Grief That Doesn't Look Like Grief: When the Loss Isn't What People Expect
Not all grief comes with a funeral. Some grief is the loss of a version of yourself. A future you planned. A need that was never met. A relationship that didn't end but changed. That counts.
Grief comes in many shapes and sizes throughout our lives. Losses that feel outside the narrow scope of what we or others think are “legitimate”, can feel particularly confusing and isolating. The grieving process becomes stilted if the loss is dismissed or rejected by our own selves because we fear it is unacceptable or will be misunderstood by others.
The losses nobody names
You lost a friendship in a slow fade. You lost a version of your life you'd planned for. You lost a pregnancy nobody knew about. You lost the relationship you thought you had when you found out it was something else. You realize the parent you have will never be the one you wanted. Your body is changing, you can't move or function like you used to.
Or maybe what you lost is harder to name than any of these. Maybe you lost touch with some part of yourself. The person you were before the career change. Before the move. Before you became a parent. Before you outgrew something you used to love.
These are real losses. They live in your body the same way any grief does. But because nobody around you recognizes them as grief, you carry them alone.
Why this grief gets stuck
Stuck grief is not rare. A 2017 meta-analysis in the Journal of Affective Disorders found about one in ten bereaved adults develops grief that doesn't move. And that number only counts the recognized losses. The unnamed ones don't even make it into the studies.
Grief needs to be witnessed. Not fixed, not explained. Witnessed.
When a loss is recognized by the people around you, there's permission to grieve. People bring food. Send cards. Ask how you're doing. They can empathize or at least sympathize. This helps to create a “container” which helps you navigate, honour, and make sense of the loss.
When a loss isn't recognized, the grief has nowhere to go. You carry it privately. You wonder if you're overreacting. You might even reject it and shame yourself for it. You tell yourself it shouldn't still hurt. You try to think your way through it on your own.
But grieving is not a thinking process, it’s a feeling process. It’s your mind/body’s natural way to heal and it needs safe space to do that. And feeling it alone, without anyone who sees what you're carrying, or trying to stuff it away is how that natural healing process gets stuck.
Stuck grief can go underground and operate from there in ways that you most likely don’t want. And it is those ways that may very well be the exact things that make you consider therapy.
The grief that comes with getting what you wanted
This one is particularly hard to talk about. Because how do you grieve something you chose?
You got the promotion. You had the baby. You married the person (or divorced). You made the move. You did what you needed to. You got what you wanted. And now there's this other feeling that’s showing up that you can’t name without feeling guilty.
When you’re focused on achieving something or making something happen, that’s what matters most. You’ve made a decision and you have put your energy into making it happen. But life doesn’t stop there. Even if the change is in your control, it’s still change. And change always means something is lost. A friend. A freedom. A path no longer available to you. And because the change is something you wanted, the grief feels illegitimate.
It's not. Wanting something and grieving what it costs can happen at the same time. Both are true.
What grief in the body actually feels like
Grief is the heaviness in your chest that shows up without warning. The tightness in your throat when someone asks a question that gets too close. The wave of something that hits you in the car, or in the shower, or at 2 am.
So if it hurts and you don’t even feel you have a right to feel the way you do, then it’s no wonder you’re trying to keep it at bay. But you’re thinking about it, right? Well, that’s all fine and dandy but thinking about grief and feeling grief are different. The thinking keeps it at a distance. The distance keeps it stuck. Grief is a process, it has a flow and it has to have space to move.
That's what it means to allow grief. To let your body do what it's been trying to do without all of the other stuff getting in the way.
When grief needs a witness
You can do a lot of grief work alone. Journaling. Sitting with it. Letting yourself cry.
But some grief needs another person. Not someone who says "I'm sorry for your loss" and moves on. Someone who can sit with you while the grief is happening and not try to fix it.
Someone who can hold the loss without flinching. Without rushing you through it. Without telling you that everything happens for a reason.
That's what depth work with grief looks like. Not just talking about the loss, but being with it. Allowing it to be in the room. In the body, with someone who isn't afraid of what's there.
If this is resonating, here's a broader look at what it means when something feels off but you can't name it
And when you're ready to know what working with someone on this would actually feel like, read this