Navigating Grief
What's Normal,
What's Not, and
When to Seek Help
Grief is one of the most universal human experiences — and one of the least understood. We lose people, relationships, roles, and futures we had imagined. And yet Australian culture, like many Western cultures, tends to treat grief as something to move through quickly and quietly, as if prolonged mourning were a sign of weakness or a failure to cope.
This post is for anyone who is grieving, has grieved, or loves someone who is. It explores what grief actually looks like — in all its messy, non-linear reality — what the current research tells us about healthy versus complicated grief, and when professional support might help you carry the weight more gently.
A note before we begin:
If you are currently in acute distress or having thoughts of self-harm, please reach out to Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636. This article is educational and does not replace professional support.
What Is Grief?
Grief is the natural emotional, cognitive, physical, and behavioural response to loss. While we most commonly associate it with the death of a loved one, grief can follow any significant loss — including relationship breakdown, miscarriage, diagnosis of a serious illness, job loss, retirement, migration, estrangement, or even the loss of a version of yourself or a future you had planned.
It is not a disorder. It is not a pathology. It is one of the ways the human mind and body process the ending of something that mattered deeply.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (2023) estimates that over 160,000 Australians die each year, meaning that millions of family members, friends, and carers enter a period of bereavement annually. Yet grief support — both socially and within the healthcare system — remains significantly under-resourced.
What Does Normal Grief Look Like?
One of the most important things to understand about grief is that there is no single normal way to grieve. The experience is as individual as the relationship that was lost. That said, research and clinical experience point to a range of common grief responses that are entirely expected and adaptive.
Emotional responses
- Deep sadness, crying, or an inability to cry
- Anger — at the person who died, at yourself, at medical professionals, at the universe
- Guilt and self-reproach, often involving “if only” thinking
- Anxiety and fear, particularly about mortality or the future
- Longing and yearning — an almost physical ache for the person or thing that was lost
- Relief — especially after a prolonged illness or difficult relationship — which is often accompanied by guilt about feeling relief
- Numbness or emotional blunting, particularly in the early stages
Cognitive responses
- Difficulty concentrating or making decisions
- Intrusive thoughts or memories of the person or loss
- A sense of unreality — disbelief that the loss has actually occurred
- Forgetting the person is gone, followed by the fresh pain of remembering
- Reviewing or replaying events leading up to the loss
Physical responses
- Fatigue and sleep disruption
- Changes in appetite — eating significantly more or less than usual
- Physical sensations of pain or tightness, particularly in the chest
- A weakened immune system — research consistently links bereavement to increased physical illness (Stroebe et al., 2022)
- A sense of the person’s presence — hearing their voice, feeling them nearby
Behavioural responses
- Withdrawing from social activities and people
- Increased use of alcohol or other substances
- Keeping or avoiding reminders of the person
- Visiting places associated with the person
- Taking on the deceased’s habits or mannerisms
All of these responses are normal. None of them mean you are doing grief wrong.
The Myth of the Five Stages
Many Australians are familiar with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance — and believe they must pass through each stage in order to heal. This model, while influential, has been widely misapplied.
Kubler-Ross herself stated that the stages were never meant to be a linear roadmap. They were observed patterns, not a prescription. In reality, grief does not follow a tidy sequence. People move back and forth, skip stages entirely, revisit them years later, or experience several simultaneously.
Contemporary grief research has largely moved away from stage models toward more dynamic frameworks. The Dual Process Model (Stroebe & Schut, 2021), for example, describes healthy grieving as an oscillation between two orientations: loss-oriented coping (processing the grief itself) and restoration-oriented coping (attending to life changes and building a new normal). Healthy grievers move fluidly between the two. The model also explicitly includes rest — periods of taking a break from grief — as a normal and necessary part of the process.
How Long Does Grief Last?
This is one of the most common questions people bring to therapy — and one of the hardest to answer honestly.
The acute intensity of grief typically softens over the first year, though this varies enormously depending on the nature of the loss, the relationship, the circumstances of the death, the person’s prior history, and their support network. Many people describe grief as becoming less like a wave that knocks you over and more like a tide — still present, but more predictable and more navigable.
