If you’ve recently been feeling emotionally overwhelmed and can’t quite explain why, I want to offer a gentle possibility: could you be experiencing cumulative grief from multiple losses?
When loss happens time and again – without enough time, space, or support to fully process each one – grief doesn’t disappear. It accumulates. And over time, that accumulation can make everything feel heavier than it should.
This is something I didn’t have the words to describe until I was already living inside of it: cumulative grief.
For a long time, I believed grief worked the way we’re often told it does. Something happens. You fall apart. You mourn. Eventually, you find your footing again and move forward.
But what if life doesn’t always follow this pattern?
What if just as you start to breathe again, something else is taken from you?
You may have experienced more than one loss – perhaps more than you ever expected to carry. And maybe what feels most exhausting isn’t any single event, but the way everything seems to accumulate.
You might find yourself wondering, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ without being able to point to a clear reason for your exhaustion or reduced capacity. On the outside, you appear to be coping. On the inside, you are constantly bracing – as if one more small thing would tip you over the edge.
If this is how you feel, then it may help to step back and look at the bigger picture. What if you aren’t struggling because you’re weak or failing at grief – but because you’ve been carrying too much, for too long?
Naming cumulative grief changed how I understood myself – and my overwhelm.
Read also ‘What if You’re Grieving What’s Still Here? Understanding Ambiguous Loss‘
When losses don’t come one at a time
Over the past few years, my losses didn’t arrive neatly spaced out. They came layered – each one arriving before I’d had time to process the last.
I lost people I loved. Relationships I believed would last. Versions of the future I had quietly planned my life around.
Five years ago, I was hit by a car driven by a colleague. In that moment, I didn’t just lose my health – I also lost the life I had known. What followed was the slow unravelling of so much more: friendships I thought were solid, my job, and the future I believed I was building.
Just as I began to make sense of those losses, three years later, we lost my mother-in-law. Another grief layered itself onto what was already there – alongside the loss of my mum more than ten years earlier. It was a stark reminder that loss doesn’t wait for us to be ready, and healing is rarely linear.
I remember thinking, ‘Why does this feel so much heavier than it should?’
What I didn’t realise then was that I wasn’t grieving one thing. I was grieving everything that came before it, too.
Read also ‘What if Mourning Begins in Advance? Anticipatory Grief in Invisible Losses‘
What is cumulative grief?
When losses are piling up, your grief isn’t just responding to the present moment, but to all the moments that never had enough time and space to be properly mourned.
Psychologists call this cumulative grief (or compounded grief) – when multiple losses happen close together without the space to enable one to be fully processed before another arrives. It isn’t about the size of any single loss. It’s about what happens when grief becomes ongoing.
Cumulative grief often goes unnamed because each loss may not seem like it should derail you. So, you keep going, even when your capacity is quietly shrinking.
Individually, each loss may feel survivable. Together, they create a layered emotional weight that can be deeply disorientating and exhausting.
These losses aren’t always obvious or publicly recognised. They can include:
- The death of loved ones or pets
- The end of important relationships
- Changes in health, identity, stability, or independence
- Dreams, plans, or futures that quietly fell apart
- Repeated disruptions that require constant adaptation
- Quiet goodbyes you never saw coming
- Collective losses – like the pandemic – that altered our sense of safety
Because these kinds of losses often don’t come with flowers or sympathy cards, they are easier for others to dismiss – and for us to minimise. Many fall under the category of ambiguous loss, which can be especially hard to grieve.
Cumulative grief also often includes secondary losses – the ripple effects that follow a primary loss, such as shifts of identity, security, or belonging. While secondary losses don’t always lead to cumulative grief, cumulative grief almost always involves numerous secondary losses.
Why cumulative grief can leave you feeling overwhelmed?
Grief requires energy. So does adapting to change. When both are happening repeatedly, your nervous system never gets a chance to settle before the next blow lands.
That’s not a personal failure. It’s what happens when your system has been asked to repeatedly adapt without having enough recovery time.
Instead of grieving one loss at a time, cumulative grief requires continuous adjustment. Multiple losses draw from the same emotional reserves, and eventually those reserves run low. The result is often a persistent sense of overwhelm, not because you’re incapable, but because you have been under sustained emotional strain.
Read also ‘The Weight You Carry – What if This Is Grief?‘
How cumulative grief shows up in the body
Cumulative grief doesn’t live only in your thoughts. It shows up physically.
This might look like:
- Constant fatigue or emotional exhaustion
- Difficulty focusing or making decisions
- Irritability, numbness, or heightened sensitivity
- Feeling affected by stressors that once felt manageable
These are common responses to cumulative grief, not signs that something is wrong with you.
I didn’t anticipate how physical cumulative grief would feel. Not just sadness, but exhaustion that sleep didn’t fix. A body that stayed tense and alert. Brain fog. A sense of being emotionally threadbare, as though one more small inconvenience could undo me entirely.
