Sneaky Grief - The Losses That Linger, the Systems That Ignore Them

Unseen Grief: Navigating Disenfranchised and Ambiguous Loss

In this episode of PsyberSpace, host Leslie Poston explores the often overlooked and invalidated forms of grief that extend beyond traditional mourning. Discussing the concept of 'disenfranchised grief,' the episode delves into how economic systems and societal norms suppress acknowledgment of certain types of loss. From the unexpected death of a first love to ongoing ambiguous losses, Poston examines how these unacknowledged forms of grief affect our mental and physical health. She highlights the limitations of traditional grief models and emphasizes the need for more inclusive and validating support systems. The episode also tackles the political and structural issues surrounding grief, arguing that acknowledging and integrating our losses is crucial for emotional well-being.

00:00 Introduction to Sneaky Grief
01:33 Understanding Disenfranchised Grief
04:00 Personal Story: The Unexpected Call
06:06 The Continuing Bonds Model
08:35 Ambiguous Loss and Its Impact
11:20 The Political Side of Grief
15:27 The Physiology of Grief
17:33 Prolonged Grief Disorder
19:16 Collective and Marginalized Grief
21:11 Conclusion: Validating All Forms of Grief

References

Albuquerque, S., Teixeira, A. M., & Rocha, J. C. (2021). COVID-19 and disenfranchised grief. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12, 638874.

Boss, P. (2006). Loss, trauma, and resilience: Therapeutic work with ambiguous loss. W. W. Norton.

Cesur-Soysal, G., & Arı, E. (2024). How we disenfranchise grief for self and other: An empirical study. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 88(2), 620-637.

Djelantik, A. A. A. M. J., Smid, G. E., Mroz, A., Kleber, R. J., & Boelen, P. A. (2020). The prevalence of prolonged grief disorder in bereaved individuals following unnatural losses: Systematic review and meta regression analysis. Journal of Affective Disorders, 265, 146-156.

Doka, K. J. (1989). Disenfranchised grief: Recognizing hidden sorrow. Lexington Books.

Hewson, H., et al. (2023). The impact of continuing bonds following bereavement: A systematic review. Death Studies, 47(7), 762-775.

Hopf, S. M., Riegel, B., Waters, C., Tamres, L., Good, M., Penner, A., & Guo, W. (2020). Neuroendocrine mechanisms of grief and bereavement: A systematic review and implications for future interventions. Journal of Neuroendocrinology, 32(8), e12887.

Klass, D., Silverman, P. R., & Nickman, S. L. (Eds.). (2014). Continuing bonds: New understandings of grief. Taylor & Francis.

O'Connor, M. F. (2019). Grief: A brief history of research on how body, mind, and brain adapt. Biopsychosocial Science and Medicine.

Phillip, L. (2024, July 8). Grief accrues faster than sick days: A reflection on pain, place, and productivity. The Philanthropist Journal. Retrieved from https://thephilanthropist.ca/2024/07/grief-accrues-faster-than-sick-days-a-reflection-on-pain-place-and-productivity/

Phillips, C. S., Trainum, K., & Thomas Hebdon, M. C. (2025). Hidden in plain sight: A scoping review of professional grief in healthcare and charting a path for change. Health Services Insights. Sage Journals.

Pitimson, N. (2021). Work after death: An examination of the relationship between grief, emotional labour, and the lived experience of returning to work after a bereavement. Sociological Research Online, 26(3), 590-606

Prigerson, H. G., Boelen, P. A., Xu, J., Smith, K. V., & Maciejewski, P. K. (2021). Validation of the new DSM-5-TR criteria for prolonged grief disorder and the PG-13-Revised (PG-13-R) scale. World Psychiatry, 20(1), 96-106.

Sandberg, S., & Grant, A. (2017). Option B: Facing adversity, building resilience, and finding joy. Knopf

Stroebe, M., Schut, H., & Boerner, K. (2017). Cautioning health-care professionals: Bereaved persons are misguided through the stages of grief. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 74(4), 455-473.

Wilson, D. M., Rodríguez-Prat, A., & Low, G. (2020). The potential impact of bereavement grief on workers, work, careers, and the workplace. Social Work in Health Care, 59(6), 335–350. 

