When we hear the word grief, many of us immediately think about the death of someone we love. The loss of a family member, close friend, or a pet is one of life’s most profound and painful experiences.

While grief is commonly associated with death, there are many other ways in which we experience grief. It can arise after the end of a relationship, major life transitions, declining health, retirement, children leaving home, or countless other experiences that change our sense of identity, security, or future.

Because grief affects the whole person, it can influence us emotionally, mentally, and physically. For some, it can contribute to feelings of anxiety or depression. For others, it can bring unresolved experiences or past trauma to the surface, making emotions feel more intense or difficult to understand. Everyone’s experience is unique

In this article, we’ll explore the many forms grief can take, how it can affect your emotional and physical health, and when to consider grief counselling.

Types of Loss and Life Transitions That Can Lead to Grief 

The Death of Someone You Love

The death of a loved one is often the first experience people associate with grief, and understandably so. Whether it is the loss of a spouse, parent, sibling, child, close friend, or a pet, these relationships become intertwined into our daily lives and can impact our sense of identity. 

When they are gone, we often experience a wide range of emotions, from sadness and anger to disbelief, guilt, or even relief in some circumstances, such as when someone had been living with a serious illness for a long time.

The End of a Relationship

Grief can also follow the end of a romantic relationship, divorce, or even the gradual loss of a meaningful friendship. While these experiences do not involve death, they often involve mourning the future you imagined and adjusting to a life that looks very different from the one you expected. 

In some cases, the grieving process can feel even more complicated because the other person sometimes is still physically present in your life. Whether through co-parenting, mutual friends, work, or social media. These ongoing reminders can make it more difficult to process the loss.

Major Life Transitions

Some of life’s biggest milestones, even if they are desired or positive, can bring on feelings of grief at the same time. 

Some common life transitions include:

• Becoming a parent
• Retiring
• Changing careers
• Moving to a new community
• Children leaving home

Any life experience that involves letting go of something familiar while adapting to something new can be challenging to move through. Even positive changes often involve loss, and it is completely normal to feel gratitude and grief at the same time.

Changes to Health, Independence, or Future Expectations

Grief can also arise when life unfolds differently than we expected. A medical diagnosis, chronic illness, reduced independence, infertility, aging, or changes in physical abilities can leave us mourning the life we once had or the future we wanted. Sometimes the greatest loss is not something tangible, but the loss of certainty, identity, or possibility.

In some situations, grief begins before the loss has fully occurred. This is known as anticipatory grief, and it often develops when we know that a significant change is coming. 

A common example of this is a person living with a terminal illness, or someone supporting a loved one through one, may experience grief long before death occurs. 

Although these experiences may look very different, they all involve saying goodbye to something meaningful either in the present or preparing for the future. 

Grief is not measured by the type of loss you experience. Rather, it reflects the significance of what has changed in your life.

How Grief Can Affect Your Mental Health

Grief is a very personal experience, there is no right or wrong way to grieve. While we often think of grief as an emotional experience, it can affect both the mind and body. No two people experience grief in the exact same way, and your response will be influenced by many factors, including the type of loss you’ve experienced and your previous life experiences.

The following are the variety of ways grief can affect both your emotional and physical well-being:

Emotionally:

• Persistent sadness or depression
• Anxiety, racing thoughts, or excessive worrying
• Anger or frustration towards the person, situation or oneself
• Guilt over things you wish you said or did differently
• Difficulty concentrating or making decisions
• Emotional numbness or feeling disconnected
• Feeling overwhelmed by everyday responsibilities

Physically:

• Changes in sleep or appetite
• Fatigue or low energy
• Muscle tension or aches
• Digestive discomfort or an upset stomach
• Shortness of breath or tightness in the throat
• Weakened immune system

Grief can also bring up unresolved past experiences to the surface. Previous losses, childhood experiences, or unresolved trauma may become more noticeable when another significant loss or life transition occurs. This can make your emotional and physical responses feel more intense than expected.

When to Seek Grief Counselling 

So when should you consider counselling for the grief you are experiencing? 

Some people seek support soon after a significant loss or life transition, while others reach out months or even years later when they realize they are still struggling to adjust. The right time is when you feel you would benefit from additional support in processing your grief and navigating the changes it has brought into your life.

Because every experience of grief is unique, therapy should be tailored to your individual needs. This may involve processing difficult emotions, working through anxious or self-critical thought patterns, regulating your nervous system that has remained in a state of stress, or exploring how past experiences are influencing your present response.

