How Grief Affects Parts
By Alicia Dabney, LMFT, APCC, ATR, and Clinician at the IFS Telehealth Collective*
How can Internal Family Systems (IFS) support the grieving process?
Grief proceeds at its own pace. It is a visitor that can arrive in unexpected moments before leaving just as quickly. Sometimes it settles in and stays for a long while, taking the mind and heart along well-trodden paths—sometimes serene and peaceful, other times overgrown and filled with brambles—to wander through different thoughts, memories, emotions, or sensations relating to the loss. Grief can also be patient and present, sharing space with love, compassion, and gratitude.
But one thing is clear: everyone’s experience with grief is different. No matter the way it unfolds, sometimes it seems there’s nothing to “do” with grief but be with it, attentive to whatever is most needed in those moments. Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy offers an effective, evidence-based approach to understanding, transforming, and healing the human experience. This approach also supports the natural grieving process with compassion and care, allowing space to heal from painful losses without feeling overwhelmed.
Mapping the Territory of Grief
It is often said that grief is just love with no place to go. The American Psychological Association (APA) describes grief as sorrow, distress, or anguish experienced after a significant loss. This loss can take many forms and is not limited to the death of a loved one or pet. Grieving is a natural process that might include multifaceted responses to the loss: physiological distress, mood changes, shifts in identity or social engagement. There may be a sense of yearning, reliving the past, or feeling apprehension about a future that does not include whomever or whatever has been lost.
“It is impossible to extricate grief and love. They are intertwined like light and shadow and roots and plants. You can’t have one without the other. I am in grief because I was in love.”
—Shari Walling, PhD
Grief is the personal response that happens on the inside, while mourning captures the expression of that grief on a personal and/or collective level, and often follows cultural, religious, or social customs. The vast majority of the literature on grief focuses on aspects of bereavement, of having lost a close person such as a family member or friend. However, there are other losses that are not as often addressed that might be easy to overlook or dismiss in comparison to bereavement. Yet all losses are valid and worthy of compassion and care.
What happens with disenfranchised and complicated grief?
Disenfranchised grief describes loss that is unrecognized, minimized by our culture, or difficult to openly acknowledge. This might include the death of an ex-partner, an estranged family member, a client or patient, or secret relationship. Similarly, losing someone to suicide or acts of violence might complicate the process of grieving, adding a layer of tangled emotions to sift through. Estrangement in itself, even when the person is still living, might bring up confusion or a sense of being caught in limbo. Depending on the circumstances, disenfranchised grief may encompass things like the death of a pet, addiction of a loved one, breakup or divorce, and infertility.
Complicated grief brings up conflicting emotions, thoughts, and responses to the loss—including guilt. Imagine how there might be a sense of relief when the loss includes an estranged family member, abuser, or other tor-mentor that has deeply impacted your life. Layers of trauma—including that of sudden, traumatic, or violent losses—can further mask or compound the grief process. Sometimes this becomes long-lasting and severe as a form of prolonged/complex grief.
The Liminal Spaces of Grief
What happens when the circumstances leave you in a sort of limbo or in-between space of uncertainty as you try to make sense of things? Ambiguous loss has become more widely recognized and acknowledged in recent years, yet it can still be challenging to make sense of such conflicting feelings or experiences.
What happens when there’s ambiguous loss?
Oftentimes, the challenge of ambiguous loss comes in trying to make sense of things when someone is physically present but psychologically absent, or psychologically present but physically absent. Ambiguous loss accounts for the times when someone is missing or presumed dead, yet there is no verification of death. This includes people who are abducted, go lost or missing, and military service members who are missing in action (MIA) or became prisoners of war (POW). However, ambiguous loss is a continuum that also encompasses the confusion or lack of clarity experienced when there is no clear reason why an important relationship or family connection has become estranged. It can include grieving the past and present versions of your relationship with someone who is impacted by addictive processes, certain mental health diagnoses, or changes associated with neurocognitive disorders such as Alzheimer’s or traumatic brain injury (TBI).
How do injustices, trauma, and disasters factor into grief?
There is another important facet of ambiguous loss, such as the many losses that occurred at the hands of historical or generational trauma, or that are linked to the impacts of those who were enslaved, to that of genocide, and to the many forms of racial injustice. This leads us right into another form of grief: that of collective grief, which is experienced widely—or even globally—due to disasters, wars, pandemics, and terrorist attacks.
Depending on your situation, each form of grief can stand alone on its own path, or can be layered in a way that adds complexity to this natural process of grieving. Just as important to acknowledge is that everyone’s path through grief and loss is different. Sometimes there is anticipated grief of losses yet to come; other times, there might be abbreviated grief that is interrupted by other life events or changes, or delayed grief that does not have space to emerge until a later time.
Secondary Impacts of Grief
It is important to recognize the secondary losses that occur as a result of a primary loss. Sometimes there must be changes to living arrangements, employment, income, lifestyle, and health. What if you are left missing something that will never come to pass due to illness, loss of ability, infertility, lack of an important relationship, or more? In cases like this, there is a painful awareness of what could have been and what is now possible. Your vision of the future might change. There might be a restructuring of identity, such as when a parent loses a child, when a dancer or athlete sustains a severe or long-term injury, or with degenerative illnesses and diseases that result in a permanent change in ability. With certain losses of identity, it might be necessary to change the labels we identify with or to re-discover a new sense of purpose.