 

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Episode Transcript

Leslie Poston (00:12):
Welcome back to PsyberSpace. I'm your host,
Leslie Poston. Today, we'reexploring something that touches
every single one of us, yetremains largely invisible in our
culture, grief. But not the kindof grief you see in the movies
as dramatic funeral scenes,black dresses, or a socially

(00:32):
acceptable mourning period. I'mtalking about that sneaky grief,
the kind that shows up uninviteddecades later or the kind that
you're told doesn't count, thekind of grief that our economic
systems pretend doesn't existbecause acknowledging it might
cost them money.
We're going to explore whathappens when, say, the person

(00:54):
you loved at 19 dies and youfind yourself sobbing before a
Zoom meeting, surprised by thedepth of your own reaction.
We'll examine why our brainsstruggle to process losses that
don't fit into neat categoriesand why capitalism has a vested
interest in keeping our griefsmall, private, and time
limited. This isn't just aboutdeath. It's about all the ways

(01:17):
we lose people, lose pieces ofourselves, and lose futures that
we thought we'd have. It's aboutthe psychological and
physiological toll of carryingunacknowledged pain, and it's
about the systems that profitfrom our silence.
Let's start with a fundamentaltruth: not all grief wears
black. When we hear grief, mostof us picture funerals, caskets,

(01:44):
and crying relatives. We thinkof the obvious losses: death,
divorce, maybe a job loss ifwe're being generous. But grief
is far more pervasive andcomplex than our cultural
narratives suggest. Let's startwith Doge's concept of
disenfranchised grief.
These are the losses that aren'topenly acknowledged, socially

(02:05):
validated, or publicly mourned.Recent research shows this
phenomenon is more widespreadthan we realized, encompassing
everything from the loss of abeloved family pet to the end of
a friendship we expected to lasta lifetime. From workplace
deaths to pandemic relatedlosses. We don't just experience

(02:26):
disenfranchised grief fromothers. New research reveals
that we also selfdisenfranchise, suppressing our
emotions and not allowingourselves to grieve even when we
feel the loss acutely.
We become our own grief police.Think about it. You can grieve a
job that meant everything toyou, even if everyone else
thought it was just work. Youcan grieve a friendship that

(02:49):
ended badly or ended suddenly.You can grieve a mentor who
ghosted you or a version ofyourself you had to abandon to
survive.
You can grieve the person yourparent never was even though
they're still alive. You cangrieve a city you had to leave,
a dream that died, or a possiblefuture that evaporated. One

(03:10):
systematic review found thatgrief in professional settings
alone, which is just onecategory of disenfranchised
grief, has been the subject ofincreasing research since 2020.
Why? Well, think of the exampleof health care workers.
They've been experiencingrepeated exposure to patient
deaths without adequaterecognition or support since

(03:32):
COVID hit us and even beforethen. The problem isn't that
these losses are less real. Theproblem is that we live in a
culture that struggles to holdcomplexity. We want grief to be
simple, time limited, andpredictable. We want it to
follow rules, but grief doesn'tfollow rules.
It shows up when it wants to, asintense as it needs to be, and

(03:55):
it stays for as long as it needsto stay. Let me tell you about a
type of grief that I experiencedrecently and the inspiration for
this episode. Last week, I got acall that hit me hard. My first
love, someone I dated in highschool and for several years
after and someone I had remainedgood friends with, had died

(04:17):
unexpectedly in a car accident.I was surprised to find myself
completely undone.
My sadness seemed to blindsideme and lingered throughout the
week, disrupting my research, mywork, and my personal life with
its insistence. My griefdemanded to be seen and refused
to be dismissed or put on aschedule. It was hard to explain

(04:41):
to people who are more familiarwith the professional side of
me. Even to myself, I wondered,Why does this feel like losing a
limb? The answer is in the brainas well as the heart, of course.
First loves leave an indeliblemark on our brains. They occur
during peak neuroplasticityperiods when our identity is
still forming. Research on theneurobiology of attachment shows

(05:06):
that early romanticrelationships activate brain
systems similar to addiction,encoding these memories deeply
in our neural networksassociated with reward and
meaning. And when that persondies, even decades later, it can
feel like a part of youridentity has been torn away. Not
because you were still in lovewith the person, but because

(05:27):
they were part of thescaffolding on which you built
your understanding of love, ofrelationships, and of yourself.
But society doesn't have ascript for this kind of grief.
There's no sympathy card forsorry your ex boyfriend from
decades ago died. There's nobereavement leave for I need
time to process the death ofsomeone who helped shape who I

(05:49):
am. So people tend to grievethese losses in secret. In
talking with someone else whoknew us both back then, they
mentioned that it felt like theywere losing their mind, that
their grief seemed so out ofplace.
That's normal. The continuingbonds model of grief helps
explain this phenomenon. Ratherthan getting over losses, we

