Understanding Grief and Loss: A Guide to Coping and Healing
Grief is a deeply personal journey, and its effects can touch every part of our lives. Whether you’ve recently experienced the loss of a loved one or are simply seeking to understand your emotions better, this guide aims to provide insight into grief, how it manifests, and how therapies like EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) can support healing.
The Many Faces of Grief
Grief is not one-size-fits-all. It can vary widely in its intensity and expression, and loss doesn’t always have to be tied to death.
Loss Without Death
Grief isn’t only tied to the death of a loved one. Individuals can experience profound sorrow and mourning in response to other types of losses, such as:
End of a relationship: Divorce, separation, or the loss of a close friendship can all evoke grief. These losses may leave you feeling heartbroken, with an intense need to process the end of a shared history.
Loss of identity: This could include a career change, losing a sense of purpose after a life event, or personal transformation that feels like the loss of a former self. For example, someone retiring after decades of work might experience grief over the loss of their professional identity.
Loss of opportunities: This can occur when dreams or future plans are thwarted, such as infertility, an inability to pursue a desired career path, or a life-changing injury. These kinds of losses may not be widely understood or acknowledged, but they can be deeply painful.
Intangible Loss
Sometimes, the grief is tied to something that can’t easily be seen, measured, or fully articulated. This could include:
Loss of safety or trust: If someone experiences betrayal, abuse, or a trauma that shakes their sense of security, the loss isn’t of a person, but of the feeling of safety or trust they once had.
Loss of potential: People may grieve the loss of a dream or expectation, like a future they had hoped for or planned. For instance, someone who dreamed of becoming a parent but cannot, whether through miscarriage, infertility, or other circumstances, can experience intense grief.
Disenfranchised Grief
This type of grief occurs when a person’s loss is not acknowledged or validated by society, often because it doesn’t fit traditional grief norms. Examples include:
Grieving a pet: The loss of a pet is often minimized by others, but the bond between humans and animals can be deeply meaningful, and the grief that follows can be intense.
Grief over a relationship that ended privately: If a relationship ended without public acknowledgment or recognition (such as a private romantic loss or the end of a friendship that was never publicly declared), the individual might feel their grief is dismissed by others.
Loss of a lifestyle or ability: Sometimes people mourn the loss of their ability to perform everyday tasks or participate in hobbies due to illness or disability. If others don’t acknowledge the loss of these abilities, the person may feel isolated in their grief.
Each type of grief requires a different approach to healing and it’s important to acknowledge that grief isn’t linear. It’s okay to feel “stuck” or overwhelmed at times. Whatever your type of grief, it’s important to honor it and seek support when necessary.
Types of Grief
Anticipatory Grief
Grieving a loss before it happens, often seen in cases of terminal illness. The individual may begin to mourn the anticipated loss of their loved one’s presence, even before the death occurs.
Normal Grief
The natural and expected emotional response to loss, which can include sadness, disbelief, anger, and even relief in some cases. Over time, this grief tends to ease as the person comes to terms with their loss and starts adjusting to life without the person or situation they’ve lost.
Complicated Grief
When the grieving process is disrupted and becomes prolonged, or intensely distressing, sometimes preventing healing. This type of grief might manifest when someone cannot seem to move forward or constantly feels overwhelmed by pain or yearning, preventing them from finding any peace with the loss. Symptoms may include:
Intense yearning or longing for the deceased
Difficulty accepting the reality of the loss
Extreme difficulty moving forward with life
If grief feels unmanageable, seeking support through therapy can help. EMDR has been shown to be particularly effective in processing complicated grief and moving individuals toward healing.
The Psychological, Behavioral, Social, and Physical Effects of Grief
Grief doesn’t just affect your emotions—it impacts your body and your behavior. Understanding these manifestations can help normalize your experience and reduce any shame or confusion.
Psychological: Sadness, anxiety, guilt, and even feelings of numbness.
Behavioral: Changes in routines, avoidance of reminders, or a desire for isolation.
Social: Distancing from others, difficulty connecting, or withdrawing from support.
Physical: Fatigue, sleep disturbances, headaches, or a weakened immune system.
All of these responses are normal. Grief can affect every corner of your life, but acknowledging these shifts is part of the healing journey.
The Dual Process Model of Grief by Stoebe & Schut
The Dual Process Model of Grief offers a helpful framework for understanding how we balance the grieving process. It suggests that we move between two main tasks:
Loss-Oriented: Focusing on the pain, memories, and sorrow of the loss.
Restoration-Oriented: Adjusting to life without the loved one, including engaging in new roles or activities.
Both processes are necessary for healing, and they don’t occur in a neat, linear fashion. In fact, oscillating between the two is a natural part of grief. This model honors that grief does not have an end point that once we reach, life will return to “normal.” Grief does not shrink over time, what really happens is that we grow around our grief.
How EMDR Can Help in the Grief Process
The EMDR AIP Model and Grief
The EMDR AIP (Adaptive Information Processing) model provides a foundational understanding of how EMDR works in healing trauma and grief. According to the AIP model, the brain stores memories of life experiences, including emotional experiences, and links them to other information. In cases of trauma or loss, these memories can become “stuck,” causing emotional distress that’s difficult to process.
How EMDR Supports the Grieving Process
Promoting Uncomplicated Grief: EMDR can facilitate a smoother grieving process by helping individuals process their grief in a healthy, natural way. It allows the brain to reprocess painful memories, reducing their emotional charge and helping individuals accept the reality of their loss.
Addressing Complicated Grief: For those whose grief has become complicated or prolonged, EMDR can break through emotional blockages and facilitate mourning.
Supporting Connection to Positive Memories: EMDR also helps re-establish connections to positive memories of the lost loved one, allowing the individual to remember with less pain and more peace.
Removing Barriers to the Grieving Process: For some, unresolved emotions or psychological blocks prevent full grieving. EMDR can help identify and remove these barriers, creating space for more open and authentic grief.
Conclusion: Grief is a Journey
Even with the help of EMDR, it’s important to recognize that grief requires time and space to unfold naturally. EMDR can’t bypass or erase the pain—it facilitates the process of mourning by helping to move stuck memories and emotions, making the journey through grief more manageable. It’s a tool that supports healing, but the experience of grief itself must be honored and fully felt. Understanding the different types of grief, the ways it manifests, and how therapies like EMDR can help may offer comfort and support as you navigate your own grieving process. Healing is possible, and with the right tools and support, you can move through grief in a way that honors your unique journey.
