Understanding the Many Forms of Grief
ShrinkChicks
Jennifer Chaiken, LMFT and Emmalee Bierly, LMFT
4.9 • 755 Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2026
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on ShrinkChicks, Em and Jen explore grief; not just the kind that follows death, but the many forms of loss that shape our lives. From pregnancy loss to complicated family relationships to the life you imagined but didn’t get, grief can surface in ways people don’t always expect or understand.
They talk through different types of grief, including anticipatory grief, ambiguous grief, traumatic grief, and disenfranchised grief, and why many people feel guilty grieving something that others might not recognize as a “real” loss. The conversation also touches on how grief resurfaces during milestones, why long-term grief is normal, and how a culture focused on positivity can make it harder to honor what hurts.
Listener questions include coping with miscarriage, grieving a parent who is still alive but emotionally unavailable, navigating suicide loss, and mourning the future you thought you’d have.
Tune in to gain insight, awareness, and action! PS: Fast forward to around 3:30 to skip the intro and get straight to today’s content.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | How do we make space for grief at a culture that rewards staying positive and moving on quickly? |
| 0:05.7 | You came up with a good thing for this. I had never heard before. |
| 0:08.0 | Yeah. To treat grief like weather and not a mindset, storms come and go. |
| 0:15.0 | It's not like we hit one big storm and we're like, storms are never going to happen again. |
| 0:19.5 | You know the storm is going to come again, |
| 0:21.0 | but there will also be days that will be sunny. |
| 0:33.5 | Welcome back to another episode of shrink chicks. Take a seat on our virtual therapy couch and get ready to learn all about, well, you. |
| 0:41.4 | I'm Emily Beirley. |
| 0:42.5 | And I'm Jennifer Chakin. |
| 0:43.8 | And we're both licensed, marriage and family therapist and relationship experts. |
| 0:47.6 | We're the owners and founders of the therapy group, a nationwide psychotherapy practice with down-to-earth therapists just like us. |
| 0:55.1 | Your session is starting, so get ready to know yourself and grow yourself. |
| 1:01.9 | I used to wake up sneezing almost every morning, and I kept thinking, do I suddenly have seasonal |
| 1:06.4 | allergies inside my own home? I'd clean, I'd vacuum, I'd wash the sheets, and there would be no change. That's when I realized it might not be the surfaces, it might be the air. So I'm so excited to tell you about our newest sponsor air doctor. It made all the difference in my house, and it's now the only air purifier we use in our home. Let me tell you what I've noticed so far. Fewer random odors lingering in the kitchen, |
| 1:28.8 | weightless congestion when I wake up, |
| 1:30.4 | and I feel like I'm sleeping more deeply. |
| 1:32.4 | But most importantly, the peace of mind knowing the air my family is breathing |
| 1:36.1 | is actually being filtered well. |
| 1:37.8 | And as a mom to a kiddo with asthma, that's huge for us. |
| 1:41.1 | Air doctor uses a powerful three-stage filtration system |
| 1:44.1 | that captures particles about 100 times smaller than what a typical air purifier is removed. |
| 1:49.8 | It traps things you don't want floating around. Dust, pollen, pet dander, mold spores, bacteria, viruses, even VOC's and odor. |
... |
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