by Sara Stanizai, LMFT

There’s a common, half-joking sentiment that therapists and their clients think “everything is trauma.” I tend to think that everything is grief.

What if power imbalances, trauma, depression, relationship struggles, differentiating from your family, self-esteem, or anything else that brings you therapy was actually related to grief? If you boil down a lot of our pain, it often contains some part of the grieving process. We struggle to adjust to changes and loss in one form or another. And yet, grief is often treated as a mysterious syndrome that we try to avoid but know we can’t.

This isn’t to downplay the extremely painful loss of a loved one. But on a much, much smaller scale, we are often experiencing a version of grief every time we lose something.

Grief is a very weird experience.

It’s both extremely personal and universal. It is common but also unpredictable.

It’s even more strange to deal with anticipatory grief.

What is anticipatory grief?

Anticipatory grief is the grief that sneaks up on you before you have even experienced the actual loss.

When you know the loss of a loved one is imminent, for example, you may experience grief for that person while they are still living. Watching a loved one decline is always difficult. Despite what you hope, a terminal diagnosis means the time you have left is brief. Every moment is precious.

But, what happens when you are grieving while this person is still alive? Does that mean something is wrong with you for experiencing these earlier emotions at a time that seems inappropriate? This is called anticipatory grief, which occurs before death. Anticipatory grief is rarely discussed because of the shame of feeling deep pain before anything has happened. Let’s talk about the signs and symptoms of anticipatory grief.