Am I grieving wrong?” is the number one question grief therapist Emily J. Danekas hears from clients — and it’s a question I asked myself too.
In this conversation, Emily and I dig into one of the biggest misconceptions in grief and loss: the idea that grief follows a formula, a predictable order, or a “correct” way of being experienced. The truth is, grief is deeply personal — shaped by countless variables — and there is no roadmap that fits everyone’s grief journey.
“Am I grieving wrong?” It’s the number one question we hear from almost everyone who comes through our door. One of the biggest reasons people seek out counseling — besides simply feeling emotionally overwhelmed — is this nagging sense that they’re doing grief incorrectly, and a need for someone to guide them through the process. There are so many expectations that surround grief: how it’s supposed to look, how it’s supposed to be experienced. But the reality is that grief is a deeply unique experience, shaped by countless variables and personal circumstances. Every person’s grief journey is necessarily its own. And yet, for some reason, we place expectations on it that people then feel pressure to conform to — and that’s what leads to so much confusion and frustration along the way.
I thought about this a lot myself, because I asked that exact question after my husband died: “Am I grieving wrong?” I wasn’t crying much, and it worried me. Since we don’t have honest, open conversations about grief, most of our impressions of it come from movies and books — and of course, that portrayal exists to serve a plot line, not real life. So I genuinely wondered whether I’d even loved my husband enough, since I didn’t look the way I’d seen other grieving people look on screen.
That’s exactly the second biggest misconception people cling to: that grief should look a certain way, that it should be orderly and predictable, that there’s some formula or method you can follow to move through it neatly. That’s simply not true. People get thrown off because they believe they should have reached some particular step by now, or that they shouldn’t still be feeling certain things — when in reality, there’s no roadmap. Every person’s grief is unique, so there’s no formula to place on top of it. That mismatch between expectation and reality is what leaves so many people confused and unsure about where they’re “supposed” to be at any given moment.
If you’re wondering whether you’re grieving wrong, we’ve developed two resources that can help: the Grief App and the Unlocking Grief Intensive. Links to both are in the show notes, along with a video where I share my own experience trying to find help — the journey that ultimately led me to sell my house, buy a travel van, and use the proceeds to fund the creation of both the Grief App and the Unlocking Grief Intensive.
When my husband died, there was no grief support available to me. I had to find my way through grief and rebuild my life all on my own. I’m now on a mission to make sure that no one else has to go through grief alone.
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- Why Does It Feel So Impossible to Recover From the Death of a Loved One?
- Am I Grieving Wrong?
- Unlocking Grief Intensive
- I sold my home to build The Grief App: Here is why
- Why I Cried in the Lunchable Aisle: Understanding Grief Waves