August 31st is National Grief Awareness Day: Understanding Grief and How to Seek Help

Every August 31st, a quiet observance asks something more of us than a moment of sympathy. National Grief Awareness Day was founded in 2014 by Angie Cartwright, who wanted loss to be talked about openly instead of tucked behind closed doors ¹⁶.

If you are reading this, you may be the one carrying the loss, or you may be watching someone you love carry it. Maybe it has been six months. Maybe three years. And maybe a small voice keeps asking, is this still normal, or is something else going on?

That question deserves a real answer, not a platitude. This article is here to help you tell the difference between grief that is moving, even slowly, and grief that has gotten stuck, and to show you what kinds of help actually work when it has.

Here is the part most people are not told clearly: healthy grief is rarely tidy. It is not a five-step staircase. It does not move in a straight line, and it does not graduate on a schedule.

A healthy grief response can include waves of sadness that show up out of nowhere, a tightness in the chest when you pass a familiar street, sleep that feels thinner than it used to, and stretches of time when you actually feel okay, followed by guilt for feeling okay.

You might cry at a song one week and laugh genuinely at a friend’s joke the next. Both belong. The CDC describes coping in practical terms: leaning on others, keeping some daily routine, finding small ways to remember the person, and reaching for professional help when you need it ¹.

The signal that grief is still moving, even when it feels stuck, is usually this: the intensity softens unevenly over time. You sleep through the night occasionally. You notice the taste of your coffee again. You can think about the person without your whole day collapsing.

That is grief doing what grief does. Slow, uneven, deeply personal, and shaped by your culture, your relationships, and the specific shape of the loss ⁷. If that sounds like where you are, you are not broken. You are grieving, and grieving is allowed to take the time it takes.

If grief has stopped moving, the good news is that there are therapies designed specifically for that. Not generic supportive listening. Not advice to journal more. Real, structured approaches with evidence behind them.

The two most studied psychotherapies for prolonged grief are grief-focused cognitive behavioral therapy and EMDR. A scoping review of EMDR for prolonged and complicated grief found that CBT and EMDR were equally effective in reducing grief symptoms, trauma symptoms, and distress, with integrated EMDR plus CBT approaches showing particular benefit for people bereaved by homicide and other traumatic losses ⁹. A broader review of psychotherapeutic interventions for PGD reaches a similar conclusion: targeted psychotherapy reduces prolonged grief symptoms in ways that general supportive care often does not ⁸.

What does that actually look like in a room? Grief-focused CBT helps you gently approach the memories and reminders you have been avoiding, while working on the thoughts that keep the loss locked in place, things like guilt, self-blame, or the belief that moving forward means abandoning the person. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation to help your nervous system reprocess the moments of the loss that still feel raw, like the phone call, the hospital room, the empty driveway.

Underneath the specific therapy, there are usually other layers of care running alongside. Medication management when sleep or depression is severe enough to block engagement in therapy. Somatic work to help a body that has been on high alert finally come down. Peer or mutual support groups, which an NIH chapter on bereavement programs describes as offering peer exchange, coping strategies, and a renewed sense of personal worth ¹⁰. None of these replace targeted therapy for stuck grief, but they hold up the rest of you while the deeper work happens.

Here is the honest part. A 2025 umbrella review of bereavement interventions found that most were rated positive-conditional, meaning they help under certain conditions and for certain people, rather than universally ¹². That is why the type of care matters so much. Generic grief support is not the same as evidence-based treatment for prolonged grief disorder, and if you have been in the first for a while without relief, asking about the second is a reasonable next step.

Most grief, even hard grief, does not need residential treatment. Weekly therapy, a peer group, a trusted physician, and the slow work of time carry the majority of people forward. We want to say that clearly before anything else in this section.

There is a smaller group, though, for whom outpatient care has not been enough. You may recognize them, or recognize yourself in them. A year of weekly sessions has not moved the needle. Sleep is gone. Work is slipping. Co-occurring depression, trauma symptoms, or substance use have layered on top of the loss, and the pieces are now tangled enough that an hour a week cannot reach them all ⁶.

That is the point where a higher level of care earns its place. At Bridges to Recovery, the adults who arrive after a significant loss usually share a pattern: treatment-resistant symptoms, real functional decline, and more than one diagnosis interacting at once. Our model is built for that complexity. Comprehensive neuropsychological assessment up front, a dedicated psychiatrist, at least five individual therapy sessions weekly, and integration of grief-focused CBT, EMDR, and somatic work inside a six-client residence where the nervous system can actually settle ^{8, 9}.

If outpatient care has plateaued and life is narrowing, that is the signal to ask about more, not to try harder at the same level.

If you have read this far and something in your chest is saying yes, this is me, here is a short list of steps you can take in the next seven days.

1. Start with your primary care doctor. Tell them honestly how long it has been, how you are sleeping, and what has changed in your daily functioning. NIMH suggests reaching out when distressing symptoms last two weeks or more, which most people pass without realizing it ².
2. Ask specifically about grief-focused therapy, not just any therapist with an opening. The difference in outcomes is real ⁸.
3. Consider a peer or mutual support group as a parallel layer, not a replacement ¹⁰. Online options exist if in-person feels like too much right now ¹³.
4. If you have already tried weekly therapy and feel stuck, ask about a higher level of care. That is a reasonable, informed question, not a failure.