In this week's This Might Be a Trauma Response segment, Jessica takes the conversation about grief a layer deeper — moving beyond last week's broad definition of loss into a specific and often invisible form of pain: disenfranchised grief. This is the grief that never got witnessed. The loss that was minimized, dismissed, or met with an "at least" instead of acknowledgment. Jessica explores what happens psychologically when grief goes unvalidated, names the symptoms it can create, and offers a path forward through self-witnessing.
What's Covered in This Episode
What disenfranchised grief is — and why it's so psychologically costly
How suppressed grief doesn't disappear, it transforms into symptoms
Five common presentations of unacknowledged grief
The clinical concept of grief without witness
Why healing grief requires acknowledgment — and how to give it to yourself
A simple but powerful self-witnessing reflection practice
Key Clinical Concepts
Disenfranchised Grief
Grief that is not socially recognized or validated — losses that others communicate are "not big enough to count." This can include relational losses, identity shifts, ambiguous loss, and more. When grief isn't witnessed externally, it doesn't resolve; it suppresses.
Suppressed Grief & Its Symptoms
Jessica outlines five places suppressed grief tends to surface:
Emotional numbness — a flatness or reduced emotional range
Disproportionate irritability — especially common in women, who are socialized to internalize pain
Avoidance — staying busy, changing subjects, pulling away from people
Persistent low-grade sadness — a heaviness underneath daily functioning
When external validation isn't available, healing can begin with self-witnessing — the act of naming your own loss and affirming its reality to yourself. Jessica frames this as "the beginning of everything."
This Week's Reflection Practice
Think of one loss in your life that never got acknowledged. It could be from years ago, something recent, or something you've never said out loud.
Then say this somewhere private, just for you:
"This was real. This hurt. And I am allowed to feel it."
Coming Up Next Week
Jessica turns to one of the most complex and misunderstood grief experiences: grieving someone who is still alive. The parent who is physically present but emotionally absent. The relationship that's technically intact but quietly over. The grief with no clear ending because there was no clear event.
disenfranchised grief, unacknowledged grief, minimized loss, grief without validation, emotional numbness, irritability, low-grade sadness, physical symptoms of grief, self-witnessing, somatic grief, IFS and grief, ambiguous loss, "grief that doesn't count," "giving yourself permission to grieve," "why am I like this", mental health podcast, therapy podcast, LCSW podcast, trauma response, Jessica Colarco
Transcripts
Jessica Colarco (:
Hi, welcome back. I'm so glad you're here. I'm Jessica and this is Healing Is My Hobby. And welcome to our This Might Be a Trauma Response segment, where we talk about those, why am I like this moments? We name common patterns, normalize emotional responses, and create space for compassion instead of shame. Last week, we talked about grief. Not just the grief that comes with death, but the full
clinically accurate definition, the grief that lives in endings and losses of identity in relationships that change or disappear. This week, I want to go a layer deeper because there is a particular kind of grief that I see again and again in my practice, a kind of grief that people carry completely alone, quietly, and often with a lot of shame.
It's the grief that nobody validated, the loss that got an at least instead of a witness. The pain that you were told directly or indirectly wasn't big enough to count. And today I want to talk about what that does to a person and what it might be doing to you.
So here's what I want you to consider. The symptoms we're about to talk about, the ones that might be making your daily life harder. They might not be personality flaws. They might not be anxiety in the traditional sense. They might not be depression. They might be grief, specifically grief that never got to be grief.
When a loss isn't acknowledged, when you're told it doesn't count or you tell yourself it doesn't count, the grief doesn't disappear. It gets suppressed. And suppressed grief has to go somewhere. Here are some of the places it tends to go. Emotional numbness.
You used to feel things more easily. You used to cry at commercials or feel genuine excitement about things. Now there's this kind of flatness, like someone turned the volume down on your emotional life and you're not sure when it happened. Irritability that feels disproportionate.
You snap at your kids, your partner or coworker over something small, and then you feel guilty about it. But here's what I need you to hear. Irritability is one of the most common presentations of grief, especially in women. We're taught to internalize our pain. So instead of sadness, it comes out sideways as frustration. Avoidance. You find yourself pulling away from certain people.
changing the subject when certain topics come up, staying busy in a way that feels almost compulsive because slowing down feels dangerous, even if you can't explain why. A persistent, low-grade sadness you can't trace. Not depression exactly, more like a heaviness that just lives underneath everything. You're functional. You show up.
but there's something heavy you've been carrying and you've carried it so long you almost forgot it was there. Physical symptoms. This one surprises people, but grief lives in the body. Tightness in the chest, fatigue that sleep doesn't fix, headaches, digestive issues. The body keeps a record of what the mind tries to move past. Does any of this resonate?
If it does, I want you to consider whether there's a loss underneath it, specifically a loss that you never fully let yourself grieve. Maybe because the world didn't give you permission. Maybe because you decided it wasn't worth grieving. Maybe because someone or a lot of someone's communicated that your pain was inconvenient or excessive or just not that big of a deal. Disenfranchised grief.
Grief without witness is one of the most psychologically costly experiences a person can have. Because healing grief requires acknowledgement. It requires someone or something to reflect back to you, this was real, this mattered, and you are allowed to feel it. And when that doesn't happen externally,
we have to learn how to give it to ourselves. That's not easy, but it is possible. And it starts with this. Naming the loss. Saying out loud or in writing or in a session, I am grieving this even if no one gave me permission, even if it doesn't look like what grief is supposed to look like. I am grieving this and it is real.
The act of self-witnessing, of being the one who finally shows up for your own pain is not small. It's actually the beginning of everything.
This week's reflection is simple, but it asks something real of you. I want you to think of one loss in your life that never got acknowledged. It could be something from years ago, something recent, something you've never said out loud. And I want you to say this somewhere private, somewhere just for you. This was real. This hurt.
and I am allowed to feel it. That's it. That's the work this week. It's quiet, it's internal, but don't underestimate it. Next week we're going somewhere I think is going to hit close to home for a lot of people. We're talking about grieving someone who is still alive. The parent who is physically present but emotionally absent. The relationship that's technically intact but quietly over.
the grief that has no clear ending because there was no clear event.
I'll see you then. And if you'd like to read my blog or stay up to date, you can sign up for the newsletter at healingismyhobby.com. You can follow me on Instagram at healingismyhobby or YouTube at healingismyhobby. And if you'd like to know more about my clinical practice, you can visit jessicacolarcolcsw.com or follow me on Instagram at jessicacolarcolcsw. Thank you, see you next week.
