Grief is how a person feels when they lose someone they care about. You could be sad, mad, numb, confused, or a lot of other things. Maybe you do something different from what you normally do. It’s a process, and you might feel a lot of different things as it goes on. There is no wrong way to grieve because everyone deals with it in their own way.
Some people say that the time of grief is “normal grieving,” but this just means a process that everyone goes through. No two people experience loss in the same way. For this reason, sadness looks and feels different for each person. Each loss is unique.
These are the three kinds of grief
Getting ready for grief
Some people start to feel sad before their loved one dies. They might feel worried or sad, or they might start to think about how their loved one’s death will change their life. They may also worry more about how their loved one is feeling. Afraid of loss is what this is called. It’s normal, and it gives the person who is dying and their family or friends a chance to work out any problems that still need to be fixed. This is a part of getting ready for the death of a loved one.
Having anticipatory sadness doesn’t change how someone grieves when their loved one dies. A lot of people are still shocked and sad when someone they care about dies. The death itself is what starts the normal grief process for most people.
Grieving in a normal way
Each person grieves in their own way, and the process can go through many ups and downs. There will be better days and worse days, but the sadness will usually go away over time.
These are some of the most common responses people have when they lose a loved one.
Feelings
You could be shocked, numb, sad, angry, in denial, hopeless, or angry. You could be dealing with stress or sadness. You might also feel guilty, good, or hopeless. There may be times when you wish your loved one hadn’t been told they have cancer.
When you’re sad, hearing or reading something that makes you think of your lost loved one can bring you to tears. You could also cry for no reason.
Also, your belief, faith, or spirituality may make you feel different ways. Death and grief can make you question what you believe or how you see the world. It could also make your faith stronger or give you a new way to think about what life is all about.
Thoughts
You might not believe what you’re hearing, get confused, and have trouble focusing. You might only be able to think about how much you miss the person who died. It’s also possible to dream about your loved one or see or hear things that other people don’t.
Feelings in the body
Grief can make you feel things in your body. It feels like your chest or throat is tight or heavy. You might not want to eat or feel sick to your stomach. People who have trouble eating might lose weight.
Feelings in the body include headaches, numbness, pain, dizziness, muscle weakness or tightness, and being very tired. It’s possible that you’ll feel or get sick more often.
How people act
You should expect to act differently when you are sad. You might have trouble going to sleep or staying asleep. You might not like your best things to eat or do. You might be cranky or have a short fuse. You might feel like you don’t have any energy sometimes, or you might be hyperactive because you’re bored.
You might find that you don’t want to do social things. You might want to be alone a lot of the time.
When you are suffering, it is normal to feel and act in these ways. But if they keep coming back, you might need to get help.
Too much or unresolved pain
Some people’s sadness doesn’t go away for a long time. Some signs of complicated or unresolved sadness are:
- Still not seeing that their loved one has died
- Still feeling emotionally numb about the loss
- A lot of thoughts about the person you lost or how they died
- a lot of sadness and mental pain, sometimes with anger or bitterness
- Not being able to remember the loved one in wonderful ways
- Being responsible for your own death
- We want to die so we can be with our loved ones
- Not wanting to be reminded of their loss
- Continuously missing the dead
- Feeling alone, disconnected, or suspicious of other people
- Not able to follow your hobbies or make plans for the future
- Being empty or like life has no point without the loved one
- Lack of identity or purpose in life, and a sense that a part of them went with the loved one
Some people are more likely to have sadness that gets worse over time. Parents and spouses are most likely to be hurt. Some other things that might make the risk higher are:
- losing a lot of money in a short amount of time
- A history of stress
- Having a hard time in the past
- Talk to a mental health or health care source if you or someone close to the person who died is showing signs of complicated grief. Help for people with complicated loss can come from mental health care. This kind of sadness can get worse over time, and people who have it are more likely to kill themselves.
Sadness
When people show sadness and loss in public, they mourn. When people are sad, they might follow religious views or rituals. The way we mourn can be affected by our race and culture practices. Going to see family and friends and getting ready for the funeral and burial are all routines that can help you deal with your grief.
Having a death
When someone you care about dies, you may feel sad for a while. This is called bereavement. During this time, you will be sad and mourn.
Kids and sadness
Kids of all ages feel sad, hopeless, and loss when they lose someone they love, especially if that person was a parent. It’s important to know the signs of grief in children and help them through it, even if it looks different from how adults grieve.
How long does it take to get over grief?
Everyone deals with grief in their own way. And everyone may need a different amount of time.
There is no “right” amount of time to be sad. It’s important to give someone who has lost a loved one the time they need to get over their sadness.
