Everyone thinks you’re coping. But are you?
You get up. You go to work. You answer messages. You see family. You do the shopping. You walk the dog.
When somebody asks how you are, perhaps you have become very good at saying:
“I’m fine.”
But you’re not sure that you are.
You are still grieving.
The difficult part may be that the people around you seem to think you should be feeling better by now.
The messages have slowed down. People don’t ask as often. Conversations about the person who died have become shorter.
Life has moved on.
But you haven’t stopped missing them just because everyone else has stopped asking.
And that can be an incredibly lonely part of grief.
Perhaps you’ve stopped talking about your grief
Not because you have nothing left to say.
But because you have started noticing how other people respond.
Someone changes the subject.
Someone tells you that you need to move forward.
Someone reminds you how lucky you are to have other things in your life.
Or perhaps you hear:
“They wouldn’t want you to be unhappy.”
“You’ve got to stay strong.”
“At least they had a good life.”
“You need to start living again.”
Usually these words are meant kindly.
But when you’re grieving, they can feel very different.
They can leave you wondering:
Am I grieving for too long?
Should I be coping better?
Why am I still feeling like this?
So perhaps you stop saying what is really happening.
And grief becomes something you carry privately.
Grief doesn’t need permission — but it does need somewhere to go
Nobody else has to validate your loss for it to matter.
If someone or something was important to you, your grief is real.
But being able to have that grief heard and acknowledged can make an important difference.
Sometimes you need to be able to say:
“I really miss them today.”
without somebody trying to cheer you up.
You might need to say:
“I’m angry.”
without being told not to be.
Or:
“I feel guilty about something that happened.”
without immediately hearing:
“You mustn’t blame yourself.”
Sometimes you need to finish the sentence.
That is something we can easily lose when the people around us desperately want to make things better.
Are you protecting everyone else from your grief?
This happens more often than people realise.
You may avoid talking to your children because you don’t want to upset them.
You might not tell your partner how difficult things still feel because they are grieving too.
Perhaps friends have been supportive, but you worry they are becoming tired of hearing about it.
You might even find yourself reassuring everybody else that you are okay.
So you carry on.
From the outside, you appear to be coping.
Inside, there may still be sadness, anger, guilt, regret, loneliness or questions you have never been able to say aloud.
Looking as though you’re coping and feeling as though you’re coping are not always the same thing.
Sometimes the grief itself isn’t recognised
Perhaps nobody died.
But something important in your life ended.
Grief can follow divorce, separation, estrangement, redundancy, retirement, miscarriage, infertility, the loss of health or independence, becoming a carer, the death of a pet or the loss of the future you expected to have.
These losses can be particularly difficult when other people don’t recognise them as grief.
You might hear:
“It was only a pet.”
“You’re better off without them.”
“You’ll find another job.”
“At least they’re still here.”
The problem with these responses is that they focus on what other people think you have lost.
Grief is about what the loss means to you.
And only you can truly know that.
What can happen when you keep grief to yourself?
There is nothing wrong with wanting privacy when you are grieving.
You don’t have to talk simply because somebody else thinks you should.
But there is a difference between choosing not to talk and feeling that there is nowhere you can talk.
When you continually push your grief down because you don’t want to burden other people, you may begin questioning your own feelings.
You might withdraw.
You may become frustrated that nobody seems to understand.
You may feel guilty that you aren’t “further forward”.
Or you may become so accustomed to saying you’re fine that it becomes difficult to tell anybody when you’re not.
Eventually the question can change from:
“What do I need?”
to:
“What am I allowed to feel?”
That is a very different place to live from.
You don’t need somebody to fix your grief
Grief isn’t a problem that another person can solve for you.
There isn’t a sentence that makes bereavement okay.
There isn’t a timetable that tells you when you should stop missing somebody.
And grief counselling isn’t about teaching you how to forget, “let go” or move on.
Sometimes what you need is much simpler.
Somewhere you can talk without having to look after the person listening.
Somewhere you can tell the truth.
Somewhere you can talk about the person who died.
Somewhere you can explore anger, guilt, regret, relief or things left unsaid.
Somewhere you don’t have to pretend you’re okay.
And somewhere nobody expects you to have your grief neatly worked out.
Evolve Talking Therapies offers you time:
Grief counselling, is not about being instructions as to how to grieve.
I’m not going to decide where you should be by now or try to “fix” you.
We start with you. What happened and what you have lost?.
What that person, relationship or part of your life meant to you and what feels difficult now.
And what you need/want from our time together.
Sometimes that means talking about the person who died or the life you had planned.
It might be anger or guilt and sometimes there are no obvious words at all and that’s okay too!!.
You don’t have to arrive knowing what to say, just arrive as you are on the day. No expectations or judgement in the therapy room.
What might change if your grief finally had somewhere to be heard?
The loss doesn’t disappear.
That isn’t what grief support is promising.
But you may begin to understand your reactions rather than judging yourself for having them.
You may start recognising what you need.
You may feel more able to set boundaries around difficult people, situations or significant dates.
You may find ways of managing the moments when grief suddenly feels overwhelming.
And perhaps, most importantly, you no longer have to carry everything privately.
Do you recognise yourself in this?
Perhaps you’re functioning but struggling underneath.
Perhaps you are tired of telling everyone you’re fine.
Perhaps your grief happened months or years ago and you have never really had somewhere to talk about it.
Or perhaps something has happened recently and you simply don’t know what you need yet.
You don’t have to wait until things become unbearable before seeking support.
At Evolve Talking Therapies, I offer specialist grief and bereavement counselling for adults who need somewhere safe and confidential to talk about loss without judgement, pressure or expectations.
Sessions are available in person in East Yorkshire and online across the UK.
If you are unsure whether grief counselling is right for you, I offer a complimentary 30-minute consultation. There is no obligation to book further sessions.
We can simply talk about what is happening for you and whether I am the right person to support you.
You don’t have to find your way through grief alone.
Evolve Talking Therapies — here to listen, not to fix.
Warmly, Sue