Is it Really Grief?

Have you experienced the loss of a relationship? I’m talking about losing a relationship and the person is still living. No one has died, but you feel like a part of you has. When you lose something that you’ve invested your time, energy, and talents into, it can feel like a punch to the gut when it ends. Especially if you are the one who wants the relationship to continue, but for whatever reason, the other person has said no, no more, or not for now.

When you think of grief you may only think it applies when someone dies. That’s what grief is, right? It’s that painful feeling you get after death. Well, yes and no. (I know, really helpful…) But grief is a normal response to any loss. Not just the death of someone you loved (or perhaps, hated).

You see, we grieve those to whom we have heart strings connected. Sometimes, those heartstrings are connected through love, and sometimes they are connected through love unrequited. For example, you may be a motherless daughter who longs to have a relationship with a healthy mother, but because mom is not interested in getting healthy, you can’t have what you so desperately long for. You haven’t lost your mother to death, but you lost her a long time ago through emotional and psychological disconnection, and there is a grief that accompanies that loss.

This is called disenfranchised grief which takes many forms, but a distinguishing factor is that this type of grief isn’t recognized by society as being legitimate grief. Therefore, you have a tendency to keep your thoughts and feelings to yourself. You may even try to convince yourself that you shouldn’t feel the way you do. The support you need to grieve well is typically denied, leaving you to grieve alone and without validation.

However, the more you shove the grief aside, pretend it doesn’t bother you, or refuse to share your story, the grief continues to grow inside of you. You may start to notice some somatic symptoms such as headaches, stomachaches, backaches, and/or tightness in your chest or throat. You may have strong emotional reactions (Dominguez, 2018) and not understand why.

Physical symptoms can manifest as a result of unprocessed grief. Henry Maudsley once said, “The sorrow that has no vent in tears may make other organs weep” (Maudsley, 1867). It’s important to speak with your primary care physician to make sure that there are no underlying medical conditions present. If you get the all clear, there are tools that can be used such as, but not limited to, expressive writing, movement, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. Feeling your feelings is the way the body processes pain, but sometimes, our brain has been too overwhelmed and cannot process it without help. Grief is a path toward healing that can be overlooked, but it is something to which you may want to pay attention.

If you are struggling with a loss that is not related to a death and you would like to speak with someone about it in the Greensboro area, please feel free to reach out using the contact form (please FAQs first) to see how Breathe Again Counseling may be able to help. Because you matter, your story matters too!

Dominguez, K. M. (2018). Encountering disenfranchised grief: An investigation of the clinical lived experiences in dance/movement therapy. American Journal of Dance Therapy, 40, 254-276.

Maudsley, H. (1867). The physiology and pathology of the mind. D Appleton & Company.