There are many reactions to loss, many types of losses and expressions of grief. The type of loss may impact your grief response. Grief is always messy. It is not helpful to impose your expectations of grief on others, or even yourself.

This list is intended to give a hint at how varied loss and grief can be, to cultivate empathy rather than judgment.

• Reactions to sudden death differ than to a long illness and expected death.
• A child’s death is different than an aged person’s.
• A violent, traumatic death is very difficult for survivors to manage.
• Suicide plagues the loved ones with not only grief but also guilt.

Ambiguous loss when no remains are found is very troubling. Soldiers missing in action, abducted children, people who walk away from families never to be heard from again, victims of plane crashes and never found. The grief process can be paralyzed with the lack of closure.

Not all losses involve death. Loss of a relationship, divorce, child custody, the re-marriage of your ex, a job, a house, relocation can all be significant losses that take time to grieve.

Other common losses include loved ones who may be physically present but emotionally or cognitively unavailable due to conditions such as Alzheimer’s, brain injury, mental illness, or addiction.

You may have experienced too many losses recently and your resilience is overwrought. No longer able to cope with one more loss. This is sometimes called “bereavement overload” or cumulative grief.

Anticipatory grief is experienced at the news of a loved one’s terminal diagnosis. It is normal to feel pain at the threat of loss, how you will mange with the loss of a loved one. It is normal to feel genuine grief in anticipation. The difficulty with this grief is you experience grief twice. First, you anticipate. Then at death you grieve again for the actual loss.

Grief can be so painful that people deny and block their feelings only to have the grief come up years later. They seemingly sailed through grief unscathed, until.

Others may experience grief immediately but then cut short the grief process by making a complete life change. This is often seen when one re-marries within a few months of losing a spouse.

Disenfranchised grief is around a loss considered invalid or insignificant. A relationship with stigma attached may be disenfranchised grief such as suicide. In a conservative religious family the same-sex partner of a family members dies. A “mistress” dies. Death from drug overdose or complications from AIDS. The silence from others adds another layer to one’s grief.

Examples of insignificant losses are pet loss, miscarriage, an ex-spouse dies. Other people do not see why it matters so much to you. If someone says, “You are not over this yet, it was ‘just’ a …..” Perfect example of disenfranchised grief. Your grief is valid and real but the lack of social support is a double wound.

Complicated grief is a term for grief that is debilitating; the extreme pain of loss does not ever recede. The griever does not adjust to the loss, does not re-engage in one’s life as the yearning for the lost is too great. This is how early grief is experienced by most of us but if this continues beyond the second or third year, most label this grief complicated. Counseling is often recommended.

This is a partial list of types of grief. Grief is complex and varied. If you are in the throws of grief it is important to give yourself time to stumble through it. If a friend or family member is in this process, it is more important to understand how individual this process is for each person. Be a support through their process and do not impose your own expectations of the grief process on them.