The Lingering Shadow: Understanding Complicated Grief and Unmourned Losses
When Grief is Complicated
We often picture grief as a straightforward response to a clear loss, a distinct period of sadness that follows a significant event. But life, as we know, is rarely that simple.
Sometimes, grief doesn't follow a neat timeline. It can become tangled, prolonged, or even manifest in unexpected ways like persistent irritability, a general sense of distress, or a feeling of being emotionally distant.
When these patterns emerge, it might signal that you're carrying more than just the weight of today's challenges.
Grief has a profound way of making its presence known, often beyond just the realm of our thoughts and feelings.
Maybe you recognize the persistent tension in your jaw, the hollowness in your stomach, or a general feeling of unease that seems to reside within your very being.
These physical manifestations can be echoes of both current and past losses – the imprint of unmourned experiences held within the body. Let's gently explore this deep connection and the various paths towards finding a greater sense of ease and integration, including approaches that honor your mind, body, and inner world.
In this post, we will explore the often-overlooked connection between complicated grief and earlier, unmourned losses, and how therapeutic approaches like EMDR, IFS, and Somatic Therapy can offer pathways to healing that honor the whole of your being.
The Invisible Burden: How Unaddressed Losses Shape Our Present
Throughout life, we experience a lot of losses, some seemingly minor, others profoundly impactful.
Think of the disappointment of a childhood dream that never materialized, the sadness of leaving behind a beloved home, the quiet ache of a friendship that faded away.
These experiences, though perhaps not always labeled as "grief," carry emotional weight. When these earlier losses aren't fully acknowledged, felt, or mourned, those feelings don't magically disappear.
They often get tucked away into the corners of our being, forming an invisible burden – an unseen backpack of unresolved emotions that we carry with us, often unconsciously, into our adult lives.
And you know what? That backpack can get pretty heavy. Over time, the weight can start to show up in surprising ways.
You might find yourself more easily agitated than usual, quick to frustration, or experiencing a low-grade hum of distress that you can't quite pinpoint. Maybe you feel emotionally flat, struggling to connect with joy or enthusiasm, or simply feeling like you're observing life from behind a pane of glass.
These difficulties, though they might seem unrelated, can often be the surface signals of deeper, unaddressed grief yearning for recognition.
When Grief Gets Stuck: Prolonged Mourning and the Echoes of the Past
The tricky thing about unmourned losses is how they can amplify our response to more recent losses.
When those earlier hurts haven't been processed, a new loss – even one that might seem less significant on the surface – can act like a trigger, stirring up the backlog of unresolved emotions.
This can make the present grief feel disproportionately intense, overwhelming, and incredibly difficult to navigate. It's like trying to deal with a flooded basement when the main drain is already clogged with years of debris. The current overflow just has nowhere to go.
This can lead to what we recognize as complicated or prolonged grief, a state where mourning continues for an extended period, significantly impacting daily functioning and overall well-being.
Why We Can't or Don't Mourn Earlier Losses:
There are so many reasons why we might not fully mourn those earlier losses. Sometimes, we're masters of minimization, right? We tell ourselves, "It wasn't that big of a deal," or that we "should just toughen up and move on."
Other times, we might not have had the support we needed. Maybe our families weren't comfortable with big emotions, or we didn't have anyone to turn to who truly understood.
Life also just gets in the way. We're busy, juggling work, family, and everything else, and sometimes we just don't give ourselves permission to feel.
We push those feelings down, hoping they'll eventually vanish (spoiler alert: they usually don't). And let's not forget those protective mechanisms we develop, especially as kids.
Sometimes, shutting down emotionally feels like the only way to survive overwhelming pain. Plus, there's that whole societal pressure to be strong, to not "dwell" on things, especially for certain types of losses that aren't always openly acknowledged.
The Shields We Carry: Defense Mechanisms and Unfelt Grief
It's our natural human instinct to want to avoid pain, and grief can be one of the most profound emotional pains we experience.
