Many of us associate grief with funerals. Someone passes away, rituals happen and there is an unspoken expectation that a period of sadness will follow. This is a misconception, however, because grief is not uniform, nor is it only confined to situations of bereavement. Many instances of grief can emerge independent of death. For example, a close friendship of ours might fade over a year of unanswered messages, or a parent may be physically alive but no longer recognise us in the context of dementia. Alternatively, we may have pictured a life timeline inclusive of adventures, new experiences and particular milestones, that ultimately did not eventuate for us. These examples are all rife with loss, however, many people have difficulty identifying and defining these as grief inducing experiences, due to the absence of a physical loss. Importantly, these losses are equally as valid and real in the pain they stand to inflict, but remain largely misunderstood. Oftentimes people seek counselling in the setting of anxiety, relationship challenges or a persisting low mood, however, several sessions in they might discover that the primary experience underlying the others is grief. This is why Schema Therapy offers a unique and novel way of understanding why these losses land so heavily, and why they can feel so painful to process.
Losses without a clear ending
Researcher Pauline Boss coined the term ambiguous loss to describe grief that has no clear ending or resolution, with two distinct types:
Someone is physically gone but psychologically present (examples: an estranged sibling, an adult child that has severed contact, an ex-partner who occupies part of our mind after the relationship ends).
Someone who is physically present, but psychologically absent (examples: caring for a parent with dementia, living alongside a partner experiencing addiction or complex mental ill-health, growing up with a caregiver in the house that was emotionally absent/unavailable).
Mental Health Clinician, Kenneth Doka, introduced the term disenfranchised grief for losses that other people might not recognise or give us permission to mourn. Examples could include things like infertility, a miscarriage, a career ended by injury or mistreatment, the death of a pet, or realising that a relationship will never meet a need we yearn for. When these losses go unacknowledged or invalidated, both by others in our life and society more broadly, our grief can feel silenced and internalised. When we are forced to subdue these painful feelings, they can later surface as irritability, numbness or overwhelming exhaustion (think of constantly being outside of your window of tolerance).
How schema therapy ties in
Schema therapy, developed by Jeffrey Young, is underpinned by the idea that every child has five core emotional needs. These include secure attachment, a sense of autonomy and competence, freedom to express feelings, room for spontaneity and play, and realistic limits. When those needs go unmet in a repeated way, we develop what are called early maladaptive schemas. These are deep patterns and beliefs about ourselves and other people, held in our body as much as our mind, and they can become activated whenever something in the present resembles the original psychological wound.
This deeper context matters in the setting of grief, because a present-day loss isn’t always experienced in isolation. That is, a loss we experience today is likely to trigger whatever schema is already under the surface, and the schema itself informs how we make meaning of the loss. When this happens, the emotional intensity we feel in the moment often actually belongs to a past wound we have experienced.
Schemas that commonly shape grief
Abandonment/instability
This schema often develops when caregivers were unpredictable, emotionally inconsistent, or physically left through separation/illness/death. The underlying belief is that the people you love will eventually go, and that connection cannot be relied upon. Ambiguous loss is especially painful for people with this schema, because the uncertainty itself is the trigger. For example, an estranged parent that may call us one day, or an ex that keeps drifting back in and out of our lives keeps our nervous system stuck on high alert. Pain associated with this uncertainty can then compel us to cope by reaching out first (despite knowing this isn’t good for us), clinging to new relationships, or alternatively cutting people off first so that we are in control of the departure, instead of being blind sighted by the pain of their abandonment.
Emotional deprivation
Jeff Young described three types of emotional deprivation within this schema:
missing nurturance
missing empathy
missing protection.
This can be subtle, wherein people who have this schema frequently describe childhoods that seemed objectively fine from the outside. Yes, they may have been clothed, fed and housed, but the emotional availability of their caregivers was absent. They may have had their physical needs for safety tended to, but emotionally, they may not have felt comforted or truly understood. The core belief underpinning this schema is that our emotional needs will not be met by anybody. In the context of grief, this may exacerbate feelings of loneliness, as well as an instinct to grieve privately because asking for support risks rejection and thus, further confirmation that we are on our own emotionally. Watching a parent decline into dementia or poor physical or mental health can elicit another layer of grief for people with this schema, where they may mourn the parent as they are now, but also mourn the attuned/comforting parent that they never got to have, knowing that this window is now closed.
Defectiveness/shame
This schema is underpinned by the belief that we are fundamentally flawed, and that anyone who sees our true self will reject or judge us. It is often through criticism, comparison or rejection in childhood that this schema is born. When a friendship fades or a partner leaves us, a defectiveness/shame schema can internalise this as evidence proving that we are fundamentally unlovable. Here, grief can become interspersed with self-blame, where a lot of energy is consumed by rumination on what we did wrong, rather than allowing ourselves to mourn. Shame also creates secrecy around grief, convincing us that it is somehow bad, wrong or invalid to feel. Alternatively, shame creates a narrative that grief looks a particular way, and if our own grieving process deviates from this, then we are defective or somehow unworthy. With so much internalised shame, people with this schema may avoid talking about the grief trigger, which ultimately leaves them carrying the weight of the loss alone.
