Grief Is Not A Performance- We all grieve differently

Grief doesn’t always cry. Sometimes it files paperwork, goes back to work, tells a joke, cleans the house, or sits in eerie quiet because the body is doing what it must to survive. We’re talking about performative grief and the “grief police” mindset that pressures people to prove their love with tears, breakdowns, or a perfect timeline. If you’ve ever been told you’re not grieving “right,” this conversation is for you.

We get into why mourning looks wildly different from person to person, even when the loss is the same. We unpack the myth that emotions are always visible, and we explain how shock, denial, numbness, and delayed crying can be protective nervous system responses rather than signs that something is wrong. We also talk about the unfair assumptions people make when someone appears functional in public, especially when a loss is scrutinized online or in the media.

Finally, we zoom out to the body. Grief can show up as anxiety, brain fog, irritability, insomnia, digestive issues, panic, and physical tension. That’s why trauma-informed and somatic healing approaches matter: sometimes the goal isn’t forcing emotion, it’s helping the nervous system feel safe enough to let emotion move. If this helped you feel seen, subscribe, share it with someone who needs permission to grieve their way, and leave a review so more people can find it.

Transcript

Performative Grief And The Grief Police

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of my podcast, Soul Talk and Psychic Advice. Today I want to talk about something that doesn't get discussed nearly enough. It's something that can make grieving people feel misunderstood, isolated, and even ashamed. It's the expectation that grief should look a certain way, that it has to look a certain way. I call this performative grief. And there are grief police out there that say this person isn't crying enough. They don't seem as upset. I would be real upset if it was me. And the reason why I bring this up is because we've had some cases in the media where people have lost loved ones and you know people didn't think that they were crying enough or upset. And as a grief coach and someone who's been through a lot of loss, I do not appreciate someone telling another person how to grieve. Somewhere along the way, society created an image of what grief is supposed to look like. Where sh we've sh been shown people collapsing to the floor, you know, sobbing uncontrollably, unable to get out of bed, crying every single day, wanting to die, um just all these emotions, right? Speaking dramatically about their pain. And while grief can absolutely look like that for some people, it's far from the only way that people grieve. A lot of people, you'll be surprised to not grieve like this. And if you haven't been through a situation that's been tough like this, you know, losing someone that you care, be grateful, but withhold judgment. And sometimes people who are grieving will judge other people for how they grieve. That happens too, and we need to stop all of this madness. It it doesn't help anything and it can make matters worse. Like, what do we know about people who take their own lives? They act fine. You they actually get a little bit happy. You know, I I heard a therapist say they get a little bit happy before they transition because they've made peace with that. So we don't know how people are gonna act. Very few people show the real emotion. A lot of people guard emotion, and there's too much in this society of, well, if it was me and I would act, and that's right, if you, if it was happening to you, maybe you act that way, but you don't know until you're in the situation. And so the problem begins when we start expecting everyone to grieve in the same way, in a melodramatic way. And I call it melodramatic because it it can feel performative and satisfy other people, but is it satisfying the person who's grieving? When someone doesn't cry enough, doesn't seem emotional enough, returns to work quickly.

When Grief Looks Like Functioning

SPEAKER_00 3:03

I literally went to work the day after planning my son's funeral because I was self-employed and I had patience and I put on a semi-smile and I put on some nice clothes, and you know, I just felt like I had to keep this business going. You know, I was gonna have bills, I was gonna have things, and I wasn't gonna have nothing, already lost my son. And a lot of people will go to work soon because they don't want to sit in a grief, they want a distraction. Sometimes we tell people to keep busy, and that's their way of keeping busy. And sometimes you will laugh, you remember a good moment, you know. My son was hilarious, and you know, if you knew somebody who you lost who was wonderful, yes, you're gonna grieve their loss, but you're gonna also smile at the good times. And sometimes you could appear really calm when you're grieving, or you could simply shut down. People begin questioning whether they really love the person. One thing that we noticed about like if a male spouse loses their wife, they will be married within a year. And the reason why is they're used to they do better with marriage. Men do better with marriage. Studies show that. Even when men say I'm gonna stay single forever, studies show that they do better with marriage. Whereas a woman, she can go on longer, she can take her time, she could heal longer, and so you you know, we're gonna see people do a lot of strange things, and it's not all ID channel, you know, mindset that they're doing, they're just coping differently. And when you question if somebody really loved the person that they lost, it isn't fair because that couldn't be further from the truth.

