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Episode 57: Grief Before Loss: What Anticipatory Grief Actually Looks Like
6 Plays22 minutes ago
In this episode, I talk about one of the most painful and unspoken parts of caregiving: grieving a parent who is still alive. I walk you through what anticipatory grief really is, why it feels so isolating, and the thoughts and emotions many caregivers are too afraid to say out loud. You’ll hear why nothing is wrong with you, even if your feelings feel confusing or heavy. Most importantly, I share simple, grounded ways to help you process what you’re carrying so you don’t have to hold it alone.
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Transcript
Introduction to Anticipatory Grief
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There's a sentence you've probably never said out loud. You've thought it, you've pushed it down, you felt ashamed a bit, but you haven't said it. It goes something like this.
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I'm already grieving her and she's still alive. Or this one. I miss the mother I used to have and the woman in front of me feels like a stranger. Or the one that scares you the most.
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Some part of me, the part I would never tell anyone about, just wants this to be over. if any of those sentences just made your test tighten, I want you to take a breath because today we are going to talk about the loneliest emotion in caregiving.
00:00:41
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The one nobody told you was coming.
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The one nobody gives you permission to feel. The one that has a name, it's called anticipatory grief. And by the end of this episode, I want you to know three things.
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One, you are not crazy. Two, you are not a bad daughter. And three, you are not alone.
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Welcome back to the Aging
Defining and Naming Anticipatory Grief
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Parent Playbook. I am Dr. Barbara Sparacino. If you are new here, i am a triple board certified psychiatrist. I trained in adult psychiatry at Temple University, where I served as chief resident of academics.
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And I completed my fellowship in geriatric psychiatry at the University of Miami. I am also board certified in addiction medicine. And outside of all that, I am the daughter of aging parents myself.
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This podcast exists for one reason, to be the voice in your ear when you are in the parking lot of the doctor's office, when you are folding laundry at 11 o'clock at night, when you are lying awake wondering if you are the only person in the world who feels the way you feel right now.
00:01:59
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I'm here to let you know you are not. Today's episode is one I have wanted to record for a long time because in my work with daughters caring for aging parents, this is a topic that gets whispered.
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Not asked, and not discussed, whispered. Usually towards the end of the session when someone has been brave enough to say the thing she's been caring alone.
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And every single time when I name what she's feeling, I watch her shoulders drop and relax. Sometimes she cries.
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She usually lets out a sigh. and Most of the time she says some version of the same sentence. I thought it was just me. And no, it's not just
Challenges of Unacknowledged Grief
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you. It has a name and today you're going to hear it.
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So in part one, I want to define what anticipatory grief actually is. So let's start with the simple part, the clinical part, because as a psychiatrist, I want you to have the language.
00:03:02
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Anticipatory grief is grief that begins before loss, right? It's the morning you do while the person you love is still right in front of you. It's that slow, sometimes terrible recognition that the person you knew, the person who raised you, the person who was your mother or your father is changing.
00:03:22
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Disappearing bit by bit, becoming someone you have to learn how to love all over again. researchers Researchers have a phrase for this. They call it watching a thousand little deaths.
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Every time your mother forgets your child's name, little death. Every time your father needs help with a button, little death.
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Every time you walk into the kitchen and realize she has not noticed you came in, A little death. Every time the person you used to call for advice becomes a person you have to give the advice to.
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little death. And here's what nobody told you. You are allowed to grieve every single one of these. In our culture, we have one socially acceptable kind of grief.
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The comeback times and the end. after a funeral. There are casseroles, there are condolence cards, there is a script. People know what to say to you even when they say it badly.
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But anticipatory grief has none of that. There is no funeral, there is no card, there is no acceptable way to walk into work and say, I'm losing my mother a little bit at a time and it's breaking my heart.
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Oh, and she's still alive.
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So you don't say it, you carry it, you smile in meetings, you answer the texts, you make the appointments, you show up at our house with groceries and inside quietly you are mourning someone who is sitting right across you.