After losing a loved one, a person may feel better for a while, but then they will feel sad again. As people grieve, they sometimes wonder how long it will last and when they can feel better. This question doesn’t have a right answer.
But these things can change how bad someone’s sadness is and how long it lasts:
- The way they knew the person who died
- How the person died
- What their own life has taught them
- What they think about death
- Their customs and traditions
- A lot of people go through sadness for a year or more. Most of the time, grief gets lighter over time, but the feeling of loss can last for decades. Strong feelings that only last a short time can be brought back by certain events, objects, or memories.
Relationships with problems
People who didn’t get along with the person who died are often shocked by how painful their feelings are after the death. They might be sad about the relationship they wanted to have with the person who died and give up on ever having it.
Other people may feel better, and some may not feel anything at all when that person dies. A lot of people also feel regret and guilt. All of this is a normal part of getting over the loss.
A Quick Look Back
There are different stages of sadness that people go through when they lose someone they love, a relationship, or even their job. But it’s important to remember that not everyone goes through each stage, and they won’t all happen at the same time. Instead, everyone deals with loss in their own way and at their own speed.
Still, learning the stages of grief can help people make sense of what they are going through and why. It’s important to be kind to yourself and give yourself the time you need to adjust to your new life after a loss. Talk to a mental health professional if you think you are having more problems than usual. They can help you understand your thoughts and come up with healthy ways to deal with them.
Grief in Seven Stages
Some people say that grief goes through seven steps instead of just four or five. In this more detailed picture of the grieving process, people go through:
- Both shock and denial. Losing someone or something can shock you, whether it happens quickly or with some warning. You don’t feel anything and might try to ignore the loss.
- Pain and shame. This part of grief is when the pain of the loss starts to show. Sometimes you might feel bad that you need more from family and friends during this tough time.
- Dealing and getting angry. You might act out at people you care about or get mad at yourself. You could also “strike a bargain” with a greater power and ask that the loss be taken away in exchange for something you do.
- Sadness and being alone. You might start to feel sad or lonely as you think about your loss. At this point in the grief process, you start to understand how real your loss is.
- The turn up. As time goes on, you get used to your new life, and the pain of losing someone starts to fade. As you move through this stage of grief, you may feel calmer.
- Rebuilding and getting through it. During this part of the loss process, you take steps to move on. You start to put together your new normal and deal with any problems that the loss has caused.
- Giving up and having hope. You start to accept the loss and feel hopeful about what tomorrow might bring in this last stage of grief. You still feel other things, but you’ve come to terms with them and are ready to move on to other things.
How to Be There for Someone Who Is Sad
When someone has lost someone close to them, it can be hard to know what to say or do. We try our best to comfort others, but sometimes it feels like our efforts aren’t enough or won’t help.
People who have a friend or family member who is grieving can help that person in many ways. Offering to listen or willing to do something helpful, like run errands or make a meal, are some examples.
Furthermore, local and national support groups can be very helpful for people who have lost someone close to them by providing comfort and company.
What Are the Five Stages of Grief?
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a therapist, came up with the idea of the 5 Stages of Grief. It says that after losing a loved one, we go through five different steps. First there is denial, then anger, then bargaining, then sadness, and finally acceptance.
Denying
During the first stage of grief, denial helps us deal with how bad the pain of loss is. We are trying to deal with the truth of our loss while also getting through the emotional pain. Some of us find it hard to believe that someone important to us has died, especially if we just talked to them last week or even the day before.
At this point in the grief process, our whole world has changed. Our brains need time to get used to the new things going on in our lives. Sometimes, when we think about the times we spent with the person who has died, we wonder how to go on with our lives without them.
There is a lot of information to look into and a lot of painful images to think about. Denial tries to slow this process down and take us through it one step at a time so that we don’t have to worry about getting too emotional.
Denying a loss is more than just trying to act like it didn’t happen. We’re also trying to take it all in and figure out what’s going on.
Anger
Anger is the second stage of grief. We are trying to get used to a new world and are probably feeling very bad about ourselves. Because there is so much to think about, getting angry may seem like a good way to let out our feelings.
Remember that being angry doesn’t mean we have to be very open. But it might feel better in public than telling people we’re scared. When we’re angry, we can show how we feel without worrying about being judged or rejected.
Also, anger is often the first emotion we feel when we start to let go of feelings linked to loss. This can make us feel alone in our experience. In times when we could use comfort, connection, and encouragement, it can also make other people think we are hard to reach.
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Making Deals
People who have lost someone or something often feel so desperate that they are ready to do anything to ease their pain. At this point in your grief, you might try to make a deal to change things by offering to do something in exchange for being able to feel less pain.
