Grief & Loss
Types of Grief & Loss
Death Loss
Non-Death Loss: A person can grieve the loss of anything significant to their physical, psychological, spiritual and interpersonal lives.
Secondary Loss: After experiencing a devastating loss, there is often a ripple effect of subsequent losses. The primary loss causes such significant shifts and fractures that there is a domino effect of losses.
Cumulative Loss: Refers to the experience of suffering new loss before you have the chance to grieve the first loss, or suffering multiple losses in quick succession.
Non-finite Loss: From childhood, people form ideas about how they think and hope their lives will turn out. People imagine, make choices, and work towards the future they think they want and, in some cases, need. But many things are out of one’s control and they may experience this loss as they struggle with trying to achieve their hopes and dreams when life falls short of their expectations.
Ambiguous Loss: When someone or something profoundly changes or disappears and a person feels torn between hope things will return to normal and the looming sense that the life they knew is fading away. There is no certainty or finite loss.
Anticipatory Grief: Grief that occurs before a potential loss. Circumstances where death is a real possibility might lead to starting to grieve the loss.
Disenfranchised/Stigmatized Grief: When a person feels denied the right to grieve by family, friends, community members, or society as a whole. The grieving person isn’t receiving the support or validation they need. The impact of disenfranchised grief is that the person experiencing it feels alienated, invalidated, ashamed, weak etc.
Examples of Grief & Living Loss
Death of a loved one
Memory loss
Hearing loss
Vision loss
Loss of independence
Social isolation
Loss of a pet
Loss of a career
Primary and secondary Infertility
Miscarriage
Divorce
Estrangement
Financial security
Death of a dream
Chronic pain
Addiction
Abandonment
Adoption
Terminal diagnosis
Childhood trauma
Abuse
Empty nest
Natural disasters
Menopause
Faith
Intimacy
Infidelity
Retirement
Abortion
Disappearance
War
Support system
Legal issues
Global Pandemic/Covid-19
Examples of Goals after Loss
Supporting thoughts, emotions, and mindfulness
Increasing organization and productivity
Completing critical tasks
Long term financial planning
Cultivating loving relationships
Seeking fun and pleasure/travel
Launching a meaningful career
Volunteering/helping others
Implementing community engagement/connection
Writing a book/memoir as a therapeutic process
Understanding grief in terms of love and loss
Awakening to spiritual possibilities
Reducing stress and anxiety through mind and body techniques
Intentionally forgiving and letting go as an act of self-love
Finding meaning in post-traumatic growth
Building a new normal
Believing resilience can be learned
Being empowered as a sensitive or empathetic person
Incorporating creative activities/hobbies that bring a sense of belonging and connectedness
Achieving new physical fitness goals
Improving physical health/weight management
Practicing self-love with compassion
Rediscovering and redefining what joy and balance means
Creating rituals for remembrance of life
Evaluating your support system
Allowing joy when grieving
Creating new routines
Supporting partner in differing grief
Accepting life is impermanent
Grief and loss are universal human experiences. It changes you. It takes courage to intentionally uproot yourself after loss, honoring your grief and building your new normal that leads to a fulfilling existence without being overwhelmed by suffering. Grief cannot be fixed, but carried and integrated into your new life. Little by little, life alongside grief will find new passages. By integrating neuroscience, you will benefit from brain-based grief coaching in both death losses and living losses using tools and exercises. You will intentionally live forward with creating new joy, renewing your life while you carry your grief.
Trauma permanently changes us. This is the big scary truth about trauma: there is no such thing as "getting over it." The five stages of grief model [denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance] marks universal stages in learning to accept loss, but the reality is in fact much bigger: a major life disruption leaves a new normal in its wake, There is no "back to the old me." You are different now, full stop.
This is not a wholly negative thing. Healing from trauma can also mean finding new strength and joy. The goal of healing is not papering-over of changes in an effort to preserve or present things as normal. It is to acknowledge and wear your new life - warts, wisdom and all - with courage.
— Katherine Woodlwiss