For some people, grief also marks the beginning of a new chapter. As you adapt to life after a significant change, questions about identity, purpose, or what comes next often emerge. Therapy can provide space to process these experiences while helping you reconnect with yourself and move forward with greater clarity and confidence.

As a Registered Psychologist in Coquitlam, I use an integrative, brain-wise, body-informed approach tailored to each client’s unique experiences and goals. I offer grief counselling in person and virtually throughout British Columbia. If you’re considering therapy, I invite you to get in touch for a free consultation.

Moving Forward Through Grief

Grief is a natural response to loss, but loss can take many forms. While we often associate grief with the death of a loved one, it can also be experienced through a major life transition, changes to our health, the end of a relationship, or the loss of the future we had imagined for ourselves. Whatever the source of your grief, your experience is valid.

Although grief can feel overwhelming, it is also a reflection of something that mattered deeply to you. Healing doesn’t mean forgetting what has been lost. It means learning to carry your experiences in a way that allows you to continue living a meaningful and fulfilling life.

Do you find yourself feeling anxious, emotionally exhausted or reacting more strongly to certain situations than you’d like without a clear reason why?

Or maybe you struggle to relax, always expect something to go wrong, or find yourself repeating the same patterns in relationships. These experiences can feel confusing, especially when there doesn’t seem to be a cause for them.

Sometimes, these patterns are signs of unresolved trauma.

Unresolved trauma doesn’t only affect us immediately after a difficult experience. It can continue influencing our emotions, thoughts, behaviours, physical health, and relationships long after the original event has passed, especially if we never had the opportunity or support to fully process it. This is particularly true for experiences that happened during childhood, when our brains and emotional coping skills were still developing. However, it certainly is not limited to childhood experiences.

If you’ve ever wondered why you respond the way you do, understanding some common signs may provide some answers. From there, you can begin exploring how to heal from the experiences that shaped those responses. 

What Is Unresolved Trauma?

The simplest way to think about unresolved trauma is that it’s when a past experience continues to affect the way you think, feel, and respond because your brain and body haven’t had the opportunity to fully process and release what happened.

Trauma can develop after a single overwhelming event, but it can also result from repeated experiences over time. It’s not just what happened that continues to affect us. It’s the way our mind and nervous system have adapted to help us cope and stay safe in situations that feel similar to the original experience. 

Experiences that may contribute to unresolved trauma include:

• Emotional neglect in childhood
• Bullying
• Emotional, physical, or sexual abuse
• Witnessing violence
• Serious accidents, natural disasters or medical events
• Sudden loss of a loved one
• Unhealthy or controlling relationships
• Chronic stress or growing up in an unpredictable environment

While everyone’s experiences are different, there are some common signs that may indicate past experiences are continuing to affect you today.

How Unresolved Trauma Can Show Up in Everyday Life

Emotional Signs

One of the most common effects of unresolved trauma is struggling to regulate your emotions.

Some common ways this shows up are:

• Feeling constantly on edge
• Becoming easily triggered by situations that seem relatively small
• Finding it difficult to relax, even during quiet moments
• Experiencing anxiety that doesn’t seem to have a clear cause
• Feeling emotionally numb or disconnected
• Feeling irritable or more angry than you’d like
• Carrying persistent shame or guilt

These responses are often protective patterns your mind developed to help you avoid being hurt in the same way again. As a result, it stays alert for situations that feel similar to past experiences, even when they aren’t actually dangerous in the present moment.

For example, if you experienced emotional neglect growing up, someone cancelling plans, taking a long time to reply to a message, or seeming emotionally distant may trigger feelings of rejection that are much stronger than the current situation alone would explain. This isn’t because you’re “too sensitive.” It’s because your mind has learned to recognize situations that feel familiar and respond by trying to protect you.

Physical Signs

Trauma isn’t only stored in our memories. It also gets stored in the body.

Some common physical symptoms include:

• Frequent headaches
• Tight shoulders or jaw tension
• Digestive issues
• Ongoing fatigue
• Difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep
• Feeling physically tense without realizing it

When your nervous system spends long periods in survival mode, your body begins preparing for danger even when there isn’t an immediate threat. Muscles stay tense, breathing becomes shallower, digestion slows down, and it can become difficult to fully relax. 

For example, if your neck and shoulders constantly feel tight or painful without a clear physical cause, it may be because those muscles have spent so much time unconsciously bracing for stress that holding tension has become your body’s default response.

Changes in Thoughts and Behaviours

Unresolved trauma can also influence the way you think and behave over time. 

Some examples of this are:

• You expect the worst: Your mind constantly scans for potential problems because, at one point, anticipating danger or being emotionally hurt helped you prepare for it.