During negotiations, we often address our needs to a higher power, or something bigger than ourselves that might be able to change the result. When you’re suffering, you can make deals in the form of many different promises, such as:
“God, if you can heal this person, I will turn my life around.”
“I promise to be better if you will let this person live.”
“I’ll never get angry again if you can stop him/her from dying or leaving me.”
At this point in the loss process, when we know there is nothing we can do to change things or make things better, we become very aware of how human we are.
When we feel hopeless, bargaining makes us feel like we have some control over something that seems so out of our hands. When we’re bargaining, we often think about the things we do wrong or wish we could change. Sometimes when we lose someone, we might remember all the times we felt separated from them or may have caused them pain.
People often think back to times when they said or did something they didn’t mean and wish they could change how they acted. On top of that, we sometimes think that if things had gone differently, we wouldn’t be going through such a rough patch in our lives.
Feeling Down
After going through the stages of grief, there comes a time when our ideas start to fade and we begin to see things as they really are. There’s no longer any desire to bargain, and we have to deal with what’s happening.
Being in this stage of grief makes us feel the loss of our loved one more deeply. Our fear starts to go away, the emotional fog starts to lift, and the loss feels more real and inevitable.
We tend to pull inward as the sadness grows during those times. We might pull away from people, be less social, and talk to fewer people about what we’re going through. Even though depression is a normal part of the grieving process, it can be one of the hardest steps to deal with after the death of a loved one.
Call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helpline at 1-800-662-4357 if you or someone you care about is dealing with sadness. They can help you find support groups and treatment centers in your area. Please look at our National Helpline Database for more mental health tools.
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Getting along
To accept your grief is the last of the 5 Stages of Grief. It’s not that we no longer feel the pain of loss when we reach a state of acceptance. To put it another way, we are no longer fighting the truth of our position or trying hard to change it.
In this phase, you may still feel sad and feel bad about things. During this stage of grief, however, the mental defense mechanisms of denial, bargaining, and anger are less likely to be present.
More models of the grieving process
The 5 Stages of loss model, which was created by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, is one of the most well-known ones. However, there are other models to think about as well.3 Each one tries to explain how loss can be understood and dealt with.
For people who are sad because of the death of a loved one, these models can help them understand. These can also be used by people who work in healing fields to help them help hurting people who are looking for good advice.
Four Stages of Loss
As a child, John Bowlby studied the emotional bond between a parent and a child.4 He believed that early attachment experiences with important people in our lives, like caregivers, shape our sense of safety, stability, and connections.
Based on Bowlby’s theory of attachment, British psychiatrist Colin Murray Parkes created a model of grief that says there are four stages of sadness when someone close to you dies:5
Being shocked and numb: At this point, loss seems hard to accept. We feel overwhelmed when we try to deal with our feelings, which is similar to Kübler-Ross’s state of denial. Parkes says that during this time, there is also physical distress that can cause somatic or physical symptoms.
As we deal with our loss during this stage of grief, we may start to look for comfort to fill the space our loved one’s death has left. One way to do this is to look at old pictures and remember things about the person to feel closer to them. During this time, we think a lot about the person we passed away.
Despair and disorganization: During this time, we may question things and feel angry. When we realize that our loved one is not coming back, it hurts, and it can be hard to understand or find hope for the future. During this part of the loss process, we may feel like we have no purpose and want to be alone to deal with our pain.
Changes and healing: At this point, we have more faith that our thoughts and hearts can be fixed. Like Kübler-Ross’s acceptance stage, we don’t stop being sad or longing for our loved one. But we’re getting better and getting back in touch with people who can help us. We’re also finding small ways to get our daily lives back to normal.
Remember these things if someone you care about is going through the stages of grief:
Don’t try to save or fix things. We might say positive, encouraging things or even funny things to try to make them feel better or “fix them.” This is meant to be helpful, but it can make people feel like their pain is not seen, heard, or real.
Do not push it. We might really want to help and see the person feel better, so we think that pushing them to talk about and work through their feelings before they’re ready will help them more quickly. This isn’t always true, and it can even get in the way of their healing.
Make yourself easy to reach. Give people a place to cry. This lets the person know we’re ready when they are. Even though we can ask them to talk, it’s important to understand and accept if they’re not ready yet. Tell them you’re there and that they should not be afraid to come to you.
Help is Here
We’ve used the best online therapy services, like Talkspace, Betterhelp, and Regain, and written honest reviews of them. Figure out which choice is best for you.
Help for People at Different Stages of Grieving
There are a number of groups that offer knowledge or help to people who are grieving. No matter what state of grief you’re in, you may be able to get help from groups like
- AARP for blog posts about loss and grief
- This website, Grief.com, talks about all kinds of grief and offers grief workshops and free tools.
