While society tends to recognize and validate certain forms of loss, such as the death of a loved one or the end of a relationship, there exists a type of unacknowledged grief that remains largely invisible. Grief counselor and author of Invisible Loss: Recognizing and Healing the Unacknowledged Heartbreak of Everyday Grief, Christina Rasmussen, says she’s encountered these losses repeatedly in her work with clients.
She’s given this realm of grief a name: invisible losses. These quieter losses can deeply impact our sense of self and well-being without us even recognizing their magnitude, and they often stem from everyday experiences that don’t fit neatly into the conventional grief narrative.
These invisible losses are pervasive, showing up as humiliation in public settings or feeling overlooked or judged by a parent. They leave lasting emotional scars that affect our self-perception and behavior. Rasmussen also highlights how normalized but distressing behaviors, such as roughhousing with a sibling, can contribute to invisible losses as well.
The impact of unacknowledged grief
Unacknowledged grief, particularly invisible losses, can have a profound and lasting influence on the way we move through life. Rasmussen describes these experiences as emotional punches, subtle yet persistent, shaping our perception of ourselves and the world around us.
“In those moments, we actually have a shift in the perception of ourselves,” explains Rasmussen. “We change the way we think, the way we see the true nature of ourselves. We actually feel completely helpless.”
She points out that society often places greater emphasis on more visible forms of loss, such as death or divorce. But it’s not just society that dismisses these losses. One of the most striking aspects of unacknowledged grief is its hidden nature, and Rasmussen says these losses may not even be apparent to us.
However, without recognizing our own loss, Rasmussen says we end up feeling isolated and invalidated, unable to express our pain or seek support. The result? We walk away feeling powerless—doubting ourselves without really knowing why.
The long-term consequences of unacknowledged grief
Perhaps most concerning are the long-term consequences of unacknowledged grief. The danger of these invisible, “non-catastrophic” losses is that by not acknowledging them, we turn them catastrophic. We move into a way of operating that Rasmussen calls the “waiting room,” a state of emotional limbo where we retreat to protect ourselves from further harm.
“We go to a place where we can take emotional shelter and pull ourselves out of risky choices,” Rasmussen says. “We’re frozen in time, and we hide there. We shift from our highest level of thinking to a more primal response. We even feel it in our bodies. We can feel nausea before meetings or heart palpitations before a difficult conversation.”
When we don’t integrate our invisible losses, Rasmussen says, we end up living our lives in that holding pattern, that safe space, “We never leave that place because it becomes comfortable. We actually feel like it’s OK here.”
The “waiting room” isn’t a bad place, but it was only ever meant to be a temporary way of being.
Identifying invisible losses
Rasmussen says we have to identify our invisible losses in order to integrate them and move out of that “waiting room.” She recommends starting with these questions: What are you pulling away from? When are you holding back your thoughts? Where in your everyday life do you pull back from sharing yourself? What do you postpone or reschedule? Do you remember the first time you were told off? That first time feeling of shame and isolation? What about the first time you were shut down when you were expressing what you wanted in your life?
Using these questions as a starting point, Rasmussen typically leads her clients through a verbal or written cleanse. If you’re a verbal processor, speak with a trusted friend. If you prefer to write things down on your own, work through the questions on paper.
“When we start reading back or listening to ourselves, we hear the things that are on repeat inside our mind; we are absolutely able to find the loop, find that place where we’re stuck and find what I call the survivor mindset of thoughts,” Rasmussen says.
Because it can be hard to identify our own invisible losses, Rasmussen created The Invisible Loss Library where people can anonymously submit their losses.
“Once we start reading about someone else’s invisible loss, we can recognize our own,” says Rasmussen.
How to integrate our losses and move forward
Once we’ve identified our losses, Rasmussen says the next step is reframing the narratives through a strategy called mental stacking. By identifying the survival mindset that often emerges in response to invisible losses, we can begin to challenge its grip on our lives.
Mental stacking is the process of writing down your thoughts, identifying the traces of your invisible losses, and rewriting them: cleanse, pattern reframe. In her book, Rasmussen says that 80% of our thoughts in the “waiting room” are negative, but we can identify the scripts we’ve been playing out by writing them down. Once we pinpoint them, we can trace them back to those original invisible losses and rewrite the scripts.
Rasmussen gives an example in her book:
Cleanse: I’m a failure, and I will never succeed at work. It feels like no matter what I do nobody notices. I am so done with trying. What is the point of it anyway? No matter what I do, nothing ever changes. I must be dumb.
Pattern: I am a failure. I suck at everything.
Reframe: Even though I have been beaten down, I know that someone will notice my work ethic and my potential.
Confronting invisible loss
The process of reframing our thoughts takes time, says Rasmussen. “The way to know that you’re heading in the right direction out of the waiting room is when you’re starting to feel an increased willingness to go outside of your daily routine; when you have the readiness to try new things; when you say yes to new things.”
When we confront the invisible losses that have so deeply impacted us, we can debunk the insidious lies we’ve believed as a result and reclaim our identity and resilience. By acknowledging and integrating our invisible losses, we not only move out of that “waiting room” but also begin to trust our abilities and intuition again.
Photo by fizkes/Shutterstock.com
