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Everyone here is giving you good advice mostly but I'm going to depart from that and give you a potentially unhealthy crutch.
Food.
Start baking or trying to get good at asian food or something new to you. As long as you dont massively overeat it gives you something to research, guves you an activity that keeps you from wallowing and when you nail it dopamine from delicious food.
Obesity speedrun
Music. Art.
especially doing it yourself.
make yourself cozy, drink tea, listen to music or a podcast you like and get your hands busy: drawing, painting, crocheting, soldering, whatever you like
I once stumbled upon an image that now I regret I lost. It showed a Venn diagram with two circles, one circle was your personality. The second, smaller and inside the first one but definitely took most of the space of it, was grief.
Now, most people think that over time the grief gets smaller. But that's not true at all. The grief doesn't change, it stays there. But, if you grow as a person, as your personality gets larger, while the grief is the same size, it starts to take less space inside you.
This is why the worst thing one person can do about grief is doing nothing. If you do nothing, and you stay the same, the grief will always hurt the same.
But if you start to move, slowly at first as you must. And grieve when you have to. And laugh when you have to. Connect with others, and slowly start moving forward and growing and learning again. You grow, and the grief, little by little, takes less space. And it still hurts, but it hurts a little less.
Lost my wife of 15 (together 20) years a year ago tomorrow.
Dont hide from the grief. Grieving is a natural process. Cry for an hour or two every few days. Be sad about it. Remember the good parts and bad parts.
The human mind is fucked up. None of your memories are real. Traumatic memories that stay repressed stay traumatic. It is only through remembering those memories from a safe place that you start to quantify them and feel safe around them. Your worst memory is actually just a memory of the last time you remembered it. So remembering it in the safety of your own home while eating your favorite food and listening to your favorite song will over time slowly dull the pain of that memory.
Same for grief. You want to grieve. You need to grieve. But do it from safety and security and over time the pain will lessen.
This is why talking to a therapist is useful because they create a safe place to remember in. But also remember that everyone is different and not everything works the same for everyone. You have to find your own path, be it personal, therapy or counseling or group meeting etc.
Personally I could not do counseling or group counseling. It made me irrationally angry to hear someone try to talk me through it and it made me sad and upset to listen to other people's grief. So I did my own thing.
Good luck! The great healer is time but only if you let it.
Hey man, I'm sorry you went through that. I can't even imagine this.
I don't have advice, but I can share my experiences.
When I was young, a family member died (cancer): I soldiered through it. Yes, there were some tears shed, but by and large I just pushed through it.
Fast forward 10+ years, I always felt I never really "processed" it. At least on an emotional level, I was always detached and not really "present". It's been something, I wanted and have been trying to address, but with limited success.
Recently, a close friend was diagnosed with cancer (probably terminal). I am a point in time in life, where I don't need to soldier on. I've emotional grown confident enough, that this time - I'm allowing myself to sit with this pain.
Words cannot express the gut-wrenching sorrow it brings. ...yet, I welcome and allow it. I tell myself that the depth of the sorrow, is relative to the depth of love I have for this person and that I'm capable of carrying. How painfully beautiful it is to "feel" in this moment. At moments, there is a certain catharsis in all the tears being shed.
I've started to play the guitar, just so I can play Smashing Pumpkins "Landslide". I can't sing and I can't play, but I can channel that sorrow into those lyrics in a way, I could never before.
And as much as all this hurts - it also feels healthy, it feels human.
One thing I did was, share this with the people I work with. Not necessarily the deals (effectively what I shared here). I told my boss, it will impact my performance and might require some flexibility in my schedule as I want to be able to support my friend. For me, this was an (accidental) wise move: I'm not expected to "keep it together" ...try as I might, I am failing: anger bleeds out in unexpected ways, I miss details on tasks (cause I'm not focused). And that is "okay", I apologize, people understand the why - some share their tales of grief - and we move on.
tl;dr : give yourself permission to feel, to mourn. Bring people into your life. Be "proud" that the sorrow you carry is purely a reflection of your capacity to love. Hiding from it, suppressing it, won't make it go away.
Process it, don't bury it.
As others have said, you don't deal with it.
It hurts. It is supposed to hurt. It will hurt for a while, a LONG while.
But over time it will hurt less. It will consume less of your time as days go by. And after a while it will be only the occasional flare-up.
With that said it's important not to implode. Not to let grief, the attached guilt (there's always guilt with loss - the what-ifs, the why-did-i-nots, and so on) consume you. Seek out company from family and friends. Try to occupy your free time so you're not just spinning in your own head aimlessly wallowing.
Also try to refocus things. Mourn the loss, but try to remember the good things. It is important to remember what you lost, but remember it as something you had instead.
When I lost someone decades ago, a friend of mine said,"Allow yourself 3 days to grieve. Then remember them happily." It helped me.
Basically you don't. I mean you don't "deal with it". It deals with you. It hurts like fuck. It's supposed to. Everything is worse now. It will get better though. Eventually the pain fades.
If you have any friends or family nearby don't be afraid to lean on them for support. Ultimately all we have in this world are the connections we make, that's why it hurts so much to lose one forever. Use the ones you still have.
a therapist, grief conseling, or look for someone with similar sitiaution in person or online. looking for food or games to escape isnt healthy too, take a break from work
Talking to friends, making new ones, leaning on my surviving family, and my therapist.
There is no cure. Talking about it can help. Alcohol and drugs will make it worse, because this kind of pain can't actually be numbed. All you can do is keep going, and remember them however you want to. Don't give up. People are rooting for you. ❤️
Weep.
Take your time.
Talk about it.
Repeat.
I lost my mom in 2009. I'm still grieving. Having friends and family that can share the experience with helps alot.
Don't pish yourself to "move on" if you feel like it's not what you need.
Too many people try to push the idea that you have to always move on and basically completely stop feeling bad after a while (and often a short one) but that's bullshit. Think about what you need, what you want, try to find inner peace whether it is by keeping your emotions, or letting them go.
And obviously, therapy.
Counseling/therapy. Friends. Family. Community. Psychiatrically prescribed drugs, if the depression is severe enough, and your counselor and psychiatrist agree it’s a good idea.
By giving yourself time to heal, being mindful of your emotions, talking about your experience and feelings with others
Fuck if I know.
So much this. I say turn to alcohol or pot, but not too much because I'm old and more than a couple drinks give me a hangover, and the pot makes me paranoid. So moderation.
I've done too much of both, and pot seems to be better for everyday coping with life. Or, at least ignoring it.
Its ok to be sad and to take as much time as you need. Everyone's grief looks different. It's really hard and I hope you have family or friends you can spend time with.
Community and Daoism. Being with loved ones and reading the Zhuangzi, basically.
The Zhuangzi spends a lot of time talking about the inevitability of change in a way I found amusing, easy to understand and profound without being mystic. It also has a bunch of odd tales that encourage thinking about things beyond the human time scale, which i found oddly comforting. Kinda like the disassociation of booze/drugs, but less unhealthy.
Remember that healing is not the same as forgetting. What heals is your ability to function as an empathetic human. Learning to carry grief can make you a stronger person to help others bear their losses.
Also, people will unintentionally hurt you during your time of grieving. Accept it as part of the process of healing. Think of it as the world reminding you that it’s not all about you.
Whatever works for you. If you regularly use drugs or alcohol, don't completely stop, but be careful with them. There's plenty of lists of strategies and not everything works for everyone. The only real universal thing is to take time being not ok.
I find knowing my Five stages of Grief to help.
However ! This isn’t an empirically tested theory and if processing is becoming harder you should seek specialized help. We’re rooting for you