A rattan chair by the window through which the bright morning light shines

There’s another phrase I sometimes come back to when thinking about therapy:

In some ways, everything is grief work.

Not literally, of course.

When we hear the word grief, we tend to think about death, the loss of someone we love. And certainly, bereavement is one of the most profound forms of grief human beings experience.

But grief can also emerge whenever we are confronted with a gap between what we wanted, needed, expected, or imagined versus what reality actually is.

We grieve:

relationships.
childhoods.
expectations of ourselves and other people.
possibilities and paths not taken.
versions of ourselves we thought we would become.
other people's limitations.

And eventually, in one way or another, we have to contend with our own.

A surprising amount of therapy and growth involves this process.

Grief Isn't Only About Death

Some losses have a clear before and after.

A relationship ends. Someone dies. We lose a job. We move away from somewhere we loved.

Other losses are harder to name because what we are grieving may never have fully existed in the first place. Maybe:

You imagined that by this point in your life you would have a partner, children, a certain career, financial security, or a clearer sense of direction.
You expected a relationship to become something it hasn't.
You thought that if you worked hard enough on yourself, eventually you would become completely confident, secure, productive, certain, or free from anxiety.
You have spent years hoping that someone you love will eventually understand you in the way you wish they could.

These experiences may not initially register as grief.

We may experience them instead as anxiety, anger, resentment, disappointment, perfectionism, rumination, or a persistent sense that something still needs to be fixed.

Sometimes something does need to change.

But sometimes underneath all of our attempts to solve the problem is a reality we haven't yet allowed ourselves to mourn.

Sometimes Relationship Work Becomes Grief Work

We often enter therapy wanting to improve our relationships.

And there is a lot that can change.

We can learn to communicate more clearly. We can understand our attachment patterns. We can become more vulnerable. We can set boundaries. We can recognize the ways we contribute to recurring dynamics. We can learn to ask for what we need rather than hoping someone will intuitively know.

But relationships involve at least two people:

You can communicate beautifully and still not receive the response you hoped for.
You can invite someone to grow, but you cannot make them grow.
You can explain what hurts you, but you cannot determine what another person does with that information.
And someone may genuinely love you while still having limitations in what they are able (or willing) to offer.

This can be incredibly painful to accept. Sometimes relationship work therefore becomes grief work.

We may possibly have to grieve that:

A parent will probably never understand us in quite the way we wanted.
That a partner may change in some ways but not others.
A friendship may have limits we wish it didn't have.
That someone can care about us and still disappoint us.
That another person's capacity may simply not match our longing.

Acceptance does not necessarily mean deciding that these limitations are okay. Depending on the relationship, acceptance may lead us to stay, leave, create a boundary, change our expectations, or relate to the person differently.

But there is often grief involved in seeing someone more clearly.

We are letting go of the person we hoped they might someday become and deciding what relationship, if any, we can have with the person who is actually here.

Grieving the Childhood We Needed But Didn't Have

Some of the most profound grief work in therapy concerns something that happened many years ago.

We may need to grieve the childhood we wish we had experienced.

More importantly, sometimes we need to grieve the childhood we genuinely needed and did not receive.

Children have developmental needs:

They need some degree of safety, protection, attunement, affection, encouragement, guidance, stability, and emotional responsiveness. They need opportunities to develop autonomy while also knowing someone is there to help when the world becomes overwhelming.

No parent provides these things perfectly.

But sometimes important needs were chronically unmet.

As adults, we can understand why:

Perhaps our parents were dealing with their own trauma. Perhaps they lacked emotional skills. Perhaps they were overwhelmed, mentally unwell, emotionally immature, preoccupied, frightened, or simply repeating what had been modelled for them.

And therapy cannot go backwards and create a different childhood experience.

However, we can build healthier relationships now. We can develop capacities we weren't helped to develop earlier. We can learn to care for ourselves differently. We may even develop a better relationship with our parents as adults.

Sometimes healing includes finally allowing ourselves to say:

I needed something I didn't receive. I wish it had been different. And I cannot go back and make it different.

There is grief in that realization.