What are the most commonly known approaches to grief?
There are several theories and commonly-known approaches to grief. Parkes and Bowlby presented a four-stage theory of grief based on attachment, where grief is viewed as a universal response to separation that results in shock-numbness, yearning-searching, disorganization-despair, and reorganization. Among the most widely-known is the Kübler-Ross five stage model of grief with denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Interestingly enough, this model was based on the experience of those who know they are dying, not the bereaved. The Continuing Bonds theory holds that when someone dies, our relationship with them does not end, but changes and continues forward in another way. The Dual Process model of grief recognizes an ongoing oscillation between loss-oriented and restoration-oriented coping.
The Five Gates of Grief
Francis Weller’s poignant exploration of grief in his book, “The Wild Edge of Sorrow,” presents a beautiful and touching way of acknowledging the many ways sorrow enters our lives. This book was the centerpiece of IFS Lead Trainer Ann Sinko’s presentation on the multiplicity of grief at the IFS Annual Conference in 2021. IFS acknowledges that, not only are there many types of loss, but there are also many parts of us that will have different responses to each loss. Weller’s offering of the Five Gates of Grief provides a framework for these different sorrows that supports the IFS view of grief as a constellation of parts responding to loss.
“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.”—excerpt from “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye
The First Gate
Everything we love, we will lose.
The Second Gate
The places that have not known love, compassion, or warmth. The places of shame.
The Third Gate
The sorrows of the world.
The Fourth Gate
What we expected and did not receive.
The Fifth Gate
Ancestral and legacy grief.
What is the IFS approach to grief?
The IFS model views grief as a constellation of different parts of you that are activated around the emotion of grief. Each part may have its own responses to the loss and its own timeline for grieving. Parts might express their emotions in various ways: sensations in the body, impulses or urges, running thoughts, or memories. Parts can also feel many emotions at once including disbelief, relief, numbness, shock, sadness, yearning, depression, guilt, anger, despair.
Who’s grieving?
Some parts might polarize with each other as a result of their differing and conflicting responses in the grieving process. At other times, there may simply be so many emotions present that it feels overwhelming to try to navigate this alone. In IFS we can, one by one, spend time with the parts of you that are coming up in relation to grief and loss. It is through this process that we can identify and differentiate each response in a way that creates more spaciousness and ease inside. As more space opens up, you will slowly regain more access to your Self—a core, undamaged essence inside that carries qualities such as calm, clarity, compassion, connection, courage, curiosity, creativity, and confidence. This Self offers internal wisdom, guidance, and an inherent ability to heal from within.
“Isn’t it odd. We can only see our outsides, but nearly everything happens on the inside.”
—from “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse” by Charlie Mackesy
Bigger losses can ripple throughout the entire system, as well as into the past. Protector parts of you, who either mobilize in order to pre-empt emotional pain, or to numb and distract from pain that has already been activated, may be thrown into bigger roles or greater action than they usually take. When the most tender and vulnerable exile parts and emotions slip through, protector fears of overwhelm may lead to an even larger response such as shutdown, isolation, lashing out, or even self-destructive behaviors.
Other protective responses may include minimizing your loss or falling into loops of self-criticism and self-blame. Daily life tasks, personal and professional roles, self-care, and energy levels are likely to be impacted. Present loss may trigger parts connected to past losses, especially if those parts still carry tenderness or are still in need of healing. No matter your individual circumstance, untangling these many threads calls for patience, persistence, and compassion.
What if you could experience Self-led grieving?
The compassion and healing presence of Self and its qualities is the centerpiece of the IFS model. Initially, it may be difficult to access much Self energy, if any at all, due to the myriad emotional responses that are present. Your IFS therapist will offer their own Self-presence and compassion to help you simply be with these parts. As each part begins to feel heard and witnessed, more space will open up inside of you to allow for Self-led grieving and the deeper healing that is possible with IFS.
Healing parts that are grieving starts by simply asking what the parts most need. Depending on the response you get, it may involve making meaning of the loss, witnessing different memories and experiences, or shifting aspects of the many different identities—parent, child, partner, career role, and more—that exist within you. Throughout this process, it is quite possible that parts will come to redefine some of their roles. Different parts may need different types of help with their grief. Some parts may grieve in the background, while others might need more direct care and steady attention.
There is hope for a return to equilibrium and spaciousness within you, even with the many responses that arise from within your grief. It is possible to experience this Self-led grieving through witnessing parts, being with them in the way they most need, and fostering Self-connection with each of them. Parts will have the opportunity to feel seen, heard, and even held in their grief. Trust that, when they are ready, parts will find their own way forward, perhaps defining new rituals and ways to honor what was lost, or finding community support alongside this inner work.
Alicia Dabney is an IFS Certified Therapist, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist #136816, Associate Professional Clinical Counselor #8016 supervised by Andrew Pflueger LMFT #86223, and Registered Art Therapist #20-261.
Would you like to be able to lean on a supportive IFS therapist during your journey through grief? A therapist at IFS Telehealth Collective can help you find and connect with the parts that need to be seen, heard, and ultimately healed by you. If you live in California, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, or Oregon, please contact our Client Care Coordinator or call 503-447-3244.
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