• You struggle to relax: Staying busy, overworking, and filling up every spare moment with more tasks can become a way of avoiding uncomfortable thoughts or emotions.

• You feel the need to always be in control: Unexpected changes or uncertainty feel uncomfortable, so you become the person who always has to make the plans, know what’s happening next, or have a backup plan just in case. 

• You avoid certain situations: This might include avoiding difficult conversations, certain places, or social situations that trigger uncomfortable feelings, even if you’re not fully aware of why.

• You withdraw from others: Keeping people at a distance can sometimes feel safer than risking disappointment, conflict, or heartache.

Similar to the emotional responses, these thoughts and behaviours develop as protective responses to avoid or navigate challenging situations in the present or perceived future.

Unresolved Trauma Can Affect Many Areas of Life

Because trauma influences how safe we feel in the world, its effects often extend far beyond the original experience.

It may have an impact on the following areas of your life:

• Relationships: struggling to trust others, unable to be vulnerable, or becoming overwhelmed during conflict. I take a deeper dive into how trauma affects relationships in a previous article if you’d like to learn more. 
• Work: feeling like you constantly have to prove yourself, struggling with perfectionism, or finding it difficult to leave work at work.
• Parenting: reacting more strongly to your child’s behaviours than you’d like, becoming overprotective in an effort to keep them safe, or finding it difficult to connect emotionally.
• Confidence: second-guessing yourself, worrying about making mistakes, or finding it difficult to believe in yourself.
• Everyday life: neglecting your physical or emotional wellbeing, finding everyday tasks overwhelming, avoiding responsibilities, or finding it difficult to be fully present.

Once you understand why these patterns developed, you can begin healing the experiences that shaped them.

How Therapy Can Help Heal Unresolved Trauma

Because unresolved trauma affects the way we think, feel, behave, and physically respond to the world around us, therapy should address it at both the mind and body level. Focusing on just one piece often isn’t enough to create lasting change.

As a psychologist in Coquitlam, I take a brain-wise, body-informed approach to trauma. This means integrating Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) to help identify and reshape the unhelpful thought patterns and beliefs that developed through past experiences, while Somatic Experiencing (SE) and Self-Regulation Therapy (SRT) help regulate the nervous system, reduce emotional overreactivity, and release protective patterns that continue to keep your body in survival mode.

The goal is to reduce the emotional and physical effects of unresolved trauma, strengthen your resilience, and help you feel calmer, safer, and more present in your everyday life.

If you’re looking for trauma therapy in Coquitlam or virtual therapy throughout British Columbia, I’d be happy to support you. Get in touch today for your initial consultation.

Making Sense of Your Experiences 

Many people spend years trying to change the anxiety, overthinking, emotional reactions, or physical tension they’re experiencing without ever understanding where those patterns came from.

Often, the missing piece isn’t trying harder to reduce the symptoms. It’s recognizing that your mind and body have been responding to past experiences all along.

Once those experiences are understood and processed, the patterns that once felt automatic can begin to change. And that’s where healing begins.

Do you find yourself saying things to yourself like, “I’m not good enough,” “I always fail, so why bother trying?,” “I don’t think they like me,” or any number of other harsh, self-critical thoughts?

If you’ve become aware of these thoughts, you’re probably wondering, “Why am I so hard on myself?” and struggle to figure out how to change them.

Unfortunately, many people say harsh, self-defeating things to themselves that they would never say to someone they care about.

They hold themselves to impossibly high standards, focus on what went wrong instead of what went right, and struggle to recognize their own strengths and accomplishments.

Over time, this pattern of self-criticism can take a toll on mental and emotional well-being. It can contribute to anxiety, low self-worth, shame, perfectionism, depression, and feelings of never quite measuring up.

As a psychologist in Coquitlam, one of the main things I help clients with is understanding where these self-critical thoughts are coming from, because that is the starting point for healing and creating lasting change.

What Self-Criticism Can Look Like

Self-criticism doesn’t always show up in the same way for everyone. Here are some common ways it shows up:

• Replaying mistakes you made long after they happen
• Dismissing compliments or achievements
• Feeling like nothing you do is ever enough
• Comparing yourself to others and feeling behind or not as good as them
• Holding yourself to standards you wouldn’t expect from anyone else
• Feeling guilty when resting or taking time for yourself

Over time, these defeating thoughts become a part of your identity, shaping how you see yourself, your abilities, and your sense of self-worth. 

Where Does Self-Criticism Come From?

