The most reliable predictor of good mental health is having a large toolkit of strategies to deal with one’s emotions and deploying the right strategy at the right time. It can be exhausting to have such high emotional intensity in the initial grieving period. There are good reasons to ignore our grief some of the time, in order to give the brain and the body a break, or even to give a break to those around us who feel emotional contagion. Distraction and denial have their usefulness. Rather than asking which are the best strategies, the more appropriate question might be whether using a
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