Why Tears Aren’t The Measure

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Today we're going to explore why grief is so different for every person, why many grieving people don't cry at all, and why asking someone to perform their grief actually makes healing much harder. And some people are worried about how they look and when should they date after losing a spouse and if they should have another kid after losing a kid or if they should start a foundation and etc. Right? When do they get to smile again? We gotta stop being grief police. Grief isn't a performance. Grief is far from being a performance, it's just different for everybody. One of the biggest myths about grief is that emotions are always visible. They aren't. Some people cry openly, others cry privately, some cry years later. It took me a year because I was in denial that my son was actually dead. So how am I gonna grieve while I went to the funeral? I helped, you know, plan the arrangement, but I still didn't accept his death. I don't cry right away when I lose someone because I go into shock, I numb out, and there are people like that. You know, now I do more somatic work, you know, I may cry at different times or have different effects of how I respond to grief, but you you know, if somebody never cries, that's how they're coping in the moment, that's their survival. Some will rarely cry at all. None of these responses tell us how deeply someone loves. Sometimes it's so traumatic for the person, their brain can't catch up. It's trauma, right? Trauma is anything that happens too fast too soon for the mind and body to deal with. That's the definition of trauma that I've heard over and over through all the trauma training that I've done. None of these responses tell us anything. Grief isn't measured by tears. It isn't measured by how emotional someone appears, it isn't measured by how devastated they look to other people. Let's stop being grief, police. Grief is an internal experience, it's deeply personal. It's shaped by our nervous system, our personality, our past experiences, our attachment history, and even our biology. Two people can lose the exact same person have and have completely different grief responses. One may solve for weeks, the other may become incredibly quiet, one may feel overwhelming sadness, another may feel absolutely nothing, just numbing out. Neither response is wrong. Some people may just rage and become very angry, because under all the anger is a sadness, but they're coping by being angry. So any of these responses are all valid, none of them are wrong. The problem is that we've learned to judge grief by what we see instead of understanding what's happening beneath the surface. I always say in my line of work, especially doing readings and also with doing coaching, that I tell people if you could just see it a little bit different from how you're seeing it, and maybe think maybe this person thinks something different, you feel better. You feel so much better, you understand them better, you understand that they see the world differently from what you do, they have their own filter, their own drama, their own trauma, and they respond differently because a lot of times we judge people who don't respond the way that we think they should respond. And it happens a lot with grief. It happens in other situations I've talked about too. The nervous system doesn't always cry.

Survival Mode And Emotional Numbness

SPEAKER_00 8:52

One of the first things I explain to grieving clients is that grief isn't only emotional, it's norlogical. When something overwhelming happens, your nervous system immediately begins assessing one question. Am I safe? If the loss feels too overwhelming for your brain to process, your nervous system may not allow you to feel the full emotional impact immediately. Instead, it may move into survival. More than likely, that's what it's going to do. That survival response can look like feeling numb, feeling disconnected, feeling like you're watching your life from outside your body, feeling emotionally flat, being unable to cry, feeling strangely calm. People often worry that something is wrong with them. They say, I haven't cried. I don't feel anything. Did I even love them? The answer is almost always yes. Your brain is simply protecting you. Think of it like a circuit breaker. When too much electricity flows through a house, a breaker shuts off power to prevent damage, to prevent a fire. Your nervous system does something very similar. If emotional pain feels too overwhelming, it temporarily reduces your access to those emotions until your system believes it's safe enough to experience them. That's not dysfunction, that is protection for the people in the back.

