WHAT IS GRIEF OVERLOAD?

“You give yourself permission to grieve by
recognizing the need for grieving.”
— Doug Manning

Grief overload is what you feel when you experience too
many significant losses all at once or in a relatively short
period of time.
The grief of loss overload is different from typical grief because
it is emanating from more than one loss and because it is
jumbled. Our minds and hearts have enough trouble coping
with one loss at a time, but when they have to deal with
multiple losses simultaneously, the grief often seems especially
chaotic and defeating. Before you can mourn one loss,
here comes another loss. Even if you have coped with grief
effectively in the past, you may be finding that this time it’s
different. This time it may feel like you’re struggling to survive.
Tragic incidents
Unfortunately, sometimes several people die in a single
incident. Natural disasters, car accidents, and acts of violence
can cause the deaths of multiple people you care about all
at once. Such traumatic circumstances naturally give rise to
grief overload. If you have suffered this type of loss, I urge
you to read the section below on traumatic loss. You are in
particular need of extra support and care.
Traumatic loss and grief overload
All significant losses feel traumatic, but here I want to talk
specifically about losses caused by sudden and often violent events.
Murder, suicide, and death by a traumatic accident or natural
disaster all fall into this category. So do events that cause severe
injuries instead of death and/or significant damage to homes and
property, such as fires.
Multiple people may die in a traumatic incident, or one person
might die and others may be seriously injured. Or no one might
die, but several people—including you, perhaps—might be hurt,
or maybe your home, belongings, and financial stability might be
destroyed.
If you are reading this book because, at least in part, you have
suffered a traumatic loss of any kind, you are at risk for your grief
overload being influenced by what is called “traumatic grief.”
Traumatic grief is grief that has an added component of intense fear
and other challenging symptoms caused by the violent nature of
the incident itself.
If flashbacks, memory gaps, persistent negative or intrusive
thoughts, low self-esteem, hyper-vigilance or anxiety, personality
change, and/or an inability to handle the tasks of daily living are
part of your grief overload experience, I urge you to see your
primary-care physician and a trauma-trained grief counselor. You
will need—and you deserve—extra support and care in addition
to the education and self-care guidance offered in this book. You
might also find solace and support in my book The PTSD Solution, as
PTSD and traumatic grief are largely one and the same experience.
Back-to-back losses
Other times, a number of people you love may die of
unrelated causes but in quick succession. If a close friend
dies of cancer, then a parent dies of natural causes in old age,
and then a sibling is killed in an accident, for example, you
are certain to feel overwhelmed by too much loss all at once.
These deaths might happen within days or weeks of each
other or within months or a few years. But it’s also important
to note that there are no hard-and-fast deadlines that
define grief overload caused by successive loss. If you feel
overloaded by grief, no matter how spread out in time the
losses have been, you are experiencing grief overload.
Losses other than death
And it’s not only death loss that causes grief overload. Other
types of significant loss are also common contributors.
Whenever you lose something you are or have been attached
to, you naturally grieve the change or separation. This means
that job loss often causes grief. Divorce causes grief. Health
problems cause grief. Estrangement from loved ones causes
grief. A move away from a beloved home or location causes
grief. When you experience a number of such significant
losses in a period of time, in addition to or even in lieu
of death losses, you may well find yourself suffering grief
overload.
Secondary losses
What’s more, secondary losses are also intrinsic components
of grief overload. That’s because each significant loss in our
lives gives rise to a number of related losses, like ripples in a
pond after a stone is dropped in.
For example, if a spouse or partner dies, we don’t only suffer
the loss of that important relationship and unique individual.
We also experience related losses, such as the loss of our
self-identity as half of a twosome, the loss of our hoped for

future, the potential loss of financial security, and many
more. Even everyday life changes resulting from a major
loss—such as no longer having a companion to prepare
and eat dinner with each night—fall into this category of
secondary loss. Secondary losses can make it feel like loss is
permeating every aspect of our lives. Everywhere we turn,
there’s nothing but loss.
Cumulative losses
On a related note, cumulative lifetime losses can also lead
to or be a factor in grief overload. Throughout our lives, we
all experience loss, of course. From the time we are young,
pets die, friendships break, and other hardships present
themselves year after year after year. But what you may not
realize is that if you don’t fully grieve and mourn each loss as
it arises, you end up carrying unreconciled grief. Eventually
that carried grief can add up and become an unsustainably
weighty burden. If you suspect that long-ago losses might be
part of your grief overload right now, you’re probably right.
Grief overload in the elderly
Finally, older people often find themselves experiencing grief
overload for a combination of reasons mentioned above.
Increasingly, their friends and peers begin to die in faster
succession, their health often deteriorates, and they may
have also accumulated a great deal of carried grief over the
course of their lives.
If you are an older person affected by grief overload, the
principles in this book will help you through this challenging
phase of your life and make the most of the precious years
you have left. I myself am in my mid-sixties as I write this,
and I want you to know that while I understand that loss
overload in our final decades is a very real challenge, we can
continue to live and love meaningfully as long as we also
continue to actively mourn.
Caregiver grief overload
Professional caregivers of all kinds are at risk for grief overload. If
your job, career, or dedicated volunteer role involves helping others
who are experiencing trauma or loss of any kind, grief overload
is both something to be aware of and something to proactively
anticipate and address in your self-care plan.
While professional grief overload and its proper handling is
outside the scope of this brief guide, I urge you to read my book
Companioning You: A Soulful Guide to Caring for Yourself While You
Care for the Dying and the Bereaved. Whether you work in a hospice,
funeral home, hospital, or school, whether you are a counselor,
medical professional, or another type of caregiver altogether, this
book will help you identify, prevent, and deal with burnout and
grief overload as well as create an action plan for caring for—or
companioning—yourself