14/01/2026
The complexities of Grief and Loss (a personal post)
Many people think that we only go through a grief process when we experience a bereavement such as the death of a loved one, but in fact, we can enter a grief process for many different reasons. This is because there are so many ways in which we can experience loss.
We can experience loss of the following things:
- Loss of sense of identity
- Loss of stability/security
- Loss of self worth or self esteem
- Loss of control (over self or a situation)
- Loss of community or belonging
- Loss of acceptance and understanding by others
- Loss of status (either personal or professional)
- Loss of connection or relationship with those who were important to us
We can even experience a sense of loss for things that we have never had, for example if we were raised in an environment that wasn't safe, was abusive and caused us pain and trauma, when we grow up to realise that wasn't the norm and that we deserved better we can feel a sense of loss that we have missed out on the things we should have had, but didn't get. Even if we manage to replace some of those things in other parts of our lives, the sense of loss can still remain.
Grief is complex and multi faceted, and can often have layers which can involve going through a grief process in the here and now intensely and which feels disproportionate to the current circumstances, but can in fact be re-triggering or resurfacing old unresolved trauma or old grief processes that haven't been fully able to run their course yet. We can also go through individual grief processes for each individual sense of loss.
Grief is experienced in stages: Anger, Denial, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. To reach acceptance we must first go through the other stages, but this is none time limited and can happen in any order. It may even be that we go back and forth between stages before we move on to another one. It is not linear and very individual. We simply cannot force it or rush it.
I feel it's important to remember these things if you have thoughts you should be "done with" something by now, that you should be over it, that you should already have moved on or that you are taking too long. Sometimes it isn't just about "that one thing" and perhaps it's about so much more. Don't fall in to a trap of having unreasonable expectations of yourself or comparing yourself to others and how you perceive they might deal with things "better". These are just things we tell ourselves and have no factual basis. Some people may in fact just be very good at hiding their struggles and despite carrying things very well, still feel heavily.
I hope this post may be useful if anyone resonates or is experiencing/has experienced similar❤️
