Grief comes in waves and continually changes. It doesn’t move in a straight line, and it doesn’t follow a schedule, no matter how many well meaning people ask if you’re “doing better” yet. Some days it’s sharp and unmistakable. Other days it’s a quiet flatness, or exhaustion you can’t quite explain, or a wave that catches you off guard in the middle of an ordinary afternoon. All of it is grief. There is no right way to do it.
Grief takes more forms than people expect
When most of us hear “grief,” we think of losing someone to death, and that’s certainly a central kind of grief. But loss shows up in many shapes, and all of them deserve care:
- The death of a parent, partner, child, friend, or pet
- Divorce, separation, or estrangement from someone you love
- Miscarriage or pregnancy loss
- A serious medical diagnosis, your own or someone else’s
- The loss of a future you had pictured, a relationship that didn’t become what you hoped, a career path that closed, a version of your life that isn’t going to happen
- Losses that aren’t tied to death at all, where you find yourself wondering if you’re even “allowed” to grieve
If you’re grieving something that doesn’t fit the usual picture of loss, it’s OK to grieve even if the people around you don’t fully understand what you’re carrying. Grief doesn’t require anyone else’s permission to be real.
Signs it may help to talk to someone
Everyone grieves differently, just as everyone falls in love differently, so there’s no single checklist that applies to every person. That said, it may help to reach out for support if you notice:
- Grief that feels stuck, where time passes but the intensity isn’t shifting at all
- Difficulty functioning at work, in relationships, or with daily tasks for an extended stretch
- Guilt, anger, or regret that keeps circling without resolution
- Avoiding reminders of the person or the loss so completely that it’s shrinking your life
- Using alcohol, food, or other coping habits more heavily to manage the pain
- Feeling isolated in your grief, like no one around you understands
None of these mean you’re grieving wrong. They mean you’re carrying something heavy, and a therapist can help you carry it in a way that doesn’t cost you your whole life in the meantime.
What grief therapy actually looks like
Grief therapy isn’t about rushing you toward closure or convincing you to feel better on someone else’s timeline. It’s about giving you a steady, unhurried space to be with what you’re feeling, and to slowly build a relationship with the loss that lets you keep living. Depending on what fits you best, this might include:
Talk therapy, simply having room to say the things that feel too heavy, too strange, or too complicated to say anywhere else, without anyone rushing you along.
EMDR, which can help when a loss is tangled up with trauma, such as a sudden or traumatic death, so that difficult memories connected to the loss lose some of their intensity. You can read more about how EMDR works on our site.
Somatic approaches, since grief lives in the body as much as the mind, showing up as fatigue, tension, or a heaviness that talking alone doesn’t always reach.
Mindfulness based tools, which can help you tolerate difficult emotions as they arise instead of being swept under by them.
A good therapist will tailor this to you rather than moving you through a fixed program. Grief and loss have their own timeline, and that timeline is allowed to be however long it needs to be.
Grief in families, and grief before a loss happens
Grief doesn’t only touch the person closest to a loss. Children and teens grieve too, often in bursts rather than in one continuous stretch, which can look confusing to the adults around them: playing normally one moment, sobbing the next. Family therapy can give everyone in the household a shared language for what’s happening, so grief doesn’t get carried alone or in silence by any one person.
Grief can also start before a loss actually happens. If you’re caring for someone with a serious or terminal illness, or watching someone slowly change with dementia or another progressive condition, you may already be grieving the person you knew, even while they’re still here. This is real grief, sometimes called anticipatory grief, and it deserves support just as much as grief after a loss.
Try to be gentle with yourself
If you’re in the middle of grieving right now, one of the most useful things you can do is lower the bar for yourself. You don’t have to be productive. You don’t have to have it figured out. You don’t have to grieve the way anyone else expects you to. Try to be gentle with yourself as you find your own way through it, and let the people and support around you carry some of the weight while you do.
Support, whenever you’re ready
At Therapy for Every Body, our therapists offer grief support for adults, teens, children, couples, and families, both in person across the Bay Area and by telehealth throughout California. Whatever your loss looks like, and whenever you’re ready to talk about it, we’re here.
Schedule a free consultation or learn more on our grief and loss therapy page.