Because of this, we often develop defense mechanisms – psychological strategies that help us cope with difficult emotions in the short term, even if they can create bigger problems down the road.
When it comes to grief, particularly those earlier losses we've been discussing, several common defenses can prevent us from fully acknowledging and processing our feelings.
Suppression: Consciously trying to push unwanted thoughts or feelings out of our awareness. You might actively tell yourself to "not think about it" or try to distract yourself whenever the feelings of loss start to surface. It's like trying to hold a beach ball underwater – it takes a lot of energy, and eventually, it might just pop up unexpectedly.
Repression: Similar to suppression, but on an unconscious level. Repressed feelings of grief aren't just intentionally ignored; they are pushed deep into the subconscious mind, where they can still influence our emotions and behaviors without our conscious awareness. You might not even realize that a current feeling of unease or irritability has roots in an earlier, repressed loss.
Compartmentalization: This involves mentally separating different aspects of our lives or our emotions to avoid confronting conflicting feelings. You might be able to function well in one area of your life while completely shutting down emotionally in another, effectively putting your grief into a separate "compartment" where it can't affect the rest of you.
Ignoring or Denial: This can range from outright refusing to believe a loss has occurred to minimizing its impact. You might tell yourself "it's not a big deal" or act as if everything is fine, even when you're hurting inside. While it can offer temporary relief, ignoring grief doesn't make it disappear; it just delays the eventual need to process it.
Displacement: This involves redirecting emotions or impulses from the person or situation that caused the grief onto a less threatening target. For example, someone might be angry at the person they lost for leaving them, but instead they become irritable and short-tempered with their family members.
Projection: With projection, we attribute our own unacceptable feelings or thoughts about the loss onto someone else. For instance, you might be feeling guilty about something you said to the person you lost, but instead you accuse others of harboring guilt.
Rationalization: This is when we create seemingly logical or acceptable explanations for our feelings or the circumstances surrounding the loss, in order to avoid facing the true emotional pain. For example, someone might say "They were old and had a good life" to minimize the impact of their loss, even though they are deeply saddened.
Intellectualization: This defense involves focusing on the factual or intellectual aspects of the loss in a detached way, rather than engaging with the emotional experience. We might become very involved in the practicalities of funeral arrangements or the medical details of an illness to avoid feeling the sadness and grief.
Regression: When faced with the intense emotions of grief, an individual might revert to earlier, more childlike behaviors or emotional states. This could manifest as increased dependency, emotional outbursts, or withdrawal.
Acting Out: This involves expressing difficult feelings, including grief, through actions rather than words or direct emotional expression. This might look like increased risk-taking behavior, substance use, unjustified conflict, or impulsive actions.
These defense mechanisms, while sometimes helpful in immediate or overwhelming situations, can prevent us from fully experiencing and working through our grief.
The unfelt emotions associated with unmourned losses can then contribute to the burden we carry, potentially leading to those feelings of irritability, distress, or being checked out that we discussed earlier.
Recognizing these defense mechanisms is an important step in understanding why some grief becomes complicated or prolonged and in starting the journey towards healing.
Unpacking the Weight: How EMDR Can Offer a Path to Healing
How do we start to understand our grief, acknowledge our defense mechanisms, and move through pain and hurt into restoration?
This is where EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy can be a truly transformative tool.
EMDR is an eight-phase therapy that helps your brain process and heal from distressing life experiences by using bilateral stimulation while focusing on those memories. For complicated or prolonged grief linked to earlier unmourned losses, EMDR offers a unique and effective route to finding relief:
Tapping into the Unconscious: Those earlier losses, especially from childhood, can be stored in what we call implicit memory. These are feelings and sensations that might not be easily accessible through conscious thought or words. EMDR can help us gently tap into these deeply held experiences.
Getting Around the Brain's Defenses: Sometimes, our brain, in its attempt to protect us, can create roadblocks to fully feeling and processing painful emotions. EMDR can help bypass these cognitive defenses, allowing for a more direct and authentic emotional release.
