Overcoming Loneliness in Grief

Grief often brings with it a quiet, pervasive feeling of loneliness – one that doesn’t show up in crowds but lingers in empty spaces. Loneliness following a bereavement isn’t just a passing sensation – it can prolong and deepen grief, making healing feel out of reach.

Feeling Isolated in Grief

Years ago, a grieving woman said to me that she wouldn’t attend a family gathering because, “I don’t want to infect them with how I feel”.

What a powerfully sad, and truthful thing to say. So many people feel profoundly isolated by and in their grief. They feel that they can’t spend time with close friends because they don’t want to spread their gloom.
Dumbing down becomes the ‘go-to’ way grieving people socialise. They learn to hide how they’re feeling. This is because they’re aware that even close friends may not be able to deal with this. Grieving people keep their feelings to themselves as a way of protecting themselves. They don’t want to ‘tell it like it is’ to someone they know and trust in case the person can’t receive and hold what is shared with them.
Sad, but true! It’s uncomfortably common even for close friends of a grieving person to avoid all mention of their deceased loved one and to shy away from asking how the grieving person really is.
Grieving involves heavy emotions. It’s unavoidable. Grieving people don’t intend to be miserable. These feelings aren’t contagious though.

Why Grief Leads to Loneliness

The grieving woman who said the powerfully sad and truthful thing about her reluctance to attend a family gathering speaks for the millions of grieving people who discover that their grief is so weighty and unbearably painful and sorrowful that it prevents us from being the sociable person we used to be.
Grief can and does isolate us. It takes us out and away from what we are used to doing, and away from the person we used to be. Sometimes, we can barely recognise ourselves in our grief. Grief changes us. When we grieve, we also lose aspects of ourselves we know and like. It’s a double whammy.
We feel isolated in our grief when our friends avoid mentioning our beloved and asking how we’re faring.
We feel isolated in our grief when we feel that to say anything about our experience would be more than friends could bear.
We feel isolated in our grief when our employer fails to offer us some time out when we feel overwhelmed at work or fails to point the way to bereavement support. We feel isolated in our grief when work colleagues say nothing to us.
When even close friends keep silent on the ‘big topic’ of our loss, it can make our grief feel bigger and increase our sense of being overwhelmed by it. The silence of close friends and work colleagues can shut us down or cause us to put on an act of being ok, when we’re a million miles away from being ok.

The Importance of Connection in Healing

Current research and evidence-based practices relating to loss and grief illustrate and emphasise the importance of connectedness with other people when we’re grieving. Retreating into our cave and withdrawing from social contact increases emotional overwhelm and helplessness.
Putting just one or two social events each week into your calendar can make a positive difference to how grief affects you and how you can manage it and learn to live with it constructively.

What can we do to be less isolated in our grief?

1. Identify those friends and colleagues with whom you can talk freely about everything, especially those you can call at short notice and cry “Help!”
2. At work, ask for some slack and find out if your employer offers free counselling.
3. Talk about your beloved with your friends and colleagues. This might mean starting a conversation when, maybe, your instinct is to say nothing and to remain silent and isolated. When you initiate that conversation with your friends, your colleagues, they’ll be more likely to join in because you’ve started off the conversation and in doing this, are giving them permission to talk about your beloved with you.
4. Bereavement Support Groups provide a very safe place where you can talk about your beloved and your experience with others who’ll understand and not need everything to be explained. Solidarity eases isolation. Who knows, you might find new friends? Why not take a look at the bereavement support group I offer?
5. Putting low-key and relatively undemanding social events in the calendar can relieve isolation. Ask a good friend to go with you as support. The key is to be aware of what you feel you can manage, and to choose your events accordingly.

So many of my clients tell me how ‘good it is just to talk with somebody’ and to feel seen and heard as they grieve. You don’t have to grieve alone. Help is at hand. Why not find out how I can support, encourage and help you to live well with grief?