(06:13):
often maintain emotionalconnections to significant
people throughout our lives.These bonds can include
memories, internalizedconversations, memories sparked
vividly by something as simpleas a song or a smell, and all
the ways the person continues toinfluence our choices and our
identity. That's not pathology.
That's just how humans work.We're relational beings. The

(06:37):
people who matter to us becomepart of us. And when they die or
leave, we don't just lose them.We lose the part of ourselves
that existed in relationship tothem.
Disenfranchised grief is sneaky.It takes many forms. But they

all share one thing (06:54):
society's message that your pain doesn't
count. Maybe because it's thedeath of an ex partner, people
expect you to be over them, ormaybe if it's someone you only
knew online, people don'tunderstand how a virtual
relationship could matter toyou. Maybe it's a colleague, a
mentor, a friend you'd grownapart from, or a pet who was

(07:16):
your constant companion.
Recent empirical researchexamined three common scenarios

of disenfranchised grief (07:22):
pet loss, romantic relationship
breakups, and receiving apsychological disorder
diagnosis. The findings revealedsignificant differences in how
society validates these losseswith attachment styles and
social support playing crucialroles in how people navigate
unacknowledged grief. Theinvalidation wasn't just social.

(07:46):
It was structural. Insurancecompanies don't recognize grief
counseling for minor losses.
Workplaces don't providebereavement leave for friends or
ex partners. Even support groupsare organized around specific
types of loss, often excludingthe messy, complicated types of
grief that don't fit into neatcategories. But here's what the

(08:08):
research tells us.Disenfranchised grief can be
just as intense and long lastingas what society considers
legitimate grief. When yourgrief isn't validated, it's
harder to process, leading toisolation, anxiety, and
unresolved emotional pain thatcan persist for years.
The silence becomes part of thewound. You're not just grieving

(08:30):
the loss. You're grieving yourright to grieve. Some losses
resist closure entirely.Psychologist Pauline Boss calls
this ambiguous loss situationswhere the person is neither
fully present nor fully gone.
A parent with dementia who nolonger recognizes you, or a

(08:54):
child estranged because of yoursexual orientation, or a parent
a child can no longer talk tobecause of how they continue to
harm them. A best friend whodisappeared entirely without
explanation. A relationship thatended mid fight with no
resolution. Someone who diedwhile you were still angry at
each other. These were allambiguous losses.

(09:16):
Research shows that ambiguousloss disrupts normal grief
processing because the brainlacks clear markers of beginning
or end. Without resolution,people experience higher levels
of anxiety, depression, andidentity confusion. Our grief
rituals assume finality.Funerals mark endings. Memorial

(09:38):
services celebrate completedlives, but ambiguous loss exists
in perpetual limbo.
You can't properly mourn someonewho might call tomorrow. You
can't fully let go of someonewhose story with you has no
period, only endless ellipses.Social media has intensified
ambiguous loss in unprecedentedways. Where relationships once

(10:01):
naturally faded when peoplemoved apart or grew distant, we
now maintain digital connectionsthat create perpetual
uncertainty. You still see yourestranged sibling's post but you
can't comment.
Or an ex updates their statuswhile you're blocked from their
life but not their feed. Someonewho ghosted you continues to

(10:21):
watch and like your Instagramstories. These digital half
connections create a new form ofpsychological limbo. They're
simultaneously present andabsent, accessible yet
unreachable. The algorithmsensure we keep encountering
traces of people we've lost,preventing the natural

(10:41):
resolution that distance onceprovided.
The psychological toll of thiscan be profound. Studies on
continuing bonds reveal thatunclear or traumatic
circumstances of loss make itmuch harder to maintain healthy
emotional connections to thedeceased or the simply
separated, often leading tocomplicated grief reactions.

