Understanding and Managing Various Types of Grief

David Kessler said that grief is a reaction to the death of something. This “death” punctuates the before and after of our lives. Life before and after a beloved’s death; the end of a relationship; losing our sense of safety; losing our autonomy; the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, your grief can look different from mine because how each of us grieves is informed by our culture, traditions, beliefs, intersectionality, and sadly, how society expects us to grieve (hint: not long and not messy). We may cycle through Kubler-Ross’s “stages of grief” but how we grieve would remain idiosyncratic to each of us. 

Grief can leave us at a loss

Loss is a part of life; it is inevitable and intertwined with change. At some point, all of us lost something significant to us or intimately know someone who did. It may not be a physical death but “death” of something, nevertheless. Yet despite the inevitability of loss, the grief that follows can make even the best prepared and well-rehearsed among us feel clumsy, inadequate, and ill-equipped to deal with it. We may overcompensate or decompensate in the face of it. Our first instinct may be to fix it or avoid it, not to sit with it and allow it to just be. We may want to control it and make things better somehow. Still, the loss can leave us feeling at a loss. 

Making sense of grief

Grief is the aftermath that we have to make sense of. You may be wondering: “How could this happen to me?” “Why am I feeling both yearning and relief?” “I don’t want to wake up tomorrow anymore.” “Why don’t I feel anything?” “I should not feel this way, others lost so much more than me.” “I could have, should have, would have…” As we grapple with our loss, it can lead us to isolate ourselves from those who wish to share in our pain. After all, how can others understand that which we cannot fully fathom?

Different types of grief

Sometimes knowing about the different types of grief can help. Knowledge can arm us with a sliver of control at a time when we feel like our lives are spinning out of control. Knowledge can make us feel empowered. Merely knowing the kind of grief we are holding can help normalize and legitimize our experience. The language, label, prescription, etc. (however you want to call it) can provide both a shape and a container to the globs of contradictory emotions roiling inside us. 

There are many kinds of grief and while this list is non-exhaustive, it provides some of the most common ones:

Cumulative grief:

Cumulative grief pertains to grief stemming from multiple losses occurring within a short period. It could be due to the death of multiple loved ones simultaneously or in quick succession or the loss of a home, identity, and community following divorce or separation. 

Anticipatory grief:

Anticipatory grief can be complex and begin long before the loss of a person. For those whose loved ones were diagnosed with a terminal illness, the thought of death can bring about relief but also guilt and confusion. 

Traumatic grief:

Traumatic grief, on the other hand, is the type of grief that accompanies loss that is unexpected, sudden, and feels earth-shattering. Such a loss often triggers post-trauma survival mechanisms that live parallelly with the mourning process. What degree of surprise makes grief traumatic? That is something that cannot be defined and varies from one person to the next. Some may experience delayed grief, wherein their suppressed grief after the loss of a loved one appears at a time that they least expect because of an unrelated or related trigger. Some may experience masked grief, wherein their grief manifests as physical symptoms or other maladaptive behaviors that they are unable to recognize as symptoms of grief.

Complicated grief:

Complicated grief may be experienced as feeling stuck in your grief. People who suffer from complicated grief are unable to escape feeling lost, alone, and catastrophic. Grief becomes painful constant compassion, and at some point, they may need expert support to help them differentiate between dysfunctional and healthy bereavement.

What now?

You may be stumbling your way into grief, trying to figure out day by day how to grieve in a way that feels true to you and your idiosyncrasies, intersectionality, and messiness. You may discover along the way that grieving is a process. It is a journey with no end, a day-by-day decision to keep moving forward and to honor your loss in the best possible way. 

If you want to know more about ways to cope with grief, we invite you to look at our resources, our EMDR page, and grief counseling page. 

If you need someone to bear witness to your pain without trying to fix it or make it go away for you, our Grief and Loss therapists are ready to help. 

Schedule a 15-minute consultation with our client concierge and allow us to offer you the container you need to move through your grief, in all its messiness and nonlinearity.