Prolonged Grief And Burnout: When Loss Won't Settle
Most people adapt to grief but if you've found it hard, you're not the only one.
Two years after my Dad died, I thought I was grieving. Turns out, I was also burning out. And I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
I was in my day job for just over a year by then. It started off positively enough. But a nightmare project and my people-pleasing pattern kicked in: long hours, trying to be all things to everyone. Add toxic colleagues and disrespect, and I found myself fully absorbed in the job.
The second anniversary of Dad’s death was a tough one. It felt different from the first because I put added pressure on myself: “Shouldn’t you be OK with this by now?”
I didn't appreciate how much long-lasting and intense grief impacts every day life: how I was avoiding the pain of grief by throwing myself into work, giving up my health and wellbeing for everyone else.
When we feel shaky inside, it's easy to grasp at external solutions for a sense of importance and value. I ended up in tears talking to a colleague, feeling like there was no way out of the pressure, the bad behaviour, the lack of boundaries.
But I hadn't realised, until I looked back on that time, how much grief was driving my burnout patterns.
Burnout and grief feed into each other
I'd survived a lot of pain in my life by that point, and avoidance always gave me relief.
People-pleasing made me feel useful. Perfectionism made me feel proud. Being a busy bee made me feel important.
These coping strategies started as survival, but they became constant patterns that cost me my sense of self, my health, my emotional wellbeing.
The more I tried to show I was 'back to normal,' the more exhausted I got. And I turned it all inward, being harsher and harsher on myself.
I felt cynical, depleted, frustrated that no one could see how much effort it took just to function.
Work felt meaningless. My life didn't feel like mine anymore. I was a robot, going through the motions, isolating myself because I was 'too busy.'
Shame and guilt kicked in and sat heavy in the background. How had life turned out like this again? Not asserting healthy boundaries. Not putting my health or values first. I’d abandoned myself.
But when I stopped or slowed down, I just really missed my Dad. It still hurt so much.
My burnout pain felt weirdly aligned with my grief. Both felt unbearable, so in a twisted way, it matched how much I was hurting inside.
Now, I notice these patterns in myself and my burnout clients. And how grief drives us into burnout, and how burnout intensifies our grief without us realising.
They feed each other.
If you've felt like this, whether it's months or years after losing a parent, you're not alone, and you're not failing.
What you're experiencing has a name, and understanding it changes everything. So, let’s talk about what the research actually shows, because knowing you’re not alone in this pattern can be super relieving.
Most of us grieve resiliently, but not everyone
I've always wondered how some people deal with obstacles and challenges better than others.
We now know it's a combination of biological, psychological and social inputs, but it doesn't stop us comparing our reactions to everyone else and feeling sh*tty when we struggle to cope.
We often talk about grief as if it follows one predictable path. But the research doesn’t support that.
Longitudinal grief studies show that people don't move through the same experiences at the same pace. Instead, they follow different 'grief trajectories’.
Work led by Resilience expert, George Bonanno, which followed bereaved people for years after a loss, consistently found a small number of broad grief trajectories rather than one “normal” or standard response.
Since his early studies, here's what the research consistently shows:
Most people (around 60%) grieve resiliently: the loss is painful, but life gradually reorganises and grief integrates
Some people (around 20–30%) struggle at first, then slowly adapt
A smaller group (around 10–20%) follow a non-resilient trajectory, where grief remains intense and disruptive over time
People who fall into this non-resilient trajectory often experience what researchers call prolonged grief (or sometimes still known as complicated grief). It’s not a judgment about how much you loved someone or how ‘strong’ you are.
It’s simply a description of a grief pattern where the loss continues to feel intense and disruptive over time, rather than gradually integrating into your life.
What prolonged grief actually looks like
Those of us who fall into this non-resilient trajectory are often functioning on the outside in one way or another. We’re working. We’re showing up. We might even look “back to normal”.
But internally, the loss is still live.
It often looks like:
Life narrowing rather than slowly widening again.
Sometimes we avoid the loss and reminders the person is gone, but other times we bathe ourselves in it.
A lingering sense that the world, or the self, has fundamentally changed.
I felt like I was drifting for months. Untethered. Nothing felt the same again, even years later.
Disbelief about the death.
I still forget Dad has gone and wonder how it all happened. I know it did, but something still feels unreal somehow.
Intense waves of emotional pain that continue months or years later.
This happened listening to a song yesterday. Tears and sadness. It still hits.
Difficulty reconnecting with purpose, direction, or a sense of “this is my life”.
This one has been particularly strong for me, and this Substack is a key part of expressing a different purpose and legacy I want to (need to) build.
Finding it hard reintegrating into relationships or activities, perhaps leaning on unhelpful coping strategies like staying constantly busy, overworking, people-pleasing, perfectionism, or distraction.
My burnout patterns kicked in quickly when I felt that deep emptiness and grief void. They took over and drove me to exhaustion and despondency until I stopped and let myself explore the ongoing impact of losing Dad on my life.
This isn’t about grieving wrong.
It’s about a loss that changed more of our reality than expected, and never fully settled.
The thing is, I didn’t recognise this as prolonged grief at the time.
I thought I was coping. I was working hard, staying productive, holding things together. Looking back, I don’t know how I survived it.
But I didn’t need more time. I needed understanding and self-compassion.
Why do some of us struggle to adapt to losing a parent?
Research suggests that those of us who struggle to adapt after a loss aren’t weaker or less resilient. Our grief tends to touch more fundamental parts of life.
This often happens when the person who died was tied to identity, meaning, or emotional safety. I always felt more connected to my Dad than the rest of my immediate family, so his loss made those family dynamics shift massively. I’m still figuring out what that looks like.
When someone keeps going, takes on responsibility, and stays “functional” rather than being supported, grief can get ‘stuck’.
And when avoidance looks like staying busy or useful or earlier losses or adversity sit quietly in the background, we don’t process the underlying issues or feelings. There’s little space to make sense of what the loss means for who you are now or in the future.
In these situations, grief doesn’t integrate on its own. Not because time failed but because adaptation needs deeper understanding, support, and space, not just endurance.
For many people, grief integrates.
For others, it doesn’t and needs more care and exploration.
Key takeaways
If your grief softened with time, that’s a common and healthy outcome.
If it didn’t, that doesn’t mean you’re broken, weak, or failing at grief. It means time alone wasn’t enough to help your system adapt to what fundamentally changed.
What helps isn't forcing yourself back to normal or comparing your path to other people's. It's understanding how grief works, reducing self-blame, and creating the conditions where the loss can integrate into your life rather than dominate it.
You don't need to avoid the hurt anymore. You can learn to carry it without it carrying you. And you don't have to figure it out alone.
P.S. If this post resonated, I’m pleased to launch my new self-paced and on-demand online workshop, Navigating Grief With Compassion, to help you find steadiness with your grief without feeling rushed, judged or pressured to '“move on”. Enrol here.