Self-critical thoughts don’t come out of nowhere. They form from past experiences, environments, and messages we absorb over time that shape how we see ourselves and our worth.

For many people, these patterns begin early in life. They may develop from growing up with families having high expectations, receiving frequent criticism, pressures to succeed, or environments where mistakes were judged rather than understood.

For others, self-criticism may stem from experiences of rejection, neglect, bullying, trauma, or situations that felt embarrassing, painful, or unsafe.

These beliefs are often passed down through family, culture, school, or other influential environments.

Over time, these patterns of self-criticism can begin to serve a function, even if we don’t consciously realize it. They may be trying to:

• Protect us from making mistakes
• Help us avoid disappointment
• Prevent rejection
• Push us to achieve more

In that sense, self-criticism can feel like a way of staying in control or keeping ourselves safe.

How Self-Criticism Affects Mental Health

The problem is that what may have started as a protective strategy can eventually become a harsh inner dialogue that impacts self-worth, emotional well-being, and our ability to see ourselves with compassion.

Many people assume being hard on themselves helps them stay motivated or achieve more. In reality, chronic self-criticism often creates the opposite effect.

When the mind is constantly focused on what’s wrong, what could have been done better, or what might go wrong next time, it can contribute to:

• Anxiety and overthinking
• Feelings of shame or inadequacy
• Low self-worth
• Perfectionism
• Stress and overwhelm
• Depression

Instead of creating confidence, self-criticism often leaves people feeling exhausted, discouraged, and stuck.

No matter how much they “do right”.

Why Is It So Difficult to Stop Self-Criticizing Thoughts?

Many people become aware of their self-critical thoughts and genuinely want to change them. Yet despite their efforts, the same thoughts continue to show up again and again.

One reason these patterns can be difficult to change is that they have often been reinforced over many years. Over time, self-critical thoughts can become so familiar that they no longer feel like thoughts at all. Instead, they begin to feel like facts about who you are.

When this happens, it becomes difficult to question them because they have become woven into your self-image and sense of self-worth.

This is why simply trying to silence the thoughts or replace them with positive ones rarely creates lasting change. To create lasting change, it’s important to understand the experiences and beliefs that shaped these patterns and learn new ways of relating to yourself.

Bringing the Pattern Into Awareness

One of the first steps toward change is becoming more aware of the pattern itself.

Rather than immediately trying to eliminate self-critical thoughts, it can be helpful to start noticing when they show up and what may be triggering them.

You might start by:

• Paying attention to recurring self-critical thoughts and writing them down when they arise
• Looking for common themes or beliefs underneath them
• Exploring where those thoughts may have originated
• Noticing the situations, people, or emotions that tend to trigger them

Awareness helps create space between you and the inner critic. Once a pattern becomes visible, it becomes easier to understand and work with.

From there, you can begin questioning whether these thoughts are accurate reflections of who you are today or simply old patterns that developed through past experiences. This can help you relate to yourself with greater compassion, understanding, and acceptance.

When Professional Support Can Help

It’s not always easy to identify where self-critical thoughts are coming from. The source of these thoughts isn’t always obvious and may even be suppressed.

And even when you begin to understand where they originated, the thoughts can still persist despite your best efforts to change them. Over time, they can affect your confidence, relationships, decision-making, and overall well-being, particularly when anxiety, depression, trauma, or other emotional challenges are also involved.

When this happens, working with a mental health professional can help you better understand and address the root of the pattern.

In my Coquitlam practice, I take a brain-wise, body-informed approach to therapy. Together, we explore the experiences, beliefs, and emotional patterns that may have contributed to these self-critical thoughts in the first place.

I integrate Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) to help clients identify and challenge these self-defeating beliefs. I also incorporate body-based approaches including Somatic Experiencing and Self-Regulation Therapy, which help regulate nervous system responses that can keep people feeling stuck in old patterns. By working with both the mind and the body, we can create deeper and more lasting change.

You can learn more about my therapeutic approach here and get in touch if you’d like to explore working together. 

Moving Toward a Healthier Relationship With Yourself

If you’ve been asking yourself, “Why am I so hard on myself?”, remember that self-critical thoughts are not a reflection of your worth. They are learned patterns that developed for a reason.

When you begin to understand where these thoughts come from and the role they’ve played in your life, they begin to lose their power. This creates an opportunity to address them, reshape them, and develop new ways of relating to yourself.

And if these patterns feel too difficult to work through on your own, then the next step is getting support from a professional.

With awareness, understanding, and support, it becomes possible to replace self-criticism with greater compassion and develop a healthier relationship with yourself.