Working with the loss
Tip: Sometimes young people might have the opposite situation of avoidance. Taylor was visiting Nanna’s grave every day to try and hold on to memories. It was helpful for Taylor to visit Nanna’s grave weekly instead. Taylor tried some of the activities from the list of activities that could be enjoyable in place of the daily visits and felt better.
If you need more help, think about some of the resources here, or talk to your GP (i.e., family doctor) about getting a referral to see a mental health professional to help you to work through this with more support.
This website also has more information on getting help for traumatic loss (e.g., losing a loved one through something like an accident).
Remember you can always seek help any time of day or night through these places.
It can be hard to do on your own, consider if getting some help might be useful from a professional who can help you to work through loss.
Tip: Not everyone who is doing this program will have experienced the loss of a loved one.
You can try and use this graded approach for anything you have avoided as result if your grief and loss.
For example, Jamie used this to reduce avoidance of seeing friends, by writing down 3 steps from the easiest task: texting a close friend, a harder task – phoning a friend, through to the most difficult task – seeing a friend for a hot chocolate.
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