Some people expect grief to be at its worst immediately after someone dies and then gradually become easier. Sometimes it does happen that way, but it can also feel completely different.
You may have coped surprisingly well in the beginning. There was a funeral to arrange, people to tell, paperwork to sort out, family to support and perhaps work to return to. You did what needed to be done and, for a while, you may even have wondered whether you were coping better than you expected.
Then, a few months later, you notice something has changed. You are crying more, thinking about the person more often, sleeping badly or finding work harder. Small things seem to affect you much more than they used to. It can leave you wondering why you seem to be getting worse rather than better.
I have heard versions of that question many times in bereavement counselling. I spent several years working with bereaved people within a hospice service, and one of the things that experience taught me is that the amount of time since somebody died tells me surprisingly little about what their grief should look like.
Why might grief feel harder months later?
I would be cautious about assuming there is one explanation.
The phrase delayed grief is often used when somebody seems to cope initially and struggles later. I think it describes a recognisable experience. I am less convinced by explanations that suggest grief has simply been pushed down, stored somewhere and has now burst out.
I am usually more interested in what was happening around you at the beginning and what is happening now.
The first weeks after a death can be extraordinarily busy. There may be a funeral, finances, probate, phone calls, belongings to deal with and other people who need you. There can be very little space to stop and notice your own experience because so much needs doing.
People also tend to be around more at the beginning. They call, send messages, ask how you are and talk about the person who died. Then, quite naturally, their attention starts to return to their own lives.
Your life may not feel as though it has returned to normal at all.
When other people have moved on
This can be one of the lonelier parts of grief.
The people around you may still care deeply, but they stop asking quite so often. At work, the fact that you have been bereaved gradually becomes old news. Friends may assume you are doing better because you seem to be functioning and, in some cases, you may have helped to create that impression.
If someone asks how you are, it can feel easier to say, “I’m alright.” You may even be alright at that moment. You may also know that explaining what the evening before was really like would require a conversation you do not have the energy for.
Over time, the difference between how you appear and what is happening privately can become quite large.
The loss can become clearer as ordinary life returns
There are some parts of a loss that you only discover by living without the person.
The funeral finishes and the paperwork eventually reduces. Then there is an ordinary Tuesday and something happens that makes you instinctively reach for your phone to tell them. You go somewhere you used to go together, a programme starts that they would have watched, or a birthday arrives and their absence feels suddenly much more obvious.
Good things can bring this into focus too. You have some news and realise they are the person you most want to tell.
None of this means the grief was absent before. Their absence may simply be becoming visible in different parts of your life.
Sometimes the person who coped is the person who had to cope
I often work with people who are used to being capable. When something difficult happens, they organise things, make decisions, look after everybody else and carry on working.
Those abilities are useful and, after a death, they can be essential. I am also interested in what happens when the need to keep everything going starts to reduce.
You may suddenly have more room to notice yourself.
I might hear somebody describe everything they dealt with after the death and say, “There doesn’t seem to have been much space for you in any of that.”
Some people immediately agree. Others tell me they preferred it that way. Both responses interest me because they tell us something about how you manage difficult experiences and what it is like for you when the practical demands begin to fall away.
Grief can move in and out of the foreground
I find this more useful than thinking of grief as a journey through a fixed set of stages.
Sometimes the loss is right in front of you. At other times your attention is absorbed by work, children, shopping, a holiday, television or whatever else is happening in your life. Then something brings the person who died sharply back into awareness.
I do not think one of those states is more authentic than the other. You do not need to think about the person constantly for your grief to be real, and being intensely affected by the loss six months later does not automatically mean you have gone backwards.
Grief can change because life around the loss keeps changing too.
“I should be doing better by now”
This is often where grief becomes mixed with something else.
You are struggling and then you start judging yourself for struggling. It has been six months, a year or two years. Other people seem to be getting on with things and you start to wonder why you are still so affected.
