How do I know if the way I'm coping with grief is helping or hurting?
Most people find something to take the edge off: a glass of wine, staying busy, the television left on. Session 13 of the Grief Works programme offers a simple two-question test for telling what's holding you up from what's keeping you stuck.
Written by
Nick Begley
Reviewed by
Julia Samuel MBE
In this article
Key takeaways
- A coping behaviour is anything you do to deal with the pain, from a glass of wine to a gym class.
- No habit is good or bad in itself. What matters is why you're doing it and how you feel afterwards.
- Unhelpful coping delays, denies or distracts from the pain. It feels good briefly, then fades.
- Helpful coping shares, soothes or releases the pain. It can be harder at the time, but you feel better for it later.
- Unhelpful habits can trap you in a loop: you feel bad, reach for them, and feel worse.
- Changing one small habit at a time, without shame, is how change tends to stick.
We have two strategies for coping; the way of avoidance or the way of attention.
— Marilyn Ferguson, quoted in Session 13 of the Grief Works programme
What counts as a coping behaviour?
Anything you do to help you deal with the pain of grief. A glass of wine is one. So is a gym class. So is putting the television on the moment you get home so the house isn't silent, scrolling your phone in bed, or staying late at work.
We do these things to feel better, and in the moment many of them work. That's what makes the unhelpful ones hard to spot. The programme is careful about one thing in particular: no behaviour is good or bad in itself.
What matters is why you're doing it and how it makes you feel afterwards.
— Julia Samuel MBE, Grief Works programme, Session 13: Coping behaviours
How can you tell if a habit is helping or hurting?
Session 13 sets out a simple test, and it's more useful than any list of dos and don'ts.
The two-question test
- Unhelpful coping: you're doing it to delay, deny or distract from your pain. It feels good for a while, but it doesn't last. It's more of a quick fix.
- Helpful coping: you're doing it to share, soothe or release your pain. It might be harder at the time, but you feel better in the long run.
Run those two questions over anything you do and you'll usually get a clear answer, including for habits that look healthy from the outside. Work can be a way of carrying on, or a way of never stopping long enough to feel anything. Exercise can be a release, or a punishment. The activity itself doesn't tell you which.
Often it is the things we do to avoid pain that harm us the most.
— Julia Samuel MBE, Grief Works programme, Session 13: Coping behaviours
Why do the unhelpful habits feel so good?
Because, briefly, they do their job. Julia describes working with a man whose wife died suddenly. He worked obsessively during the day, then binged on food and alcohol when he got home. Work took his mind off the pain, and the food and drink made him feel good in the moment.
Neither habit is unusual, and neither is wrong in itself. As the programme puts it, "These example behaviours are not inherently unhelpful." What made them unhelpful was what he was using them for. He was hiding from his grief, and it kept him stuck in the same place, not dealing with it at all.
There's a loop in this, too.
There can also be a negative cycle, where if you feel bad, you're more likely to turn to the unhelpful coping behaviours, and they make you feel worse, and so on.
— Julia Samuel MBE, Grief Works programme, Session 13: Coping behaviours
None of this means you have to face your grief every waking hour. The grief researchers Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut found that people tend to cope best when they move back and forth between facing their loss and taking breaks from it. A break is healthy. The trouble starts when the break becomes the only place you go.
Is drinking to cope with grief a problem?
It's the most common one, and it's worth being honest about. After a death, a drink can feel like the only thing that takes the edge off an evening. But alcohol is a depressant. It can deepen low mood and anxiety, and it disrupts sleep, which grief already makes harder.
The UK's low-risk drinking guidelines advise drinking no more than 14 units a week, spread over three or more days. Signs worth noticing are drinking earlier in the day than you used to, drinking alone to get through the evening, needing a drink to sleep, or hiding how much you're having. If any of that sounds familiar, your GP can help, without judgement, and the NHS has information on finding alcohol support.
What does helpful coping look like?
The things that most often turn out to help are strikingly ordinary: exercise, regular meals, enough sleep, talking to people you trust, writing things down, and calming things you enjoy, such as reading or listening to music. None of it is dramatic, and that's rather the point. What holds people up tends to be small, unglamorous and repeatable.
We've gathered more ideas in healthy ways to deal with grief and how to build a daily routine when you're grieving.
How do you change a habit without shame?
It isn't comfortable to look honestly at your own habits, especially when one of them is the thing getting you through the evenings. So it's worth saying plainly: this isn't about giving things up, and there's no shame in whatever you find. It's about knowing which habits are carrying you and which are costing you, so you can choose rather than default.
Try this: sort your own habits
- List everything you do to cope, without judging it yet. Calling a friend, scrolling, a glass of wine, the gym, keeping busy.
- Tick the ones that help and cross the ones that don't, using the two questions: why am I doing it, and how do I feel afterwards?
- For each cross, pick one small way to do it less. Eat with someone else, set a time limit on your phone, take an evening off work.
- For each tick, pick one small way to do more of it. A weekly call with a friend, a basic exercise routine, a new book by the bed.
The key is to be kind to yourself and go at your own pace.
— Grief Works programme, Practice 13: Helpful coping behaviours
How Grief Works can help
In the Grief Works programme, Session 13, Coping behaviours, includes a practice that helps you sort your own habits into helpful and unhelpful, and Session 20, A structure of good habits, helps you build the ones that hold you up. Our counsellors are available by 1-to-1 chat from 9am to 9pm every day.
If you need to talk to someone now
- Samaritans: 116 123, free, day or night
- Shout: text SHOUT to 85258, free, 24/7
- Cruse Bereavement Support: 0808 808 1677
Common questions
Is it bad to keep busy after someone dies?
How do I know if I'm drinking too much since they died?
What are healthy ways to cope with grief?
How we wrote and reviewed this article
This article was written by Nick Begley and reviewed for care, accuracy and tone by Julia Samuel MBE. Every quote from Julia is taken word for word from her books, the Grief Works programme, her writing or recorded sessions.
Sources
- Julia Samuel, Grief Works programme: Session 13: Coping behaviours; Practice 13: Helpful coping behaviours
- M. Stroebe and H. Schut (1999), "The dual process model of coping with bereavement", Death Studies, 23(3)
- UK Chief Medical Officers (2016), Alcohol consumption: advice on low risk drinking
- NHS, Alcohol support
Article history
- 9 November 2026: Published
About the authors
Written by
Nick Begley
Co-founder and Head of Research, Grief Works
Co-founder of Grief Works and former Head of Research at Headspace, a digital mental-health specialist whose tools have helped millions.
Reviewed by
Julia Samuel MBE
Psychotherapist and co-creator of Grief Works
One of the world's most respected grief psychotherapists, with over 35 years' experience. Former Vice President of the BACP, MBE for services to the bereaved, Founder Patron of Child Bereavement UK, and bestselling author of Grief Works and This Too Shall Pass.
