9 Different Types of Grief

What Is Grief?

Grief is typically experienced commonly across all people and cultures as crying and usually with bonding with those around us. Every culture has different ways of assimilating to new life beyond the loss, but is centered around the grieving person mourning their losses and having some connection to others in the process. The grief experience typically starts in your solar plexus (part of the sympathetic nervous system responsible for kidney, stomach, liver, and adrenal gland functioning) and moves out and up your chest through your head bringing memories and impulses to soothe and connect.¹

Grief about loss of life can be very complicated for the bereaved. Bereavement for many is an uncomfortable and avoided state because of the large amount of distress, disorientation and confusion about the person who has died. It is common for people to experience grief symptoms at unexpected times and without much logical reason. People can hope to process grief sooner than later, but the process of grief is more about joining with the memories and experiences as they are uncovered consciously and allowing the memories and feelings to be experienced in the moment they are uncovered. There is no timeline for effectively processing grief.

Complicating factors of loss could include: complications with the deceased dying process, past unresolved conflicts with the deceased, caregiving for the deceased prior to their death, and intense love and closeness with the deceased. Complications can come from having an insecure or contentious bereaved relationship with the deceased.

Complications in grief make it difficult to have productive grief, which is when the grief is worked through meaningfully and produces meaning, closure and connection to self, others, and the deceased. When these complications prevent effective or predictive experiences of grief, or when grief changes from being overwhelming (common experience) to trapping (problematic), you could be experiencing prolonged grief disorder.

Grief Symptoms

The common ways people experience grief is through crying and remembering. This process is how the mind and body work together to remember lasting memories that are significant. Oftentimes memories rise in seemingly disorganized ways but are presented in order of significance to the person. For example, memories of happy times, angry times, sad times, old age and young age could all be remembered in a short period of time.

Against popular opinion, the seven stages of grief or stages of grief models are not backed by science² and are not related to mapping or structuring experiences of grief.³ The type of loss (person and dying process) has the most significance to complications and reactions to grief. Grief is connected to posttraumatic stress as well as depression. Depending on how someone has learned to deal with their emotions, avoiding or indulging in the pain of loss can lead to clinical depression and unresolved issues that need to be addressed in order to heal.⁴

Reactions in the body, mind, relationships and behavior can all be linked to grief.

Here are some common grief experiences:

• Difficulty or inability to focus
• Feeling as though purpose has been lost or having no intention in life
• Physical pain in the body (similar or dissimilar to the deceased’s pain)
• Dry mouth
• Sensitivity to light/sound
• Clumsy or carelessness
• Wearing deceased clothes
• Crying
• Fatigue
• Anticipated further loss (others will die, more bad things could happen)
• Existential disorientation
• Panic
• Low motivation
• High motivation
• Low energy
• Excessive energy
• Confusion
• Feeling like a burden
• Thoughts of suicide
• Conversing with the deceased

How Grief Affects the Body

Emotions can sometimes have an effect on the body. Mind-body connections are well documented with grief. Grief can create pains or weaknesses and is partially dependent on the individual’s psychology, temperament and past experiences with grief. In other words, how we have processed our grief in the past (or haven’t processed grief in the past) will inform how the body understands the normal process of grief.

Physical pain in the body could be issues of conversion, which is the body’s ability to translate emotional disturbances into physical pain.⁵ Conversion symptoms in response to grief is rare, but possible. The conversion process in the body focuses on how the conscious mind can stay in control and redistribute emotional processes that the person either avoids or cannot deal with in the moment. Grief also can change the body’s capacity to respond in the moment to other challenges, successes and changes. This is because the body and mind together are working to process through a large amount of memories, experiences, needs, hopes, desires, emotions and impulses related to the grieving process.

The physical effects of grief may include:

• Muscle and body aches: Muscles and physical pain is connected to the body physically carrying out the tasks that grief presents. Tasks could include remembering or talking about or internal prompts to sleep, cry, hug, or even clean. This all wears out the body and makes it tired.
• Immune system issues: Similar to physical exhaustion, the body’s resources can also be preoccupied with the grieving process so the immune system could be under-resourced and vulnerable to issues it would normally fight off with ease.
• Shortness of breath: Extreme grief can cause shortness of breath at times, often linked to anxiety.
• Clumsiness: Existentially and interpersonally, grief can be very disorienting to people as losses can change anything in life causing initial trouble concentrating.
• Appetite more/less: Eating is a common way we soothe ourselves as people. Also, we need to be in a relaxed place in order for the body to digest food. So soothing and stress can be intertwined with appetite waxing and waning in grief.
• Headaches: Commonly connected to anger experiences, headaches can also be because of malnutrition, difficulties with sleep and social changes connected to grief.

What Are the Different Types of Grief?

