Grieving differently from everyone else: why comparing gets in the way of accepting yourself

Different is not the same as wrong

How it works

Two people close to the same loss, or the same setback, can feel it at very different intensities. One may go over it often while another rarely does. When what you feel does not match the people around you, it is easy to read the difference as a verdict on you. That reading is the mistake, not your feeling.

The studies here are all about grief, nearly all of it after a death. Most of them do not sort people into grief types. They measure something in a group of bereaved people and check whether it goes with how intense grief is, so their findings describe groups, not any one person.

A few terms come up. Neuroticism is a personality trait researchers measure as a tendency to feel negative emotions more readily; the word is a research label, not a judgement of anyone's character. Attachment anxiety and avoidance are two measures of how people relate in close relationships, and What grief is covers them in more detail. Early maladaptive schemas is a term from schema therapy for long-standing, painful patterns in how a person sees themselves and others.

What research links with heavier grief

Why it matters

How anything lands depends on what mattered to you, the future you wanted and what you already carry. Researchers have looked at what goes with heavier grief in bereaved people, and none of it is a verdict on anyone.

• Personality. In one study of bereaved mothers, neuroticism and extraversion went with how intense grief was, and in another study of bereaved people, neuroticism and both attachment measures were each associated with how severe grief symptoms were.
• Close relationships. In a review of studies of bereaved adults, people higher in attachment anxiety, and to a smaller degree avoidance, reported more intense grief measured at the same time, though studies that followed people over time showed no sign that these styles made grief worse later. A small study of family caregivers found no significant link; there, grief before the death predicted grief afterwards.
• Thoughts after a loss. In one study that followed recently bereaved people over time, most measures of bleak thoughts about oneself, life, the future and one's own grief were still linked with later grief and depression symptoms, after allowing for symptoms at the start.
• Moving toward the loss, and away from it. In one study of bereaved adults, the heaviest grief was in the group where moving toward the loss, such as yearning or going over it, and moving away from it happened together. No group avoided without also moving toward the loss.
• Old patterns. The one study of schemas in grief that I found reports that early maladaptive schemas may go with more complicated grief symptoms.
• Gender and culture. A large review found gender only a weak predictor of lasting grief symptoms, and men can grieve intensely too. Rates of lasting, impairing grief differed between countries and study methods, and one early scale study read grief as expressed partly in culture-specific ways. What counts as usual grief differs between communities.

These are questionnaire measures and group findings, not a judgement that anyone's thoughts are wrong.

Four comparisons that get in the way

Where people get stuck

Comparing what you feel with what someone else feels can turn a difference into a charge against yourself. Here are four comparisons, and what I would say to each.

1. "Everyone else is coping better than I am." You are comparing your inside with their outside. The studies above describe groups, and none of them tells you what is happening inside a particular person, or sets a right way to grieve.
2. "My feelings are too much, or not enough." What counts as usual grief differs between communities. The yardstick you are measuring yourself against is partly cultural, not a fixed rule.
3. "A man should not grieve this hard." Drop the "should". Gender is only a weak predictor of lasting grief symptoms, and men can grieve intensely too.
4. "I keep going over it, and I keep avoiding it." There is no contradiction there. In the study above, no group avoided without also moving toward the loss. Going over a loss again and again has its own article, The what-ifs, and so does keeping busy to avoid it, What avoiding grief costs.

Estrangement from an adult child has its own article: Grieving someone who is still alive.

When a heavy feeling is worth taking to someone

Any feeling that stays heavy most days and gets in the way of daily life is worth taking to a doctor or a therapist.

Clinicians use the term prolonged grief disorder for grief that stays intense and gets in the way of daily life, and grief-focused help exists for it. A symptom score is not a diagnosis.

If bleak thoughts about yourself, your life or the future stay heavy most days, a family doctor, or a therapist who works with grief, can help you work out what kind of support fits. For grief that stays heavy, grief-focused therapy has helped people in a randomized trial.

If you are thinking about not being alive, please reach someone now. The help box near the end of this page says how.

Where the research on grieving differently is thin

Where the research is thin, or disagrees

Almost every study here is correlational and about a death, not an estrangement or a separation, and attachment is contested, with links at one time but no sign over time. Schemas have one study and schema modes none. No study tested whether changing a trait, a thought or a habit changes grief, and none studies how people differ in anger, disappointment or regret outside grief.

Noticing the word under the comparison

One thing you might notice

When what you feel, or what someone else feels, seems wrong to you, you might notice the word under that judgement: should, too much, not enough. You might also notice how long you have been hearing that word. It is information, not a verdict. There is nothing to do with what you find.

What a session does with difference

How Feelings Buddy fits

Feelings Buddy is built for working through feelings with self-compassion, toward self-acceptance and self-motivation. A hard feeling is the obstacle, not the destination.

A session is an AI working from written instructions, so it can get them wrong. None of the studies above tested those instructions. Its instructions say to:

• never name or predict stages of grief, and never give a timeline;
• offer a pattern only as a question the person can wave away, and drop it without defending it if they say no.

Nothing in the instructions assesses a personality trait, an attachment style, a schema, a mode or a type.

There is no diagnosis, and a session carries nothing about risk into a later session. No one reads the conversation as it happens.

No study has tested Feelings Buddy. How a session works, step by step