Ambiguous grief: the broken dream explained

David Kessler, an expert on grief, says rather beautifully and simply that “Grief is a change that we did not want.” What I love about this is both its indisputable truth, helping to explain the internal chaos of loss with the comfort of a manageable simplification through truism to at least make the navigation of it, which is anything but simple, possible.  
Also, because it doesn’t just speak of death, but allows for the grief we feel that is more ambiguous.

There is so much to cover here, as so many types of loss are grieved automatically, without our realising we're grieving and need to be allowed to.

Both with death and with unwanted endings, this very lonely feeling can, silence by silence and unspoken word by unspoken word, make us feel emotionally orphaned. I am using ‘orphaned’ here not in the word’s true and literal meaning, but because it somehow acknowledges and dignifies the impact of a severing that can also exist in what is unrequited, disallowed or unrecognised, and largely misunderstood by others, when such a fundamental connection is no more.

Often, when the grief is not a death but an undesired outcome, you will often find yourself hearing the anecdotal, such as:

• "There are more fish in the sea."
• "Just forget it."
• "Put it to one side."
• "Move on."
• "Pull yourself together."
• "I can’t understand why it matters."
• "Don’t be so sensitive."

So, on top of feeling absolutely awful, you will feel that sharing it makes you some kind of social misfit nobody else relates to! So much feels unofficial and unrecognised. The thing is – the only way out of the pain is through the pain.

Finding it hard to identify the pain

This can be harder to even start to move through if you cannot identify the pain. That is why so much more needs to be known societally and, in turn, socially about the pain by allowing grief in any loss that you, as Kessler says, didn’t want.

Any type of grief is a severance, and to heal it, a person needs connection. This therefore needs to be shared through compassionate witness. A space needs to be held for the pain. For your pain.

Do we as a society even know what ambiguous grief is? Largely, I would say no. Even though there is a lot of information about it out there online, the problem is that societally, we have very little idea how to identify when we actually feel we are grieving ambiguously, because by and large grief is only legitimised when someone dies.

Examples of ambiguous grief

This can occur when you are experiencing zero accountability, which can be prevalent when dealing with a person who has narcissistic traits. This can be the case, whoever they are to you:

• friend
• adult child
• lover
• spouse
• sibling.

Sadly, when relational, the ambiguous grief is disenfranchised. It can be present in coercion when the suffering is not legitimised, and your reality is denied, often through twisting, gaslighting and the unaccountability itself.

In mental health terms, you know this forces you into a state of disenfranchised grief, a pain that is hidden because the other person refuses to even admit that a wound exists. Here you are holding all the heartbreak alone with the person who caused it, sometimes even feeling your pain is deserved because you made them behave that way, and sometimes others join in through triangulation and the conclusion that the majority must be right and you must be wrong.

"You are too sensitive."

An observation made usually by someone with little emotional depth who, with that remark, hopes to clear the decks because your feelings are unimaginable to them and therefore wrong. Perish the thought of compassionate empathy here.

I personally have found those with a dismissive avoidant attachment style are not a wise choice of someone to share your ambiguous grief with. That comes from my own experience, as well as what I've found with those I treat in my practise. It's like going to an empty well to get water. That does not mean that people with the dismissive avoidant attachment style are heartless folk, but they deal with their pain in an entirely different way.

This can be felt within families where events are experienced differently, and where, by and large, the unaffected family member's reality is made to feel correct. If you are the person feeling the loss and sadness alone, the lack of belonging here makes the already painful 50 times worse.

So this awful sadness goes underground and is felt in isolation and is felt as shame as well as grief. This can and often does turn into a deep-felt resignation that can become depression.

Rejection from those who are supposed to love you

If this is the case, it turns up the volume of the grief. Examples of this include:

• close or long-standing friends
• adult children
• siblings
• parents
• spouse
• romantic partner
• church
• aging
• ill health to compound it.

Disregard, distance, and feeling unimportant are huge causes of ambiguous grief in itself.

The toxic pattern of always blaming

Someone may use a classic defence mechanism, the DARVO cycle: Deny the behaviour, Attack you for bringing it up, and Reverse the Victim and Offender. Suddenly, you are the one saying sorry or defending yourself.

This emotional setup can create a dynamic where it is impossible for you to allow your own feelings. If you stay quiet, you swallow your pain. If you speak up, you get blamed for "creating drama." You are then in some kind of internal emotional fog.

Naming the loss

This is very helpful if you can do this with an experienced therapist if that is affordable. If you do share this with anyone, do make sure they are capable of understanding – pick your people carefully for all the reasons I have given above.

Pick one thing a day you can achieve, no matter how small, that makes you feel good. Write, either a letter or through journaling. This gets the pain out through self-legitimisation. Browse a lovely bookstore and consider buying a book about a story that echoes your own or a self-help book that is relatable to you.

Buy a plant, either indoor or outdoor, that you can watch flourish. This can be so healing. I have done this many times and once turned a little forgotten succulent plant I found, disgraced, into a glowing, healthy one. It was a very moving experience.

Love, I have found and endlessly am reminded of this, is the balm that carries us through loss. By being seen, heard, known, and understood. This can return us to believing and give us hope that there is recovery, that it is possible. Belonging is the essence of feeling loved.

Finding meaning

What does this actually mean? To you, to me, to us all?

I believe it means to me, because I cannot speak for you who are reading this, something good that can come from the loss. A felt and realised value from it that did not exist before it.

Sometimes this can be a deeper understanding. That may be a group you start or focus on to help others by bringing them together to share. It may be actually anything that allows enrichment, something new.

And last but not least, the Bach Flower Remedies can carry us when broken by ambiguous grief, gently to safer emotional shores. Honeysuckle, gorse, sweet chestnut, willow, chicory and walnut may be helpful in this circumstance.

I send here too my love and a warm hug, and my wishes for you to know joy and peace once again.