(11:02):
We're taught that closure is thegoal, but ambiguous loss teaches
us that some wounds don't heal.They just change shape. Learning
to live with uncertainty, withunfinished stories, with love
that has nowhere to go, becomesits own form of survival.
Here's where things get a littlepolitical, because grief can be

(11:24):
political. In The United States,only sixty percent of private
sector workers get any paidbereavement leave at all. And
that's usually just a few days.The national average is four
days for a spouse or a child,three days for a parent, and
one-two days for extended familyIf the person who died isn't on

(11:49):
your company's approved list ofrelationships, you get nothing.
Research estimates that griefrelated productivity losses cost
companies $75,000,000,000annually, a number that has
undoubtedly increased since thepandemic.
But instead of addressing theroot cause inadequate support
for grieving workers companiestry to minimize the problem by

(12:13):
pretending grief should be briefand private. Recent workplace
research reveals howcapitalism's emotional rules
intersect with grief. Employeesare expected to return to work
composed, efficient, andemotionally neutral. The
pressure to restore productivityoverrides basic human needs for

(12:34):
processing loss. The hiddencosts are staggering.
Presenteeism cuts individualproductivity by one third or
more, resulting in about fiftyseven point five lost workdays
per year. And grief literallyrewires your brain, creating
symptoms like brain fog that canlast six to eighteen months. Yet

(12:55):
companies would rather loseproductivity than provide
adequate support. Research onbereaved parents found that
absenteeism costs averagednearly $9,000 per employee,
while presenteeism, beingphysically present but unable to
function at full capacity, costseven more at over $9,600 per

(13:17):
employee in the six monthsfollowing a child's death. The
refusal to acknowledge thisreality isn't just cruel.
It's economicallycounterproductive. The message
is clear. Your grief is lessimportant than corporate
profits. Your pain is aninconvenience to be managed, not
a fully human experience to behonored. For decades, Western

(13:42):
models of psychology actuallygot grief wrong.
They thought the goal wasdetachment cutting ties with the
dead and moving on. But thatmodel never matched how people
actually grieve. A systematicreview of 79 studies on
continuing bonds found that mostpeople maintain ongoing
emotional connections to thosethey've lost. These connections

(14:04):
aren't pathological they'renormal and often adaptive.
Continuing bonds can includeengaging with memories, sensing
the presence of the deceased,internal conversations, using
the deceased as role models, orfeeling guided by the values of
the deceased.
The research shows theseconnections can provide comfort,

(14:27):
support identity formation, andhelp with meaning making after a
loss. However, the relationshipbetween continuing bonds and
healing is complex. Recentresearch distinguishes between
internalized bonds feelingguided by the deceased values
and externalized bonds such ashallucinations or illusions,

(14:48):
with internalized bondsgenerally being more adaptive.
This model is revolutionarybecause it validates what most
grieving people already know.You don't really get over
someone who mattered.
You just learn to carry themdifferently. They become part of
your internal world, influencingyour decisions, shaping your

(15:08):
values, living on in yourstories and your choices. For
disenfranchised grief, thismodel is particularly powerful.
Even when society refuses tovalidate your loss, you can
maintain your own relationshipto what you've lost. Your grief
doesn't need permission to bereal.
Grief isn't just emotional. It'sa full body experience with

(15:32):
measurable physiologicaleffects. Research consistently
shows that bereavement isassociated with elevated
cortisol levels, flatteneddiurnal cortisol rhythms, and
higher morning cortisol. Thesestress responses can persist for
months or even years after aloss. Your immune system also

(15:52):
takes a significant hit.
Studies document reduced Tlymphocyte functioning and
increased inflammatory markersand impaired responses to
vaccinations. Natural killercell activity decreases, making
grieving people more susceptibleto infection and illness. Your
cardiovascular system can sufferas well. Chronic stress from

(16:14):
grief can lead to increased riskof heart disease and in severe
cases can trigger takotsubocardiomyopathyliterally broken
heart syndromewhere emotionaldistress causes temporary heart
muscle weakness. Neurologically,grief can affect cognitive
function, memory, andconcentration.
Brain imaging studies show thatgrief activates regions

(16:37):
associated with physical pain,reward processing, and
attachment. The phrase it hurtsisn't metaphorical. Grief
literally hurts. These aren'tcharacter flaws or signs of
weakness if you're experiencingany of them. They're predictable
biological responses topsychological trauma.
When someone tells you to justget over it, they're not just

(16:59):
dismissing your emotions.They're ignoring measurable
changes in your brain and bodythat can persist for years if
you don't allow yourself to feelyour sadness. Research also
reveals that the intensity andduration of these physiological
effects correlate with griefseverity and the availability of
social support. People withcomplicated grief show more

(17:22):
pronounced inflammatoryresponses and greater health
risks. Your body keeps youremotions stored physically even
when your mind tries to move on.
Not all grief resolvesnaturally. For some people,
becomes a chronic, debilitatingcondition that interferes with
basic functioning. Prolongedgrief disorder was officially

