Navigating Grief in Life Transitions

In my practice, I frequently encounter clients who arrive with a familiar pattern: they present with extensive self-judgment about their inability to achieve healing goals, combined with profound disappointment in their current circumstances. Despite working with numerous professionals—coaches, nutritionists, therapists, and others—they remain stuck. These clients are typically motivated, intelligent, and receptive. They diligently implement suggested strategies, yet either nothing changes, or things change externally while their internal landscape remains unchanged. They feel disconnected, inadequate, and immobilized.

What’s often missing in their healing journey? Recognition of grief.

Grief Beyond Death: The Unacknowledged Losses

Most people associate grief exclusively with the death of a loved one—a tangible, physical loss. However, grief is actually woven throughout the fabric of our lives in ways we rarely recognize. Our lives consist of constant change, and when things change, they are no longer as they were before. This fundamental reality creates loss.

Throughout our lives, we develop dreams and aspirations about how we want our lives to unfold—specific careers, relationships, financial situations, and more. Yet for virtually everyone, life never perfectly aligns with these expectations. The gaps between our imagined futures and our lived reality represent genuine losses—the death of dreams, hopes, and aspirations that never materialized.

These discrepancies emerge at different times and in varying intensities for each of us. Having your life look different than you imagined is indeed a profound loss. In therapy, we create space to recognize and honor these losses that society often dismisses.

A Case Study in Unrecognized Grief

I recently conducted an intake session with a client who exemplified this phenomenon. This individual had endured childhood poverty, family dysfunction, abandonment, and substance use issues. Despite these challenges, they had achieved remarkable professional success as a non-profit executive, developed vibrant artistic talents, achieved sobriety independently, and completed advanced graduate education to facilitate a values-based career change in midlife.

Additionally, they were recovering from a major medical event that had kept them from working and permanently altered their body’s functioning. Most observers would recognize the exceptional resilience demonstrated by this client and understand why life might feel different after such significant events.

Yet this client repeatedly expressed the need to “fix” themselves, convinced they weren’t doing enough despite constant engagement with numerous helping professionals. Life no longer felt vibrant or worth waking up for—they felt defeated and lost.

As they shared their story, I reflected back the incredible tenacity of spirit and innate resilience I observed. I also acknowledged how difficult it must have been to lack the support and care they deserved throughout various life stages—the sadness of missing a carefree childhood and now living in a body with limited mobility compared to before.

Then I asked, “Have you ever allowed yourself to grieve all of this? Have you ever consciously felt the weight of these experiences?”

Tears slowly streamed down their face as they replied, “No. I had not really thought of it as a loss until this moment. I never really thought I could grieve it.”

This moment represents a cornerstone of grief therapy—helping clients recognize and validate losses they’ve never permitted themselves to acknowledge.

The Many Faces of Grief in Life Transitions

Grief manifests in numerous forms during life transitions. While depression and grief share some features, they are distinct: depression typically involves a pervasive loss of interest, while grief presents as intense, visceral sadness connected to specific losses.

Interestingly, loss often intertwines with joy and achievement, creating confusing emotional landscapes. Consider the marathon runner who finally crosses the finish line after years of training. Despite the joy of achieving the goal, the quest that provided purpose and structure has ended—also representing a loss.

Or consider the adult caring for an aging parent. Even before death occurs, they experience anticipatory grief as they witness decline and contemplate the inevitable. Self-judgment about an inability to remain perfectly present with their parent only compounds their suffering. Many clients seeking grief counseling recognize this anticipatory grief, yet feel they shouldn’t access grief support until after a loss has actually occurred.

More commonly recognized transitions that trigger grief include:

• The end of relationships (breakups, divorces)
• Career changes and job losses
• Moving to new locations
• Children leaving home
• Retirement
• Health diagnoses that alter life expectations

Life transitions therapy helps clients navigate these passages by honoring the losses embedded within them, rather than forcing toxic positivity or premature acceptance.

Why We Resist Recognizing Grief

Our society’s discomfort with grief creates barriers to its recognition. We’re often encouraged to “move on,” “stay positive,” or “be grateful” instead of acknowledging genuine pain from losses. This cultural avoidance leads many to suppress grief, creating a foundation for anxiety, depression, or behavioral patterns that attempt to compensate for unprocessed loss.

Additionally, when losses aren’t culturally sanctioned as “grief-worthy,” people often lack permission to mourn. Consider the student who finally graduates but feels unexpectedly empty and sad. Friends and family celebrate the achievement, making it difficult to acknowledge the genuine loss of identity, structure, and community that accompanies this transition.

Therapy for Life Transitions: Working With Grief Rather Than Against It

By learning to recognize and validate grief, we can finally work with it rather than against it. When grief remains unacknowledged, it often manifests as symptoms clients attempt to “fix” rather than understand. These might include:

• Persistent anxiety about not doing enough
• Feeling disconnected from daily life
• Self-judgment about emotional responses
• Perfectionism aimed at preventing further losses
• Behavioral patterns that attempt to avoid facing losses

In therapy, we create space to identify these hidden losses and give them the attention they deserve. This approach doesn’t mean dwelling endlessly in pain, but rather allows clients to integrate these experiences into their life narrative with compassion rather than judgment.

Beyond Recognition: Moving Through Grief

While recognizing grief is transformative, it’s rarely sufficient by itself. Life transitions therapy and grief counseling provide several pathways for moving through grief productively:

1. Mindfulness practices that allow clients to experience grief sensations in the body without becoming overwhelmed
2. Self-compassion exercises that counter the harsh self-judgment often accompanying difficult transitions
3. Meaning-making processes that help integrate losses into a coherent life narrative
4. Rituals that honor and externalize internal experiences of loss
5. Community connections that provide validation and normalize grief responses

Quality grief support combines these approaches in personalized ways, whether through individual grief counseling sessions or group support programs.

The marathon runner might benefit from a ritual acknowledging the end of their training journey before beginning a new chapter. The mid-career professional might need compassionate space to mourn the path not taken before embracing their current trajectory.

The Paradox of Grief Work

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of grief therapy is that fully acknowledging losses often creates more space for joy, not less. When clients stop expending energy fighting or judging their grief responses, they often discover renewed capacity for engagement and meaning.

I don’t want to suggest that simply crying once transforms everything—genuine healing is rarely so immediate. However, when my clients begin recognizing and validating their grief, they consistently report feeling lighter, less self-judgmental, and more insightful about their current emotional landscape. Rather than working against their experience, they learn to work with it.

In our achievement-oriented culture, grief often appears as an obstacle to overcome. In reality, grief represents a natural, necessary response to the inevitable losses woven through human existence. By creating space for these responses in life transitions therapy, we honor the full spectrum of human experience and open pathways toward more authentic living.

If you find yourself struggling with a life transition, consider whether unrecognized grief might be part of your experience. Sometimes, what we need isn’t another strategy for “fixing” ourselves, but rather compassionate space to acknowledge what has been lost along the way.