What Purpose Does Grief Serve?
Grief is painful, but it is not pointless. Psychologically and emotionally, grief helps the mind and heart reorganize reality after a meaningful loss. Below are the core purposes grief serves in human life. It also has an evolutionary function that contributes to social bonds and therefore increases the longevity of the species. If there was no feeling of loss then life would be more expendable. Grief often brings people together and enhances feelings of community.
1. Grief Honors Attachment
Grief is the echo of love and attachment. We grieve in proportion to how much someone or something mattered to us. In this sense, grief continues the bond and signals that the relationship was real and significant.
No attachment, no grief. Deep attachment, deep grief.
One purpose of grief is to bear witness to the value of what was lost.
2. Grief Helps the Psyche Update Reality
Loss creates a mismatch between the world as it is now and the world the mind still expects. Grief is the gradual process of reconciling those two realities. Each wave of grief helps integrate the truth that life has changed.
Without grieving, people can remain psychologically frozen or stuck in denial.
3. Grief Reorganizes Identity
Many losses affect not only our relationships but our identity, roles, and imagined future. Grief often raises questions like “Who am I now?” and “What does my life look like going forward?”
This is why grief can feel existential as well as emotional. Freud's famous statement, "The shadow of the object fell upon the ego" means that we deeply feel the absence of the lost person upon ourself./p>
4. Grief Signals the Need for Support
Grief naturally draws others in when support is available. Sadness and vulnerability communicate that a person should not carry the burden alone. From an evolutionary perspective, this likely strengthened social bonds and survival.
5. Grief Can Deepen Meaning and Perspective
While grief should not be romanticized, it often clarifies priorities, increases empathy, and deepens appreciation for relationships and time. Many people find that grief reshapes their values and life perspective.
6. Grief Metabolizes Emotional Energy
Unprocessed grief rarely disappears. Instead, it may show up as numbness, anxiety, irritability, depression, or physical symptoms. Grieving is a form of emotional digestion that allows the system to process and release pain.
In Summary
Grief is the process by which love learns to live with absence.
Understanding the purpose of grief can make the experience less frightening and more meaningful. Grief is not a sign of weakness; it is a natural human response to loss. Somtimes grief can be suppressed (unconscious) so that we are not very aware of it. A psychoanalytic approach to therapy can help with grief that has been suppressed.