The Truth About Grief: You’re Not Going to Fully Heal
But you can mourn and move on. Here’s how.
Grief is powerful.
It’s something we all experience, and it has the potential to alter how we function in the world. Surprisingly (or not), a lot of what we think about grief is wrong.
Let me explain so you don’t add to your suffering with false expectations. For starters, there’s this Five Stages of Grief myth you might’ve heard about:
- Denial
- Bargaining
- Anger
- Depression
- Acceptance
This commonly referenced five-stage model of grief was developed by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in the 1960’s. On the surface, it suggests we all grieve in the same linear way. But there’s a huge foundational flaw here. Kubler-Ross created this model to explain how terminally ill people come to terms with their impending death.
That’s a whole different ball game than grieving the death of a loved one or the loss of something important to you.
Kubler-Ross’s work has been widely taken out of context and injected into modern society’s collective mind. That’s dangerous.
When a person experiences loss and grieves differently than the model suggests they should, they become more distressed. Worry seeps in about failing to conform to the “normal” process, and questions like what’s wrong with me? pile onto their already heavy emotional load.
I used to tell my clients the grief process isn’t linear, and it doesn’t necessarily end. People can and should start grieving at any of the stages and cycle through them in any pattern. They can even “reach” the acceptance stage, stay there for years, then move onto the depression stage for a few months, then maybe swing back to acceptance.
After giving it some thought, I’ve realized what I’ve been preaching isn’t quite true either. The fact is there’s no way to predict how a person will grieve. They might experience all five stages or none at all.
My advice? Refer to the five-stage model as a loose guideline and avoid over-identifying with any stage while grieving.
Time does not heal all wounds
It’s not about how much time passes but what we do with that time.
I’m currently watching the show Shrinking on Apple TV. Jason Segel plays an unconventional therapist and dad mourning his wife’s untimely death. He’s been coping with alcohol, drugs, and promiscuity, and he can’t understand what his colleagues mean when they say he hasn’t begun to grieve yet.
The answer? He’s been numbing and avoiding his pain. Despite a year having passed since his wife died, his wound hasn’t begun to heal because he hasn’t done anything to facilitate that.
Time itself is not a magic cure-all. In order to start feeling better, you have to put in the work.
Actively processing grief can take many forms. Some people benefit most from talking to a mental health professional. Others might reckon best with their feelings by being in nature, volunteering, journaling, spending time with loved ones, or turning to spirituality.
Whatever your mode of grieving, the basic work remains the same:
- Feel your feelings. They’re all valid.
- Speak compassionately to yourself.
- Acknowledge moments of suffering.
- Distract when you need to.
There’s a difference between being in your feelings and being with your feelings, and the grief process requires both. Being in your feelings means you’re operating from a place of sadness, anger, loneliness, etc. You’re letting the emotions in and you’re fully feeling them.
Being with your feelings is necessary in order to continue functioning in the world. It means acknowledging that you feel bad and carrying the pain alongside you. You’re consciously allowing other matters to occupy the forefront of your mind so that responsibilities are met and you’re able to feel lighter emotions.
Ultimately, the idea of healing is a false promise.
You’re not going to heal. Not fully. Grief doesn’t stop when you lose someone you love, but it does become more tolerable when you actively process your pain.
It’s hard to sit with emotional pain, and it’s necessary. Emotions don’t go away when they’re ignored, they only get louder.
There’s a difference between grief and mourning
Listening to my patients has taught me that a lot of people don’t know what they’re feeling at any given moment, and many don’t know what an emotion is.
This may be a topic for a different day, but it’s important to recognize that grief is not an emotion. It’s more like a state of being. A process, as I’ve been referring to it here. Grief is emotion-adjacent.
The thoughts and feelings you embody while processing your loss collectively constitute grief. It may be helpful to think of it as an umbrella term for what you’re going through internally.
Mourning, on the other hand, is external. It’s what you do with your grief, and it can look vastly different among groups and individuals. Most religions and cultures have established rituals that are performed when a person dies. Funerals in the Christian community and shiva in the Jewish tradition are good examples of mourning customs.
There are countless ways a person might mourn independently, and there’s no timeline for when or how long to mourn. I recommend thinking of something you liked to do with your loved one and dedicating time to mindfully engage in that activity.
Maybe you went to a certain park or spent a lot of time playing tennis. You might associate a certain meal with that person, or perhaps you shared a special Saturday morning routine.
Think of something that brings up joyful memories of your time together. Go there and allow yourself to feel the range of emotions that will likely arise.
The answer?
So, how do you mourn and move on? It depends on who you ask.
There are no right or wrong ways to grieve or mourn. No rules are in place in this domain, and how a person engages in these processes is largely unpredictable.
There is, however, one broad truth: To “move on” doesn’t mean to stop grieving or mourning. Neither process ever truly stops.
Moving on refers to having actively engaged in them to the point where some healing has taken place. The pain stays, but it’s less intense. You’ve made space for it, and it moves from living in the foreground to the background. You have a scar rather than a gaping wound, and you move forward with that scar.
Put simply, to mourn and move on is to be human and to love.