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You have been making plans. You have been setting goals. You have been telling yourself that the future is bright, that the past is behind you, that forward is the only direction worth traveling.

And yet, things don’t work out the way you planned.

The promotions you chase feel hollow when they come. The relationships you enter collapse for reasons you cannot name. The energy you pour into work, into children, into the nonstop busyness of life, does not seem either enough or fitting. As if there is a ceiling you cannot break through, no matter how hard you try. It makes you tired. You feel stuck and do not find an explanation why.

It’s very possible that the pain that holds you back arrived long ago and is still unrecognized and unnamed.

Undergrieving or disenfranchised grief

Kenneth Doka tells the story of Marcus. (2) His parents had divorced, and at twelve years old he began to act out at school. His mother was bewildered: "He sees his dad whenever he wants, it's not like he is dead. There is no reason for him to behave like that!"However, divorce, separation, the death of a relationship—all these losses are very real. They are losses of connection, of continuity, of the world as it was. But in today’s world, it seems, we only get the right to grieve about a close family member who has passed away, and it is the only permissible significant loss. Doka reminds us that serious mourning can occur even when the object of loss remains physically alive. Marcus was acting out in the attempt to grieve a future that would never arrive. A family that would never reform. A father who would never come home at night. His grief was not recognized because the death had not occurred.Yes, Marcus was just 12, but we in our 30s, 40s, and 50s also tend to regress to a psychologically much younger age during stressful events due to life shifts. We are lost, we want help, we want to get a break from all that, just like children.Take another example (3). During the onset of the COVID pandemic, there was a couple whose fertility treatment was delayed and ended without success. Formally, nobody died, but the experience of not having the long-desired pregnancy made the couple feel isolated and induced........

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