Why Does Grief Come In Waves?
Grief can be unpredictable because it comes in waves. It’s one of the most frustrating aspects of life after loss. One day you feel mildly okay, and the next you feel as if the loss has just happened all over again. In addition to being frustrating, it can also be exhausting.
In this blog post, I cover a few reasons for why grief comes in waves. I’ll talk about some of the common myths around grief processing as well and how you can better understand your own grief process. While the focus of this post is grief related to the loss of a person, the information shared here is applicable to other types of loss as well.
My name is Halle M. Thomas and I’m an anxiety therapist in the states of Colorado and Oregon. My private practice Chicory Counseling focuses on individual therapy for millennial professionals struggling with anxiety.
Loss is one experience that all people will experience in their lifetime and yet, in the United States we happen to live in a culture that struggles to acknowledge how grief affects people.
Common Myths About Grief
Myth 1: Grief Is Linear and Has 5 Stages
Grief is not a linear process and comes in waves for the majority of people. Whether you’re familiar with the popular 5 Stages of Grief Model, or it’s your first time reading about it, it’s important to understand how this popular model has been misunderstood.
When Elizabeth Kübler-Ross first developed the model, she was specifically talking about the grief process for patients who were dying, not for friends and family. A person’s process of grieving their own eventual death can have some differences from a family member’s or friend’s process of grieving that person’s actual death. If you happen to be someone who has felt like the 5 Stages of Grief Model hasn’t matched your experience of loss, this could be why.
Myth 2: Grief Is Something You Get Over
A common frustration I hear from clients is that other people in their lives expect them to “get over” their grief and often on a very strict timeline. One example of this can be seen in bereavement policies in the workplace.
In Oregon, where my practice is based, a person is allowed to take a maximum of two weeks off to “deal with the death of a family member by: attending the funeral or alternative to a funeral, making arrangements necessitated by the death, or grieving” (Department of Administrative Services, 2022).
While it is worth noting that Oregon is one of two states that have laws requiring bereavement leave, the question remains: what is expected of a person after those two weeks of leave? I have yet to meet a person, either in my professional practice, or my personal life, who has felt they were “over” the death of a person in two weeks or any other timeline.
Myth 3: Feeling Sad Months Or Years After The Loss Means You Haven’t Healed
I take the position that multiple things can be true at once, even if they seem to be contradictory. Grieving people deserve to define what healing means for them and their specific relationship to their loss. For instance, it might be a sign of healing for someone to allow themself the opportunity to feel their sadness without judgment or shame no matter how long it has been since they experienced their specific loss.
Considerations For Your Own Grief Waves
You’re Normal If Your Grief Comes In Waves
If your grief comes in waves, your experience is incredibly common and normal. Loss has a way of disrupting nearly every aspect of your life. It is beyond reasonable to expect that grief will ebb and flow as you navigate these changes. It is also normal to be frustrated by the fact that grief comes in waves. There is no obligation to be accepting of this fact, though you may find that your emotional response to these waves shift and change over time.
Significant Life Events Can Activate Grief
Events that have significance to you, or that would have had significance to the deceased, can prompt grief to surge. Many people expect events like weddings, the birth of a child, or the purchase of a new home to poke at their grief, however, other events can have a similar effect.
Attending your favorite team’s championship game, getting into a specific school or program, adopting a pet, or quitting a specific job are other examples of events that sometimes come with a surprise wave of grief.
You Can Create A New Relationship To Your Grief
One question I frequently ask my own clients is, “What does your grief need from you?”
When you take a moment to consider grief as its own being, you can start a conversation between yourself and your grief. Sometimes your grief might need sleep or a specific meal. Other times, your grief may need to express anger or frustration about something related to your loss.
Rather than pressuring yourself to get rid of your grief, it may be worth asking what your grief needs from you. When your grief surges, there may be an opportunity to meet one or more needs that are specific to your relationship with your grief. Allow yourself time to get to know your grief in this way and see how, if at all, it changes how you interact with your grief.
Grief Comes In Waves, And That’s Okay
The next time you find yourself feeling annoyed or frustrated by a surge in your grief, I hope you will remember just how normal this experience is. By acknowledging that grief does not have a linear process, nor a specific timeline, you might find that you’re able to treat yourself and yoru grief with a bit more tenderness and kindness.