Sometimes We Keep Trying Because We Haven't Grieved Yet

One of the more complicated ways childhood grief can show up is through our adult relationships.

We may continue trying to obtain something from a parent that they have repeatedly struggled to provide:

Recognition.
Accountability.
Approval.
Emotional intimacy.
Protection.
An apology.
The feeling of finally being understood.

Sometimes there is value in continuing to work on a relationship. People can surprise us. Families can change.

But there can also come a point when repeatedly trying to obtain something from someone becomes a way of postponing grief:

If I can finally explain myself correctly, maybe they'll understand.
If I accomplish enough, maybe they'll be proud of me.
If I find the right words, maybe they'll acknowledge what happened.
If I become easier to love, maybe they'll finally love me in the way I've always wanted.

Therapy sometimes involves asking a painful question:

Am I still trying to change something that I may actually need to grieve?

There isn't one universal answer.

But sometimes continuing to work on something can become its own way of avoiding mourning what may never be.

Healing From Unrelenting Standards Can Involve Grieving Our Limitations

There is a schema pattern called Unrelenting Standards.

People with this pattern often experience significant internal pressure to meet extremely high standards.

The standards might involve achievement, productivity, appearance, morality, responsibility, relationships, health, competence, or almost anything else.

There can be a persistent feeling that you should be doing more. The feeling that:

You should be further ahead.
You should be using your time better.
You should be handling this better.
You should be more disciplined.
You should have figured this out by now.

And sometimes underneath these standards is an unspoken fantasy:

If I work hard enough, perhaps I can really prove that I am enough and eventually overcome the limitations of being human.

But we are not infinite, and we cannot become gods.

We do not have infinite time.

We do not have infinite energy.

We do not have infinite money, attention, talent, emotional resources, health, or opportunity.

We cannot maximize every area of our lives simultaneously.

We may want an extraordinary career, deep relationships, creative fulfilment, financial abundance, physical health, adventure, rest, community, family, freedom, and endless time to pursue everything that interests us.

There is nothing wrong with wanting a rich life.

But every choice and every human life contains trade-offs.

Choosing one thing sometimes means not choosing another.

Giving deeply to one area of life may leave less energy for another.

Our bodies need sleep. Our minds need rest. We make mistakes. We have temperaments and vulnerabilities. We age.

Part of healing from unrelenting standards can therefore involve something more profound than simply learning to "lower your expectations."

It can involve grieving the fantasy of being limitless.

And discovering that limitation does not make a life inadequate or not enough.

It makes it human.

Anxiety Can Require a Little Ego Grief Too

There is another, slightly different kind of grief that can occur in anxiety work.

Anxiety can sometimes create an exaggerated sense of our own centrality in other people's attention.

Everyone noticed how awkward I was.

They're probably wondering why I said that.

What if they think I don't know what I'm doing?

What if I embarrass myself?

This doesn't mean anxious people are arrogant or self-important in the conventional sense.

Usually, quite the opposite: these thoughts are driven by fear, shame, and heightened self-consciousness.

But there can still be something liberating about relinquishing the assumption that we occupy quite so much space in everyone else's minds.

Most people are thinking about themselves.

They are wondering how they came across.

They are thinking about what they need to do tomorrow, whether their partner is annoyed with them, what they should make for dinner, whether they looked awkward in the meeting, or why they haven't heard back from someone.

They may notice our awkward moment.

And then they usually move on.

There can be a strange little ego death in accepting:

I am not the central character in everyone else's consciousness.

And fortunately, neither are my mistakes.

We May Need to Grieve the Person We Thought We Would Become

Therapy also confronts us with our expectations of ourselves. Maybe you:

Thought that by a certain age you would feel more confident.
Expected to have accomplished something by now.
Thought healing would eventually transform you into someone who never feels vulnerable or becomes anxious, insecure, jealous, overwhelmed, angry, needy, uncertain, or afraid.

There can be an imagined future self, a healing fantasy, hovering somewhere in the distance. The person who:

Finally has everything figured out.
Never procrastinates.
Always handles conflict maturely.
No longer needs reassurance.
Makes perfect decisions.
Has healed every wound.
Has finally become immune to being human.

