There is a scene early in the episode Be Right Back of the Black Mirror where Martha grieves her partner Ash after a sudden accident and she is talked into a service that gathers together everything he ever posted online or said on camera and builds something she can talk to. At first she is horrified but after she falls for it she gets hooked. At the end she ends up with a synthetic version of him in the attic for years, because letting him go would mean admitting he is gone.
I think about that episode because of everything that happens before it. Many of us are already doing a smaller, quieter version of what Martha does, with nothing more advanced than the phone in our pocket. If you have looked into online counselling because you recognise something similar in yourself, you are not being dramatic. You are experiencing something real, and it has a shape we can talk about.
What is grief avoidance?
You do not need an app for this. You need the phone you already own and a habit you probably already have.
It looks like the voicemail you cannot delete, the one where they just say hello or ask what time you're getting home, carried across three new phones because losing it would feel like losing them twice. It looks like their number still saved in your contacts years later, not because you think they'll call, but because deleting it feels like a decision you're not ready to make. It looks like scrolling old messages at two in the morning, or leaving their social media accounts exactly as they left them. It looks like typing a question into ChatGPT just to see if it replicate their voice.
None of this is new in human behaviour. Now, it just wears a techy outfit. People have always kept a parent's jumper, a partner's letter, a child's last drawing. What's changed is the volume and the accessibility. A jumper doesn't buzz in your pocket. A voicemail is one tap away. Always available. This is what changes your relationship with it.
Why the phone make stuck in your grief?
There is a real psychological idea underneath this called continuing bonds. It came out of grief research in the 1990s and pushed back on the older idea that healthy grieving means cutting ties completely. Continuing bonds says the opposite, that carrying an ongoing relationship with someone who has died, through memory, ritual, or the odd conversation in your head, is a normal and often a healthy part of grief. You're not meant to erase them, just find a new way of holding them.
he same voicemail as many times as you want, for as many years as you want, without ever asking whether it's helping. An old photograph in a drawer needs you to go and find it. A saved voicemail finds you, every time you unlock your phone, whether you were ready or not.
The difference between holding on and never letting go
This is the bit most articles about grief and technology miss because it get more clicks to argue whether AI chatbots of the dead are creepy or comforting. The actual clinical question is simpler, and applies whether you're talking to a griefbot or just rereading old texts on the sofa.
Ask yourself what are you getting out of this.
If keeping their number saved, or occasionally listening to their voice, sits alongside you living your life, going to work, seeing people, having good days as well as bad ones, that's a continuing bond doing what it's supposed to do. It's not stopping you from grieving, it's one part of how you grieve.
If instead you find yourself needing the voicemail to get through a bad afternoon, checking the messages daily rather than occasionally, feeling real panic at the idea of your phone breaking, or building your week around access to these digital traces, that's a different picture. That's not connection anymore, that's avoidance dressed as connection. Keeping the fact of their death at arm's length, one notification at a time.
What healthy grieving actually looks like?
The counsellor and researcher William Worden described mourning as an active process rather than something that simply happens to you. He set out several tasks grief asks us to work through, not in a straight line or on any set schedule.
Accepting the reality of the loss.
Actually feeling the pain of it rather than managing around it. Adjusting to a world that they don’t exist in our day to day life. And finding a way to relocate them emotionally so you can carry them with you while still building a life with room for other people.
A saved voicemail or an untouched Facebook profile doesn't automatically block any of that. But leaning on it as your main way of avoiding actually feeling the pain, will. Grief postponed doesn't go away quietly. It tends to turn up later, heavier, and often somewhere less convenient, like a promotion, a wedding, or the birth of your own child.
Does it worth talking to a grief counsellor?
If you recognise yourself in the avoidance version of this rather than the connection version, remember that this not a life sentence nor a character flaw. It's a sign your grieving process has got stuck somewhere, which is exactly the kind of thing grief counselling is built to help with.
I've written before about grief showing up in unexpected places. The pattern is always the same. The longer we avoid the truth of a loss, the more space it holds in the parts of our life we're not looking at.
If any of this sounds like your last few months, or your last few years, I'd genuinely like to help you work through it. Grief and loss counselling isn't about telling you to delete the voicemail. It's about helping you figure out whether it's a comfort or a cage, and giving you space to actually feel what you've been avoiding.
George Papachristodoulou
Frequently Asked Questions about grief
Is it normal to keep a dead person's number in your phone?
Yes, and it is one of the most common things bereaved people do. On its own it is not a sign of unhealthy grief, it becomes worth looking at only if it is tied to avoidance rather than comfort.
Should I delete my dad's voicemail or is that wrong?
There is no rule that says you have to. Many people keep a voicemail or voice note for years and find it genuinely comforting rather than harmful, as long as it sits alongside living their life rather than replacing part of it.
Is it healthy to still talk to someone who has died?
Talking to someone who has died, out loud or in your head, is a well recognised and often healthy part of grieving known as a continuing bond. It becomes a concern only when it stops you from accepting that they are gone or from engaging with people who are still here.
How do I know if I am avoiding my grief instead of healing from it?
Common signs include needing digital traces of the person to get through each day, feeling panic at the thought of losing access to them, and noticing that big feelings about the loss keep getting pushed down rather than feeling them. A grief counsellor can help you work out what is going on and what might help.