Complicated Grief:: How to Understand, Express, and Reconcile Your Especially Difficult Grief

By Alan Wolfelt

Grief is always difficult, but if yours feels especially painful, stuck, or complex, you may be experiencing complicated grief. Complicated grief is not an illness or disorder. It' s simply normal grief that' s been made more challenging by circumstances that overwhelm the person in mourning. If someone you love has died of suicide, homicide, or accidental causes; if the death was violent or premature or ambiguous; if you are struggling with additional life issues right now, such as health challenges (physical or mental), family problems, or financial stress; if your relationship with the person who died was extremely close or troubled; if you have suffered several losses in quick succession— this concise guide is for you. In this compassionate resource by one of the world' s most beloved grief counselors, you' ll learn how complicated grief is different and what you can do to soften and eventually reconcile it. You' ll inventory the reasons your grief is complicated. You' ll learn the importance of engaging with and expressing your grief. And you' ll find hope for your healing. There is a path through and beyond the wilderness of complicated grief. It' s more arduous than most, but to li

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Sep 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781617223198

Book preview

WELCOME

You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.

— Anne Lamott

Coping with a major loss in your life is always difficult, but sometimes it’s extra difficult. Have you been experiencing this? If you’re having an especially hard time integrating a death or other significant loss into your life, my hope is that this little book will be of help to you.

My goal is to help you understand your extra-challenging grief and eventually reconcile it into your life. Rest assured that even if your grief feels extraordinarily painful or complicated, and even if others have a hard time understanding its intensity, it is normal. You are normal. Yet at the same time, you are also deserving of extra-compassionate understanding and support. In fact, the more overwhelming your grief, the more understanding and support you deserve and will need.

Know that no matter how hurtful, extreme, or challenging your grief may feel right now, you can work your way through it. No, it will not be easy. And no, you will never get over the loss. But with time and ongoing, intentional effort—plus, and this is also key in complicated grief, the help of others—you can heal your grieving heart. As Anne Lamott said on the previous page, you can learn to dance with the limp.

If you’re a mental-health professional, I invite you also to read my book for caregivers on this topic: When Grief Is Complicated: A Model for Therapists to Understand, Identify, and Companion Grievers Lost in the Wilderness of Complicated Grief. It contains much more extensive discussions of the origins of complicated grief as well as the symptoms and categories. In addition, it orients caregivers to the companioning model of complicated grief care and offers numerous suggestions for facilitating active mourning.

I’ve been a grief counselor, author, and educator for more than four decades now, and throughout those years I have been privileged to bear witness to and support the journey through unfathomable loss and complicated grief many times. These brave grieving people taught me the invaluable lessons I have the honor of sharing with you now. My hope is that you find this resource to be beneficial to you personally and in any efforts you make to help your fellow human beings.

GRIEF AND MOURNING

Grief is anything and everything we think and feel inside after a loss.

We naturally grieve when someone we love dies. But we also grieve when we divorce, experience a health challenge, or separate from a job we are attached to, among many other common life losses, large and small.

And since loss is a normal and unavoidable part of life, our natural human response to loss is also normal. Grief is natural and