Failure and unrelenting standards
The failure schema is underpinned by the belief that we are less capable/less accomplished than our peers. The unrelenting standards schema involves internalised rules that we must perform to a very high standard to avoid criticism or to feel acceptable at all. Grief surrounding lost time or opportunities provides fertile ground for both schemas to thrive. For example, years spent unwell, in a damaging relationship, or caring for someone else can act as comparison triggers, prompting us to weigh our own perceived sense of achievement against the milestones that others seem to be achieving. Social media only exacerbates this sense of comparison due to its constant reminders of other people’s life highlight-reels, which can inflame our sense of inadequacy. For people with these schemas, grief can be experienced as over-analysis of our perceived mistakes or self-blame, instead of self-validation of our right to grieve. This might involve going back over every decision during our perceived “wasted” or “missed” time/opportunities, with commentary informed by a harsh inner critic.
Self-sacrifice and subjugation
These are two schemas that usually emerge in people who learned early in their lives to prioritise other people’s needs. This could have been because we were taught that putting other people first is virtuous and important (self-sacrifice), or because voicing our own needs led to conflict/guilt or punishment. A lot of adults with these schemas may have spent years caring for others, or otherwise remaining in situations for someone else’s sake. This could have meant that we delayed or minimised our own goals, like studying, travelling, relationships or hobbies, for another person’s benefit. For people with these schemas, finally having the space to grieve the life we didn’t get to live can come with guilt attached, almost as though mourning our own losses feels somehow selfish or self-indulgent. In these instances, grief can feel particularly heavy, and it is often internalised.
Emotional inhibition
The emotional inhibition schema is underpinned by the belief that showing emotion will lead to disapproval from others, a loss of control or shame. This schema can stem from early life experiences in which we learned that certain emotions are unwelcome, embarrassing, inconvenient, or intolerable for others to be around. As such, people with this schema may describe an intellectual knowing that grief exists, without feeling able to emotionally connect with it. Alternatively, it may manifest as a physical sensation, such as tension, fatigue or headaches, rather than an overt emotional experience. Misunderstood losses, like ambiguous loss or disenfranchised grief, are easy targets for this schema to invalidate and minimise, as we have already been preprogrammed to ignore or subdue emotions that don’t seem to mean much to others.
Grieving what you never had
One of the most important forms of grief in schema therapy, and one of the least talked about, is grief for unmet needs. Many adults come to therapy still hoping, even somewhere deep down, that a parent will finally apologise/understand, or become the person that they needed back then. It is within this very sense of hope that we can feel disempowered by the same painful relationship patterns, sometimes for decades, with no clear way out.
This is why part of the work in schema therapy involves allowing ourselves to feel the loss of what didn’t happen. We cannot go back in time to receive the safety, warmth or protection that we needed back then. Acknowledging this loss is inherently painful. For a lot of people, however, this process of acknowledgement is where a shift begins to happen, because the energy that went into waiting/hoping becomes available for working towards meeting our own needs in the present day. Whilst this grief can feel strange and intangible, as there’s sometimes nothing concrete to tie to it, it is still equally valid. There may not have been an event or singular day when it ended, but rather, only an absence that has always been there that we can begin to make space for and mourn in our own way.
Schema modes: the ways we cope with grief
Schema therapy introduces something called coping modes. These are the emotional states and coping styles that can take over from moment to moment when a schema trigger appears in our environment. In the case of grief, a few coping modes are particularly common:
The Vulnerable Child Mode can hold raw sadness, loneliness, fear and helplessness.
The Detached Protector Mode may swoop in to contain our vulnerable emotions by intellectualising or rationalising our grief response.
The Detached Self-Soother Mode might try to keep us safe by distracting us, including keeping us constantly busy, doomscrolling or using drugs/alcohol to cope.
The Punitive Critic Mode might attack us or shame us for being upset about something we “should” have been over by now.
It is important to note that none of these modes are inherently bad, but rather, they have developed out of necessity. We may have learned that certain behaviours worked to mask emotional pain or increase perceived control over situations, and as such, they can feel hard to shift. It is in therapy that we can begin to notice these coping behaviours, and where the line sits between them being protective and maladaptive. The goal here is to develop the Healthy Adult part of us to make compassionate space for our grieving part, rather than silencing or judging it.
What does healing through grief look like?
Working with ambiguous and disenfranchised grief through a schema lens often involves:
Gently naming the loss, particularly if it is a loss that we assign self-judgements to, or a loss that we have been told doesn’t “count”.
Understanding which schemas the loss has touched and how this impacts the meaning that we make of it.
Experiential exercises, like Imagery Rescripting, where we revisit memories connected to unmet needs and bring in the care and protection that was missing.
Limited reparenting, in which the therapeutic relationship offers some of the attunement and validation that wasn't available earlier in life.
Strengthening a Healthy Adult voice that can create a balanced space for vulnerable emotions, without collapsing into self-blame or shutting down
Misunderstood grief can feel challenging and difficult to work through. Ultimately, one of the aims when working with ambiguous loss and disenfranchised grief is not to “resolve” the feelings, but rather to find meaning and build tolerance for uncertainty, as closure or finality may never eventuate. Many people find that easing the pressure or expectation to merely "get over it" is one of the most empowering and least restrictive parts of this process.
You’re allowed to grieve.
If you are mourning a relationship, a person who is still here, a childhood you didn't get or a life that didn’t play out as expected, your grief is valid, and it deserves the same care and attention we would give to grief after a death.
At The Felt Sense, we work with grief in all its forms, drawing on schema therapy and other approaches to help you make meaning of your experience. If something in this piece resonated with you, you're welcome to get in touch and book a free 15 minute consult.
