Musings on the relationship between Grief & Anxiety...
10th April 2026
Over the course of today, I had grief come up 5 times. Firstly within myself, during my own embodied movement meditation practise; tears flowing with grief and gratitude and prayer - in relation to my own health and healing process. Once with a client during her process of being stuck in a battle of streaming thoughts, refusing to drop into the grief that was sitting below the surface, until it was named to her with that hint of permission should one want it from another. Then emerging within my thoughts in conversation with a friend seeking support, and the pedalling anxiety that was preventing the surrender to her well of grief. Then me sharing some musings I have on grief with them, and them suggesting I seriously think about writing a blog about this (!); and finally culminating with an audio from another friend claiming they were heading off to a grief 'something or other' who had never been interested in strong emotional processing for all the years I have known them! This gave me the feeling the universe was unanimously suggesting that maybe I really should write a blog about grief, as I seem to have a lot to share on it, and it's a powerful complex emotion in a lot of ways. I also witness in society, how we cannot spend much time with grief. People cry for their deceased at a short funeral, some may not even be able to shed a tear, or try and fight this back to maintain as a frog in their throat; feeling too uncomfortable to be seen to be crying. And yet, it is a very natural human emotion that many of us seem to have lost some connection with. I don't see many of my friends, family, or colleagues feel comfortable sharing their grief like they do their judgements of people, or their frustrations, their ailments, or their joy, their stories or their news etc. And yet the indigenous, and many cultures, actually grieve in community through dance, through wailing, through ceremony. In some traditions, people would wail for the deceased as a specific role within their tribe or community, even if they weren't directly related or known to them.
Having descended deeply into my own grief during my travels to Colombia in my late 30's, and deep diving into this portal (I say portal, because here I met a deep well of grief that was laden not only with mine, but my family system's, my ancestors, the collective consciousness, and some of the grief in the surrounding location - amongst other things that would have been unknown to me at the time). This opened me up to a valuable amount of capacity to hold many a container for grief. This was via the support of an indigenous mamu (teacher), who taught me and a handful of other travelling souls, to spend time on some specific large rocks on sacred land, and sitting in silent contemplation for many an hour, every day for 40 days. After some time, I finally slipped under the threshold of my resistance to grief. I wept for many hours in one sitting. Each deep act of grief got deeper and deeper, and conversely easier and easier (even including laughter at points!) having made it out alive many times. I say this in all seriousness, as I get the sense, as I felt in myself, that those of us who have not experienced this well of grief, feel like it's an insummountable task that could literally swallow us up whole! I now believe that it is one of the most important things we need to meet internally in the times we are in collectively; to be able to function to our best capacity and highest version of ourselves. Even more crucial, is to do this in company and/or community.
A few years after this experience, I met a Death Doula in North Wales where I was volunteering in community as part of my travelling years, and we started co-facilitating Death Cafes and Grief retreats in Wales, England and Spain. I knew we were "onto something" as there appeared to be a huge need around this globally, and much interest. Many wanting permission and support to really "go there".
So i'd like to write a little about how some of my therapeutic work has taught me a lot about how many of us resist grief, and how the dramatic affect can be witnessed after we humbly surrender to it. I will start chronologically, with some of my earliest experiences with young children who I worked with in Primary schools, as a Dance & Movement Psychotherapist. Around 2012 in a school in West London, I saw how unresolved grief caused a girl aged 10, to present as regularly daydreaming and dissociating; unable to focus on her teachers and school work. It turned out that she had a large amount of unresolved grief around the sudden and unexpected death of her father, who come to pick her up after school, but had tragically died in a car crash on his way, leaving this girl in the unknown for some time before the news finally got to round to her waiting at the school gates. When this girl shared this with me, I could feel her shock, horror, feelings of abandonment, and complete confusion. Her mum found this so excruciating, that when her daughter quizzed her about this incident over the coming days, months and years - and about how much she misses her father and what happened - she requested she not talk about this because it was too painful. Following a handful of sessions, she finally realised she could cry and share how awful and shocking this was, and how much she missed her dad, and we were able to hold a ceremony to mark this major event in her life, and also to share this with her dad in sentiment. This courageous meeting of latent shock, anger, abandonment and confusion that was packed into her grief, allowed her to settle into herself and become more present in class, and her attention span increased so she was less confused by what was going on around her, plus more embodied in the 'here and now' so to speak.