If you’ve ever surprised yourself by crying harder than expected, or reacting out of proportion to something that seems “small,” I want you to hear this clearly:
You are not overreacting. Nor are you weak or too sensitive. You are carrying a lot.
Your body has been doing its best to keep you functioning through repeated emotional disruptions. Feeling worn down doesn’t mean you’re failing at grief. It means you’ve been strong for a long time without enough relief.
When new losses reopen old wounds
Another hallmark of cumulative grief is how easily older pain can resurface.
You might think you’re reacting to what just happened, only to find yourself grieving something from years ago. A new loss doesn’t replace the old ones – it activates them, builds upon them. A memory, a date, a song can suddenly bring grief from years ago into the present, even something you thought you had already worked through. This can feel confusing. But often, it’s simply a reminder that what we lost mattered and still matters.
I experienced this after my accident, when a song unexpectedly brought up memories of my mum and left me in tears. In moments like that, it’s natural to wonder if we’re stuck, or even going backwards. But I want you to know that this doesn’t mean you’re failing. It’s a reminder that grief isn’t linear. It doesn’t resolve and disappear. It integrates. And when losses accumulate without enough space to be processed, the layers begin to communicate with each other.
This isn’t regression – it’s how grief works.
When cumulative grief continues without adequate support, the opportunity or space to process each loss, it can sometimes shift into what clinicians call complicated grief or prolonged grief disorder.
This isn’t a judgment or a label meant to make you feel ‘bad’ about your feelings. Rather, it’s a description used when intense grief persists and significantly interferes with daily life. Recognising this pattern can open the door to compassionate support. I’ll explore this more deeply in a future post.
Read also ‘What Grievers Really Need: How to Support Others and Yourself Through Grief‘
What helps when you’re living with cumulative grief
Once you recognise cumulative grief, a different question often follows: What am I meant to do with all of this?
I want to be clear – I’m not going to tell you how to cure cumulative grief. I don’t believe cumulative grief is something to fix. There’s no finish line, and you don’t need another strategy to master.
What helps with cumulative grief is gentler than that. Slower. Softer.
For me, living with cumulative grief began with naming all the losses – not just the most recent one. Saying to myself, ‘Of course, this feels heavy. Look at what I’ve been carrying’.
I stopped comparing my cumulative grief to anyone else’s. I let go of ‘at least’. Cumulative grief doesn’t respond well to minimising. It softens when it’s recognised.
While training as a Grief Educator with David Kessler, he often spoke about compartmentalising our losses when experiencing grief overload. This isn’t avoidance or denial; it’s often the only way to keep going without collapsing under the weight of dealing with everything at once. Every loss in our lives is its own story, its own relationship, its own heartbreak, and trying to hold them all together can blur their meaning and deepen the overwhelm.
You’re allowed to take this one piece at a time. That might mean setting aside small, intentional moments to focus on just one loss, or creating simple rituals – lighting a candle, writing things down, acknowledging anniversaries, taking a quiet walk – that honour each experience individually. And when your thoughts wander to other losses, gently redirect them back. Each loss will get its own time. This isn’t about pushing your feelings away; it’s about pacing them with kindness. Over time, and often with support, those separated pieces of grief can slowly be integrated into your life – not so they disappear, but so they become something you can carry while still finding moments of steadiness, meaning, and hope.
I also allowed rest to become part of grieving, rather than something I had to earn. When you’re living with cumulative grief, pausing isn’t laziness – it’s care. If this feels difficult, I invite you to listen to my Live talk with Evelyn Sherwood, where we explore how allowing ourselves to pause in grief can gently support healing.
Connection mattered, too. I talked with people who could sit with the discomfort instead of rushing me to move on. Peer support spaces can help you feel less alone and less misunderstood. That’s why I created the Grief Stories community – a safe place to speak honestly, listen deeply, and connect with others who understand the long, layered nature of grief.
None of this makes cumulative grief disappear.
But it can make living with cumulative grief feel less isolating – and a little more bearable.
Julie Budge speaks beautifully to this in her Grief Stories piece, where she shares the compounded experience of cumulative grief after losing both her brother Richard and her mum Christine. Her story is a powerful reminder that cumulative grief asks for courage – not to fix it, but to speak its truth.
If you’re still reading, this is what I want you to know
If you’re reading this and quietly thinking, ‘This explains so much,’ I want you to know that what you’re feeling has a name – cumulative grief – and it makes sense given what you’ve lived through.
Maybe you feel worn down by grief that doesn’t seem to have a single cause. If so, I want you to know that you’re not broken beyond repair.
If you feel like you’re grieving everything at once, there’s a reason for that.
Multiple losses – even ones that felt manageable at the time – can accumulate emotionally. Cumulative grief is real, and it deserves more attention.
Let me walk with you through it. Let me remind you that you’re not failing at grief.
You’re responding normally to an abnormal amount of loss.
And if today all you can do is keep going – gently, imperfectly – that is already enough.
Thank you and till the next blog post,
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