7 min read
I once sat with a client — a man in his fifties, recently widowed — who told me he felt like a fraud in his own grief. His wife had died six months earlier after a long illness. He said he’d expected to feel devastated, and he did, but he also felt relief. And then guilt about the relief. And then anger at himself for the guilt. He asked me, almost apologetically: Is this normal? Shouldn’t I be past the anger stage by now?
That question — shouldn’t I be past this by now? — might be the most common thing I hear from people who are grieving. And it almost always traces back to the same source: the five stages of grief, a model that was never meant to describe the experience of bereaved people in the first place, but has become so culturally embedded that it functions almost like a prescription. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance — a neat sequence that suggests grief has a beginning, a middle, and an end. If only it worked that way.
The Problem with Stages
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s original work was about people facing their own terminal diagnoses — not about bereavement. When the model was adopted as a map for grief more broadly, something important got lost: the understanding that grief is not a linear process with a predictable endpoint. It’s more like weather. It moves through you in waves and squalls, sometimes predictable, often not. You can feel fine at breakfast and be leveled by a song on the radio at lunch. You can go weeks feeling almost normal and then be ambushed by a moment of recognition so sharp it takes your breath away.
The damage the stage model can do is subtle but real. When people measure their grief against a template, they start pathologizing their own natural responses. I should be angry, but I’m just numb. I thought I’d reached acceptance, but I’m back to bargaining. The model that was supposed to normalize grief ends up making people feel like they’re grieving wrong — which compounds the pain with a layer of self-criticism that doesn’t need to be there.
A client came in six months after losing someone close and said, “I feel like I should be further along by now.” He\u2019d read about the five stages and was frustrated that his grief didn\u2019t follow the script. Some days he felt fine; others, the loss hit him like it had just happened. What I told him was that grief is not a race with a finish line. It moves in its own time, in its own way, and honoring that is not weakness — it\u2019s respect for the depth of what was lost.
What Grief Actually Looks Like
In my clinical experience, grief has very few rules. Some people cry for months. Others feel strangely calm and worry something is wrong with them. Some grieve in their bodies — fatigue, physical pain, appetite changes — more than in their emotions. Some people feel closest to their grief alone; others need to talk about it constantly. None of this is pathological. All of it is human.
What I’ve noticed is that grief often comes in layers, each revealing something different about the relationship that was lost. The first wave might be the shock of absence — the empty chair, the phone that doesn’t ring, the routines that suddenly have no purpose. Later, deeper layers emerge: unfinished conversations, unresolved conflicts, unlived possibilities. Sometimes the most painful dimension of grief isn’t the loss itself but what the loss exposes about other parts of your life — loneliness that predated the death, emotional needs that were never fully met, a sense of identity that was more dependent on the other person than you realized.
I see this particularly with men, who are often socialized to process loss quickly and privately. The cultural message — be strong, hold it together, move forward — can push grief underground, where it doesn’t disappear but transforms into something harder to recognize: irritability, withdrawal, numbness, difficulty connecting with the people still in their lives.
Grief That Gets Stuck
Most grief, given adequate support and time, moves. It doesn’t resolve neatly — you don’t “get over” a significant loss so much as you gradually learn to carry it differently. But sometimes grief gets stuck. Clinically we call this complicated grief or prolonged grief disorder, and it’s characterized by an intensity of pain that doesn’t diminish over time, a persistent inability to reengage with life, and often a profound disruption to one’s sense of identity and meaning.
Grief can get stuck for many reasons. Sometimes the loss was traumatic — sudden, violent, or deeply destabilizing. Sometimes the relationship itself was complicated, marked by ambivalence, dependency, or unresolved conflict. Sometimes the person grieving doesn’t have adequate social support, or the grief goes unrecognized by others (what clinicians call disenfranchised grief — losses that society doesn’t fully validate, like miscarriage, estrangement, the death of an ex-partner, or the loss of a relationship that hadn’t been publicly acknowledged).
If your grief feels stuck or overwhelming, I can help you find a way to move through it without rushing or performing for anyone else.
