Am I grieving right?

Often, people I meet in therapy who are dealing with grief voice a concern that they are grieving wrong. They say things like, “I’m not crying as much as I thought I would,” or “I can go to work and function – does that mean I’m avoiding it?”

Some feel uneasy that they can laugh at something on television or enjoy a moment with family. Others feel guilty that they’re focusing on practical tasks – sorting paperwork, organising funerals, keeping the household running – instead of being with their sadness. And with these worries often comes the question: Am I doing this right?

The cultural standard

There can be a powerful cultural narrative about what grief is supposed to look like.

We’re often given images of visible sorrow being related to grief: tears, heaviness, anger, etc. The well-known “five stages of grief”, first described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, has filtered into popular understanding, culture and media. And even though that model was never meant to be rigid or prescriptive, it’s often interpreted that way. So, it’s understandable how we could assume grief should follow those recognisable emotional stages – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance – in an orderly fashion.

In my work as a person-centred counsellor, I’ve found these expectations around grief can be helpful for some people and constricting for others. For those who recognise themselves in the more familiar images of grief – waves of sadness, tears, anger – this framework can offer validation. But, for others, especially those who aren’t feeling those “classic” emotions in obvious ways, those same expectations can turn into self-judgement.

An alternative standard of grief 

Something that has seemed to bring a small sense of relief to those people who aren’t feeling the “classic” emotions is this: the very act or thought of wondering whether you are grieving “properly” is already you being with the grief.

If we are talking about the loss, sitting together and discussing what feels absent or confusing or muted, then we are already in a relationship with the grief. The questioning, the uncertainty, even the frustration about “not feeling enough” – these don’t have to be seen as signs of avoidance. They can be seen as signs that something matters.

In that moment, we don’t have to view ourselves as outside of the grief and looking in. We are already inside it. It may feel distant, muted, or hard to understand – but we are in it, looking around, trying to make sense of it.

Avoiding by being practical

I’ve also noticed that clients can feel ashamed about the parts of themselves that want to keep “going”; the times they feel they are turning their back on their grief. The part that focuses on work. The part that attends to children. The part that tidies the kitchen, answers emails, watches TV, goes for a run, or throws themselves into a project. There can be an internal accusation: you should be grieving instead.

I’ve found it can be helpful to gently ask: why can’t that part be part of the grief too?

What if keeping things going is not a betrayal of the grief, but a response to it? What if organising, working, problem-solving, and tending to responsibilities are not ways of turning away or avoidance – but an equal part of grieving too?

Dual process

Recently, I came across the Dual Process Model of grief (Stroebe & Schut), which resonated with what I had already been witnessing in the therapy room.

The model suggests that healthy grieving involves an oscillation between two orientations: loss-oriented (turning toward the pain, longing, and emotional impact) and restoration-oriented (engaging with life changes, responsibilities, and ongoing living). Rather than staying in one place, people naturally move back and forth. This back-and-forth isn’t a failure. It’s part of the process.

Before reading about this model, I had been trying to describe something similar through metaphor: expecting ourselves to immerse in grief constantly can feel a bit like trying to rehabilitate a complex injury by applying pressure and strain all day, every day. Sometimes there are moments that require focused intervention, like surgery or careful physiotherapy, but then there are also periods of rest. Periods where the body is left alone to settle, recover, readjust and integrate.

Of course, grief is not an injury to be “fixed.” It is not a problem to solve. Loss changes us; it isn’t something we neatly repair and return from unchanged. So, the analogy has its limits. But what feels important is this: even in physical healing, constant force or pain is not how recovery happens. There is movement, and there is pause. Effort, and rest.

Perhaps something similar can be true of grief? Some people need time where they don’t actively feel the weight of it. A day at work where they’re absorbed in tasks. An evening where they watch something light. A conversation that isn’t about what happened. That doesn’t necessarily mean we have to label this as suppressing or denying their grief. It may mean their system is regulating itself.

Every part is trying to help

In person-centred therapy, we hold a deep trust in the organismic process – the idea that, given the right conditions, people move toward growth and integration in their own way and at their own pace. When we apply rigid expectations to grief, how long it should last, what it should look like, how intensely it should be felt, we can interrupt that natural movement.

We begin to evaluate ourselves from the outside, using the ideas given by others, society and the media:

• “I should be more upset.”
• “I should be further along.”
• “I shouldn’t be functioning this well.”
• “I shouldn’t still be this affected.”

Those “shoulds” can become louder than the actual experience.

Sometimes, the part of us that keeps working, cleaning, organising, or caring for others is doing something profoundly protective. It may be helping us work with intensity. It may be allowing grief to come in waves rather than tsunamis or as a flood. It may even be the only way we can tolerate the loss right now.

It also feels important to say that I am not suggesting everyone is always grieving in every practical action they take. For some, a break from grief is exactly that – a break. A pause. A moment where the loss is not in the foreground. There is no hidden rule that says every activity must be reinterpreted as meaningful processing. Sometimes watching a film is just watching a film.

What I am offering is optional reassurance for those who fear they are failing at grief because they are not constantly immersed in visible sorrow. Perhaps the question shifts from: am I grieving properly? to something more open: what feels true for me right now?

And perhaps we can allow grief to be less of a test we must pass, and more of a relationship we move in and out of, at a pace that makes sense for us.