Grief Doesn’t Need to Be Fixed

There is a particular kind of suffering that comes from losing something or someone we love.

And then there is the suffering that comes from believing we shouldn’t still be hurting.

We live in a culture that is remarkably uncomfortable with grief. We know how to respond to a broken bone. We know what to do with a fever. We know how to treat many forms of psychological distress. But grief is different. Grief doesn't always respond to our efforts to “fix” it.

We want to know: When will I feel better? When will I be over this? What am I supposed to do with all of this pain?

Sometimes, the most compassionate answer is: You don't have to be over it yet.

Grief is the price of attachment.

From an attachment perspective, grief makes sense.

We are wired for connection. We reach for the people we love, organize our lives around them, develop expectations about the future, and create a sense of safety through our relationships.

So when we lose someone, or something that matters deeply to us, our attachment system doesn't simply receive the information and move on.

It protests.

It searches.

It longs.

It asks, Where did you go? How can this be happening? How am I supposed to live in a world that looks so different now?

This is true when we lose a person through death. But grief also accompanies many other kinds of loss. This could be the end of a relationship, divorce, estrangement, infertility, a change in family, illness, a dream that didn't come true, a version of ourselves we can no longer inhabit, or a future we had imagined that will never happen.

Sometimes the person is still alive, but the relationship we had with them is gone.

Sometimes what we are grieving isn't something that happened.

It is something that didn't happen.

And sometimes grief is complicated by the fact that we are grieving something we also chose.

We can know that leaving a relationship was the right decision, and still ache for what we lost.

We can love someone, and know that we cannot continue the friendship.

We can feel relief and devastation at the same time.

Grief doesn't always arrive in neat emotional packages.

The attachment system doesn't care whether the loss was "for the best"

One of the things I find so important about an attachment perspective is that it helps us make sense of experiences that can otherwise feel contradictory.

You can know something intellectually and still feel something entirely different emotionally.

You can know that a relationship wasn't working and still miss the person terribly.

You can know that your marriage needed to end and still grieve the family life you imagined.

You can feel freer and lonelier.

You can be certain and uncertain.

You can be angry and loving.

You can even feel grief for a relationship that was painful.

None of these experiences necessarily mean you have made the wrong decision.

They may simply mean that you were attached.

And attachment doesn't disappear simply because a relationship ends.

This is one reason grief can feel so disorienting. The part of you that understands what happened may be moving forward while another part is still reaching backward.

In Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), we pay close attention to these underlying attachment needs and emotions. Beneath anger, numbness, anxiety or withdrawal, there is often something deeply human: I miss you. I needed you. I wanted to matter to you. I don't know how to do this without you. I am afraid I will be alone.

Grief asks us to make room for those truths rather than rushing past them.

You don't have to turn grief into growth

There is a particular kind of pressure that can sneak into conversations about healing.

We are encouraged to find the lesson.

To become stronger.

To turn pain into purpose.

To come out the other side better than we were before.

And sometimes those things happen.

But grief doesn't have to justify itself by making us better.

You don't have to make your loss meaningful before you're allowed to hurt.

You don't have to be grateful for what happened.

You don't have to find the silver lining.

You don't have to transform your grief into a beautiful story.

Sometimes something terrible, painful, unfair or heartbreaking simply happened.

And it is okay to feel that hurt.

There is something profoundly compassionate about allowing that to be enough.

What if the goal isn't to let go?

We sometimes talk about grief as though healing means letting go.

But perhaps a more accurate image is learning how to carry what happened differently.

The relationship may change.

The person may no longer be physically present.

The marriage may end.

The dream may need to be released.

But our bonds don't necessarily have to disappear.

We can develop what EFT might call a more secure relationship with our own emotional experience: I can feel this and remain here. I can miss you without losing myself. I can remember without becoming overwhelmed. I can love what was without needing to recreate it.

Over time, grief may become less consuming.

Not because we have stopped caring.

But because our nervous system has slowly learned that we can survive the reality of the loss.

We begin to build a life that includes the absence.

And sometimes that life can hold both the pain of what is gone and the possibility of what is still here.

There is no correct timeline for loving something you lost.

Grief doesn't move in a straight line.

You may feel okay for weeks and then be undone by a song. This happened to me once as I found myself absolutely bawling in the grocery store next to the jars of pickles.

You may think you've finally accepted something, only to wake up one morning feeling the loss all over again.

A birthday, an anniversary, a familiar place, a smell, a photograph, or an ordinary Tuesday can suddenly bring you back.

This doesn't mean you've gone backwards.

It means your attachment system remembers.

Healing isn't necessarily the absence of pain.

Sometimes healing looks like being able to experience the pain without believing it will consume you.

It looks like having more room for the whole range of your experience.

It looks like being able to say:

I miss what we had.

I'm angry that this happened.

I'm relieved.

I'm heartbroken.

I wish things had been different.

I don't wish to go back.

I don't know what comes next.

And perhaps most importantly:

I don't have to choose just one of these truths.

Maybe grief is not something to get over

Maybe grief is evidence of the depth of our capacity to love, attach, hope and imagine.

Maybe the question isn't How do I stop feeling this?

Maybe it is:

Can I learn to be with what I feel?

Can I become curious about what my grief is telling me?

Can I offer tenderness to the part of me that is still longing?

Can I allow myself to be supported rather than insisting that I should be able to handle this alone?

Can I trust that I don't need to have figured out the rest of my life today?

And can I remember that grief and hope are not opposites?

They can exist in the same heart.

At Alara, we don't believe you need to arrive in therapy with your emotions neatly organized or your grief already understood. Sometimes therapy is simply a place where what hurts can finally be witnessed without being minimized, rushed or fixed.

Because sometimes what we need most isn't someone to tell us how to feel better.

Sometimes we need someone willing to sit beside us and say:

Of course this hurts.

It mattered.

And you don't have to go through it alone.