The Grief of Growing

Why Healing Sometimes Feels Like Loss

Healing is often portrayed as an upward journey. The language around it is filled with light, liberation, and the promise of becoming whole. We are told that if we just keep going, we will feel better, freer, more ourselves.

But there is another side to healing. A quiet, tender truth that is less often spoken about.

Healing often hurts.
Not because you are doing it wrong, but because growth almost always involves loss.

Growth is a Death of Sorts

When you begin to heal, you do not just shed pain. You also begin to outgrow relationships, environments, beliefs, identities, and even versions of yourself that once felt like home.

This shedding can feel like betrayal. You may miss the comfort of behaviours you no longer let yourself engage in. You may feel lonely when old friendships no longer align. You may ache for the version of yourself that tolerated things just to stay connected.

In Internal Family Systems (IFS), we understand that we are made up of many parts. Some of these parts have spent years keeping us safe by staying silent, overachieving, fawning, or hiding. When we heal, we ask these parts to let go of their roles, and for many, that feels like a kind of death. These parts grieve their loss of purpose. They grieve the systems they helped us survive.

The Science of Ambiguous Loss

Dr. Pauline Boss coined the term "ambiguous loss" to describe a type of grief that does not come with a clear ending or a socially recognised ritual of closure. Ambiguous loss can be experienced when someone disappears emotionally but remains physically present, such as in cases of dementia. But it also applies to the inner world.

When we heal, we can experience ambiguous loss for identities we have outgrown. There is no funeral for the people we used to be. No ritual for the roles we have outlived. And yet, the ache is real.

This kind of grief can feel confusing because it is hard to name. Others may not recognise it. You may not even recognise it yourself. But it is grief nonetheless. And like all grief, it deserves gentleness and time.

Why the Nervous System Resists Change

From a neurobiological perspective, our nervous system is designed to seek familiarity. According to Dr. Bruce Perry, patterns of behaviour, especially those formed in early life, become encoded in the brain through repetition. Even when these patterns are painful, they feel safe simply because they are known.

Healing disrupts this familiarity. When you begin to set boundaries, speak your truth, or allow joy, your system may interpret these acts as dangerous. Not because they are harmful, but because they are unfamiliar.

This can create a deep sense of loss. The old ways of coping, even if they were hurting you, provided a structure. Letting them go can feel like standing in an open field with no map, no compass, and no guarantees.

The Inner Conflict of Becoming

There is a part of us that longs for healing and wholeness. But there are often other parts that fear what we might lose in the process. These parts remember what it cost us to speak up. They remember the pain of exclusion, the silence that followed our truth, or the shame we felt when we were not believed.

In IFS, we honour all parts. The part that is excited to grow, and the part that quietly says, “Please slow down, I am scared.” We do not push these parts aside. We listen. We witness their grief. We let them know they are not being left behind.

Healing is not a linear path. It is a spiral that moves through joy and sorrow, clarity and confusion, courage and contraction.

The Cultural Silence Around Healing Grief

In our culture, healing is often commodified. It is turned into checklists, success stories, and positive affirmations. There is little room to talk about the sorrow that can accompany transformation.

But grief is not a sign that you are moving in the wrong direction. It is often the clearest sign that you are releasing something your system once relied on.

As psychotherapist Francis Weller writes, “Grief is not a feeling we try to avoid, but a core human experience that helps us stay connected to what we value and love” (Weller, 2015). To grieve what is gone, even when you chose to let it go, is to honour your own becoming.

Letting the Heart Catch Up

There will be moments on the healing path where your body has moved forward, but your heart has not yet caught up. You may know intellectually that a relationship needed to end, or a pattern needed to shift, but still feel a deep longing for what was.

This is not regression. This is integration.

The soul does not move in straight lines. It circles, pauses, and revisits. The grief of growth is not an obstacle to healing, it is the healing.

Give yourself permission to miss the person you were, even as you celebrate the person you are becoming. Both can exist at once.

Grieving as a Sacred Part of Growth

You are not broken because you feel grief during healing. You are not weak for missing what you had to leave behind. You are simply human. And your grief is a sign of how deeply you feel, how much you have loved, and how profoundly you are transforming.

The next time you find yourself crying after a breakthrough, or aching after setting a boundary, remember this:

• Growth is not just about becoming.
• It is about releasing.
• And releasing hurts.

Let yourself mourn the layers you have outgrown. Let yourself feel the echo of what used to comfort you. In doing so, you are not moving backwards. You are simply making space for something new.

In abundant love and kindness for all gentle souls,

Angela xox

References

• Boss, P. (2006). Loss, Trauma, and Resilience: Therapeutic Work with Ambiguous Loss. W. W. Norton & Company.

• Maté, G. (2019). In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. North Atlantic Books.

• Perry, B. D., & Szalavitz, M. (2006). The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook. Basic Books.

• Weller, F. (2015). The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief. North Atlantic Books.

• Schwartz, R. C. (2021). No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model. Sounds True.