Distraction – Good? Bad? What?

“I try to stay busy,” she said, tears filling her eyes as she recalled her late husband. The speaker was a friend whose husband had died suddenly less than a year before. It had been just a few months since my 16-year-old son, Brady, had died of suicide, and I’d asked her how she was coping. In part, this was to express sympathy and support. In part, it was me trying to pick up a tip that might help me cope with what has proven to be an extremely difficult episode.

Staying busy is a tactic many bereaved people employ. They dive into work, exercising, parenting, volunteering, gardening and other activities. The basic idea seems to be to engage the attention and keep from dwelling on what has been lost. Without an absorbing activity, the mind gravitates to thinking about the loss, and the level of sadness can become overwhelming.

I have actively employed staying busy as a coping strategy. I first noticed it could help about three weeks after Brady died. A work deadline required me to sit down at my desk for the first time since his death. I soon felt considerable relief. Work was comforting and soothing. I could lose myself in the familiar routine and, for a little while, think about something besides the fact that my son was dead.

Without an absorbing activity, the mind gravitates to thinking about the loss, and the level of sadness can become overwhelming.

Distraction also proved potent when it came to driving. I didn’t drive for the first month after Brady died. My mother stayed with me and drove me wherever I needed to go. I didn’t trust myself behind the wheel. I could envision a sudden urge to leave this world of pain overwhelming me and causing me to steer into a tree or bridge support. At the very least, I sometimes would be overcome by sadness and begin crying so hard I couldn’t see the road. So I avoided getting behind the wheel.

After a month, I was a little better and my mother returned to her home. Driving was still difficult, however. Now it wasn’t suicidal urges, per se, but just deep and grinding sadness that arose as I drove. Any drive over 10 or 15 minutes long would see me begin to think about Brady and the crushing grief would settle in. I dreaded having to go anywhere outside my immediate part of town.

Someone suggested I try listening to audiobooks in the car. This worked very well. I was able to drive for hours without feeling horrible. The distraction of the story being told took my mind off the loss. I’ve since found numerous activities including playing music shows, river kayaking, doing projects around the house and, most recently, pursuing a new romantic interest have provided much-appreciated relief from the blackness that enveloped me after Oct. 2, 2016.

Is Distraction Bad?

Although it’s widely used and recommended by bereaved people, a few commentators warn against distraction as a grief coping strategy. A typical example is a post titled, “The Myth of Keeping Busy.” This is from the What’s Your Grief website, which I consider one of the best grief resources out there, although I’m not wild about this particular post. Whenever I see someone attempting to use an analogy as a proof, I become wary. So after this writer compared recovering from grief to recovering from a broken leg and noted that distraction was a poor way to heal a fractured bone, he instantly had a steep hill to climb as far as I’m concerned.

Another problem with this post is that it’s just his experience with his wife’s head injury, which he attempts to generalize to every griever’s experience. It is amazing how many people do this while at the same time maintaining that “everyone’s grief is different.”

A final issue with this post as well as other warnings against distraction as a grief coping strategy is that it seems to treat it as a black-and-white choice. That is, they warn against attempting to completely avoid ever thinking at all about the loss. This may well be good advice. However, it’s no reason to rule out distraction as a coping strategy altogether.

It seems to me that distraction can easily serve as restoration-oriented coping, giving us a break from loss-oriented coping. You don’t have to distract yourself 24 hours a day. You can just do it some of the time.

Recall the description of the grief process described in this post: Tearful Two-Step: The Dual-Process Grieving Model. It describes an oscillation between loss-oriented coping and restoration-oriented coping. Many grieving people feel this depicts their experience better than the popular five-stages model. It seems to me that distraction can easily serve as restoration-oriented coping, giving us a break from loss-oriented coping. You don’t have to distract yourself 24 hours a day. You can just do it some of the time. That’s my approach and I think it’s a viable one.

Repressive Coping Research

The research that examines distraction as a grief coping tool is somewhat inconclusive as to whether it works very well. Part of the problem may be terminology. In much of the research literature, the term “repressive coping” seems to refer to something closely resembling distraction. Another frequently studied approach that sounds similar to distraction is “avoidant coping.” I’m not entirely clear, however, on whether researchers are really talking about distraction or something a little different.

To further muddy the water, studies produced mixed or less-than-definite findings. For instance, a 2008 study of people bereaved by suicide reported, “The results indicate that repressive coping may be associated with greater emotional health during suicide bereavement.” But the authors also warned that the findings “should be interpreted with caution.”

Another study, from 2007, examined the effect of repressive coping on 87 Israeli rescue workers who handled bodies after terror attacks. This is not exactly bereavement, of course. However, since I personally handled my son after he died while I was trying to revive him, I felt it was relevant at least to my case. This study found that “repressors reported lower levels of psychiatric symptomatology than nonrepressors.” So perhaps a point for distraction.

A 2005 study in the journal Death Studies compared effectiveness of different coping styles, including avoidant and emotion-based, for 57 bereaved mothers. “Results indicated that mothers who use emotion-based coping report significantly higher levels of grief, whereas mothers who use avoidance coping report lower levels of grief,” they found. This seems like evidence supporting distraction for coping.

A final study supporting the value of distraction for grief coping is co-authored by George Bonanno, one of the most prolific and respected grief researchers. This 2007 study of 120 people, evenly split between people who had lost a spouse or child and non-bereaved subjects, found repressive copers “had fewer symptoms of psychopathology, experienced fewer health problems and somatic complaints, and were rated as better adjusted by close friends than those who did not exhibit repressive coping.” Sounds like a point for distraction.

Negative Research on Distraction

Other research seems to suggest distraction is an unwise choice, however. A 2012 meta-analysis of 22 other studies involving 6,700 people found “significant associations between repressive coping, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases, especially hypertension.”

That may not be as bad as it sounds, since repressive coping seemed to be a result rather than a cause of a cancer diagnosis. Also, they found no evidence connecting repression to diabetes, asthma or heart attacks. Repressors were, however, more likely to have high blood pressure. Note that these studies were not focusing on bereaved people. It could be different for folks like us.

A 2007 study did focus on bereaved people, specifically 123 college students who had unexpectedly lost a family member, romantic partner or very close friend. This study compared outcomes of problem-focused, active and avoidant coping and found that avoidant coping seemed to increase the occurrence of complicated grief and post-traumatic stress among survivors. So that’s a strike against distraction, I’d say.

So What’s the Bottom Line?

I think the weight of the research suggests that distraction can help reduce the severity and persistence of grieving symptoms. Bearing in mind the questions raised by some research, I also suspect that it’s not a good idea to try to rely completely on distraction.

Instead, distraction might best be seen as one of many coping tools. I try not to overdo it. If I’m feeling completely beat-down from sadness over Brady’s death, I will seek distraction to let me recover some. I don’t expect sadness over my son’s death will ever go away completely, never to return. But if I can get a temporary break with distraction, I’m going to take it.

The Usual Caveat

As always, this is my report of my experience. I am not attempting to tell anybody how to grieve or how not to grieve. Different strokes for different folks. Your mileage may vary.

Thanks for reading, commenting, liking, subscribing and sharing Grief Science. I am sorry for your losses and hope you get some peace today.