How to manage the festive season when you're grieving

Everyone’s meant to be celebrating, but Christmas can bring up memories of the people we’re missing. Katie Rosseinsky asks grief counsellors for their advice on how to cope

- Katie Rosseinsky

If you turn on the TV or scroll through social media at this time of year, it's impossible to avoid the bombardment of images of happy families jostling for space around the Christmas dinner table. But for those of us who are grieving, those cheery tableaux – from supermarket adverts to Instagram galleries – can serve as an unwelcome reminder of exactly what (and who) you might be missing this December.

When someone you love dies, you soon learn that bereavement doesn't follow a neat timeline. Your feelings don't conveniently fade into the background just because we've reached what is supposed to be the most wonderful time of year, and everyone else would feel a lot more comfortable if you could just stick on a smile and perform. “Grief doesn't respect the fact that it's Christmas and you feel you 'need' to be happy,” says Ruth Cooper-Dickson, a trauma-informed grief coach.

It's that strange disjunction between all the external trappings of comfort and joy and the knotty reality of your emotions that can make this season such a difficult one when you're grappling with loss - whether you are navigating it for the first time or the 20th. Christmas “brings up so much - wonderful times and really challenging times”, as Kate Winslet put it during a recent podcast appearance; her latest film, Goodbye June, deals with the reality of mourning over the (not so) festive period. So what can you do to make it ever so slightly easier on yourself?