What Therapy for Grief Can Offer
When I work with someone who’s grieving, I’m not trying to move them through stages or get them to a place called “acceptance.” I’m trying to create a space where they can grieve fully, without the performance anxiety that so often accompanies loss. Where they can say the things that feel unsayable — the guilt, the relief, the anger, the yearning — without worrying about being judged or fixed.
Therapy for grief often involves making room for the full complexity of the relationship that was lost. Not just the idealized version of the person who died, but the real, flawed, complicated human — and the real, flawed, complicated relationship. This isn’t disrespectful. It’s actually a deeper form of honoring what was real. It allows grief to be about truth rather than performance, which is ultimately more healing than any tidy narrative of stages and resolution.
It allows grief to be about truth rather than performance, which is ultimately more healing than any tidy narrative of stages and resolution.
I draw on several approaches, including emotionally focused work and mindfulness-based approaches, both of which help people develop a different relationship with painful emotions — not fighting them, not being consumed by them, but learning to be present with them in a way that allows natural movement and meaning-making.
For couples navigating grief together — or navigating the strain that grief places on a relationship — couples therapy can help partners understand each other’s grieving styles and find ways to support each other rather than growing apart in their separate pain.
There Is No Right Way
If there’s one thing I want people to take from this, it’s permission. Permission to grieve in whatever way is authentic to you. Permission to not have it figured out. Permission to still be affected by a loss long after others seem to have moved on. Permission to need help, even if the loss happened years ago. Grief doesn’t come with an expiration date, and neither does the option of reaching out for support.
I offer individual therapy for grief and loss in Pittsburgh and online across PA, NJ, NM, and RI. If you’re navigating loss and would like a space to do that work, you can schedule a consultation here.
Not sure where to start? Book a free 15-minute consultation — no commitment, just a conversation.
Schedule your free consult →Frequently Asked Questions
How long is grief supposed to last?
There’s no standard timeline, and anyone who tells you there is doesn’t understand how grief works. Acute grief — the intense, all-consuming early period — typically shifts over months, but grief as a broader experience can last years and may never fully “end” in the way people expect. What changes is your relationship to it. Over time, most people find that grief becomes less constant and more episodic, but it can still surface powerfully at unexpected moments. The duration depends on the nature of the loss, the relationship, your support system, and your own psychological history.
Is it normal to feel relief after someone dies?
Yes, and it’s more common than people realize. Relief is especially natural when the person who died suffered through a prolonged illness, or when the relationship was complicated or painful. Feeling relief doesn’t mean you didn’t love them. It means you’re human, and you’re responding to the genuine complexity of the situation. The guilt that often accompanies relief is worth exploring in therapy, because it usually points to something more nuanced than simple selfishness.
When should I consider therapy for grief?
There’s no wrong time. Some people find it helpful immediately; others come months or years later when they realize the grief hasn’t moved the way they expected. Signs that therapy might be particularly valuable include: grief that feels as intense months later as it did initially, difficulty functioning in daily life, withdrawal from relationships, persistent guilt or anger, difficulty finding any meaning or purpose, or the sense that your grief is affecting your relationship in ways you can’t resolve on your own.
How is grief therapy different from just talking to friends?
Good friends are invaluable during grief, and nothing replaces genuine social support. What therapy offers that friendship typically can’t is a space to explore the full emotional range of your grief without worrying about burdening someone or managing their reactions. In therapy, you can say the things that feel too dark, too complicated, or too contradictory for casual conversation. You also benefit from a trained perspective that can help you recognize when grief has become stuck and offer specific approaches for working with it.
Can I do grief therapy online?
Yes. I work with clients on grief and loss through online therapy across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Rhode Island. For grief work specifically, many clients find that being in their own environment — surrounded by the familiar — can actually deepen the therapeutic process rather than hindering it.
About the Author
Jonah Taylor, LCSW, CST is a psychodynamic therapist and AASECT Certified Sex Therapist in Pittsburgh. He specializes in Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples, sex therapy, problematic sexual behavior, and men’s psychology — bringing analytic rigor to the deep patterns that shape how people relate, desire, and get stuck. Book a free consultation.