Weaving Together the Fragments: Unmourned losses, particularly if they were traumatic, might be stored in our minds as fragmented memories – bits and pieces that don't quite fit together. EMDR can help integrate these fragments, creating a more complete and coherent understanding of the past.
Releasing What's Been Held Tight: By focusing on specific distressing memories with that bilateral stimulation, individuals can experience a profound release of the pent-up emotions – the sadness, the anger, the fear – that have been associated with those earlier, unmourned losses.
Finding a New Way Forward: EMDR isn't just about looking back; it's about integrating those past experiences into your present life in a way that feels healthy and empowering. It can help you move forward with a greater sense of emotional freedom and overall well-being.
Finding Compassion Within: How IFS Can Support the Journey Through Grief
The Internal Family Systems (IFS) model offers a unique and compassionate way of understanding our inner world, particularly when we are navigating the complexities of grief.
IFS views our psyche as being made up of various "parts" – different aspects of ourselves that have their own feelings, beliefs, and motivations.
When we experience loss, these parts can react in diverse ways, and IFS provides a framework for understanding and healing these inner dynamics.
In IFS, grief might manifest through a deeply wounded "Sad Part" that carries the pain of the loss.
Other parts might step in to try and manage this pain. For instance, a "Protector Part" might emerge as irritability or anger, trying to shield the Sad Part from further hurt, or as a "Numbing Part" that helps us feel disconnected from the intensity of the emotions.
Even feeling "checked out" could be seen as a part trying to create distance from overwhelming feelings.
Prolonged grief, from an IFS perspective, can be understood as a situation where certain parts have become stuck in extreme roles.
The Sad Part might feel so overwhelmed that it becomes exiled, pushed away and unheard within our system. Meanwhile, the Protector Parts might become hyperactive, rigidly enforcing defenses to prevent the pain from resurfacing.
The defense mechanisms we discussed earlier – suppression, repression, compartmentalization, ignoring, and others – can all be seen as the actions of these Protector Parts within the IFS model.
These parts, though their methods might be causing problems in the long run, initially developed as ways to help us cope with overwhelming emotions.
They might be trying to prevent the vulnerability and pain associated with grief from flooding our system.
The goal of IFS therapy in the context of grief is to help us access our core "Self" – a place within us that is characterized by compassion, curiosity, clarity, calm, courage, creativity, connection, and confidence.
From this Self-energy, we can begin to understand and connect with our grieving parts and our protective parts with kindness and acceptance.
Through IFS, we can learn to:
Identify and Understand Our Grieving Parts: Recognize the parts of us that are holding the sadness and pain of the loss, acknowledging their feelings without judgment.
Connect with Our Protector Parts: Understand the fears and motivations behind our defensive strategies, recognizing that even these parts have positive intentions, even if their actions are unhelpful now.
Heal Exiled Parts: Gently approach and offer compassion to the wounded parts that have been pushed away, allowing them to share their stories and release their pain.
Foster Inner Harmony: Help the different parts of our system to relate to each other in a more balanced and compassionate way, reducing the intensity of extreme roles and defenses.
Allow for Natural Grieving: Create an internal environment where grief can be felt and processed in a more natural and integrated way, without being blocked or overwhelmed by other parts.
IFS offers a hopeful and empowering approach to navigating grief.
It recognizes the complexity of our inner world and provides a path towards healing that is rooted in self-compassion and understanding for all of our parts. IFS is non-pathologizing and sees humans as inherently good, wanting to to the best they can, and connected to themselves and their loved ones.
When we take a non-pathologizing perspective, we can tend to our internal system with gentleness and care, and find a way to honor our losses and move forward with greater wholeness.
Listening to the Body's Wisdom: How Somatic Therapy Supports Healing Through Grief
While grief is a deeply emotional and psychological experience, it's also profoundly felt within the body.
