🌿💛 When Losses Accumulate:
Many people who come to me for therapy are carrying not just one big loss, but an accumulation of multiple unresolved losses and sorrows from their lives. Often, they come seeking help for anxiety, burnout, emotional overwhelm, depression, relationship struggles, or a growing sense of exhaustion — without realising that cumulative grief is deeply embedded in the layers beneath the symptoms they are experiencing.
Cumulative grief occurs when losses build over time without adequate space, support, acknowledgement, or processing. It is grief layered upon grief — experiences of death, heartbreak, disappointment, change, trauma, and disenfranchised losses that were never fully mourned, resolved or integrated into their life in a complete way.
Our Western culture, in many ways, has not taught us how to grieve well. Generations before us were often given little language, support, or understanding around emotional pain and loss. As a result, many of the beliefs and coping patterns we inherit around grief are rooted in avoidance and repression rather than healthy processing and mourning. Thankfully, this culture is beginning to change, and conversations are opening up. More people are seeking support, becoming grief-informed, and finding compassionate communities where sorrow can be safely acknowledged, held and honoured rather than silenced and suppressed.
🌿💛 What are the Six Myths of Grief?
The “six myths of grief,” first explored by John W. James and Russell Friedman in The Grief Recovery Handbook, highlight many of the unhelpful messages we absorb about grieving. We are often taught that when navigating grief, we are to:
- be strong
- grieve alone
- keep busy
- replace the loss
- avoid painful emotions
- believe time alone heals all wounds
While these subtle yet powerful messages are usually offered with good intentions, they often leave grieving individuals feeling isolated, ashamed, emotionally disconnected, confused and/or “stuck.” Suppressed grief does not disappear simply because it is ignored. More often, it settles deeper within us in ways that are not helpful.
🌿💛 What are the Two Main Types of Loss?
There are generally two forms of loss we experience throughout life: tangible and intangible losses.
Tangible losses are those that are “concrete”, and we can clearly identify — the death of a loved one, a miscarriage/termination, or the loss of a pet.
Intangible losses are less concrete – more abstract yet equally profound. These may include the loss of identity, trust, innocence, safety, belonging, health, a relationship/family unit, a financial position, a home, a sense of purpose/career or the treasured future we imagined for ourselves.
With over 40 significant life events that invoke experiences of grief, it is crucial that our grief is witnessed, processed, and integrated in healthy, time-sensitive ways. When our losses are minimised, invalidated, intellectualised or left unresolved, they accumulate and quietly morph into something toxic to our bodies, souls and spirits.
In many cases, I believe that what appears to be a mental health crisis is deeply intertwined with unresolved grief from a lifetime of accumulated losses. Yet many people never connect the dots between their emotional distress and the grief they have carried for years.
This is why the words from Matthew 11:28 and Psalms 34:18 offer such comfort:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
“The Lord is close to the broken-hearted
and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
We are reminded and validated in our experiences that grief is heavy and heartbreaking. God does not ask us to deny our grief or hide our weariness. Instead, He invites us to bring our overwhelmed souls into His presence. In seasons when life feels unstable, God remains steady—a refuge for the grieving heart.
🌿💛 What Can I Do With Cumulative Grief?
If you recognise yourself as carrying cumulative, unresolved losses, begin gently. Here are Ten ideas:
- Consider the messages you received and what you were taught to do with your grief.
- How have you tended to cope with loss historically?
- Start from your earliest memory of loss and work up to your current life loss/es. A simple timeline can be helpful.
- Acknowledge your losses honestly and gently.
- Allow yourself to feel what has long been buried beneath survival mode. Make sure you have enough support and resources to do this (counselling can be a huge help at this stage).
- Process and make peace with what you couldn’t control, what you cannot change, what you wanted to have differently, what you need to forgive and/or perhaps apologise for
- Use movement, dance, art, poetry, storytelling, rituals and more to help you process and bear witness to your grief
- Express the undelivered communications (all the things you wish you could have said but didn’t get the chance) that absolutely need to be delivered for a sense of completion. The Therapy room is a great place to help you do this.
- Find and honour your enduring connections to your loved one(s).
- Take time for meaning-making and consider ways that are meaningful to you now for honouring your life and your losses.
🌿💛 A Word for Those Walking This Path
This work is not easy and often needs guided support. Seek safe support through counselling, trusted relationships, pastoral care, or grief communities. Healing rarely happens in isolation.
Most importantly, remember this: grief is not something we simply “get over.” It is something to gently witness, honour, process, and integrate with compassion as we learn, over time, to grow around our losses and carry them in ways that no longer consume us.
When grief is given the space it needs to be tended to well, the sharpness of pain gradually softens. In time, we become more able to remember with love, tenderness, and gratitude than with overwhelming sorrow and suffering alone.
From my heart to yours,
💛 Narelle @ Bethesda Counselling and Family Therapy