Coping With Loss

Loss is broader than bereavement. We can grieve a person, a relationship, a home, a role, a future we expected to have or a version of ourselves that no longer fits.

What makes loss difficult is not only what has gone. It is also the way the absence changes the shape of everyday life.

There is no correct timetable for grief

People often worry about whether they are grieving properly. They may feel they should be coping better by now, or become unsettled when grief returns after a period of feeling more stable.

Grief rarely moves in a straight line. Anniversaries, places, conversations and apparently ordinary moments can bring the loss back into focus without meaning that you have gone backwards.

Loss can change identity

When something important ends, we may lose more than the person or situation itself. We can also lose routines, plans, social roles and assumptions about who we are.

A relationship ending may change the future you imagined. Bereavement can alter the role you occupy in a family. Leaving a job can unsettle an identity built around work. Those secondary losses deserve attention too.

Make room for mixed feelings

Loss can involve sadness, anger, relief, guilt, numbness, fear and even moments of enjoyment. Those experiences can coexist.

Trying to force grief into a single acceptable emotion can make it harder to understand what you are actually going through.

Stay connected where you can

It is common to withdraw when you do not know how to explain what you feel. Yet isolation can make loss heavier. Support does not always require a perfect conversation. Sometimes it is enough to be with somebody who does not need you to hurry.

When therapy may help

Therapy cannot remove a loss. It can provide a place where you do not need to protect other people from your feelings, and where the practical and emotional consequences of what has changed can be understood more fully.

It may be especially useful when grief becomes tangled with guilt, conflict, identity, earlier losses or the sense that everybody else has moved on while you have not.