Grief & Bereavement

Key takeaways

• Grief is not a problem to be solved or a phase to get through—it's the natural response to losing someone or something that mattered
• There's no right way to grieve, no correct timeline, and no stage you should be at by now
• Grief affects everything: your emotions, your body, your thinking, your relationships, your sense of meaning
• Some grief gets complicated or stuck, and that's not a failure—it often reflects the nature of the loss or what came before it
• Counselling offers a space to feel what you're feeling without being rushed, fixed, or told how you should be coping

If you're reading this, you've lost something. Maybe someone you love has died. Maybe a relationship has ended, or your health has changed, or a future you expected has disappeared. Maybe the loss happened recently, or maybe it happened years ago and you're surprised by how present it still feels.

Whatever brought you here, I'm sorry you're going through this. Grief is one of the most universal human experiences, and also one of the loneliest. Everyone grieves, but your grief is yours alone—shaped by who you lost, what they meant to you, and everything you're carrying.

There's no right way to read this page. Take what's useful. Leave what isn't. And know that wherever you are in this process, that's where you are.

What grief actually is

Grief is what happens when something important is no longer there. It's the process of adjusting to a world that has fundamentally changed—even when part of you hasn't caught up to that reality yet.

We usually think of grief as following death, but grief accompanies all kinds of loss. The end of a marriage. The loss of your health or independence. Leaving a home or community. Losing a job that was part of your identity. Watching someone you love change through dementia. Losing a future you'd imagined—children you won't have, a retirement that won't happen the way you planned.

All of these are real losses. All of them deserve to be grieved.

Grief is also not one thing. It's a shifting mixture of emotions, physical sensations, thoughts, and behaviours that rarely stays still for long. You might feel devastated in the morning and oddly fine by afternoon. You might go weeks feeling like you're coping and then be knocked sideways by a song or a smell. This unpredictability is normal, even when it doesn't feel like it.

There's no right way to do this

You've probably heard about the "stages of grief"—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. These concepts come from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's work with dying patients, and while they can be helpful as a vocabulary for grief experiences, they've been widely misunderstood.

Grief isn't a linear progression. You don't move neatly through stages and come out the other side. You might feel acceptance one day and raw, fresh denial the next—even years after the loss. You might never feel some of the "stages" at all. None of this means you're doing it wrong.

There's also no timeline. Some people feel significantly better after months. Others carry heavy grief for years. Both are normal. The idea that you should be "over it" by now—whatever "it" is and however long it's been—isn't based on how grief actually works. It's based on other people's discomfort with your pain.

Grief looks different for everyone. Some people cry constantly. Others feel numb or oddly detached. Some need to talk about their loss; others need silence. Some find comfort in being busy; others can barely function. Some want company; others want to be alone. There's no correct response, only your response.

And grief is rarely simple emotionally. You can feel relief and guilt at the same time—relief that suffering has ended, guilt about the relief. You can love someone and be angry at them. You can be grateful for what you had and devastated by what you've lost. These aren't contradictions; they're what it's like to be human in the face of loss.

How grief moves through you

Grief doesn't stay in your head. It lives in your whole being—your body, your emotions, your thoughts, your behaviour, your sense of meaning. Understanding this can help make sense of experiences that might otherwise feel alarming or strange.

In your body

Grief is exhausting in a physical way that can catch you off guard. You might feel fatigue that sleep doesn't fix, as though your body is running a program in the background that takes up all your resources. Sleep itself often becomes difficult—too much, too little, broken, filled with dreams.

Your appetite might disappear or become erratic. You might feel physical aches with no clear cause—heaviness in your chest, tension in your shoulders, a hollowness in your stomach. Some people experience lowered immunity and get sick more often. Some feel disconnected from their body entirely, as though they're watching themselves from a distance.

All of this is your body processing something enormous. It's not weakness or hypochondria. It's grief.

In your emotions

The emotional landscape of grief is vast and unpredictable. Sadness and longing are often central—a yearning for someone who isn't there, an ache that doesn't have a clear location. But grief also brings anger, sometimes at unexpected targets: at the person who died, at doctors, at yourself, at people who still have what you've lost.

Guilt is common too. I should have done more. I should have said something. I shouldn't feel relieved. I shouldn't be laughing when they're gone. Grief and guilt often travel together, even when—especially when—you did nothing wrong.

And sometimes there's numbness. A flatness where feelings should be. This isn't a sign that you don't care; it's often the mind's way of protecting you from more than you can handle at once.

In your thinking

Grief affects cognition in ways that can be frightening if you're not expecting them. You might struggle to concentrate, find yourself forgetting things, or feel mentally foggy in a way that's hard to describe. You might be preoccupied with the loss, replaying memories or conversations, searching for meaning or answers.

Some people experience their loved one's presence—hearing their voice, sensing them nearby, catching a glimpse that turns out to be someone else. These experiences are common and don't mean you're losing your mind. They're part of how the brain processes absence.

In your behaviour

You might withdraw from others, even people you usually want to see. Or you might need company constantly, unable to tolerate being alone with your thoughts. You might avoid places and things that remind you of your loss, or seek them out compulsively. You might find yourself going through the motions of life while feeling disconnected from all of it.

