How Do you Experience Grief? The 4 Main Influences On Your Unique Grief Journey
Last month, I talked about the 3 most common influences on mental health/illness. Similarly, there are influences on how one will experience grief. Now, these influences aren’t speaking to IF you will experience grief but rather the factors that will influence HOW you could experience grief. Loss is inevitable which means you will experience grief at some point in your life. However, the way in which grief shows up, how it’s felt and its impact on you and your life are influenced by a few different factors. I’ll be covering 4 main influences on HOW (not if) one can experience grief and its impacts in the article below.
influence #1: loss history
Is this your first experience with grief? Has grief and loss been sprinkled throughout your life? Or do you feel like you’ve encountered more loss in your life time than most?
How much or how little loss you’ve experienced can influence how you experience grief and its impacts. If you are grieving for the very first time, it will more than likely feel very unfamiliar; leaving you with a variety of questions about grief and why it does what it does. Whereas, if you have experienced loss in the past, this journey may not feel as foreign to you for the reason that you already have an idea of what grief may have in store. You will more than likely have somewhat of a “road map” to guide you through. Of course, that does not mean this grief journey can’t (and won’t) look different. However, you may feel more equipped to handle whatever it throws your way if you’ve walked a grief journey in the past.
influence #2: Modeling of Grief
As humans, we are observational creatures. Especially as children, we lean on our surroundings to learn how to navigate certain things; we call this modeling. Whether your surroundings are your caregivers, friends, and/or society, we begin to form an understanding of acceptable behaviors and ways of being. This also applies to how one grieves.
Thinking back to your childhood, how was grief addressed?
Was conversation around grief welcomed in the home?
Was it acceptable to experience (and express) the emotions brought on by grief?
Were you allowed to grieve in a fashion that fit for you? Or were you asked (whether directly or indirectly) to morph your experience of grief to fit what was considered “acceptable”.
How grief was modeled and welcomed into your childhood/surroundings, will influence how, and IF, you allow yourself to grieve. It is also not uncommon to have the desire to grieve but resist going through the process due to not having any sort of guide on how to best start, and walk through, a grieving process. I am here to give you the “permission” to grieve in whatever fashion makes sense to you. If you’d like assistance in exploring what your grief journey might look like, I invite you to schedule your FREE 15 minute counseling consultation with me.
influence #3: Type of Loss
When you think of loss/grief, what comes to mind? More than likely the death of a loved one right? While yes, this is the most common (which is why it’s referred to as a common loss) type of loss, there are many other types of losses and grief that one can experience and grieve. The type of loss you experience (whether ambiguous, compound or disenfranchised grief), will influence how you grieve as well as what your grief journey may entail.
Influence #4: Relationship to loss
Another major influencer to how challenging a grief journey may be is the relationship you had/have to the loss you’re grieving. To better understand this influence, I invite you to explore the following questions:
What role did the individual (or thing/situation if it’s an ambiguous loss, such as a divorce) you are grieving play in your life? For example, the loss of a grandparent who lived a long full life will have a different grief journey than one who lost and is grieving a child.
How present was the individual who passed in your life? Did the individual hold a spot in your daily routine or were they someone you saw every now and then? The grief journey around a loss that impacts your day-to-day will look different than a loss that carries minimal impact to your routine.
How involved were you in the dying process? You may find your grief journey looks different if you were the individual’s caregiver vs. if you played a less involved role.
Please keep in mind, regardless of how (if at all) these factors influence your grief journey, the way in which they do isn’t right or wrong; better or worse; they’re just different. In the grief world, we do our best to steer people away from comparative grief which may sound like “their grief/situation is worse than mine”. When in this mindset, it can prevent you from engaging in the grief work due to believing it’s not deserved or necessary. Keeping the mindset of all grief journeys are valid, regardless of the challenges encountered throughout, provides “permission” to anyone who is grieving to do so in a way that honors their unique grief journey.
If you are curious to learn more about the possible influences on your grief journey or are feeling stuck in your grief journey, click below to scheduled your FREE 15 minute consultation to learn what our time working together might look like.
Here’s to living a better life as your best self.
Brittany Squillace, MA, LMFT
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist
Grief Counselor
