ABSTRACT
The postponer is the person who believes that if they delay the expression of their grief, over time it will hopefully go away. Some people will experience a combination of patterns while others will maintain one primary mode of avoidance. The various patterns of avoiding grief are not mutually exclusive. The specific combination of patterns will depend on one's personal history, societal influences, and basic personality. The compulsive overworker is the person who, with no prior history of doing so, begins to over invest himself or herself in work to the point where no time is available to think or feel about the loss. The somaticizer is the person who converts his or her feelings of grief into physical symptoms. The somaticizer may become so completely preoccupied with bodily involvement and sickness the he or she has little or no energy to relate to others and to do the work of the mourning.
