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When grief doesn't feel like sadness

 

Grief is often associated with sadness, but sadness is not the only response to a death. Sometimes it may not be the main feeling you experience at all.

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Your relationship with the person who died may have been loving and supportive, but it may also have been distant, conflicted, controlling or harmful. Some relationships hold many different experiences at the same time, and a death does not change what happened within them.

If the person who died was physically, sexually or emotionally abusive, their death does not remove the effects of that abuse. Where there was coercive control, you may only begin to recognise or make sense of what happened once the person has died.

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Other circumstances can bring feelings that may be difficult to acknowledge. If someone lived with a debilitating illness, you may feel relief that their suffering has ended. If you had demanding caring responsibilities, you might also feel relief that this part of your life has ended. These feelings may exist alongside sadness, or sadness may not feel particularly present.

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What might this feel like?

When your feelings do not match common ideas about grief, it can be difficult to know what to make of them or to talk about them with others. Your responses may also change as you have more time to reflect on the relationship. You might:

• feel angry, or experience intense rage towards the person who died

• feel relieved or safer following the death

• experience a sense of freedom or possibility that feels difficult to admit

• feel numb or notice very little emotional response

• miss someone while remembering ways in which the relationship was difficult or harmful

• feel guilty or ashamed because your response differs from how you think grief is supposed to feel

• find that other people remember the person very differently from you

• begin to recognise abuse, coercive control or other harmful experiences that were difficult to acknowledge while the person was alive.

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You do not have to remember someone positively because they have died. Recognising harm also does not prevent you from missing them, remembering good experiences, or grieving for the relationship you had or hoped might have been possible.

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How might counselling help?

Conflicting feelings can be difficult to share, particularly when others assume that your relationship with the person who died was a positive one.

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Counselling offers a confidential space where you do not have to simplify the relationship or decide which feelings are the ‘right’ ones. You can explore your experience of the relationship, what the death means for you, and what you are living with now