Around this time, I was also asked to work with a 9 year old boy who was demonstrating a very strong presentation of ADHD, where he was unable to sit still in class or assemblies, and would often leave rooms without teacher's consent. He had to have a TA with him at all times to support his learning, and manage his safeguarding around the school when he would flea the classroom without notice, or simply disrupt those around him with his hyperactive behaviours. In our earlier sessions, he would create complete chaos with the props and toys in the therapy room, and it took quite a bit for me to stay grounded and centred in this - to allow him to express fully - but also to offer some structure to his chaos, and presence to what he was trying to communicate through his body and actions, as opposed to trying to stop him as normally would need to happen in class and at home. Towards the end of the school year, it became apparent that his maternal grandfather, who had died not too long before he started sessions with me, was actually his main carer whilst both parents worked. Around the same time his dad left his mum. This child's mother was struggling with the grief of her dad dying, and losing her husband in their family home, and was unable to support and explore her son's grief with him as a shared life experience, that would have been very natural for her considering such huge losses in succession. However, as I alluded to earlier, many of us have lost this contact and surrender to grief, which i've realised from my own personal experience, can feel like a bottomless well that you may not ever come back up from, for air. Then it became clear, that this 9 year old was deeply sensitive, and holding the tension of losing his main carer (parent figure), and his father around the home, along with the animosity between his separated parents. So we started to focus on the grief of this. It all began with him spending a good 4-5 sessions "taking me to meet his grandfather on the other side" and he would introduce me and tell him things he had been doing and how much he missed him. The main thing was being able to develop a relationship with the memory of his grandad and still feel like he could share with him in thoughts, speaking and writing. This enactment was very rich and deeply touching, it involved such transformative creative imagination - him using a blue stretch cloth prop that represented the sea, and us having to physically navigate crossing this "boundary" to the other side. Here we would need to climb up some pillow "rocks" and finally up the "cliff" sofa, and up here we would convene with his grandad. We would then return the way we came and he would reflect on how he felt. I also worked with his parents around how their separation was affecting their children when they were actively included emotionally, and ways they could attempt to alleviate this from challenges that were being faced. This all helped immensley, and by the end of this piece of work, this boy was able to sit and focus in class without leaving his seat, or running out of the room. Many of his quite extreme ADHD behaviours actually regressed, which I wonder how many people would believe this could happen when we tend to fix labels i.e. like they are born with this and it cannot change? I am not saying this is always the case, however I cannot diminish the very significant alterations in behaviours I have witnessed during my career as a psychotherapist. The school and my clinical supervisor were quite amazed by the transformation. In the following year, I included this boy in a therapy group I was holding weekly, and he was able to utilise his deep emotional sensitivity and lightening fast thinking style, to be a supportive leader within this group through his caring; as opposed to dominating control. He even told me to include a girl that he felt needed support, which was accurate, and prevented someone ending sessions before it was right for them. It was like he was channelling all that energy that was chaotic and lost before, into intuitive and meaningful action. It was quite something to witness, what a teacher he was for me! One of my first around how grief can manifest into other behaviours in us when unresolved or repressed.
Other current teachers of grief for me, are the number of teenagers I work with in a secondary school, and adults in my private practise, that appear to drop their high levels of anxiety when they start meeting their grief. It has been a significant improvement, and I see that there appears to be a higher level of anxiety in those who don't surrender to, and acknowledge their grief. This anxiety can hide through behaviours similar to OCD (obsessive complusive disorder) - like symptoms, ADHD type behaviours, trying to control our environment by excessive planning, overworking, overthinking, extreme exercise, unable to sleep well, to name but a few! It can also show up in illnesses like Chronic Fatigue and ME (do read Gabor Mate's insightful books about these links). In our current sociopolitical environment, the repression of our emotions, and fuelling anxiety into our jobs and fitness, can be rewarded as successful, competitive intelligent perfectionists! Many of us thrive for awhile in this way, being very busy, externally validated, financially rewarded, and perhaps very fit; as a way to avoid feeling certain emotions and committing to deep inner reflection. None of the above is an issue per se, it's about balance, and in my role and life experience, I witness how many people discover they have been using this as a way of not feeling the discomfort of high levels of anxiety (and their repressed grief) in the body, and redirecting this into activities that make them feel better, productive and/or successful. I have noticed that grief tends to emerge more when we are not in fight, flight, & freeze responses within our Sympathetic Nervous System, but when our Parasympathetic Nervous System is in play, and therefore we are in more restful and reflective states. Many people do not hang around in these states for very long in today's world, and the culture here in England doesn't always positively endorse it.
This theme arises time and time again amongst clients and friends, and I am so very curious about this link, and the fact that there is not much written about the relationship between Grief and Anxiety, nor spoken about in the field of psychotherapy, in much detail.
I often wonder why we don't talk about death and dying in our culture here, and its very direct link to grief? My curiousity peaked whilst reading this book that I can't recommend enough to anyone interested in this blog:- "The Wild Edge of Sorrow" by Francis Weller. It is such a poignant realisation that there is more than just grieving the dead... there's ancestral grief, the collective grief, the grief of all we have lost that we loved, all that was never loved in us, and the grief of not receiving what we expected. This is all very humbling, and deeply vulnerable to delve into for many of us. If we actively felt and integrated this grief into our life experience, I truly believe and imagine that there would be less anger, blame and anxiety, and much much more compassion and understanding. This may appear like a bold statement, but perhaps you can reflect yourself on your grief journey, and contemplate whether any of this resonates, and whether any of the links to anxiety noted above stands true for you?
