husband that I need a neutralizer. For me, that means turning on any one of my extensive DVR collection of Hallmark Christmas movies. Just by having that Hallmark movie on in the background, I feel calmer. You can view my full list of neutralizers (like breathing and moving) in my sample kit below.

Decompressing and Distracting: They both serve a purpose.

These are activities that calm, settle, and give our mind a much-needed break – a sort of vacation. They can be both active or passive depending on what we are seeking at any given time. It's about balance, and what works for you at any given moment can shift.

Decompressing activities can put us in a “Flow State,” a psychological concept coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Often referred to as being in the “zone,” it's a state where we become so deeply absorbed in an activity that distractions fade into the background. Time may feel as though it's standing still as we fall into a deep focus. The repetitive mental chatter begins to quiet, and we begin to relax into the moment. Think things like painting, building, gardening, organizing.

Distracting activities play an important role too. When we’re overwhelmed by heavy feelings, they give us a different kind of break. You might not want to be actively engaged and prefer something more passive and land you in a different type of zone. Think binge-watching your favorite series on Netflix.

Sometimes the term “distraction” gets a bad rap because it's associated with avoiding an underlying issue. In Western culture, we hear threats that if we ignore or suppress our emotions, they will come back later with a vengeance. Not necessarily. Psychologist Ethan Kross remarks that, “If something doesn’t keep cropping up, there's a good chance you're not harboring some invisible wound that will fester and ruin your life decades down the road.”

We are complex and unique beings, and different things work for different people – it's all about balance and knowing what works for YOU. Also, keep in mind that there is much overlap between depressing and distracting activities. They can both achieve different types of flow states, and many fall in the middle or can be interchangeable depending on the intensity level at which they're being performed.

Customize your list to YOU.

Ideally, the activities you list shouldn’t be too easy or too hard, and what works for one will not work for all. This is not the time to learn a new hobby and the frustrations that come with learning curves. This is not the time to paint that masterpiece. Don’t go in with any expectations of productivity or judgment. That’s not how this works.

The goal is to find things that will absorb you in the present moment creating a soothing rhythm that shifts your emotional focus into a more relaxed, calm, gentle Flow State.

Include the things you will want to do. I think of it as doing whatever exercise you’re going to do – if I had to follow someone else’s regimen of crunches, I wouldn’t work out a day in my life. But yoga is enjoyable to me, so it doesn’t take the same dreaded “effort.”

Apply your kit broadly - it's exclusive to writing breaks.

Your Kit can also come in handy when your feeling stuck at any point so take the time to carefully curate it and keep it accessible. Consider taping it to your bedroom wall, or carrying a folded version in your wallet.

A Sample: My Emotional First Aid Kit

Everyone’s Decompression First Aid Kit will look different, but to get started, here are some of the things I keep in mine. The activities fall on a spectrum from distraction to flow states.

• Create and Craft (I'm talking layperson level) - Think adult coloring books with freshly sharpened colored pencils, Paint by Number or Diamond Art kit, (see Show Your Story page for recs) ripping up magazines and making a collage, build something. The list goes on. And on. And on.

  • “Grandma” activities are trending on Insta right now…so I’m told. Needlepoint, garden, knit, bake, canning.

• I find Word Searches surprisingly calming (Amazon has all kinds of them). Some prefer Crossword Puzzles (they require a higher level of thinking and tend to bring a frustration I don't have the bandwidth for). Maybe a puzzle, or playing a video or board game with a stranger on the internet.

  
  

• Clean/Declutter/Organize - The process feels akin to decluttering my brain. Disinfect and polish the shelves of your refrigerator. Organize a junk drawer. Go through the clothes you no longer wear and start a donation bag. Polish silver. Organize your books by genre. Whatever your space is asking for.

  
  

• Move Your Body - Walk Away (or run, or bike, or skate). Scour YouTube for activity of your choice from kickboxing to yoga. Filter your search to find what works for you - Break it down to yoga for grief, yoga for a targeted body part, and my favorite Yoga for Constipation (I say this with a red face only to give you an idea of how nuanced it gets).

  
  

• Breathe - It took me YEARS to buy into this, but it works wonders. A deep breath has the superpower to activate the body’s relaxation response. It slows our nervous system by interrupting the “fight or flight” state that is hijacking our mind. The mental focus on breathing also shifts attention away from the mind spiral and grounds us in the present moment. Don't be like me and wait 19 years to try it.

  
  

  • In a pinch I use the classic 4-4-4-4 second series of Inhale --> Hold --> Exhale -->Pause. Scour the internet for all the techniques and guided practices. I loathe living in information overload but on the bright side, you can get as specific as "Deep Breathing for Grief."

• Connect with Nature - Get outside, breathe in fresh air, take a mindful walk where you pay attention to the details of the world you don’t normally take in (birds chirping, squirrels playing, gentle breeze on your arm, distinct crunch of a crisp leaf).

  
  

  • Tip - Bringing your boundaries - it's an important element of self care. State your needs without apologies. If you don't want to people, don't. I visualize being invisible and stay focused on my walk. Or what I am listening to. I resist the sense of obligation to return social pleasantries and politely decline conversation. Or, just pretend you're on the phone (you’re most likely wearing earbuds anyway).

• Relax and Rest - Snuggle under the covers and "watch" or read. Sip hot tea. Take a warm bath. Nap. Cry (yes, crying can be cleansing).

• Invite in New Ideas and Perspectives –Heavy feelings have a way of bringing on a tunnel vision and we can have a biased way of seeing things. Step out of your mind and find what you need to hear. Or what you want to learn more about to better understand what you're going through. This aids not only in relaxation, but the right podcast can feel like a good therapy session.

  
  

  • Scour the internet for articles, books, videos or podcasts to find insight on what you are seeking (get really specific to what your feeling "guilt and shame in pet loss.") I loathe the information overload we live in, but at times like this it has its benefits.

    
    

• Reach Out and Connect - Call (or today’s version of a call…text) a friend who “gets” you. Lean on your supports. When we are struggling others have a way of seeing we can’t.

  
  

• Move - Literally get up and change your environment. Even going into a different room can create a shift.

• Write. Yes, this isn’t a typo. Just bring it down a level. Writing, at its core, is healing because it releases heavy feelings from our bodies. Write about writing feeling hard right now. Write from a broader, more peripheral place than revisiting specifics.

Keep in mind, any of these activities can be paired. I love walking in the company of a podcast, or while sipping a hot beverage on a cold day. I seem to always have some sort of show I don’t need to pay attention to in the background of crafting. Sometimes I have the company of my TV on mute while reading. You get the idea.

Visit my website, Hard Pet Days, for everything pet loss.

 As always, my writing is based on my own opinions and experiences and should not be taken as fact or considered professional advice.

Elizabeth Weiner

Hard Pet Days