Sometimes growth requires grieving that person too.

Not because change isn't possible; people can change enormously.

But psychological health isn't the same thing as psychological invulnerability.

Perhaps it's not about becoming invulnerable or perfect, and it's actually about radically transforming our relationship with ourselves. Developing a substantially more compassionate and realistic relationship with the person you actually are.

We Also Grieve the Lives We Don't Get to Live

Every meaningful choice closes other possibilities:

Choosing one career means not pursuing countless others.
Choosing a partner means choosing one particular life while relinquishing other imaginable lives.
Having children changes what is possible. Not having children changes what is possible.
Staying somewhere costs us whatever might have happened had we left.
Leaving costs us whatever might have happened had we stayed.

Even good decisions contain loss.

This can be difficult because we can assume grief means we made the wrong choice.

But sometimes grief simply means something mattered:

You can deeply love the life you chose and occasionally wonder about the lives you didn't.
You can know a relationship needed to end and still mourn what it might have become.
You can make the right decision and still feel sad about what the decision cost.

Healing and growth may involve developing the capacity to hold both.

Perhaps We Are Ultimately Grieving the Desire to Be Beyond Human

Underneath many of these experiences is something even larger.

Human beings are finite creatures living in an uncertain world. We can't:

Know exactly what will happen.
Guarantee that the people we love will always be safe.
Control what other people think about us.
Ensure that every relationship lasts.
Pursue every possible life.
Undo the past.
Avoid every mistake.
Remain young forever.
Guarantee that the things we build will last.

A surprising amount of psychological suffering can contain some protest against these conditions.

I don't want to be uncertain.

I don't want to need anyone.

I don't want to make the wrong choice.

I don't want people I love to disappoint me.

I don't want to disappoint anyone else.

I don't want my body to have limits.

I don't want meaningful things to end.

I don't want to lose possibilities when I choose.

I don't want to be finite.

These wishes are deeply understandable.

While therapy cannot ultimately change the finite state of being human, it can help us build greater capacity to live meaningfully within the conditions of being human.

And inevitably, some grief comes with that.

Acceptance Isn't the Same as Resignation

Grief shouldn't become an excuse for resignation. The more interesting therapeutic question is often:

What can I change, and what can't I?

What can I influence?

What belongs to me?

What belongs to someone else?

What deserves another attempt?

What requires a boundary?

What needs to be released?

What needs to be mourned?

Therapy can help us develop the discernment to tell the difference.

Maybe Much of Therapy Is Both Exposure and Grief Work

In another article, I wrote about the idea that, in some ways, everything is exposure therapy.

Again, not literally.

But growth repeatedly asks us to approach experiences our protective strategies have taught us to avoid.

Perhaps grief work is the other side of that process.

Exposure asks:

Can I move toward the reality I've been avoiding?

Grief asks:

Can I let go of the reality I keep wishing were true?

Sometimes we need to do something differently.

Sometimes we need to keep trying.

And sometimes healing begins when we stop trying to negotiate reality into becoming something it isn't:

We acknowledge the childhood we didn't receive.
The relationship we wanted someone to be capable of having.
The version of ourselves we cannot perfectly become.
The paths we didn't take.
The limits of our bodies, our time, our resources, and our control.
The fact that loving something does not make it permanent.

And then, importantly, we ask:

Given that this is true, how do I want to live now?

Grief doesn't only mark an ending. It's what finally allows us to stop fighting what cannot be changed, and redirect our energy toward the life that is still available to us.

You May Also Enjoy

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Rebecca Steele | Smart Therapy®

Registered Social Worker, Psychotherapist (MA, MSW, RSW, CCC)

Rebecca Steele is a psychotherapist in Ontario who supports adults experiencing anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), relationship patterns, self-worth, emotional neglect, and high sensitivity (HSP traits). Her work integrates depth psychology, emotion-focused and psychodynamic approaches with evidence-informed OCD treatment to help clients better understand themselves and create lasting change. She may also incorporate the Enneagram as a tool for self-understanding and personal growth.

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