Grief-related ruminations tend to center on a few topics, as evidenced by Stroebe and Schut, and their colleagues, Dutch psychologists Paul Boelen and Maarten Eisma.2 The five topics include: (1) one’s negative emotional reactions to the loss (reactions), (2) the unfairness of the death (injustice), (3) the meaning and consequences of the loss (meaning), (4) the reactions of others to one’s grief (relationships), and (5) counterfactual thoughts about the events leading up to the death (what-ifs).