Complex Emotions in Caregiving
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That is anticipatory grief and it is real. And it is one of the most studied, most documented, most under discussed emotional experiences in the entire field of geriatric psychiatry.
00:05:28
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And now part two, I want to talk about the things you feel that you cannot say, right? I want to do something a little different in this section. I want to read you a short list and I want you to notice which ones land in your chest.
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You don't have to nod, you do not have to agree, you can just listen. And if one of these is the sentence you've been carrying, I want you to know that I've heard it from hundreds of women, children.
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It does not make you who you are afraid you are. Here we go. Some part of me wants this to be over. That is one of the heaviest. And almost every long-term caregiver feels it at some point.
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It does not mean you want your parent to die. It means you want the suffering, theirs and yours to end. Those are different things. Your nervous system cannot always tell the difference.
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You and I can. I'm angry at her and she did not do anything wrong. Anger is one of the most reliable companions of grief. You're not angry at her. You're angry at the disease, at the fairness, at the loss of who she used to be, at the body that is failing her, at the system that is failing both of you.
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The anger has to land somewhere. And unfortunately, it sometimes lands on the person you love the most.
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I miss her even though she's right here. This is the most accurate sentence in caregiving. The mother you knew is not the mother in front of you.
00:07:11
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Both of those statements can be true at the same time. You are allowed to grieve the first one while caring for the second. I don't recognize myself anymore. This one I want to spend a little extra time on.
00:07:26
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Because caregiver burnout in the literature is usually described as exhaustion. And it is exhaustion. But for daughters in particular, it's also identity loss.
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You used to be a professional, a wife, a mother, a friend, a woman with hobbies and inside jokes and a body she liked. And then caregiving moved in. And one by one, those parts of you went quiet.
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You didn't abandon them. They got crowded out. There is a difference.
Isolation and the Need for Community
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And you can find your way back.
00:08:02
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I'm supposed to be grateful that she's still here. And I don't always feel grateful.
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Gratitude and grief are not opposites. They live in the same room. You can be grateful she's here and exhausted by what staying here is costing her and you.
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Both can be true. If any of those sentences just hit you here, I want you to put your hand there for a moment, just rest it there. You are not alone in this. You are in the company of every daughter and son who has ever loved a parent through their decline, which is statistically almost every daughter who has ever lived.
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Part three. why your friends may not get it. One of the things I hear most often from the women I work with is some version of like, I cannot talk to anyone about this.
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Their best friends don't get it because their parents are still healthy. Their parents don't get it because they are tired of hearing about it. Their siblings don't get it because they are not in the trenches the way you are.
00:09:16
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Their colleagues don't get it because work supposed to be where you escape the rest of your life. Their mothers cannot get it because their mothers are the situation.
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So you are surrounded by people and alone. There are reasons for this and I want to share them with you because understanding why people cannot meet you here will help you stop expecting them to.
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Reason one, Antipsetory grief is invisible. There is no event for people to react to. Nobody died. Nobody got diagnosis last week. From the outside, everything looks fine.
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So when you say I'm struggling, people don't have a framework for what you need. It wasn't too. People are afraid of it. Watching you go through this reminds them that one day they will go through it too with their own parent, their own body.
00:10:19
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Sometimes they'll pull away, not because they don't love you, but because they cannot bear to look directly at is what is coming for them. And reason three, we have a cultural script that says caring for aging parents is noble, beautiful, sacred experience.
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And it is, but it is also brutal and exhausting and lonely. And our culture has not made room for both things to be true at once. So when you tell the truth about how hard it is people get uncomfortable because this script does not include that part.
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So what do you do with all of that? You stop looking for understanding in the wrong room. Your college roommate may love you, but she cannot meet you here.
00:11:11
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Your husband may love you, but if his parents are healthy, he can't meet you here either. Your therapist might be able to, a good caregiver coach might be able to, other women in the same season as you absolutely can.
