Understanding Grief: There's No Wrong Way to Do This

Somebody has probably told you which stage you're supposed to be in by now. Denial, then anger, then bargaining, and eventually — tidily — acceptance.

It's a comforting idea. It's also not how grief works, and holding yourself to it can make a hard time harder. If you're grieving and you feel like you're doing it wrong, you almost certainly aren't.

Where the "five stages" came from

The five stages were described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in 1969, based on her work with people who were dying — not with people who were bereaved. They were never meant as a map for grief, and they were never meant to be linear.

Decades of research since have found no reliable order to grief. Most people move back and forth: functioning well one week, ambushed the next by a song in the supermarket. That oscillation isn't a setback. It's the actual shape of the thing.

The kinds of grief nobody warns you about

Grief after a death is the version we all recognise. But people arrive at our clinic carrying several other kinds, often without a name for what they're feeling.

• Anticipatory grief — mourning someone who is still here, while you care for them through a terminal illness or dementia
• Living grief — grieving a person who is alive but changed, or a relationship, a career, a body, or a future you had planned
• Disenfranchised grief — loss that others don't recognise as loss: a pet, a pregnancy, an estranged parent, an ex-partner, a friendship that ended quietly
• Cumulative grief — several losses stacked close together, before you had the room to feel any one of them
• Delayed grief — very little feeling at the time, then a wave months or years later, often triggered by something apparently unrelated

If your loss sits in one of those categories, you may have quietly decided you don't have the right to be this affected. You do. Grief is proportional to attachment, not to how legible the loss is to other people.

What grief actually does to you

Grief is not only an emotion. It shows up in the body and in the mind, and people are often unnerved by how physical it feels.

Common experiences include exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix, a tight chest, appetite changes, foggy memory and concentration, disrupted sleep, irritability, and a strange flatness where feeling should be. Some people feel relief — particularly after a long illness — and then feel guilty about the relief.

None of that means something has gone wrong. It means you're grieving.

When grief becomes something worth getting help with

Most grief doesn't need clinical treatment. It needs time, and people, and permission. But grief and depression can look similar from the outside, and sometimes grief gets stuck in a way that support genuinely helps with.

It's worth talking to someone if, several months on, you notice:

• Intense yearning or preoccupation with the loss that hasn't eased at all
• Life has narrowed — you've stopped working, seeing people, or doing things that used to matter
• You're avoiding every reminder, or conversely can't stop returning to the details
• Persistent guilt, self-blame or a sense that life has no purpose without them
• You're using alcohol or other substances to get through the evenings
• Thoughts of not wanting to be here

That last one deserves a plain sentence. If you are having thoughts of suicide, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14, or 000 in an emergency. You do not have to be in crisis to deserve support, and you don't have to wait until you are.

Clinicians sometimes call the stuck version prolonged grief. It's recognised, it's understood, and it responds to treatment. Naming it isn't pathologising your love for the person you lost.

What support actually involves

Grief counselling isn't about "moving on" or being talked out of missing someone. The goal is not a smaller grief. It's a life that has room for the grief and for you.

In practice, that can mean making sense of the loss and its story, finding ways to carry a continuing bond with the person, unpicking guilt or unfinished conversations, rebuilding sleep and routine, and gently widening life back out. Where trauma is tangled up with the loss — a sudden death, or one you witnessed — trauma-focused therapy can help the memory settle.

Victoria's mental health system is built so that most people start with a primary care clinician rather than a specialist service, and you can read how the state structures that support on the Victorian Department of Health's mental health services pages. At Health in Mind, we're one of those first doors — you can come straight to us.

If you're supporting someone who is grieving

You don't need the right words. There aren't any, and reaching for them is usually what makes people go quiet around the bereaved.

What helps is specific and ordinary: turning up, saying the person's name out loud, remembering the second Christmas and not just the first, and offering something concrete rather than "let me know if you need anything." Mow the lawn. Drop off dinner. Text on the anniversary.

Where to from here

There is no schedule you're behind on. Grief isn't a problem to be solved — but you don't have to carry it by yourself, and support is easier to reach than most people expect.

We offer grief and loss support for teens and adults through one-on-one counselling at our Gisborne and Woodend rooms, or by Telehealth anywhere in Australia. You don't need a GP referral or a Mental Health Care Plan — you can refer yourself, and Medicare rebates apply.

When you're ready, get in touch. There's no rush, and there's no wrong way to do this.