Shock As A Grief Response

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Shock is part of grief. Another response people rarely talk about is shock. Shock isn't simply disbelief, it's a physiological survival response. Many people continue functioning almost automatically after someone dies. You know, they just got to keep it going. Like when a wife loses her husband and he was a sole provider, or you know, she needed his income, even if she worked, she's like, I gotta hustle, I gotta take care of these kids, I gotta keep my kids alive, I gotta keep them safe, and they just go into that mode. I think some of us have seen that in people, especially women in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, when everything was really hard for women, they just had to hustle and make it happen, you know. And so you you know, they're having this survival response, and you know, they're continuing, they're they're making the phone calls, planning the funeral, handling paperwork, taking care of family, taking care of the kids, answering messages, cooking the meals, going back to work, they can't lose their job. We know jobs don't give us that much leave. We know they don't. So you can't take all the time you need because what if you need a year and you're not getting a paycheck anyway? Yeah, you know, I don't think any job has those benefits out there. Yeah, you know, um people may even compliment them like you're being so strong. I hate that phrase personally, but what they don't realize is that the grieving person may still be in shock. Shock often delays emotional processing, sometimes for weeks, sometimes for months, sometimes much longer. Then one ordinary day, maybe while folding laundry, driving home, hearing a song, walking into a grocery store. Yes, out in public, the nervous system finally feels safe enough and suddenly the grief arrives. It arrives and people think they're grieving late. They're not. Their nervous system is simply allowing them to process what it couldn't process before. When you lose one, your world is just turned upside down.

Public Scrutiny And “Looking Fine”

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Functional doesn't mean you're not grieving. Another misunderstanding is assuming that someone who appears functional isn't grieving. We're doing this a lot to people who lose one and they're in the public eye or they have a public case because it may be criminal. We're we're really judging people, and this is wild to me. And yes, it's a little bit upsetting, a little bit triggering for me because we don't know what that person is experiencing. Could you imagine losing someone and then it's in the public and everybody's watching your every move, how you respond and what you do, and how you handle things and how you talk, and do you look like you've been crying? Well, you don't look like you've been crying. Maybe you just do in a few fake tears, you know. So think about it. Um, some people become incredibly prote productive after loss, they clean, they organize, they work longer hours. So you know, they help everyone else. I worked a lot of hours after losing my son. You keep moving. Movement becomes protection. If they stop, they may have to feel, and maybe they're just not ready to feel it. This doesn't mean that they're avoiding grief intentionally, it's often automatic. It's how their nervous system arrives. Other people become exhausted, unable to concentrate, unable to remember things, unable to make simple decisions. Both responses are normal. Grief changes brain function. Research has shown that grief can affect attention, memory, concentration, sleep, decision making, and emotional regulation. So instead of asking, Why aren't they crying? How about minding our business? Maybe we should ask what is their nervous system trying to protect them from right now? You know? That's another thing. But sometimes we just have to mind our own business. Stop judging other people's grief. One

Why People Judge Grief

SPEAKER_00 15:01

of the most painful experiences grieving people describe is feeling judge. People say things like, You seem okay. Aren't you over it yet? You've cried enough? You haven't cried enough. You need to move on. A lot of people want the grieving person to move on so that they're not triggered by the grieving person. Or, you know, I heard, well, you're spiritual. What does that have to do with anything? You know, but we are so uncomfortable with death and loss. We don't talk about it enough in society, although we all know that's the one thing we're gonna do and we're gonna experience before we die. We're gonna lose someone. They say we lose the average of five people before we die. You know, five people that we care about deeply. And so you know, but and I remember during COVID, people are freaked out because of their mortality. They're like, What if I die? And they realize how little control they had. And that's what it was about. You know, we haven't really talked about death enough in society. And we really need to we need to get more comfortable with it. People are just like, I just want to avoid that topic. You can't because one day it'll be in our face. You know, when people what else do they say? You need to let it out, you need to stay busy, you shouldn't stay busy. Notice something people receive completely opposite advice. Everyone has an opinion, very few people understand grief. Instead of allowing someone to have their own experience, we unconsciously compare them to what we think grief should look like. Healing begins when we stop measuring grief against imaginary timelines and movie scenes. Movie scenes have screwed us up in many ways, and relationships, what we think our romance should be, and definitely how we should handle loss. And you know, it just it's so different for everyone. No one gets to decide what grief should look like except the person living it. That's the end. That's the end of that discussion. And if you find yourself judging someone or grief, ask why. Are is it because you're scared of what you're gonna feel when you go through that experience? Yeah, you know, I know it's uncomfortable. People were very uncomfortable around me when my son died. It's one thing when I lost my mom. You're supposed to lose parents, right? That you lose them. You may even lose a sibling, but for the parent who lost a child, it's so out of order and it makes people so uncomfortable. People don't know what to say, and they don't know how to handle that. And they want you to be okay so that they don't have to think about it. And then they want you to just hurry up and cry and get it done. And I just I swore at a lot of people and I told them, You're not gonna tell me how to survive losing my son.