Some people throw themselves into activity—staying busy as a way of outrunning the pain. Others can barely get out of bed. Some veer between the two. All of these are ways of coping with something that has no good solution.

In your sense of meaning

Loss often raises the big questions. Why did this happen? What's the point of anything? How do I go on? What do I believe now? You might find yourself questioning things you used to take for granted—about life, about death, about fairness, about faith.

This isn't a sign that something is wrong with you. When the world breaks open, it makes sense to look for new ways of understanding it.

When grief gets complicated

Most people find that grief, while never fully disappearing, becomes more manageable over time. The acute pain softens. The loss gets integrated into life rather than dominating it. You learn to carry it.

But sometimes grief gets stuck. The pain stays as raw as the early days, even after months or years. You're unable to accept that the loss really happened. Life feels meaningless without what you've lost. You can't engage with normal activities or relationships. It feels like a part of you is missing, not just someone or something external.

This is sometimes called prolonged grief disorder or complicated grief. It's not a weakness or a failure to cope properly—it often reflects something about the nature of the loss itself.

Complicated grief is more likely when:

• The death was sudden, traumatic, or violent
• The relationship was complicated—intense, conflicted, or unresolved
• You've experienced multiple losses in a short time
• You lack support, or your grief feels unacknowledged by others
• You have a history of loss, trauma, or mental health difficulties

If your grief feels stuck in a way that isn't shifting with time, that's not a character flaw. It's often a sign that something specific is keeping the grief from processing naturally—and that support might help.

The grief that isn't acknowledged

Some losses are harder to talk about because the world around you doesn't fully recognise them. This is sometimes called disenfranchised grief, and it can be especially isolating.

The loss of a pregnancy, at any stage—something that may be invisible to others but is devastatingly real to you. The loss of a pet who was family. The death of an ex-partner, when your grief doesn't fit neatly into a category. The loss of someone to suicide or addiction, which carries its own weight of stigma and complicated feelings.

The anticipatory grief you feel while someone is still alive but no longer really present—through dementia, through illness, through estrangement. The loss of the relationship you wished you'd had with someone, which you can only fully mourn once they're gone.

These losses are real. They deserve to be grieved. And if the people around you don't understand, that doesn't diminish what you're carrying.

Taking care of yourself through this

There's no formula for grieving well. But some things tend to help, even when they're hard to do.

• Let yourself grieve. There's no shortcut around grief—only through it. The feelings you avoid don't disappear; they wait. Giving yourself permission to feel whatever arises, without judging it or rushing it, creates space for grief to move.
• Accept that this takes time. Healing isn't linear. You'll have better days and worse days, and the worse days don't mean you've gone backwards. Grief has its own rhythm, and it doesn't care about your calendar.
• Take care of your body. Eat something. Sleep when you can. Move a little, if you're able. Grief is physically depleting, and your body needs support even when taking care of it feels pointless.
• Stay connected, on your own terms. Even when you want to withdraw, some thread of connection usually helps. Let trusted people know what you need—whether that's company or space, talking or silence. People often want to help but don't know how.
• Lower your expectations. You don't have to be strong. You don't have to move on according to anyone else's timeline. Do what you can; let the rest wait. This is not the time for self-improvement projects.
• Create rituals if they help. Ways of remembering and honouring what you've lost can be comforting—lighting a candle, visiting a place, marking anniversaries. These don't have to be elaborate or conventional. They just have to mean something to you.

How counselling can help

Sometimes grief needs more than time and support from friends. Sometimes you need a space specifically dedicated to holding what you're carrying.

Grief counselling isn't about being fixed or moved through your pain faster. It's about having a space where the full weight of your experience can be felt and witnessed—without being rushed, without being told to look on the bright side, without protecting anyone else from how you really feel.

Sometimes what helps is simply having someone fully present with your grief. Someone who isn't uncomfortable with your tears or your anger or your numbness. Someone who doesn't need you to be okay.

Sometimes grief brings up unfinished business—things left unsaid, conflicts unresolved, relationships that were complicated. Counselling can help you work with these feelings, find your own kind of resolution, even when the person is no longer there to have the conversation with.

And sometimes grief is stuck in ways that need specific attention—when trauma is involved, when the loss has triggered something older, when you're trapped in patterns that aren't letting the grief move. There are ways of working with this that can help.

What grief counselling ultimately offers is help finding your way forward—not forgetting, not "moving on" in the sense of leaving your loss behind, but learning to carry it with you as part of your life rather than being trapped under its weight.

A note to end on

If you're grieving, I want you to know that whatever you're feeling is a legitimate response to loss. You're not doing it wrong. You're not taking too long. You're not too much. You're going through something genuinely hard, and the way it's affecting you makes sense.

Grief is the price of love. It's what it costs to have had something worth losing. That doesn't make it easier, but it might make it feel less like a problem to be solved and more like something to be lived through, with as much compassion for yourself as you can manage.

You don't have to do this alone. If you'd like support, I'm here.

About the author

• Cruse Bereavement Support: cruse.org.uk
• Kübler-Ross, E. (1969). On Death and Dying
• Worden, J.W. (2018). Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy (5th ed.)
• Stroebe, M. & Schut, H. (1999). "The Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement" — Death Studies