When it all falls apart: a map for the first thirty days after losing a job, a relationship or someone you love

Most advice about hardship is written for people who are past the worst. It talks about lessons, growth, other doors opening. This piece is for the first month, when there are no lessons yet and lines like "it'll be all right" sound hollow.

Vietnamese tradition already has a map for this stretch. When someone in the family dies, the household holds a ceremony every seven days, seven times, up to the forty-ninth day, and then one at a hundred days. Setting the spiritual side aside, that rhythm does something very practical: it gives those left behind a marker every week, just when everything else has lost its shape. This piece suggests a similar rhythm for any kind of collapse.

Week one: lower the bar to survival

In the first week the only goals are to eat, to sleep, and not to make big decisions. That is all. Manage those three and the week counts as a success, whatever else you did or did not do.

In particular: do not sell the house, do not quit, do not message the ex, do not sign anything. In 1967 the psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe ranked life events by the stress they cause. Death of a spouse topped the list, divorce came second, and being fired was near the top. Under that level of stress, judgement is much worse than usual. That is physiology, not weakness.

Week two: put back a few fixed points

• Pick a fixed time to get up. It need not be early, only fixed.
• Eat one meal at the same time each day.
• Leave the house once a day, even if only to the end of the street for bread.

These sound trivial, but when everything else has lost its shape they are the only frame left. The body needs to know when the day starts and ends, and it cannot work that out by itself while the mind is in turmoil.

Week three: tell exactly one person, or write it down

Not everyone, and not no one. Choose one person you trust and tell them the truth, including the parts you are ashamed of. That is entirely different from answering "I'm fine" to twenty people.

If there is nobody to tell yet, write. In 1986 the psychologist James Pennebaker asked students to write about the most painful experience of their lives for fifteen minutes a day, four days running. Those who wrote about their real feelings made far fewer visits to the health centre over the following months than those who wrote about trivial things. The experiment has been repeated many times. It does not need to be well written, and nobody needs to read it.

The most frightening thing in this stretch is not the pain but the sense that you are the only one feeling it. That sense is nearly always wrong, and the only way to find out is to say it out loud.

Week four: watch for a few signs

Many people believe grief has to pass through five stages in order: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's model was originally about dying patients, not the bereaved, and later research, notably George Bonanno's at Columbia, found people follow no set order at all. Many recover faster than they expect. If you feel "fine too soon", it does not mean you are heartless.

But some signs deserve to be taken seriously: many sleepless nights in a row, being unable to eat for days, or thinking about harming yourself. If any of these apply, see a doctor or a psychologist, and if you have thoughts of harming yourself, contact emergency services or go to the nearest hospital straight away; in Vietnam, call 115. Not because you are weak, but because this is when you need a professional, the way a broken leg needs an orthopaedic surgeon.

One last thing: thirty days is not the point of being better. It is only the point of no longer being in free fall. Real recovery takes much longer, and it does not run in a straight line. There will be days that turn bad again after you had improved, often on an anniversary or at a chance song. That is normal too, and it does not mean you are back at the start.