Grief and mourning are natural human reactions to loss
Loss is one of the most common human experiences, even if painful, and one we all navigate multiple times in our lives. One could say that loss is pervasive, unavoidable, and at times necessary. Loss can not only lead to growth, but it can be essential to move through our journey if we can grieve and mourn.
Each person's journey through grief and mourning is different and there is no one way to grieve and mourn. Honoring and respecting each person's journey is essential to help someone navigate grief, which is anything but a linear process. The concept of "stages of grief" might give the wrong impression that one will move through it in a stepwise manner. This is not the case. Oftentimes it feels like a roller coaster, with random feelings or memories hitting us when least expected. We need to be compassionate with ourselves when this happens.
Grief might also look different for different people. It can be experienced as sadness, longing, loneliness, irritability, loss of interest in life, and other depressive symptoms. In some challenging situations, feelings of hopelessness might emerge. Grief can also be expressed through feelings or behaviors aimed at avoiding sitting with the deep pain of the loss. This includes anything from abusing substances to "over-functioning," for example over-working or engaging in activities that would keep one's mind busy to avoid the pain.
How can grief counseling help?
Grief and mourning can be difficult, sometimes unbearable. Grief counseling can provide a compassionate space to process the loss, accept a painful reality, and understand how it has affected you. Increasing your sense of awareness creates the possibility to process the meaning of the loss, tolerate feelings of grief, and find a renewed sense of meaning and purpose. Mourning is a process of internal transformation. This process looks different for everyone. Grief counseling can help you integrate this experience into your life and regain a sense of direction and hope.
What counts as a loss?
This might seem like an obvious question, but it is helpful to broaden our understanding of what we mean when we talk about loss. By doing so, we can expand our awareness of the role that loss, grief, and mourning play in our lives. This, in turn, can help us make sense of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that can be understood as part of those processes.
Losses as endings
Someone passing away or having a divorce are clear examples of losses as endings. However, endings can sometimes be less concrete. An experience of betrayal can bring an end to the way we understood our reality. When we experience trauma, we might lose our sense of basic safety in our bodies and trust in others. A loved one behaves in ways that make us feel we don’t know them anymore, and we are confronted with the loss of the person we once knew. A medical diagnosis, losing your job, or financial struggles can make us feel like the future we envisioned for ourselves is lost.
In all these examples, there is something that comes to an end. Something we once had (a relationship, a vision, an ideal, a sense of reality) is no longer with us.
Losing what we never had
Sometimes the experience of loss is not about something we had and then lost. Loss, grief, and mourning can also involve the loss of what we never had. This is one of the most difficult things we must face in life and usually happens as we understand and process experiences of early trauma or attachment disruptions during our childhood.
How can we lose what we never had? When it comes to old wounds created in our families of origin and other relationships, our losses involve experiences we needed to have but were not available to us. We need an environment that is consistent, responsive, unintrusive, and attuned to our needs, in order to develop a sense of self, trust in relationships, and our place in the world. Experiences of psychological, emotional, or physical abuse or neglect create a sense of loss and longing. Over time, these unmourned losses become part of the fabric of our personality and our relationships.
You Don’t Have To Go Through It Alone
All change is loss
It is important to recognize that all change is loss. This is true for changes that are part of the natural progression of life. For example, growing up and learning social norms might require us to let go of the illusion that we are the center of the universe (in fact, resistance to accepting that kind of loss can become problematic later on).
Loss is also involved when we pursue change as part of our personal growth. For example, someone who decides to move away for a better life, someone who distances themselves from toxic relationships, or someone committed to stopping unhelpful habits, might experience a sense of loss, grief, and longing. In these cases, experiencing loss does mean that we must go back to old relationships or patterns.
Grief and mourning take as long as they take
There is no predetermined duration for grief and mourning. This doesn't mean we will remain non-functioning since the way grief looks and feels can and will change over time. Our losses can become part of who we are, leaving us with a sense of void or longing. In some cases, it would be unfair to expect a parent to "be done with" their grief. The goal of grief counseling is not to “get over it,” but to accept our losses and recognize them as part of ourselves and our history.
Sometimes people ask if someone can grieve for “too long”. The answer is no. You grieve for as long as you need to. Setting a time limit to divide "normal" vs "pathological" grief is problematic and stigmatizes a natural human emotional experience. Suggesting that one is grieving for "too long" can be invalidating for the person who suffers.
What makes it different for each person?
The nature of the loss
Some losses can be experienced as traumatic, in the sense that it overwhelms our capacity to make sense of reality. For example, witnessing an unexpected, premature, and violent loss can leave us with traumatic responses in our minds and our body. Trauma-informed grief counseling can help you navigate this process, following losses triggered by death, abandonment, abuse, rejection, neglect, or betrayal. Trauma experts agree that mourning the losses involved in traumatic experiences is an essential part of the healing process.
Our psychological makeup
This includes our personality, sense of self, and attachment experiences. These variables impact the meaning of the loss and our ability to process and incorporate the loss into our life's narrative. Grief and mourning can be very painful, so our minds may understandably try to avoid that pain. This refusal to grieve can be conscious or unconscious, sometimes making us hold on to fantasies or old hopes that can get in the way of mourning.
How the loss is processed
While there is no one way to process and mourn our losses, how we allow ourselves to deal with them can make a big difference. Many cultures have developed rituals that help people make sense of their losses and provide shared meaning for them. In contrast, when we are more likely to shut down our emotions after a loss and turn away from difficult feelings, we might be planting the seeds for a more complicated journey. This is where grief counseling can play an essential role: a grief counselor can help you process unexpressed emotions that may otherwise leave you feeling guilty, disconnected, and alienated from yourself and others.
How grief counseling with our Chicago therapists can help
Grief and mourning can be difficult, sometimes unbearably so, because they entail accepting a painful reality. Resisting the process of mourning and not wanting (consciously or unconsciously) to accept our losses are understandable reactions. The bonds of love are not easily relinquished. But thinking about mourning as transformation can be helpful.
We all navigate loss and process grief differently. There is no predetermined event for when is the "right time" to seek professional help. Grief does not need to be a "problem" for counseling to be valuable. Grief counseling at Fermata Psychotherapy will involve helping you make sense of the loss, understanding how it deeply affected you, and the nature of the void the loss left in you. Along with your therapist, grief counseling can help you define a new sense of possibility, direction, and meaning in your life. Our grief and mourning therapists in Chicago can support you through this journey in person or via telehealth.
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Banner photo credit: Paola Chaaya