When Grief Lives In The Body

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Sometimes grief looks like nothing. This may surprise people. Sometimes grief doesn't feel like sadness. Sometimes it feels feels like anxiety, sometimes it feels like brain fog. Sometimes it feels like irritability. Sometimes physical pain. Yes. You know? It can feel that way. And sometimes digestive problems, sometimes exhaustion, sometimes insomnia, sometimes panic attacks, yes, sometimes chronic tension, sometimes numbness. We don't know how people are gonna respond. Grief lives in the body as much as it lives in the heart, and until the nervous system feels safe enough to process a loss, those emotions may continue showing up physically rather than emotionally. This is one reason I love teaching somatic healing, because sometimes people don't need help expressing emotions. Sometimes they need help helping their nervous system to feel safe enough to experience those emotions in the first place. I'm all about feelings and emotions because what I've learned throughout my years of being on this planet and losing loved ones and being in foster care and is that a lot of people aren't comfortable with their feelings because we haven't been given the space to become safe with our feelings and to express them, how we need to express them, because someone somewhere is uncomfortable with how we feel, and they're telling us to just stop it because they don't want to feel their own stuff, and maybe someone experienced that growing up, so it carries into adulthood, and that's why we have avoidance and anxious people and you know all these different issues because it started young.

Permission To Grieve Your Way

SPEAKER_00 20:35

Now I'm gonna close this out. If you're grieving right now, and someone is, I want you to hear this. There's nothing wrong with you if your grief doesn't look like someone else's or it doesn't look like the fucking movies. You do not have to cry to prove your love. You don't. You know what you had. You do not have to fall apart to prove you're hurting. You do not have to perform your pain so other people believe it is real. Whether you're crying every day or feeling completely numb or living in shock, or simply trying to survive one day at a time, your grief is valid. Healing is not about performing sadness. Healing is about allowing your nervous system to process laws in the way it was designed to, your way, your body's way. That process cannot be rushed, it cannot be compared, and it certainly cannot be judged. The next time someone tells you that you aren't grieving the right way, remember this. There is no right way. There is only your way. And if you know someone who is grieving, perhaps the greatest gift you can give them is isn't advice, it's not advice at all. It isn't telling them to be strong. Please stop telling people to be strong. It isn't trying to fix their pain because you can't. It's simply giving them permission to grieve exactly as they are. However that looks, I ran through all the emotions because grief isn't a performance, it's a deeply human experience. And just think about that. You know, yes, you know, we have this group think that goes on in society where we have some common beliefs and common thoughts and social norms, and we're told to act a certain way at certain times, but grief just doesn't work that way. It can't, it's so individual, and it could be different for each person that you lose. Some people cry more over pets than they do humans, and you know, there's reasons for that, yeah. You know, so there's different ways that we grief, and I just I had to do this, you know. I was going to talk about something else today because I thought, what has happened to us, and why are people so comfortable online telling someone you're not grieving correctly, and we don't realize what we do to others will be said and done to us, and so be gentle with each other as you will want someone to be gentle with you.

Closing Thanks

SPEAKER_00 23:33

I want to thank you for listening. Have a great day, and I will see you in the next episode.