Grief and returning to work: how to cope with going back without putting too much pressure on yourself

September, at least in the collective imagination, is the month when life gets back on track. The holidays come to an end, the cities fill up again, schools start up, diaries fill with appointments and work once more takes up a significant part of the day.

Of course, these boundaries are much less clear-cut today than they used to be. Not everyone goes on holiday in August; some do not go away at all, whilst others spread their holidays throughout the year. Yet a sort of shared social calendar remains: with the end of summer, it seems time to get back into the swing of things.

For those who are grieving, however, this transition can have a special significance: the outside world once again demands our presence, attention, punctuality, relationships, decisions and results. Grief, on the other hand, does not follow the calendar. It does not know it is September and does not necessarily become any easier just because it is time to return to normality.

And perhaps this very word, ‘normality’, deserves some attention.

Returning to work does not mean going back to how things were before

Following the death of someone close to us, there may be an understandable expectation – whether our own or that of others – that returning to work represents a step towards regaining our previous life.

You go back to the office, switch on your computer, meet your colleagues, and resume meetings. Many things are exactly as we left them.

But those returning may not feel exactly the same person as the one who left.

Grief is not just about feeling sad for someone who is no longer with us. A significant loss can temporarily change the way we function, but it can also affect our sense of identity, our priorities, our relationships and the way we view our lives.

This is why returning to work can produce a peculiar feeling: everything seems to have gone back to normal, whilst deep down, something certainly hasn’t.

This does not necessarily mean that there is anything wrong. Rather, it means that our external life and our internal experience may proceed, at least for a time, at different speeds.

Contemporary research on grief helps us to move away from the idea of a linear process. Grief can change over time and manifest itself with varying intensity, resurfacing in particular situations or during transitions. Mary-Frances O’Connor distinguishes, for example, between ‘grief’ – the experience of pain that can arise even long after the loss – and ‘grieving’ – the process through which, over time, we learn to live in a world where our loved one is no longer physically present.

Returning to work, therefore, does not signify the end of the mourning process. It is simply one of the many contexts in which we gradually find ourselves experiencing life after the loss.

When concentration, memory and energy seem different

One of the difficulties that may come as the greatest surprise concerns day-to-day functioning.

During the grieving process, you may experience tiredness, difficulty concentrating, increased distractibility, forgetfulness or the feeling that it takes much longer to carry out tasks that previously seemed automatic. Clinical literature on grief also describes confusion, forgetfulness, anxiety and lethargy as possible experiences associated with loss.

At work, all this can become particularly evident because many professions require precisely what may be most difficult to manage at that time: maintaining focus, organising information, making decisions, meeting deadlines and constantly interacting with other people.

A seemingly normal day can therefore require much more energy than before.

The risk is to immediately interpret this exhaustion as a personal failing: ‘I should be able to concentrate’, ‘I should be more productive’, ‘enough time has passed’, ‘I should be feeling better’.

But grief is not a test of efficiency.

It may be more helpful to observe what is happening and, where possible, temporarily adjust expectations to match the resources available. Not to give up one’s professional life, but to make the return to work more sustainable.

Work can be a burden. But it can also help

It would be equally reductive to describe work solely as an obstacle; for some people, returning to work can be very difficult, whilst for others it can also represent something valuable.

The structure of the day, set times, familiar routines, people you know and the chance to keep yourself occupied can provide some points of reference at a time when so many aspects of one’s life seem to have changed.

This is one of the key characteristics of grief: seemingly conflicting needs can coexist.

We may feel the need to stay close to our grief and, at the same time, long for moments when our attention is directed elsewhere. We may need to talk about the person who has died and, just a few hours later, prefer that nobody asks us any questions.

Contemporary models of grief describe precisely this possible oscillation between a focus that is more centred on the loss and moments when we are more engaged in reorganising our daily lives.

Work can form part of this process. Not necessarily as an escape from grief, nor even as therapy, but as one of the dimensions of life that carries on.

The question, if anything, is to understand how much space it can occupy without becoming an excessive demand or the only place where we try not to feel what is happening.

Returning to others as well

Then there is an aspect of returning to work that has little to do with professional duties: meeting people again.

Colleagues may be warm and supportive, but they may also feel awkward. Some might not know what to say, whilst others might avoid the subject for fear of causing pain. Others might ask questions just when we don’t feel like talking about it.

And, as the weeks go by, a different phenomenon may emerge: to others, life seems to have returned to normal.

The questions become fewer, the initial attention wanes, and work-related demands revert to business as usual. But for the bereaved person, the loss remains ever-present.

This is one of the reasons why bereavement can also become an experience of loneliness: not necessarily because there is a lack of people willing to help, but because it can be difficult to convey just how much a loss continues to occupy one’s experience when, on the surface, everything seems to have returned to normal.

It is not necessary to share everything at work. Everyone has the right to choose what to share and with whom. However, it can be helpful, when the situation allows, to make clear at least what we need: a more gradual approach, a few breaks, less exposure at certain times, or simply the assurance that a difficult day will not be immediately interpreted as a lack of interest or motivation.

September can make the distance felt once more

Finally, there is a less obvious aspect: the issue of returning to work does not only concern those who have suffered a loss over the summer or those returning to work for the first time following a bereavement.

The loss may have occurred many months earlier.

Yet certain points in the calendar can make it feel more present once again. Public holidays, anniversaries, birthdays, holidays, the start of a new year and even the return to full activity in September can serve as moments of comparison between what was and what has become.

Over the summer, the rhythm of life may have changed. Then, in September, the language of plans, goals and to-do lists returns.

And you may realise once again that your life has moved on, but it has not simply returned to the way it was before.

This does not necessarily represent a step backwards in the grieving process. The pain may come to the fore precisely because we are going through a new situation in which we must, once again, learn how to live without the person we have lost.

Carrying on without expecting to start afresh

Perhaps, then, the point is not to ask ourselves how quickly we’ll manage to get back to normal.

It may be more helpful to ask ourselves what we need, today, to live this part of our lives once more.

For some, this will mean getting back into a routine quickly. For others, it will mean taking things more slowly. There will be people who find comfort in being with colleagues and others who feel a greater need to protect their personal space. And what works one week may not work the next.

Grief does not require a ‘correct’ response.

Even returning to work can be seen for what it is: a process of readjusting to a part of life that carries on whilst we are still learning to live within a reality altered by loss.

It is not necessarily about going back to the way we were, nor about proving that we have managed to ‘get over’ something.

Sometimes it may be enough simply to return. And to allow ourselves a little time to work out, day by day, how to do so.