Post-COVID Effects & This Thing Called Grief

Even though the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic has ended, many people are still living with its long-term emotional, relational, and physical impacts. At This Thing Called Grief, we continue to witness how post-COVID realities shape grief, coping capacity, and the way people show up in their everyday lives.

Why Post-COVID Grief Is Still Emerging

Research shows that the pandemic created a form of collective, prolonged, and ambiguous grief—grief that doesn’t always have a clear beginning or end (Wallace et al., 2022). This includes grief connected to:

Loss of a loved one

Loss of health (long COVID, chronic fatigue, reduced functioning)

Loss of routine, identity, stability, and predictability

Loss of relationships that shifted or ended

Loss of community and belonging

Loss of time and developmental milestones (graduations, births, funerals, career steps)

Many are only now recognizing the emotional weight of these losses, long after the crisis has passed.

How Post-COVID Experiences Show Up Today

Clinicians and researchers note that post-COVID distress often appears as:

Emotional numbing or flatness after long periods of survival-mode functioning.

Increased anxiety, especially around health, social interactions, or uncertainty (Xiong et al., 2020).

Social withdrawal after years of isolation, masking, hyper-vigilance, or virtual living.

Reduced coping capacity, especially during transitions, holidays, or seasonal change.

Complicated grief, especially among those who experienced sudden death, traumatic hospitalizations, or could not be present at the bedside (Eisma et al., 2021).

Exhaustion and burnout, including among caregivers, parents, students, and helping professionals.

These patterns align with what we see at This Thing Called Grief: people navigating not only personal losses, but the invisible grief accumulated over years of disruption.

A Lived Example

A student recently shared that although “life is back to normal,” they can’t understand why friendships feel harder, motivation feels lower, and the holidays feel heavier. During the pandemic, they spent two years isolated in residence, lost a grandparent without being able to travel home, and missed all major milestones.

Today, they’re grieving the time they didn’t get, not just the people they lost.

This is grief—and it matters.

Another client shared that after surviving COVID-related hospitalization, they experience new fear around illness, crowds, and relying on others. Their body recovered, but the emotional imprint remains—a form of post-traumatic stress and health anxiety that research now recognizes as common (Park et al., 2023).

Thing Called Grief

Post-COVID grief is not something people “should be over by now.”

Research shows that delayed grief reactions emerge once the body is safe enough to feel again (Neimeyer, 2022).

We create space for people to explore:

Grief that never had time or permission

Stories that were interrupted or minimized

Burnout that now feels like emotional collapse

The quiet loneliness that surfaced after years of disconnection

The sense of “I should be coping better than this”

Our Approach

Our work is grounded in thanatology and social justice, trauma-informed practice, and the belief that grief is relational—not pathological.

At This Thing Called Grief, we support clients through:

One-to-one grief counselling

Support groups for students

Lived-experience-informed practice

Psycho-education on grief patterns post-COVID

Space to reconnect with community, identity, and coping capacity

You don’t have to navigate post-COVID grief alone.

Your experience is valid, and your story still matters.

APA References

Eisma, M. C., Tamminga, A., Smid, G. E., & Boelen, P. A. (2021). Acute grief after deaths due to COVID-19, natural causes and unnatural causes: An empirical comparison. Journal of Affective Disorders, 278, 54–56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2020.09.049

Neimeyer, R. A. (2022). Meaning reconstruction in bereavement: From principles to practice. Grief Matters, 25(1), 6–12.

Park, C. L., Russell, B. S., Fendrich, M., Finkelstein-Fox, L., Hutchison, M., & Becker, J. (2023). American pandemic stress, trauma, and post-traumatic growth: A year of COVID-19. Traumatology, 29(1), 84–95.

Wallace, C. L., Wladkowski, S. P., Gibson, A., & White, P. (2022). Grief during the COVID-19 pandemic: Daily stressors, relationship strain, and resilience. Families in Society, 103(1), 27–38.

Xiong, J., Lipsitz, O., Nasri, F., Lui, L. M. W., Gill, H., Phan, L., ... & McIntyre, R. S. (2020). Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on mental health in the general population: A systematic review. Journal of Affective Disorders, 277, 55–64.