Anticipatory Grief

I’m a physician, so I work within the medical model. But I’m also a big fan of understanding the world outside of medicine. One of the things that we’ll learn from psychology is that we grieve in anticipation of loss.

Something that’s been very eye-opening for me is to talk with families who are preparing for the eventual death of someone who’s dealing with a diagnosis. Many times, they will have disdain towards dealing with daily life. Most of the time, these folks don’t realize that they’re already in grief because the loss ostensibly hasn’t happened yet.

But really, loss begins the moment we can conceive of it.

And there are other active losses at the time of a diagnosis. Your roles may change. Your identity may change. And even though you’re not dead, a part of you may be gone. Grief that occurs before a physical loss is known as anticipatory grief.

I think anticipatory grief is a really important concept to understand so we can make sense of difficult situations and terminal diagnoses. For example, a wife of a dying husband could be distraught wondering, “What’s wrong with me? My husband is still here. Why am I so sad? He’s still here, but I’m not enjoying him.”

Anticipatory grief is totally normal.