The Harmful Effects of Unresolved Grief

Don't underestimate the importance of processing losses both big and small.

Reviewed by Lybi Ma

Key points

• Experiencing a loss can negatively impact mental, emotional, and physical health.
• Unprocessed grief accumulates and becomes even more harmful to overall health and quality of life.
• Processing grief is an individualized process but there are strategies that can help.

Loss is an integral part of the human experience and grieving is a complex, highly individualized process. Before discussing some practical strategies to help process grief, I’d like to describe my own grief journey that inspired this topic.

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Like many of you, I have experienced a significant amount of loss in my lifetime. In addition to past grief, within the last few years, my dad died, I tragically lost my nephew who I was very close to, my brother died after a lengthy battle with cancer, I lost a beloved pet dog, and I got divorced. With all that loss, it was the divorce that affected me most, which made me wonder why.

During the time of my divorce, I developed some significant unexplained back pain. I was in so much pain I had difficulty walking and I ended up in the emergency room where an MRI revealed several bulged discs on both sides of my spine. I felt physically and emotionally crushed.

Such an intense physical response to loss is not unique. It’s estimated that 84 percent of people who experience a loss report that it negatively affects their daily lives either physically, emotionally, or both.[1]

The authors of a study on grief published last year reminded us that “It may be tempting to think of grief as an emotion…it is more appropriate to characterize grief as an emotion experience that touches every dimension of life. It shows up in the body, overwhelms cognition, impacts relationships, and potentially fractures the spirit.”[2]

Author and psychotherapist Francis Weller wrote about how a significant loss can open the floodgates to all the unprocessed grief we’ve encountered over a lifetime, which can worsen our grieving. I experienced that firsthand. The extent of our difficulty with a loss is related more to the amount of unprocessed grief we carry versus one loss episode.

Big Grief, Little Grief

Whether it’s a big loss or a small loss, all loss needs to be processed. To help illustrate this, I’ll use the metaphor of hiking.

I’m hiking along the trail, and I’m faced with a loss, which takes the form of a rock. I place the rock in my backpack and keep hiking. Soon another loss (rock) is added to my backpack. At some point, there is a huge loss—this is the boulder that represents my nephew’s death—which is added to my backpack. Just when I think I can’t handle any more, another loss, this one smaller, is placed in my backpack. By now I’m so weighted down I collapse under the pressure. Metaphorically speaking, that last little rock was my divorce that attached itself to the boulder of my nephew’s death and all my unprocessed losses.

Not all loss is the same but when we don’t process both the large and small losses, loss can become magnified. The cumulative effect can feel suffocating. The divorce was valuable because it set me on a journey to process my grief—all 62 years of it.

I’ve had many other losses both big and small like the death of my mom when I was 32, the loss of my uterus due to ovarian cancer, and even the loss of my hair with my alopecia diagnosis. But I have always been the dedicated hiker, diligently carrying my heavy backpack, trudging along life’s trail.

Hanging on While Letting Go

Thich Nhat Hanh said, “If we can learn to suffer, we will suffer much less.”

Clinical psychologist and brain researcher Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor contends that grief is a form of learning and the lessons we glean from our grief can help us rewire the brain after a loss. Research shows that there are epigenetic changes that take place in the brain when we bond, and the loss of that bond can create mental, emotional, and physical pain, as well as confusion.

When we experience loss, we can feel disoriented because our brain perceives this loss as losing a part of ourselves. Before the loss, when we wanted to connect with our loved one, we were rewarded with interaction, support, and stability. But after the loss, our brain still wants to connect. Dr. O’Connor likens this to phantom limb syndrome where the brain still senses the limb, and yet the limb is not there. Our brain can’t yet accept the loss, which is what causes the physical, mental, and emotional trauma that lingers. That’s why processing grief—all grief—is so important.

It takes time and intention to help the brain recalibrate; however, rewiring the brain by processing our grief allows us to find ways to hang on to the love while letting go of the loss.

Healing Strategies to Consider

The first step in the healing process is to acknowledge our losses. The key is to feel the feelings of our grief and accept those feelings without judgment or fear, only with love and compassion.

It can be helpful to share our grief experiences in safe settings with family, friends, a therapist, or in a formalized grief group.

Meditation and being in nature as I contemplated my losses helped me. I felt I needed to create new routines and new ways to honor my loved ones to help me release the heaviness and get back to the love.

I made a shrine for my dog where I spread some of her ashes. We all got tattoos to honor my nephew. He and I are both writers so my tattoo is a feathered quill that features his actual signature and his fingerprint. Granted tattoos aren’t for everyone but when I see my tattoo and my family’s tattoos, I feel comfort.

With each loss, I have tried to infuse gratitude into the process. Even though I was not close to my dad, I created a gratitude list of the things I learned from him. And I look back with gratitude on how my protective big brother watched out for me when we were young. I have also found peace with my divorce. Now that I’ve been able to move on from that pain, I’m grateful for the lessons learned and the time I had with my ex.

Gratitude is a healing balm for almost everything that ails us, including grief.[2]

What’s in Your Backpack?

Stuffing my grief for so many years was weighing me down mentally, emotionally, and physically.

As you peak inside your own backpack, I offer some reflections to consider:

• Processing grief does not require you to let go of your loved one. Loving and letting go are not mutually exclusive.
• Trust your gut. When creating a plan to process your grief, you know what’s best for you.
• Practice gratitude. Find ways to develop a deep sense of appreciation for the love you felt and still feel.
• Try not to give your grief more power than it deserves. Your grief does not define you, rather it is a feeling that is meant to be felt and processed.
• Listen to your grief and learn from it. Knowledge is power but only when we make room for it and are open to the information we are meant to receive.
• Ongoing awareness is key. Remember the loss was an event, but healing from it is a journey that will bring you back to love. Love is far more powerful than the loss itself.

These days the rocks aren’t all gone but they are smaller, fewer, and I feel lighter.