How suppressed emotion shapes our experience of bereavement.
Grief Is Not Always Singular
Grief is often spoken about as a singular experience: a response to loss that moves, however unevenly, towards some form of resolution. In practice, it is rarely so contained. For many, grief does not arrive alone. It brings with it emotions that have been suppressed, deferred, or never fully felt. What presents as grief may, in part, be something older. Loss has a way of lowering the threshold of our emotional defences. The structures that once helped us manage or contain difficult feelings can become less reliable under its weight. In this sense, grief is not only an experience of loss, but also an encounter with what has been held beneath the surface.
The Spring-Loaded Box
One way to understand this is through a simple image. Suppressed emotions can be thought of as being placed into a spring-loaded box, held shut over time with effort and adaptation. For many, this becomes an unconscious posture: sitting on the lid, keeping things contained, maintaining function. It works, often for years.
When a significant loss occurs, the impact can be enough to release that pressure. The box flies open. What follows is not only grief, but a surge of feeling that may not seem directly connected to the loss itself. Emotions that have long been contained begin to surface all at once, surrounding us and clamouring for attention.
This can give rise to a particular kind of distress. Alongside grief, there may be a sense of overwhelm, disorientation, or even ‘madness’. The world can feel unfamiliar or unreal, not only because something important has been lost, but because the internal landscape has shifted so suddenly. What was once held in place is now in motion.
When the System Becomes Overwhelmed
When emotions have been consistently suppressed, they do not disappear. They remain active beneath awareness, often shaping behaviour indirectly. Grief intensifies this dynamic. A person who has learned to minimise anger may find themselves unexpectedly reactive. Someone who has avoided vulnerability may experience waves of anxiety or instability. What appears to be grief “out of control” is often the system attempting to regulate more than it has previously allowed into awareness. It is important to recognise that suppression itself is not a failure. It is often an adaptation that once served a necessary purpose. At different points in life, containing emotion may have allowed relationships to continue, responsibilities to be met, or stability to be maintained. These strategies can be effective, but they come at a cost: a narrowing of what can be consciously felt. Grief disrupts this arrangement. It places a demand on the system that these strategies cannot fully meet.
Not Disproportionate, but Cumulative
At this point, many people become concerned that their response is disproportionate. The intensity of what they are experiencing may not seem to match the loss alone. This can lead to further suppression, as they attempt to regain control, or to self-criticism, as they question their own stability. It may be more helpful to understand this not as disproportionate, but as cumulative. Grief is interacting with a wider emotional history. What is being felt in the present moment includes not only the pain of loss, but the release of what has been held over time.
Working With, Rather Than Against
The question then is not how to force the lid closed again, but how to remain in relationship with what has emerged without becoming overwhelmed by it. This begins, not with analysing every feeling, but with the gentle regulation of attention. When everything is clamouring at once, the task is not to attend to all of it, but to allow small amounts into awareness, gradually increasing the capacity to stay present. In this way, attention becomes a stabilising force rather than something that is pulled in multiple directions.
As this capacity develops, what initially feels chaotic can begin to differentiate. Grief becomes more recognisable as grief. Anger, sadness, fear, or longing can be experienced with greater clarity, rather than as a single, overwhelming mass. The system no longer needs to defend against everything at once. In time, the box is no longer required in the same way. What was once held down can be felt, in part, without the same risk of destabilisation. Grief, then, is not only an experience of loss. It is also a moment in which the inner world becomes more visible. What emerges may be difficult, but it is not without meaning. Within it is the possibility of a different relationship to emotion: one that does not rely solely on suppression, but on a growing capacity to remain present to what is there.
A Closing Reflection
Perhaps the work is not to contain everything that has been released, nor to make immediate sense of it, but to notice where our attention settles in the midst of it. When the internal world feels crowded or overwhelming, we might return, gently, to what can be held in this moment, rather than all that demands to be felt at once. In doing so, we begin to find a steadier ground within the movement of grief, where what once felt unmanageable can, over time, be met with greater presence and less fear.
Collette O’Mahony – March 2026