Grief is documented in every culture known today.⁶ To be clear, while there are common experiences of grief, there are not universal progressions of what grief looks like and there are infinite experiences of grief.^1,2,3

Here are nine types of situations that provoke grieving responses:

1. Absent Grief

Absent grief is a term popularized for those who do not show immediate signs of grief. These are people who seem relatively unaffected by the loss. People who don’t have immediate effects of grief could experience them later as the effects of loss set in. People can also not notice grief experiences inside themselves all together. While there is a strong likelihood of prolonged experiences without grief for situations of loss, there could be avoidant or repressive tendencies within the person as a way to deal with the grief that is present within them. Dealing with absent grief first requires one to identify possibilities of repression or avoidance and then choose to experience and express the emotions instead.

2. Anticipatory Grief

Anticipatory grief is another common term in the grief world and is used to describe the grief experience of someone in the dying process and someone grieving the dying person’s death before their actual death. This often happens with prolonged disease processes, winding health symptoms or progressions and regressions, and also for caregivers. Caregivers often report that they have already grieved the deceased because they spent so much time watching the dying process. While some may advocate that they have been able to move on from grief before death, or shortly thereafter, there is no evidence to support that people could work ahead emotionally and get past current symptoms of grief ahead of time.

3. Complicated Grief

Complicated grief refers to grief that persists in intensity and does not heal, grow or change. Complicated grief can come from a variety of relationship dynamics with the deceased including safe and secure connection. Complicated grief can last upwards of six months or more, and in clinical settings, complicated grief symptoms have been seen to last many years with clinical attention ineffective at supporting the progression of symptoms. Complicated grief can be inspired from unresolved conflict, unresolved trauma, lost opportunities, unanswered questions, and dependence that was unmatched by another person.

4.Cumulative Grief

Cumulative grief is where there are several losses that are all intertwined or are unprocessed and further losses pile up emotionally. Cumulative grief is common for healthcare workers, military personnel, and first responders because these industries are primed for multiple losses, sometimes even in a single event or in a single shift or in a single week. This is essentially when the grief and losses pile up to the point where they blend together and are considered by the bereaved as a lump sum and are extremely overwhelming.

5. Delayed Grief

Similar to absent grief, delayed grief is the grief responses that have a late onset. Delayed grief could be realization as an adult what had happened in childhood and connecting losses over the course of life. Delayed grief can also be connected to a death that previously did not affect the bereaved and then later, symptoms emerge. There are a variety of reasons why this happens and is common in traumatic loss, people who have repressive barriers to their emotions and those who have a series of significant losses. The important consideration for delayed grief is to focus on what is happening in grief as opposed to why not, or why not then. Answers to the why now questions may come later, or may not, but the grief process has started nonetheless.

6. Disenfranchised Grief

Disenfranchised grief is grief over areas of life that are not seen as significant to the general culture or public. Disenfranchised grief can also be connected to smaller cultures and not just culture at large like your workplace or community, family or friends. Examples of loss that are commonly judged as insignificant could include: pets, property, investments, friendships, aunts/uncles as opposed to hierarchical family, etc. The biggest difficulty those with disenfranchised grief experience is the social disconnection and lack of support. Similarly, and at a lesser scale, this is like when emotions are not validated causing an internal assessment of reality, needs and expectations. At the level of disenfranchised grief, it can cause similar inner reactions that draw the person away from actually grieving.

7. Normal Grief

Normal grief is a process of accessing emotions, memories, impulses and meaning connected to bereavement. Normal grief process is not always characterized by stages, or common progressions but does have common themes seen across cultures and time.⁶ Normal grief experiences tend to experience beginning, middle and ending phases of emotions and memories causing further emotions and memories at times. This process is how the mind brings important information to you about your relationship with the person, or object or thing you are experiencing grief over.

8. Breakup Grief

Breakup grief is the feelings connected to loss of a relationship. After breaking up with someone, there can be many simultaneous experiences alongside grief. But grief in the context of a breakup tells you about the good times as well as the possible harm you were put through inside the relationship. Grief in this context is similar to all the others, the emotions and memories are showing and telling you about your relationship with yourself and the loss together. The implications of breakup grief could cause someone to think about a rebound relationship to avoid the pain of heartbreak, or go about convincing themselves and their communities that the breakup was for the better as a way to avoid the related inner pain, big or small.

9. Traumatic Grief

Traumatic grief is the grief process connected to loss(es) related to trauma. Trauma is anything that is too fast, too much, too intense or not at the right time causing avoidance, agitation, diminished pleasure or guilt as well as difficulty focusing and having intruding thoughts or memories.⁷ Grief in these situations can be very complicated and could require clinical interventions to help the process of grief unfold in meaningful and productive ways. Traumatic grief with losses is oftentimes connected to healthcare, military, first responders, crime, or medical complications at death that could be intense to internalize.

How to Support Someone Dealing With Grief

Helping someone with grief can be hard, especially if the helper is also experiencing grief. This is common for friends who lost a shared friend and together one friend helps the other friend(s) cope and grieve. It also happens in family systems when parents or children die, or for those with losses that are systematic like jobs, a home or shelter, or shared investment.

Friends can provide a great deal of support and for most people experiencing typical types of grief, this level of support will be enough to help the grieving process move along as needed. But chances are, those who need help or support processing grief will need clinical levels of support and intervention. Friends helping other grieving friends is a necessary and wonderful resource to those wrestling with grief, but a mental health professional can help you tap into healing and hope that was previously inaccessible.

