Published: October 23, 2025
Grief is one of the most universal human experiences — and one of the most isolating. Whether you’ve lost a loved one, ended a significant relationship, experienced a miscarriage, or faced a loss of identity, health, or future you once imagined, the pain of grief can feel overwhelming and without end.
And yet, grief is not something to be fixed or rushed. It is something to be moved through — and that process looks different for every person.
At True Therapy in Mississauga, Ontario, we offer compassionate support for people at all stages of grief. This guide is meant to help you understand what grief is, how it moves through us, and when and how therapy can support your healing.
What Is Grief?
Grief is the natural response to loss. Most often associated with death, grief is actually the emotional, physical, cognitive, and spiritual reaction to any significant loss. This includes:
- Death of a loved one — including pets
- Separation, divorce, or the end of a relationship
- Pregnancy loss, infertility, or the loss of a hoped-for child
- Diagnosis of a serious illness — yours or someone close to you
- Loss of a job, career, or sense of purpose
- Loss of safety or innocence (including after trauma)
- Loss of a friendship, community, or sense of belonging
- Grief about what was never had — love, safety, or a healthy childhood
In Canada, grief is often under-supported. We live in a culture that tends to emphasize resilience and moving forward, which can leave grieving people feeling like they should be “over it” well before they actually are.
The Stages of Grief — and Why They’re Not a Roadmap
You may have heard of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. This model was groundbreaking when introduced — and it continues to be widely referenced. But it’s important to understand that these stages are not a linear sequence that every grieving person goes through in order.
Grief is rarely orderly. You might feel acceptance one day and raw anger the next. You might skip a stage entirely, or cycle through the same one repeatedly. You might grieve intensely for three weeks, feel okay for a month, and then be ambushed by a wave of sorrow on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon.
More recent models of grief, including the Dual Process Model (Stroebe & Schut) and the concept of continuing bonds, acknowledge that healthy grieving involves oscillating between sitting with the pain and getting on with life — and that maintaining an ongoing connection to what or who was lost is often part of healthy adaptation, not a sign of being “stuck.”
What Grief Can Feel Like
Grief is not just sadness. It’s a full-body, full-mind experience that can include:
Emotional Symptoms
- Intense sadness, crying, or numbness
- Anger — at the person who died, at yourself, at the unfairness of it
- Guilt (“I should have called more”) and regret
- Anxiety or fear, especially about your own mortality or losing others
- Relief — which can itself become a source of guilt
- Longing and yearning for what was lost
Physical Symptoms
- Exhaustion and disrupted sleep
- Physical heaviness or aching
- Changes in appetite
- Difficulty concentrating or “brain fog”
- Feeling a tightness in the chest or throat
Cognitive Symptoms
- Difficulty believing the loss is real
- Thinking you heard or saw the person who is gone
- Difficulty making decisions or focusing
- Replaying memories or searching for meaning
All of these are normal. None of them mean something is wrong with you.
When Grief Becomes Complicated
Sometimes grief doesn’t move through on its own. Complicated grief (also called prolonged grief disorder) occurs when grief remains intensely disabling beyond 12 months, or when it interferes significantly with daily functioning. Signs may include:
- An inability to accept that the loss has occurred
- Intense longing that doesn’t diminish over time
- Feeling that life is meaningless without the person or thing lost
- Withdrawing significantly from life, activities, or relationships
- Thoughts of wanting to die to be with the deceased
- Bitterness or anger that doesn’t soften
Complicated grief is not a sign of weakness or excessive love. It often relates to the circumstances of the loss (sudden death, traumatic loss, ambivalent or difficult relationships), pre-existing mental health concerns, or a lack of social support. It is also very treatable with the right therapy.
How Therapy Supports Grief
Grief therapy does not rush you through the process or tell you what your grief should look like. At True Therapy in Mississauga, our approach to grief work honours your unique relationship to what was lost and supports you in finding your own path through.
Witnessing and Validation
One of the most powerful things therapy offers grieving people is simply a consistent, compassionate witness. Someone who doesn’t need you to be “over it.” Who can sit with you in the weight of it without flinching or trying to fix it. This kind of attuned presence is deeply healing in itself.
Making Sense of the Loss
Therapy helps you find your own meaning — not forced positivity, but genuine integration. What does this loss mean to you? How does it change your sense of who you are and what matters? How can you carry what you’ve lost forward into the rest of your life?
Addressing Secondary Losses
Major losses ripple. Losing a spouse might mean also losing a financial partner, a social identity, a sense of safety at home, and a vision of the future. Therapy helps identify and grieve these secondary losses, which are often invisible to others.
Working With Grief-Related Trauma
When a loss was sudden, violent, or traumatic, grief and trauma are often intertwined. Processing the traumatic aspects — the shock, the images, the “what if” thoughts — is often necessary before the grief itself can move.
Supporting Complicated Grief
Evidence-based approaches like Complicated Grief Treatment (CGT) and EMDR have strong research support for helping people whose grief has become prolonged or stuck. We offer these approaches at our Mississauga practice and through virtual therapy across Ontario.
Ways to Support Yourself While Grieving
Between therapy sessions — or while you’re deciding whether therapy is right for you — here are practices that many grieving people in Ontario have found helpful:
- Let yourself grieve — resist the cultural pressure to be “fine” before you are
- Talk about the person or thing you’ve lost — sharing memories is a healthy part of grief, not “dwelling”
- Move your body gently — grief lives in the body; movement helps it process
- Maintain simple routines — structure can be steadying when everything else feels uncertain
- Connect with community — grief support groups, spiritual communities, or trusted friends can provide belonging
- Journal — writing to or about the person or loss can help process what’s hard to say aloud
- Be patient with yourself — grief doesn’t follow a schedule
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does grief last?
There’s no standard timeline. Grief is highly individual and depends on the significance of the loss, the circumstances, and your support network. Many people experience the most intense grief in the first year; others find certain anniversaries or life milestones reopen grief years later. Both are normal.
Is it normal to feel angry when grieving?
Very much so. Anger is one of the most common — and most socially uncomfortable — parts of grief. You might feel angry at the person who died, at the medical system, at yourself, at God, or at people who are still fine when your world has fallen apart. Anger in grief is valid and doesn’t need to be suppressed.
Should I go to grief therapy, or is it better to go through it alone?
Many people grieve without formal therapy and do fine, especially with strong social support. Therapy becomes particularly helpful when grief is prolonged, when it’s interfering significantly with functioning, when the loss was traumatic, or when you feel alone in it. It’s not weakness to seek support — it’s wisdom.
Can children grieve? How do I support a grieving child?
Yes. Children grieve, but they often express it differently than adults — through play, behaviour changes, regression, or matter-of-fact questions that can feel jarring. Consistent honesty, maintaining routines, and creating space for their feelings without forcing them are key. A therapist trained in child therapy can also be enormously helpful.
Is grief therapy available online in Ontario?
Yes. True Therapy offers secure virtual sessions for clients across Ontario, including for grief and loss work. For many clients, especially those who are physically or emotionally exhausted by grief, being able to attend from home makes a real difference.
You Don’t Have to Grieve Alone
Grief is one of the hardest things any of us will ever face. It is also one of the most profoundly human — evidence of how deeply we love and how much we’ve been connected to others. You deserve support as you move through it.
True Therapy offers grief counselling in Mississauga, Ontario, and virtually across the province. Whether your loss is fresh or long-standing, we are here to walk alongside you.