Perhaps somebody has said, “Your mum wouldn’t want you to be unhappy” or “You’ve got to start living your life again.” Sometimes nobody has actually said anything. You have simply developed your own idea of where you ought to be by now.
I can become quite curious about that.
Whose idea of grief are you measuring yourself against?
There is a big difference between noticing that you are struggling and deciding that you are failing at grief.
It may not only be sadness
When grief becomes harder later, sadness is only one possibility.
You may find yourself angry with doctors, other family members, yourself or even the person who died. There may be guilt about something you did or did not do. After a long illness, there can also be relief, followed very quickly by guilt for having felt relieved.
Sometimes an old disagreement becomes much more important because there can now never be another conversation about it. There may have been things you hoped would change between you, an apology you wanted, or something you always thought you would have another chance to say.
Bereavement is often talked about as though the relationship becomes simple once somebody dies. It does not always work that way.
You can miss somebody and still be angry with them. You can love somebody and still recognise that they hurt you. Those things can exist together.
What might we do with this in counselling?
I would want to understand what has changed for you rather than assume I already know.
Of course we might talk about the person who died and what happened. I am also interested in what happens while you are telling me.
You may become upset and immediately apologise. You talk about how much you miss somebody and then tell me that you know you should be grateful for the years you had. You become angry and quickly explain why you have no right to be. You tell me something painful and then smile.
I might draw attention to one of those moments, not because I have already decided what it means, but because something happened.
We can stay with it for a little longer and see what becomes clearer.
That is one of the things that can make counselling different from simply talking about the events again. We can become interested not only in what happened, but in how you respond to your own grief as it appears between us.
Do I need bereavement counselling?
Not everybody who struggles with grief needs counselling.
There are times when family, friends, community, faith, work and simply having time are enough. Counselling may become worth considering when you feel increasingly alone with what is happening, when the loss is affecting relationships or work, or when you keep going over the same things in your mind and feel unable to make sense of why you are struggling more now than you were at the beginning.
You also do not have to wait until things become unbearable.
Some people come because they want somewhere they can speak freely without worrying about upsetting their family, burdening friends or protecting somebody else from what they really feel.
That can be reason enough.
The research behind this article
My thinking about grief has been shaped by my experience of working with bereaved people, alongside contemporary bereavement research.
One idea I find particularly useful comes from the Dual Process Model of bereavement. Rather than expecting grief to progress through a series of stages, it describes people moving between attending to the loss and attending to the demands of continuing life. A systematic review by Jennifer Fiore found meaningful support for this way of understanding bereavement. Fiore’s systematic review of the Dual Process Model
Research also suggests that people do not follow one standard grief trajectory. A UK study by Kirsten Smith and Anke Ehlers followed 275 bereaved adults during the first 12 to 18 months after a loss and identified several different patterns of grief and adaptation. Smith and Ehlers’ study of grief trajectories
This is also why I am cautious about the term “delayed grief”. The experience it describes, coping initially and struggling more later, is very real. The explanation that grief has necessarily been suppressed and has then emerged later is much less certain. The US National Cancer Institute’s professional review describes labels such as delayed and inhibited grief as having very limited empirical validity. National Cancer Institute professional bereavement review
For me, that makes “What is happening for you now?” a more useful place to start than deciding that you have grieved at the wrong time or in the wrong way.
Bereavement counselling in Shenfield and Brentwood
I offer face-to-face bereavement counselling in Shenfield, close to Brentwood, and I have several years’ experience working with bereaved people in a hospice setting.
You can read more about my bereavement counselling in Brentwood and Shenfield, including how I work and practical information about sessions.
If grief has become harder months after somebody died, we do not need to begin by deciding whether you have “delayed grief” or whether you are grieving in the right way.
I would rather begin with what is happening for you now.
If you would like to talk, you can arrange a free 20-minute introductory call. You can tell me a little about what has brought you here, ask anything you want to know about counselling and decide whether you would like to arrange a first session.