The Hidden Feelings Related to Grief

One of the hardest parts of grieving is the feeling that no one understands what you are going through. Sometimes, this is because grief comes with complicated emotions. Besides missing a loved one, feeling hopeless, and struggling to accept change, we might be feeling and thinking uncomfortable things.

Grief and its surrounding circumstances can be complicated. People might not be able to understand the full context of our experience, which is often why we keep these thoughts and feelings to ourselves.

But keeping these issues in adds to the feeling that we are all alone in the experience. It is common to feel and think unusual things in grief. If you’re struggling with these feelings, reaching out to professionals like Redding Christian Counseling can help guide you through this challenging time.

Hidden Emotions Related to the Grieving Process

Here are some emotions and thoughts that many grievers keep hidden:

Anger

Even when our loved one didn’t choose to die, we might feel anger at being left by them. Some people leave debt and other messy life business behind for us to deal with. It’s common to feel anger at them even while missing them.

We might also feel angry as we hear friends complain about their loved ones while we are missing someone. We would give anything to have them back and appreciate them, while our friends seem to take relationships for granted. Many people feel anger at cancer survivors after losing someone to the same disease. We know logically that none of these things were planned against us, but that doesn’t stop us from being angry.

Guilt

Similarly, many people feel guilt while grieving. Much of the guilt we feel is attached to feelings, thoughts, and emotions we can’t control. People commonly feel ‘survivor’s guilt’ when they win a battle with a disease or survive a tragedy that others were lost in. It is often only in grief that we realize the ways that we let a loved one down and now have no way of making it up to them or atoning for our wrongdoing and failure.

Relief

A common emotion that goes with grief is relief. It is emotionally taxing to nurse a terminally ill person. When they do go, it can feel little other than relief, for selfish reasons as much as for their sake that they’ve finally passed.

Some people confess to feeling relieved when a partner’s parent dies. They might have been a difficult in-law, or sometimes it’s a relief that now your partner can empathize with your grief. It might feel terrible to admit these things, but they are common aspects of grief, and they won’t necessarily disappear if you ignore them.

Callousness

It’s hard to care for others when you have been dealing with your own experience of grief. Sometimes, we just run out of compassion and empathy because grief has leached us out of our emotions. Some people only get a short time with their loved ones before they pass, and it is hard for them to empathize with others who got a few decades together.

Jealousy

As we try to navigate grief, we often can’t help but compare our experience to other people’s, even friends and spouses. Some people seem to go through much easier experiences, and it’s hard not to feel jealous of them. For example, if we lose parents at a young age, it’s hard not to be jealous of friends and loved ones whose parents died much later in life.

Resentment

The close relative of jealousy, resentment is a hardened kind of bitterness that can run deep. We might resent a family member for outliving another family member we were closer to or resent in-laws for outliving our own parents. Sometimes, it feels like the “better” person passed away, leaving behind someone who didn’t deserve it. These thoughts feel ugly, but they are real for many people going through grief.

Feeling lost

After years of grieving someone, it’s not uncommon to still miss them and still feel lost without them. We often wonder when grief will pass or how long it will take for things to feel “normal” again. Sometimes, we get stuck in grief, and it can all feel so overwhelming that we don’t know what to do with ourselves.

It can be alarming to hear unfiltered confessions of what people are going through. It can also be difficult to express unfiltered truth because we are so afraid of being judged. Sometimes, it is only as we confront some of our feelings that we can work past any blockage in our thoughts and feelings.

Grief counseling in Redding, California

If there is something you would like to get off your chest, grief therapy at Redding Christian Counseling in California could be a great place to do it. A Christian counselor in Redding will listen to even your darkest feelings about your grief and walk you through your anger, guilt, and resentment.