Grief is not a performance. You do not have to cry a certain amount, feel sad every day, stop laughing, or suffer visibly enough to prove that someone mattered. Grief can follow death, divorce, estrangement, loss of health, or the end of a caregiving role. The work is not to manufacture the right emotion. It is to understand what is actually happening.
You do not have to hurt in a particular way to prove that the person mattered.
Applying the McInnis Method
Reality
What happened, and what is true now?
Separate what actually happened from the story about how you're supposed to be reacting to it.
Threat
What feels dangerous about this grief?
The fear may be: "I am forgetting them," "If I am okay, maybe I did not love them enough," or "If I let myself feel this, it won't stop."
Protection
What are you doing to stay steady?
Working more, staying busy, getting irritable, "handling it," caring for everyone else, avoiding reminders, or staying strong may all be protective responses.
Function
What has that protection done for you?
It may have helped you survive caregiving, keep working, hold the family together, get through a funeral, or simply make it to the next day.
Cost
What is the protection costing you now?
Protection becomes costly when there is no room for your own experience: constant activity, isolation, or guilt whenever you laugh, rest, or enjoy your life.
Capacity
What can you tolerate now, even a little?
A memory. Quiet. Letting someone see that you hurt. An unplanned afternoon. Or two truths at once: "I miss them" and "I am still alive."
Action
What is one honest next step?
Do not force a breakthrough. Choose one small action that fits reality: talk, remember, rest, keep a meaningful routine, enjoy something, or make a little room for what you feel.
A Practical Check
Am I grieving the loss in front of me, or am I also fighting myself because my grief does not match the picture I expected?
Working Through Grief in Therapy
Grief does not always arrive as overwhelming sadness. It can show up as irritability, constant activity, guilt about feeling okay, difficulty tolerating quiet, or pressure to grieve differently than you are.
In therapy, I am less interested in deciding whether your grief is normal than in understanding what is actually happening. We may look at what has been lost, what now feels threatening, how you are protecting yourself, what that protection has made possible, what it is costing, and what remains available to you.
I provide in-person therapy in Austin and telehealth in Texas, Arizona, Florida, and Nevada. Grief work may involve death, divorce or separation, estrangement, changes in health, or the end of a long caregiving role.
When to reach out
Professional support may help when grief feels unmanageable, is seriously interfering with daily life, or you are concerned about your safety. In the U.S., call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
If you are in immediate danger, call 911.