Loss and grief

Losing your sense of who you were before something happened

The loss of a self you recognized. Before the illness, before the trauma, before the thing that changed everything. Grieving a version of yourself that is gone. Not always visible to others but one of the most disorienting losses there is.

Grieving who you were before is one of the most disorienting losses there is, because the mourner and the mourned share a body. People may say you should be grateful to have survived, as if grief and gratitude cannot coexist. They can. Missing the person you used to be is not ingratitude. It is honesty about what was taken.

What can follow an experience like this

No two people carry the same experience the same way. These are some of the effects that people with this experience often describe. Having some of them, all of them, or none of them says nothing about how real what happened to you was.

Depression Not just sadness. Identity disturbance Not being able to answer simple questions about yourself. Loss of meaning The questions that will not resolve. Spiritual injury Something happened and the belief system that held your world together stopped holding. Loneliness This is different from pulling away. Learned helplessness When nothing you did made a difference, when effort did not produce safety, when asking for help did not bring help, the nervous system eventually stops asking. Emotional numbing Not depression exactly. Dissociation Dissociation is what the nervous system does when what is happening is too much to stay present for.

Nothing on this page is a diagnosis, and nothing here decides what is wrong with you, because nothing is wrong with you. Something happened to you. This page exists so that when you are ready, you can find people who understand it from the inside.

You do not have to carry this alone.

Bridge of Hope Recovery is a free, anonymous, peer-led fellowship for trauma survivors. Meetings run throughout the week by phone, by video, and in person. No cost, no waitlist, no one asking for your real name.

Find a meeting Join the fellowship

Need support right now?

Related experiences we cover

See everything we cover