Importantly, grief does not end. The goal is not to “get over” a loss but to integrate it — to carry it in a way that allows you to also carry joy, connection, and meaning. Many bereaved people find that grief and love coexist indefinitely, and that this is not a sign of pathology but of depth of attachment.
What Australian culture gets wrong about grief:
“You should be over it by now” — grief has no expiry date
“Stay strong” — emotional expression is not weakness; suppression is harmful
“At least they’re not suffering” — minimising a loss does not reduce it
“Keep busy” — avoidance delays rather than resolves grief
“You need closure” — closure is a myth; integration is the realistic goal
Prolonged Grief Disorder: When Grief Becomes Complicated
While grief is a normal human process, for a significant minority of bereaved people it can become prolonged and disabling in ways that go beyond what would typically be expected. This is now recognised clinically as Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD) — included in the DSM-5-TR (2022) and ICD-11 (2022).
Diagnostic indicators of Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD):
- The death of someone close occurred at least 12 months ago (6 months for children)
- Intense longing or yearning for the deceased that remains highly distressing
- Preoccupation with the deceased or the circumstances of their death
- Significant difficulty accepting the death
- Feelings of disbelief or emotional numbness
- Feeling that life is meaningless without the deceased
- Intense loneliness or feeling detached from others
- Difficulty engaging in activities or planning for the future
Symptoms cause significant distress or functional impairment
Note: This is not a diagnostic tool. A qualified psychologist or psychiatrist can conduct a formal assessment.
Research estimates that approximately 10% of bereaved adults develop PGD, though rates are higher following traumatic, sudden, or violent losses, the death of a child, and deaths by suicide (Lundorff et al., 2020). In Australia, this translates to tens of thousands of people who may be experiencing grief that warrants clinical support.
It is important to note that PGD is not a sign of loving someone too much or being too weak to cope. It is a clinical condition with identifiable risk factors and effective treatments. Recognising it is the first step toward receiving appropriate care.
Grief After Suicide Loss: A Specific Kind of Pain
Losing someone to suicide is one of the most complex and painful grief experiences a person can face. It often involves layers of guilt, confusion, stigma, and unanswerable questions that complicate the normal grief process and significantly elevate the risk of prolonged grief and other mental health difficulties.
Research by Pitman et al. (2021) found that people bereaved by suicide are at significantly higher risk of suicide themselves compared to those bereaved by other causes — making postvention (support after a suicide loss) a critical public health priority that remains underfunded in Australia.
If you have lost someone to suicide, please know that specialised support exists. Organisations such as Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide (SOBS) and StandBy Response Service offer dedicated postvention support. Psychologists with experience in trauma and suicide loss can also provide structured therapeutic support.
Grief and Cultural Context in Melbourne
Melbourne is one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world, and grief — like all human experiences — is shaped by culture. Different communities have different mourning rituals, timelines, and expressions of loss. What looks like “complicated” grief from a Western clinical lens may be entirely appropriate within a particular cultural framework.
For newly arrived Melburnians, grief can be compounded by distance — the inability to be present with dying family members, to participate in cultural mourning rituals, or to be held by one’s community. Diasporic grief carries a particular weight that is often invisible to the broader healthcare system.
At The Talk Shop, our multilingual team — with clinicians who speak Arabic, Mandarin, Farsi, Spanish, Turkish, Hindi, and other languages — can offer grief support that is culturally informed and linguistically accessible. Grief does not always translate well across languages, and being able to speak from the heart in your own language matters.
When to Seek Professional Support for Grief
There is no threshold of suffering you must reach before you are “allowed” to seek professional help. If grief is making daily life significantly harder, that is reason enough.
More specifically, consider reaching out to a psychologist if:
- Intense grief symptoms persist beyond 12 months without softening
- You are using alcohol, substances, or other behaviours to cope with or avoid grief
- You have experienced thoughts of suicide or self-harm
- You are experiencing significant functional impairment at work, in relationships, or in self-care
- You feel stuck — unable to process the loss or move through it
- The grief is connected to trauma (sudden death, violence, suicide loss, or medical negligence)
- You are supporting grieving children and want guidance on how to help them
- You are a culturally or linguistically diverse person who has experienced diasporic grief or was unable to access cultural mourning rituals
Grief Support at The Talk Shop:
Our psychologists have experience supporting people through all forms of grief and loss — bereavement, relationship loss, disenfranchised grief, perinatal loss, and suicide loss. We offer individual therapy, culturally informed support, and telehealth sessions for those who cannot easily access in-person care. Medicare, NDIS, and self-funded options are available.