Tips helping support a loved one through grief include:

• Ask them how you can help: Checking in can do wonders and remember not to feel the pressure to fix anything. Checking in, listening and being kind is enough to help.
• Offer help for tasks: Offering to help clean up or organize dinners is a life saver. Being ready to offer a hand when someone is struggling can make the day go that much easier. Remembering that people who are experiencing grief can have a hard time completing their activities of daily living, the additional things around the home or getting them back on their feet can really jump start healing.
• Help plan a grief ritual: Making meaning in grief is one of the best ways to support further grieving. Especially when rituals are repeated intentionally and year on year practices will make them all the more meaningful.
• Attend the memorial service, celebration of life or ritual with the bereaved permission: Being a presence and contact for sharing and reminiscing over the service will be an asset for your friend or loved one as they grieve.
• Listen to their stories, even if you have heard them before or don’t want to hear them at all: In grief, repetition is a common theme both in terms of symptoms as well as in terms of remembering. Oftentimes in grief, the bereaved will remember the same situation from multiple perspectives and want to share about it each time it comes up. If you can, this supportive presence will be a wonderful gift to the bereaved.
• Normalize the odd behaviors that could happen: Your friend could start wearing the deceased’s clothes or believes they are talking to the deceased. Endorse what meaning is in the clothes or conversations to help the bereaved connect with themselves, the deceased as well as you.
• Don’t tell them to move on: For some, grief over significant losses can take years to process due to complications, avoidance, trauma, compounding losses/changes in life.
• Do more of what works: Maybe you find that taking a friend out to lunch works well, or long walks help, or distractions are good for their mood- do more of this!
• Refer to counseling: You can only do too much, and by doing too many avoidance activities could complicate the grief journey. So while taking breaks and having peer-to-peer human connections are essential to healing, acknowledging your limits can prevent you from getting burnt out from helping a friend with challenging grief. Suggest counseling to a friend who needs more support with the grieving process.

How to Heal From Grief

It is not uncommon for people to enter individual therapy due to grief, the winding nature of the process of grief, and there not being a roadmap for grief progression. Seeking professional help can stimulate stuck and wounded areas to reorient towards further healing.

Grief counseling focuses on the loss, its complications and how to move forward with the grief, not move past the grief experiences. Grief counseling can be done online and there are several forms including individual grief counseling, group grief counseling and family or couples grief counseling. For group grief counseling, there is often a focus on the type of loss like parental, spouse, child, sibling losses so that the bereaved can connect with those who have a similar loss in their life. Typically these forms of grief counseling all focus on the losses and effects of the losses to help promote meaning and processing of the loss so people can move forward.

Some ways to begin healing from grief include:

• See a therapist: There are trained professionals who have researched and implemented the best ways of helping so that you do not have to recreate the wheel. Trying grief therapy sooner rather than later could save a lot of heartache in the long run.
• Attend group therapy: Group therapy helps because there are peers in the group all going through something similar as well as a trained therapist. Group therapy is a lovely option for those who want more friend-like experiences as they process their losses or are nervous about seeing a therapist.
• Practice self-care: Making sure you are ready for whatever comes your way takes preparation and space to process. Self-care will take the focus off of doing all the other essentials in life and allows you to just be you when you need to.
• Be patient: As noted before, there is not a timeline for how long grief processing takes. Sometimes grief is fast, and others it can be slow and for most it is somewhere in between a fast and slow process.
• Journaling: Putting your thoughts on paper, so long as they are honest and unsanitized and without self judgment, will definitely help with grief.
• Practice a hobby: Doing things that aren’t for productivity and are just for fun allow for internal senses of play and resilience to build. The goal for a hobby to work therapeutically for grief and resilience is that it wouldn’t contribute to any sort of measurement of productivity output in life. Hobbies that are just for the moment of happiness will be most effective.
• Visit with the deceased: Even if you cannot or do not have access to a physical space where the deceased resides, being with them in your mind and talking with them can be a very grounding experience.
• Be kind to yourself: As said already, because grief is not linear, the process can inspire further distress so being kind and accepting of how difficult the tasks of grief are will promote further healing.
• Get fresh air daily: Getting outside, in the sun (when possible) and moving around resets sensory experiences and can help with circadian rhythms as well as mental well being.

In My Experience

In my experience grief is a strong and challenging experience. Many people (including myself at times) push off the experience of grief and this is to our disadvantage. Keeping the focus first on accepting what is happening, noticing and exploring what you want and need to do with what is happening and implementing the impulse in some way is the process of grief. Getting support early in the process of grief will save a lot of heartache in the long run and help you connect with yourself, the deceased and those who are still alive in meaningful ways. I believe that grief is one of the most powerful experiences internally and reveals a lot about what we truly are dealing with and are attached to. Seeing what’s beyond the grief can bring other emotions but the same process of accepting, exploring and doing will help with all else that is surfaced.