.png)
Based in Beaverton, Oregon, serving clients across Oregon and Washington, in person and online.
PSYCHOEDUCATION
Grief
Grief is what can happen when someone, or even something, that mattered is no longer in your life in the same way.
We most often associate grief with death.
However, people can grieve many different kinds of losses: a relationship, a home, a community, a career, a pregnancy, a version of their health or body, a future they expected to have, or even a sense of who they once were.
Some losses are obvious to everyone around us and others are harder to explain. Even more complicated, we sometimes don't recognize what we're experiencing as grief at all.
What is grief?
Grief is a response to loss and loss is complicated.
Loss asks the mind and body to adjust to a reality that may be very different from the one they were expecting. For example, someone who was part of your everyday life is suddenly absent or a future you had quietly organized yourself around no longer exists. The world may look mostly the same while your relationship to it has changed considerably.
Grief can involve sadness, but sadness is only one part of it. It can also include anger, relief, guilt, fear, numbness, longing, confusion, resentment, tenderness, or even moments of genuine happiness. It is even possible for several of those things to show up at once.
Why does grief happen?
We build our lives around people, places, roles, routines, identities, possibilities, and imagined futures. Over time, they become woven into how we understand ourselves and our lives.
When something important is lost, our minds don't "instantly update" simply because we logically understand what happened. Part of grief is the gradual process of adjusting to a reality that we may already understand logically. You may know someone has died and still reach for your phone to text them. You may know a relationship is over and still automatically include that person in plans six months from now.
You may understand that your health has changed while continuing to expect your body to work the way it once did. Grief can involve repeatedly encountering the difference between the world you expected and the world that now exists.
This can take time.
What can grief look like?
There is no correct way to grieve.
Deep sadness or crying
Feeling numb, detached, or strangely normal
Missing someone intensely
Anger or irritability
Relief, then subsequent guilt about feeling relieved
Difficulty concentrating or remembering things
Exhaustion or feeling physically heavy
Trouble sleeping, or wanting to sleep much more
Changes in appetite
Restlessness or difficulty sitting still
Replaying what happened
Thinking about what you should have done differently
Wanting to talk about the loss repeatedly
Not wanting to talk about it at all
Feeling disconnected from people who seem to have moved on
Becoming more aware of mortality or uncertainty
Questioning beliefs, priorities, identity, or meaning
Feeling okay for a while and then suddenly not okay at all
Grief can also look surprisingly "routine" from the outside. You may go grocery shopping, answer emails, or even laugh at something stupid. However, on the inside, it's more complicated and you can be taken by surprise. You may be feeling OK and then be absolutely devastated by a song playing in the produce aisle.
Those moments don't mean you're going backward. They may simply mean that grief doesn't move in a straight line
Grief does not follow a schedule.
Many people have heard about the “stages of grief.” They can be useful language for describing some experiences, but grief isn't that predictable. People don't necessarily move from denial to anger to bargaining to depression to acceptance and then finish grieving.
Humans are more complex than that.
Grief often changes in intensity over time rather than disappearing. There may be stretches when the loss feels relatively quiet and moments when it suddenly feels very close again. A birthday, an anniversary, a familiar smell, a medical appointment, or a piece of good news you instinctively want to tell someone can all bring the grief to the surface.
Some losses also don't have a clear ending. A person may still be alive but profoundly changed by illness, dementia, addiction, or the circumstances of a relationship. Estrangement and family rupture can leave someone grieving a person who is still somewhere in the world. These losses can be particularly confusing because there may be no single moment when the loss clearly begins or ends.
When grief gets complicated.
Grief can be painful without being a mental health disorder. There is no universal amount of time someone “should” grieve. Intense emotion after a significant loss does not automatically mean something "is wrong."
However, it is possible for grief to become fused with other experiences. A death may have been traumatic, or a complicated relationship may leave someone grieving and angry at the same time. A loss may bring up earlier losses that never had much room to be felt. Someone may become caught in guilt, avoidance, isolation, or relentless attempts to understand something that may never have a satisfying explanation.
Even more complicated, some losses can happen privately or not receive the understanding from others we would like. Some examples of this are miscarriage, infertility, estrangement, loss of health or ability, losing a career, or loss of friendship.
When the world doesn't recognize a loss, people may begin to question whether they are “allowed” to grieve it.
One thing to remember is that you are not required to prove that something mattered before you can be affected by its loss.
How can therapy help?
Therapy cannot "fix" a loss and grief isn't a problem that necessarily needs to be solved. Sometimes therapy provides a place where the full complexity of the loss can exist without judgment or needing to rationalize it. This may mean talking about sadness. It may also mean making room for anger, guilt, relief, resentment, confusion, love, unfinished conversations, or things you aren't sure you're supposed to say out loud. We may explore what was lost, what that loss changed, and how your reactions to it make sense in the context of your life.
Sometimes the work involves finding ways to stay connected to what mattered without requiring your life to remain frozen around the loss. It can involve rebuilding routines, relationships, identity, or a sense of direction. Therapy can also simply mean having somewhere you don't need to make your grief easier for other people to be around.
The aim isn't to teach you the right way to grieve and the goal isn't to stop caring about what was lost.