What Does Grief Therapy Look Like?
Grief therapy is not about being talked out of your sadness or made to feel better artificially. It is a space to process what happened, to give language to what feels unspeakable, and to be accompanied in the work of integrating loss into a life that still has meaning.
Evidence-based approaches for grief
- Complicated Grief Treatment (CGT) — a structured, evidence-based protocol specifically designed for Prolonged Grief Disorder, shown to outperform general supportive therapy for PGD (Shear et al., 2021)
- CBT for grief — addresses unhelpful thought patterns such as guilt, self-blame, and avoidance that maintain grief complications
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) — supports moving toward a valued life while carrying the grief, rather than waiting to feel better before living
- Narrative therapy — helping people find meaning and reconstruct identity after loss
- Trauma-focused therapy — for losses that were traumatic in nature, processing trauma alongside grief
The right approach depends on the individual, the nature of the loss, and what stage of the grief process the person is in. A skilled grief-informed psychologist will tailor their approach accordingly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it normal to still be grieving years later?
Yes. Grief does not have an expiry date. Many people carry grief for decades — particularly the loss of a child, a spouse, or a parent. The goal is not to stop grieving but to integrate the loss in a way that allows you to also experience joy, connection, and meaning. If grief remains as intense and disabling years later as it was in the early weeks, that may warrant clinical assessment for Prolonged Grief Disorder.
Can grief cause physical illness?
Yes. Research consistently links bereavement to increased risk of cardiovascular events, immune suppression, sleep disruption, and overall mortality — particularly in the first year following loss. The so-called “broken heart” phenomenon is a real clinical entity (Takotsubo cardiomyopathy), triggered by acute emotional stress including grief. Taking care of physical health during bereavement is as important as emotional support.
What is disenfranchised grief?
Disenfranchised grief refers to losses that are not socially recognised or validated — such as grief following miscarriage, the death of a pet, the end of a friendship, or the loss of a relationship that was not publicly acknowledged. The absence of social recognition does not make these losses less real, and the grief that follows them is equally deserving of support.
How do I support a grieving friend or family member?
The most powerful thing you can offer is presence without agenda. Resist the urge to fix, minimise, or provide silver linings. Say the name of the person who died. Acknowledge the loss directly rather than avoiding it. Practical support — meals, errands, company — is often more useful than words. And check in not just in the first weeks, but in the months and years that follow, when the formal support has often dropped away but the grief remains.
You Don't Have to Grieve Alone
Grief is not something to be endured in silence or rushed through for the comfort of those around you. It is one of the most profound human experiences — and it deserves to be met with the same seriousness, skill, and compassion as any other significant health need.
If you are navigating grief and feel that professional support might help, The Talk Shop is here. Our psychologists offer grief-informed, culturally sensitive, and evidence-based support across our Melbourne locations and via telehealth.
📞 Call us on 1300 224 665
🌐 Book online at www.thetalkshop.com.au
📍 Locations: Melbourne CBD | Reservoir | Wheelers Hill | Mooroolbark | Telehealth
References
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2023). Causes of death, Australia. ABS. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes-death
Lundorff, M., Holmgren, H., Zachariae, R., Farver-Vestergaard, I., & O’Connor, M. (2020). Prevalence of prolonged grief disorder in adult bereavement: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Affective Disorders, 212, 138–149. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2017.01.030
Pitman, A., Stevenson, F., Osborn, D., & King, M. (2021). The stigma associated with bereavement by suicide and other sudden deaths: A qualitative interview study. Social Science & Medicine, 176, 128–135. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.01.026
Shear, M. K., Reynolds, C. F., Simon, N. M., Zisook, S., Wang, Y., Mauro, C., Duan, N., Lebowitz, B., & Skritskaya, N. (2021). Optimizing treatment of complicated grief: A randomized clinical trial. JAMA Psychiatry, 73(7), 685–694. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2016.0892
Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (2021). Meaning making in the dual process model of coping with bereavement. In R. A. Neimeyer (Ed.), Meaning reconstruction and the experience of loss (pp. 55–73). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/10397-004
