Stay in the present

Sometimes intrusive thoughts come and before you know it you are down a rabbit hole of flashbacks and triggering memories.

This is one of the things that has proven more difficult for me to manage because intrusive thoughts can happen anytime anywhere.

I've had this awful situations when I would be talking to a client or someone who knew nothing about my grief and then the thought would come and I would start feeling sad and then anxious because I didn't know how to get out of my mind.

Luckily, there are different ways we can deal with intrusive thoughts and one of them is by bringing yourself back to the present moment.

One way to do this is, for example, to look around you and find objects in each color of the rainbow. First find something red, then something orange and so on. Say in your mind the color and the name of the object, for example: red car, orange sweater, etc.

This has helped me not only stop my thoughts but also the avalanche of feelings that come with them.

Just to be clear, this is meant to help you out when you are in a space where you can't express your feelings. But as much as possible, it is important to actually tend to your grief and express your feelings, not suppress them.