Ask Julia: Why Does Grief Make Me Feel Like Someone I Don't Recognise?
Fear, fury, jealousy and numbness, often all at once. Why grief can turn you into a version of yourself you don't know, and the simple practice of naming what you feel.
Written by
Julia Samuel MBE
In this article
Key takeaways
- Emotions are messengers. They put the body on alert when something is wrong, and after a death many arrive at once.
- The most common and least recognised emotion in grief is fear.
- Grief can also bring fury, and even jealousy of other couples, and it can make you a version of yourself you don't recognise or like. That is grief, not who you really are.
- My one tip: name what you're feeling, as precisely as you can. Research shows that putting feelings into words reduces their intensity.
- Then turn to yourself with compassion, not criticism.
Watch Julia answer
Read the full conversation
Interviewer: So Julia, it would be lovely to discuss a bit more about the different emotions people often experience when they go through grief.
Julia: The emotions in our body are transmitters of information. And the purpose of them is to put our body on alert or if something is up. And I think the most common and unrecognised grief emotion is fear. And that can go from being scared to being terrorised, to feeling properly terrified. And then it comes with tons of other feelings that you often have at the same time. People can feel furious. They can be angry. They can be sad. They can feel immense despair. They can feel numb. They can feel like they can't concentrate. Often it affects all their behaviour so they're not sleeping well so then they can't process things so well. They don't eat properly so then they have low blood sugar and spikes. So it can be a real kind of cocktail of complex feelings that people don't have the emotional intelligence or being able to name them. One of the things I hope from the app is by going through each one, although grief isn't tidy, if we can take each feeling out and help people find a way of recognising it in themselves and naming it for themselves, then that will help them navigate their internal processes without the sudden kind of starts of fear of what is wrong with me. I am going mad right now but actually if they can say, okay I'm feeling really frightened, that's because I've been thrown into this very frightening new situation that's normal that I should feel frightened. Kind of name your fear. Fear is anticipation of being hurt. I feel hurt. And I'm anticipating my future without this person that I love so that makes sense. And then now what can I do to support myself given that I'm frightened? And often it's things that come for you. If I'm really sad, let yourself cry. So the emotions are there for a reason but when they come all together, all banged up against each other, they are very confusing and debilitating.
Interviewer: So a lot of it really stems out of this fear and that's where anger can come from. It's all just different ways of representing that fear, even the numbness to try and suppress it.
Julia: Absolutely. So fear is one of the big ones. Anger can come from the circumstances of the death. It can come from the relationship with the person that's died. It can come from feeling hurt and just furious they've gone and died on me. I had a client who said to me, I was never really angry with my husband in his lifetime, but I could dig him up and kill him now because he's left me. Also, you become this version of yourself that you didn't know and you really don't like. I think I talk about that in the app, that you get jealous when you see couples or that before you went, ah, and now you go, ah. So it's so complicated and intense.
Interviewer: Yeah. And so a way to work with that one of the first steps is just recognizing that. Recognizing how you feel.
Julia: Normalizing it, yeah. And not turning on yourself. So when I talk about the shitty committee, the thing is to turn to yourself with self-compassion. Go, oh, like pull me. Oh, that really hurts. Rather than go, oh, I'm this horrible person now and the grief is ruining me.
Transcribed automatically; may contain small errors.
It comes up most often with people whose husband, wife or partner has died. When fear, anger, sadness, numbness and exhaustion arrive together, they are confusing and debilitating. It's no wonder you don't feel like yourself.
Emotions are messengers
We tend to think of feelings as things that happen to us. It helps to see them differently.
The emotions in our body are transmitters of information. And the purpose of them is to put our body on alert or if something is up.
— From my answer in the video
When the person you share your life with dies, something is very much up. Your body goes on alert, and fear is at the centre of it. It can range from feeling scared to feeling properly terrified. The writer C.S. Lewis, after his wife died, put it perfectly: "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear." The neuroscientist Mary-Frances O'Connor explains why: the loss of a close attachment triggers the body's stress response, raising stress hormones and keeping you on edge.
