Sergio Lottimore was in the year below me at Warwick Academy. We hadn't had a proper conversation in years, just the odd Instagram story reaction and a DM here and there.

But when news came through that Marilyn Bean, 66, was being flown to Boston for treatment with her son at her side, and that their air ambulance had been lost off Nantucket, the reverberations hit the island and the region hard. I didn't know Marilyn. But a son who travels through the night beside his mother tells you something about the family that raised him.

Bermuda is grieving for Marilyn and Sergio and for the four Canadian crew who flew them. In a place where there's no such thing as six degrees of separation, a loss like this is being carried by everyone.

While trying to get a grip on what I was feeling, I wanted to get a better understanding of grief, and what helps. So, I spoke to Darrien Ray, a clinical psychologist at Milestones and assessment director at The Reading Clinic, who grew up with Sergio and was in my year at Warwick. They were at Gilbert together and played football at PHC. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

From what I'm reading and seeing, many people are grieving who only knew Marilyn and Sergio a little. What should they understand about what they're going through?

One of the first things to understand is that grief is a normal process. It's part of the human experience, and it's a very natural, normal thing to happen.

But what people don't necessarily think about is that grief isn't just sadness. It's not just someone feeling sad or isolated in their room, like the cliché. Grief can show up in a lot of different ways. It can be anger. It can be getting touchy, easily frustrated, easily annoyed, a low tolerance for distress all of a sudden when you didn't used to have that. It can be forgetfulness, losing track of things because you're just kind of off.

It can also be psychosomatic symptoms: symptoms that start in the brain and end up in the body, like headaches or stomach aches, when otherwise you were normally healthy.

It's important to normalise all that, but it's also important to take a second and think: that might be what's happening. Sometimes we don't stop and think about how we're doing, because we're just trying to get through the day, and we don't realise it's taking a toll and we're not our usual selves. It's normal to be in that space, and it's normal for our island to be in a mourning process. It's one of our own, one of our young, bright Bermudian males who had a lot going for him.

In my experience, on a small island like ours, sometimes grief can turn almost competitive, with people feeling resentment towards others whose grief they perhaps feel is less genuine. Is that normal?

I can see both sides of that. I can see people genuinely being upset or confused by someone who's struggling to get to work, when that person is the fifth cousin who never came around unless it was Christmas. Meanwhile, I could be the person who lived next door, see them every day, and I'm still going to work. But sometimes we don't think about the bigger picture. We may not understand that person's circumstances. Maybe they struggled with their own stuff before. Maybe they've had a string of deaths in the family and this was the last straw. I don't pretend to judge other people by the way they choose to grieve. That's their own process.

I will say that your grief, as best as possible, should not step on other people's toes. It's one thing to recognise that you might need time for yourself. It's another thing, out of frustration, to harm other people's process, or to attack people in ways that weren't intended. As the saying goes: if you don't heal what cut you, stop bleeding on people that didn't harm you. The idea is for you to grieve in your own way, but not to step on other people's toes while you're doing it.

In your experience, where do people typically go for help, and when should someone say, “I think I need help with this”?

Unfortunately, many people don't seek help, especially the first time they lose someone. Many people don't even understand that's what they're going through, or they think it's something that they have to deal with on their own. In my experience, one of the biggest things that helps someone through grief is to stay connected to other people, in a way that makes sense to you.

Some people feel guilty that they don't feel as bad as they think they should. Some feel guilt over feeling or expressing normal happiness: how dare you be happy when this family are going through something you can't imagine? But everybody goes through grief in their own way, and on some level, you have to decide what you're going to focus on. Grief is not necessarily something you get past. It's something you learn to live with and develop meaning around.

That's why I think it's great when I hear people talk about a celebration of life: focusing on how a person lived, the example they gave, the people they touched. If it were me, I would want people to remember that I touched a lot of people's lives, that I worked hard for Bermuda. I'd want them to focus on who I was as a person.

I don’t believe in saying you have to get over it, or that you can't feel sad. What I say to teenagers sometimes is: the feeling isn't what gets you in trouble; it's what you decide to do with it that matters. You need help when the feelings are controlling your behaviour, when it's been a week and you still haven't been back to work. It's OK to be sad.

A part of learning to live with the emotions is to get back into routines, like sleeping at a regular time and eating at a regular time, even if you don't feel like eating. Your body needs food, and if you don't feed it, it'll be harder to deal with the things to come.

So, I am hearing choice and action: even when grief makes you feel out of control, you can choose what to focus on and choose connection over isolation. Is that fair?

That sounds perfect. The one thing I'd add is that even though we can choose what to focus on, there are still going to be times when we feel how we feel, and it can be a deep sad feeling. Another way to think about it is like when you stub your toe. It really hurts. Unless you've broken it, hopefully you haven't done any permanent harm, but you cannot stop that initial pain. What you can choose is whether to get mad that you stubbed your toe or focus on something that allows you to get through it. It's about accepting that's where you're at.

As human beings, we are way more resilient than we often think we are. One of the analogies I give in my practice: imagine you're the bus driver, going to Somerset or St George's, whichever way you like. Your responsibility is to get the bus to its destination, and along the way a bunch of people are going to get on. Some are nice and polite. Some are mean and rowdy. All these people are going to get on your bus, but they're also going to get off your bus. At the end of the day, everybody gets off the bus. You just have to get there. That's how feelings are.

Another analogy that will probably resonate with you is running with a weighted backpack. When you first put that backpack on, you feel it. It hurts. But if you don't change the weight, and you keep going, you get used to it. It's not a burden any more; it's something that moves with you. The relationship between you and your backpack changes, even though it hasn't gone anywhere. It's the same with grief. You can't change what's happened, but you still have to make it through.

I absolutely identify with carrying a heavy rucksack, and I always found the weight easier to carry when I was moving with others carrying a similar load. Does shared hardship make the weight easier to carry?

Absolutely, and that connection matters. But there is also something to the saying that misery loves company. When the connection is negative and spirals you down, groupthink can make things worse than they are. But if you have positive connection, a shared sense of “we got to make it together or not at all”, you find a way to encourage each other, and that's contagious too.

There's a saying I came across recently that I love: nervous systems are contagious. If you're anxious, you spread that anxiety to everybody around you, especially if you're in a leadership position. But if you are courageous in the face of adversity, that's also contagious. Especially for children.

I’m glad that you brought up children. I lost my mother last year and I agonised over how to tell mine about her passing. How should we think about children, who may not know how to express what they're feeling?

As adults, we have our own challenges expressing grief, and it's important to be developmentally appropriate with children. It could be explained like: “Mom and Dad are going through their own grief process, so we may be a little different than usual. It doesn't mean we don't love you, and it doesn't mean everything's going to change.” Establish that stability under their feet. The reality is that sometimes we're going to be a little more frustrated, and it's OK if you're frustrated too. When you talk about your feelings with your children, it's easier for them to talk about theirs with you. They learn it's OK to say these things.

For families whose children were close to Sergio, allow children to feel the way they feel. Let teachers and other people know they may be going through things and they may not know how to express it. And let the child know there's an open-door policy to talk about whatever's going on for them, and that extends beyond grief.

• Paolo Odoli is a former aide-de-camp to two governors of Bermuda and a former government communications officer. He is living in northern Italy with his family