will grief ever end?

Grief is commonly thought of as a feeling of deep sorry as the result of a loss, typically associated with someone’s death. As human beings, we are blessed (and/or cursed one could say) with the ability to form and have memories. As a result of these memories and the brain's way of making associations, the feeling of grief will unfortunately never end as one will never truly forget the loss and the impact it had on your life. This is due to unconscious and sporadic memories presenting themselves to us during the duration of our lives, whether they be triggered by something that our brain has associated with the thing or person we lost, or as a result of the brains sporadic automatic thoughts that arise in situation in which there is no tangible and logical reason to have the thoughts we are having. With that being said, the good news is that the frequency, intensity, and duration of the feeling of grief can, and often does, decrease over time with the appropriate processing and addressing of the loss. Everyone experiences loss differently, even to the same loss, and therefore we do not have any definitive timeline of when one should experience various feelings in their intensity, frequency, and duration after the loss or when one should be “over it,” so to speak. One’s feelings of grief do change over time, but the underlying loss remains. Psychologist William Worden has identified four tasks of grieving that can aim to reduce the negative impact of grief on one’s life, with those being to accept the reality of the loss, to experience the pain of grief, to adjust to an environment with the deceased missing, and finally to reinvest in the new reality and find an enduring connection with the deceased. Further information and specifics on these tasks can be found with a simple internet search. Regardless of the loss, factors such as our age and sex, factors that are out of our control, will play an impact on the way we grieve. Another factor that plays a role in the experience of grief, and perhaps the most important and one that can be controlled by the person to some extent, is one’s level of social support. It is important to know that grief does not have to occur in isolation and by reaching out to and utilizing one’s social support network, the grieving process can be experienced as less painful and more manageable.