(17:46):
added to the DSM-five TR in2022. It affects an estimated
ten percent of people whoexperience natural deaths and up
to forty nine percent of thosewho lose someone to unnatural
causes. Symptoms include intenseyearning, identity disruption,
emotional numbness, and apersistent inability to

(18:06):
function.
Complicated grief is associatedwith distinct neurobiological
patterns. Brain imaging showsthat reminders of the deceased
activate reward regions ratherthan memory regions, suggesting
that the brain is still seekingreunion rather than adapting to
a loss. This medicalization ofgrief is controversial. Critics

(18:28):
worry about pathologizing normalhuman responses to loss. But

research is clear (18:33):
some people do indeed get stuck in their
grief in ways that significantlyimpair their lives and their
health.
Intervention research showsmoderate effectiveness for grief
specific therapies, particularlywhen tailored to an individual's
needs. However, access to thesetreatments is limited,

(18:53):
especially for marginalizedpopulations. What's particularly
concerning is howdisenfranchised grief increases
the risk of complications. Whenyour grief isn't validated and
you have to carry it in secret,when you lack social support,
you're more likely to developpersistent, impairing symptoms.
Silence kills.

(19:13):
Literally. When Queen Elizabethdied, daily routines in England
stopped. Flags were lowered.News coverage dominated.
Official mourning periods weredeclared.
And compare that to the namelessvictims of climate disasters,
police violence, mass shootings,or pandemic negligence. Some

(19:34):
grief gets global attention.Other grief only gets
statistics. As writer LydiaPhillip observes, for those who
are black, indigenous,Palestinian, racialized, women,
gender nonconforming, queer,disabled, or newcomers, she
said, there's a historiccumulative grief we cohabitate

(19:54):
with. We are survivors of thisgrief, but it isn't recognized
on the job.
It defies the boundaries of anyworkplace bereavement policy.
Research on African Americanhomicide bereavement reveals how
societal invalidation compoundstrauma. When the circumstances
of death violate social norms,empathic failures occur within

(20:17):
support systems, creatingadditional layers of
disenfranchisement. Grief isweaponized by society as well.
We're told that dwelling onhistorical traumas like
enslavement, genocide,internment camps is divisive,
that processing collective lossis playing the victim, and that
systemic grief should beprivate, individual, and

(20:38):
manageable.
But communities are finallyfighting back. From memorial
murals to protest chants toonline spaces where marginalized
grief can be honored, people arecreating their own rituals,
their own validation, and theirown permission to mourn. As
Philip wrote, grief accruesfaster than sick days. The

(20:59):
accumulation of loss, personaland collective, exceeds what any
workplace policy canaccommodate. This isn't a
personal failing it's astructural problem.
Grief doesn't need permission tobe real. It doesn't need to fit
into neat categories or followprescribed timelines. It doesn't

(21:21):
need to be productive orconvenient or socially
acceptable. Grief is love withnowhere to go. It's the tax we
pay for caring.
It's the shadow cast byconnection, the price of
attachment, and the evidencethat something mattered. The
research is clear. Healthygrieving isn't about getting
over a loss. It's aboutintegration. It's about finding

(21:44):
a way to carry what we've lostforward into who we're becoming.
So let's stop asking people tominimize their grief to make
others comfortable. Let's stoppretending that three days is
enough to process the death ofsomeone who helped shape your
soul. Let's stop treatingemotional labor as less
important than any other kind ofwork. Your sneaky grief, the

(22:06):
kind that shows up atinconvenient times, the kind
that doesn't fit categories, thekind that lingers longer than
others think it should, isvalid. Your tears in a Target
parking lot are valid.
Your dreams about people youlost years ago are valid. Your
inability to concentratesuddenly six months after a loss
is valid. Grief is not weakness,it's not self indulgent, and

(22:30):
it's not unproductive. Grief iswhat happens when love
encounters mortality. It's oneof the most fundamentally human
experience we all share.
And any system that tries tosilence it, minimize it, or
commodify it is a system thathas forgotten what it means to
be human. Take a moment today tohonor a grief you've never fully

(22:51):
acknowledged. Whisper it toyourself. Write it down. Tell
someone who will listen withouttrying to fix you.
Your grief matters even if,perhaps especially if, no one
ever told you that it did.Thanks for listening to
PsyberSpace. I'm your host,Leslie Poston, signing off and
thanking you for sitting with mein my grief this episode.

(23:14):
Remember to stay curious andstay human. And if you like
PsyberSpace, don't forget tosubscribe so you can sit with me
every week and learn somethingnew about your world and share
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