- HOPE for Bereaved is for people who have lost someone through death.
- Hospice Foundation of America helps people deal with their sadness before, during, and after the death of a loved one.
- Choose option B if you want to get over something bad quickly.
- Help for people who have lost a child from The Compassionate Friends
- Experts say there are nine different kinds of grief that people can go through.
- It is important to remember that different people deal with loss in different ways. Even though you might go through all five stages of grief, you might also find it hard to put your thoughts into any of them. When you’re dealing with loss, be kind to yourself and your thoughts.
It’s important to give yourself time to deal with all of your feelings. Then, when you’re ready, talk about your experiences with someone you care about or a healthcare expert. As you help someone who has lost a spouse or sibling, know that you don’t have to do anything in particular. Just give them space to talk when they’re ready.
How long does it take to get over grief?
There is no set length of time for grief, and people go through each stage at different speeds.
After one to two years, most grief symptoms go awayTrusted Source. That being said, this schedule isn’t the same for everyone. In addition, people’s feelings of sadness don’t tend to get better over time; instead, they tend to come and go in waves.
It’s normal for grief reactions to come back after a long time when certain things happen, such as
- Getting old
- important events
- fun times
- songs
Different kinds of grief
The different kinds of sadness are talked about in research from 2020Trusted Source. Among them are:
Getting ready for grief
This is how someone feels when they think they are going to lose something that hasn’t happened yet. It has a lot of the same feelings that someone has after losing someone close to them.
People who depend on others or don’t have a lot of social support are more likely to experience anticipatory sadness.
“Normal” or everyday sadness
“Normal” sadness is a slow process that leads to acceptance.
Individuals can still go about their daily lives even when they are feeling bad emotions. Their feelings might be hurt, causing them to cry, be sad, or long for something.
A lot of grief
Pathologic sadness is another name that doctors might use for complicated grief. It’s a lot like mental illnesses like sadness and generalized anxiety disorder.
It might be different from “normal” sadness in these ways:
Absent or repressed grief: This is a pattern of showing little sign of pain or longing.
When you have delayed grief, your signs show up much later than usual.
When someone is experiencing chronic grief, their effects last for a long time.
Distorted grief is a set of signs that are very strong.
Heavy, long-lasting, or complicated sadness
If you’ve been through this kind of complicated loss for 12 months, or 6 months for kids and teens, you will still be very sad. Because of how strong and widespread the responses are, they can make people disabled.
Long-term grief is recognized as a separate illness in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition, text revision (DSM-5-TR).
How to help someone who has lost someone
It can be hard to be there for suffering family, friends, or loved ones. What people can do to help is:
Offering to listen: Someone can let someone who is mourning know that they are there for them whenever they want to talk about their feelings or share memories.
Helping in real ways: Don’t just say, “Let me know if I can do anything for you.” Offer to help in specific ways. This could mean making a meal, running errands, or taking care of kids.
Let them know that you understand how they feel. Remember that sadness can last for a long time after a loss. There will be good days and bad days.
The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry says the following can help a child who is grieving:
asking the child questions to find out how they are feeling and how much they understand about the loss
Trying to keep the child on a plan as much as possible
giving the child time to talk about how they feel
being with the child and doing things they like
Taking the child to see a mental health professional if they are having serious, long-lasting issues with sadness and loss that get in the way of their daily life
Ways to deal with grief
Support groups can offer warmth, company, and reassurance. They can also be used to find useful information.
Communities, hospices, places of churches, and hospitals are all good places to look for groups in your area.
The following national tools may also be useful:
Hope for Bereaved helps people who are suffering by giving them services and support groups.
AARP’s Grief and Loss: The AARP has information and tools that can help you deal with grief.
If you have lost a child, The Compassionate Friends can help you find support groups in your area and online.
National Widowers Organization: This group helps guys who have lost a spouse or partner.
The Dougy Center is a place where kids and teens who are hurting can find support groups and learn new things.
What’s Your Sadness?People who are grieving or who are helping someone who is hurting can use this.
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When you should call a doctor
Even though it’s normal to feel sad, too much sadness can be bad for you. People can talk to a doctor if their sadness makes it impossible for them to do the things they normally do.
Also, if someone shows signs of complicated sadness, like not being able to find meaning in their life, they might need professional help.
In short
There are different stages of grief, such as shock, denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, testing, and acceptance. On the other hand, this is not always how things happen, and some steps take longer than others.
Symptoms of grief usually go away after one to two years, but they can come back on occasion, like around birthdays, years later. Grieving is a normal part of life, but people can talk to a doctor if their symptoms get in the way of their daily lives.