Somatic therapy, a body-centered approach to healing, recognizes this vital connection and offers powerful tools for navigating grief, especially when it becomes prolonged or when we've built up defenses against feeling its full impact.
In somatic therapy, we understand that grief isn't just a collection of thoughts and feelings in our minds; it's an energy that resides within our physical being.
Unmourned losses, especially those from earlier in life or those that felt overwhelming at the time, can become stored in the body as chronic tension, restricted movement, or even unexplained pain.
Think of those phrases we use – "a weight on my chest," "a knot in my stomach" – these often reflect the very real physical sensations of grief being held within us.
Prolonged grief can sometimes manifest as a persistent state of physical unease. The body might feel perpetually tense, or you might experience recurring aches and pains without a clear physical cause.
This can be a sign that the grief process hasn't fully moved through the body and is remaining trapped within the tissues and nervous system.
The defense mechanisms we use to avoid feeling grief also often have a physical component.
Suppression might manifest as holding your breath or tensing your muscles. Compartmentalization could create a sense of disconnection or numbness in certain areas of the body. Ignoring grief might lead to a general feeling of being disconnected or "out of body."
Somatic therapy offers a way to access and process these physically held aspects of grief.
Through techniques that emphasize body awareness, mindful movement, self touch, and focused attention to physical sensations, we can begin to connect with the grief that might be stored in our body.
This approach can be particularly helpful for accessing pre-verbal or implicit memories of earlier losses – those losses that occurred before we had the language to fully understand or express our emotions.
The body often remembers what the mind might not consciously recall. By paying attention to subtle physical cues, somatic therapy can help unlock these buried experiences and allow for their release.
Ultimately, somatic therapy aims to help the body and mind work together in the healing process of grief.
By releasing the physical holding patterns and tension associated with loss and our defenses against it, individuals can move towards a greater sense of integration, ease, and well-being. I
Somatic therapy is all about allowing the body's innate wisdom to guide us through the complex experience of grief, leading to a more complete and embodied feeling of healing.
Integrating EMDR, IFS, and Somatic Therapy in Grief Work
My approach to grief therapy often involves weaving together the strengths of EMDR, IFS, and Somatic Therapy, tailoring the integration to each client's unique needs and experiences.
I might start by establishing a safe and trusting therapeutic relationship, a core principle in IFS, recognizing that the client's system may have parts that are wary of vulnerability.
Somatic techniques can be introduced early on to help clients become more aware of how grief is held in their bodies, offering grounding and regulation skills.
When addressing specific traumatic memories related to the loss or earlier unmourned losses, EMDR can be invaluable for reprocessing these experiences and reducing their emotional intensity.
Throughout the EMDR process, I continuously bring in an IFS lens, helping clients understand and connect with any "Protector Parts" that might arise, such as avoidance or resistance.
This allows for a more gentle and compassionate processing experience.
Somatic interventions are ongoing, helping clients track and release physical tension or stuck energy associated with the grief.
This might involve mindful movement, breathwork, or gentle body awareness exercises. IFS helps clients develop self-compassion and understanding for all their parts, including those that are grieving, those that are protecting, and even those that might seem stuck in anger or denial.
By integrating these approaches, I aim to provide a holistic and deeply personalized path towards healing and integration for clients navigating the complexities of grief.
Grief Deserves to be Acknowledged
If you've recognized the weight of unmourned losses in your body and spirit, please know that healing is possible.
EMDR, IFS, and somatic therapy offer compassionate and effective support to explore these hidden wounds, allowing you to finally acknowledge and mourn those past hurts, freeing you to step into a brighter, more present future.
Whether through the targeted reprocessing of EMDR, the compassionate understanding of your inner world offered by IFS, or the gentle wisdom of Somatic Therapy that listens to your body's story, there are real ways to address these long-held tensions.
By embracing a holistic approach that honors your unique experience, you can move towards a future where your body feels lighter, your mind feels clearer, and a deeper sense of peace and wholeness is within reach.
