When other people expect you to be “moving on”

After a loss, support can be very present at first and then gradually fade while your grief continues.

People around you may expect life to return to normal, encourage you to move forward, or avoid mentioning what happened because they are worried about upsetting you. You may feel pressure to appear stronger than you feel or worry that other people are tired of hearing about your loss.

Grief does not follow somebody else’s timetable. Anniversaries, photographs, music, places, smells or apparently ordinary moments can bring feelings back unexpectedly.

Counselling offers somewhere your loss does not have to be hurried, tidied away or made easier for somebody else to hear.

Complicated relationships and mixed feelings

Not every bereavement involves a straightforward loving relationship.

You may have lost someone with whom your relationship was complicated, distant, painful or unfinished. There may have been conflict, estrangement, addiction, abuse or things that were never said.

It is possible to love someone and also feel angry with them. It is possible to miss someone while also feeling relief. You might grieve the relationship you had while also grieving the relationship you wished you could have had.

There is room in counselling for the whole relationship, not only the parts that are easier to speak about.

Anticipatory and uncertain loss

Sometimes grief begins before a loss has fully happened.

Someone you love may be seriously ill, living with dementia or becoming increasingly dependent on others. You may find yourself grieving changes in the relationship while the person is still physically present.

You might be trying to support them, manage practical responsibilities and cope with your own fear at the same time. Love, exhaustion, guilt and resentment can all exist alongside each other.

Other losses can feel harder to name. A relationship may have changed completely, someone may still be alive but no longer part of your life, or there may have been no clear ending at all.

When a loss is uncertain or not widely recognised, it can be especially difficult to know what to do with the feelings that remain.

Loss can change how you see yourself

A significant loss can affect more than how you feel about what has happened. It can also change the way you understand yourself.

You may have spent many years being someone’s partner, parent, child, carer, colleague or friend. When that relationship or role changes, questions such as “Who am I now?” can begin to surface.

Grief can also affect the body. You may notice tiredness, tension, restlessness, changes in sleep or appetite, heaviness, or simply a sense that something feels different.

Sometimes grief also brings older losses back into awareness, including experiences you thought you had already dealt with.

How I work with this

My approach is humanistic and person-centred. I will not tell you which “stage” of grief you should be in or give you a timetable for when you should feel better.

Instead, we can make space for your experience as it actually is.

You may want to talk about the person or thing you have lost, tell stories, remember particular moments, explore anger or guilt, or say things you do not feel able to say to family and friends. At other times, you may not want to talk directly about the loss at all.

My hospice counselling experience has also shaped my understanding that grief, dying and loss can involve many different emotions, and that those emotions do not need to be corrected or rushed.

We can also explore how grief is affecting relationships, identity, confidence and everyday life, as well as what it means to continue living while carrying something that cannot simply be undone.