A cocktail of feelings
Fear rarely arrives alone. People feel furious, angry, sad, and full of despair. They feel numb. They can't concentrate. And it affects everything they do: they don't sleep well, so they can't process things; they don't eat properly, so their blood sugar spikes and crashes. It becomes a real cocktail of complex feelings, and most of us have never been taught the words for them.
That's when people start to think, what is wrong with me? I'm going mad. You're not. You've been thrown into a frightening new situation, and it's normal to feel frightened.
Anger, jealousy and the version of you that you don't like
Anger can come from the circumstances of the death, from the relationship itself, or simply from the hurt of being left. One woman told me she'd never really been angry with her husband in his lifetime, but she was furious with him now, because he had died and left her.
Grief can also bring feelings you're ashamed of. Many people whose partner has died find that when they see a couple holding hands, where once they'd have felt warmth, they now feel a stab of jealousy. You become a version of yourself you didn't know, and you really don't like. That's so common, and it's grief speaking, not your character.
Why naming your feelings helps
Naming a feeling sounds almost too simple, but it's powerful. The psychiatrist Dan Siegel calls it "name it to tame it". And there's evidence behind it: in a study at UCLA, Matthew Lieberman and colleagues found that when people put their feelings into words, activity in the amygdala, the brain's alarm system, reduced.
Kind of name your fear. Fear is anticipation of being hurt.
— From my answer in the video
When you can say, I'm frightened because I'm facing a future without the person I love, the feeling starts to make sense. And once it makes sense, you can ask what you need.
My one tip: name the feeling, then answer it
- Pause and notice. Where do you feel it in your body: your chest, your stomach, your throat?
- Name it precisely. Not "I feel awful", but "I feel frightened", "I feel furious", "I feel jealous".
- Add the reason. "…because I'm facing my future without him."
- Tell yourself it makes sense. "Of course I feel this. Anyone would."
- Ask what you need, given that you feel this. If you're sad, let yourself cry. If you're frightened, slow your breathing or call someone. If you're angry, move your body or write it down.
- Offer yourself compassion. Put a hand on your chest and say, "That really hurts."
Talk back to your inner critic
The hardest part is often what we say to ourselves about these feelings: I'm a horrible person now. Grief is ruining me. I call that voice the "shitty committee". The answer to it isn't to argue, but to turn towards yourself with the kindness you'd offer a friend.
the thing is to turn to yourself with self-compassion.
— From my answer in the video
Normalise what you're feeling, and don't turn on yourself. The person you are hasn't gone. They're grieving.
How Grief Works can help
In the Grief Works programme, Session 4, Tuning into your emotions, helps you recognise and name the cocktail of feelings, Session 5, Soothing fear, and Session 6, Managing anger, take the two biggest ones in turn, and the understand your emotions check-in tool is there on the days you can't tell what you're feeling. Our counsellors are available by 1-to-1 chat from 9am to 9pm every day.
If you need to talk to someone now
- Samaritans: 116 123, free, day or night
- Shout: text SHOUT to 85258, free, 24/7
- Cruse Bereavement Support: 0808 808 1677
Common questions
Why does grief feel like fear?
Can grief change your personality?
Why am I jealous of other couples since my partner died?
How we wrote and reviewed this article
Julia Samuel MBE wrote this article from her own answer in the filmed conversation above, adding research and practical guidance. Lines marked "From my answer in the video" are her words as she spoke them.
Sources
- Julia Samuel, filmed Grief Works conversation, "Why Have I Become Someone I Don't Recognise?" (video, 3.5 minutes)
- M. D. Lieberman et al. (2007), "Putting feelings into words: affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli", Psychological Science, 18(5)
- D. J. Siegel and T. P. Bryson, The Whole-Brain Child (2011)
- C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (1961)
- Mary-Frances O'Connor, The Grieving Brain (2022)
Article history
- 17 September 2026: Updated
- 18 August 2026: Published
About the author
Written by
Julia Samuel MBE
Psychotherapist and co-creator of Grief Works
One of the world's most respected grief psychotherapists, with over 35 years' experience. Former Vice President of the BACP, MBE for services to the bereaved, Founder Patron of Child Bereavement UK, and bestselling author of Grief Works and This Too Shall Pass.