Support and Recommendations for Caregivers
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This is one of the reasons I built what I built. Not because women need more education. They have read every article, they have memorized every checklist. What they need is a room, a room where they do not have to translate,
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where they do not have to say where they can say the and unsayable thing and watch someone nod because she has been carrying it too. If you have been feeling like you are losing your mind, you are not.
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You are responding accurately to a situation that almost no one around you understands. The problem isn't your feelings. The problem is the rooms you have been trying to feel them in.
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So what to do with it? So you have a name for what you are feeling, anticipatory grief. You know you are not alone. You know your friends and family may not be the right people to carry this with you.
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Now what? I wanna give you four things you can do starting tonight. Number one, name it out loud, even if it's just to yourself. In therapy, we have a phrase, name it detainment.
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There is real neuroscience behind this. What you give an emotion, And when you give an emotion a name, move it from the part of your brain that is in panic mode to the part of your brain that is in problem solving mode.
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So tonight when you are alone, I want you to say it out loud. I'm grieving my mother and she's still alive. Or I'm grieving my father and he is still alive.
00:13:05
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Watch what happens in your body. Sometimes the relief is immediate. Number two. Stop trying to be grateful and grieving at the same time, in the same moment, in the same space.
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You do not have to feel grateful while you are feeling sad. You can have a sad hour. You can have a grateful hour. You can have a furious hour. They do not have to coexist in the same minute.
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Trying to feel two opposite things at once is exhausting. It is one of the reasons you feel so depleted. Let one feeling have you for a while.
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The next one will come on its own. Number three, find one person who can hear it. Just one. It does not have to be a whole community. And it does not have to be a perfect therapist.
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Is there one? It can be one woman who has been through this one trusted clerk claim clergy person. one cousin, one online support group, one coach, the relief of being heard by one person who actually understands it is enormous, bigger than you think it will be.
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Number four, stop expecting yourself to be the daughter you were before this started. You are no longer that woman. Not because you've done anything wrong, but because no one walks through what you are walking through and stays the same.
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Some of who you were before is going to be different on the other side. Some of it will come back. Some of it will be replaced by something deeper, harder won, and frankly, more interesting.
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That is the work of this season. It is not extra. It is the point.
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So let's bring it home. Here is what I want you to take with you today. One, anticipatory grief is real. It has a name.
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You are not crazy. Two, the unspeakable feelings include some part of you wanting this to be over. That's normal.
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They do not make you a bad daughter. They make you a human one. Three, the reason you feel alone is not because something is wrong with you. It is because the people around you do not have the framework, the perspective to meet you here.
00:15:41
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Four, there are four things you can do tonight. Remember, name it. Stop forcing gratitude and grief to coexist. Find one person who gets it and let yourself be changed by this.
00:15:54
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If anything in this episode felt like it was written for you, I want to give you something. It's called the caregiver burnout self-assessment. It's free. It's short. It walks you through 18 most reliable signs that anticipatory grief and caregiver burnout are running your life right now.
00:16:14
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Even when you haven't been able to name it. To get it, comment the word burnout on any of my Instagram posts this week, or send me a DM with the word burnout.
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I'll send you the assessment right over. This is the assessment I wish every daughter had access to before her first crisis. I built it for you. It's yours.
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Before we close, I want to say one more thing. If today's episode hit hard and you're sitting in your car or in your kitchen or in bed feeling something you have not been kicked something you've been carrying alone for a long time, I want you to know something.
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The fact that you love your mother enough to grieve her now before she's gone is the most profound evidence of love I know. The grief is the love.
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They have the same thing. You are not losing your mind. You are losing your mother.
Closing Affirmations
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And the part of you that is grieving is the part of you that has loved her best.
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I see you. i am proud of you. And I'm right here with you. This is the Aging Parent Playbook. I'm Dr. Barbara Sparacino, psychiatrist, coach, daughter.
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I will see you next week. Take care.