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What Is Existential Grief and How Can Therapy Help?

September 17, 2025
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Grief is most often understood as something that follows a clear, visible loss: the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, or a significant life transition. However, there’s another form of grief that can be more difficult to name or explain, and may be overlooked even by those experiencing it; this is existential grief. It’s a deep sorrow tied to the loss of meaning we make in our lives, our sense of identity, and our place in the world.

This kind of grief can leave you feeling empty even when nothing “bad” has happened, or unsettled when life changes in ways that challenge your understanding of who you are. While existential grief can feel lonely or confusing, it can also be an opportunity to rediscover purpose, reconnect with your inner child or your values, and create meaning again.

What Is Existential Grief?

Existential grief arises from the loss or collapse of meaning. It can emerge during moments of transition or shifts in identity. At other times, it comes when you’re confronted with life’s bigger questions about mortality, purpose, freedom, and belonging. Unlike traditional grief, which follows an external event, existential grief is often internal and invisible, and felt deeply in the parts of us that create meaning out of life.

You might experience existential grief if:

As humans, we all experience different levels of pain, loss, or distress. However, this suffering can worsen when we lose touch with meaning in our lives (Frankl, 1946). Studies have found that meaning-making is strongly associated with psychological resilience, while disruptions in meaning are tied to depression, complicated grief, and distress (Ostafin & Proulx, 2020).

A contemplative person sitting alone by a cliff edge, gazing into the distance while processing deep emotions and life's meaning

How Existential Grief Differs from Traditional Grief

While traditional grief usually has a recognizable “object” (something or someone that is no longer with you, such as a loved one, job, or home), existential grief is more abstract. It may come from:

Since it doesn’t always look like what most people think of when it comes to grief, existential grief can be dismissed as a midlife crisis, depression, restlessness, or a personal flaw. However, the pain from loss of meaning or feeling meaningless is just as real as the grief we feel over more tangible losses.

The Link Between Existential Grief and the Inner Child

One unique aspect of existential grief is its connection to unmet needs from early life. The inner child is the part of us that carries our original innocence, hope, and need for safety and care. If you’ve experienced abuse, neglect, disconnection, or other childhood traumas, your inner child may hold unacknowledged grief.

When meaning feels fractured in adulthood, it is often tied to an earlier wound:

In these examples, existential grief is about more than losing meaning in the present; it’s about the resurfacing of old grief that the inner child never had space to process. Therapy can help connect these threads, allowing present grief to heal alongside childhood grief.

Why Does Existential Grief Feel So Overwhelming?

This type of grief strikes at the foundation of what it means to be human. It’s not only about what happened; it’s about what it means. That’s why it can feel destabilizing, even when there isn’t a concrete loss.

Individuals feel existential grief so deeply because:

A hand reaching to the sun representing existential psychotherapy.

How Therapy Can Help with Existential Grief

While existential grief can feel isolating, therapy provides a space to explore it without judgment. Approaches that may be particularly helpful include:

1. Existential Psychotherapy

This approach helps you confront questions of mortality, freedom, isolation, and meaning directly, rather than avoiding them (Schnipke & MacKay, 2023). It doesn’t offer easy answers, but it can help you live more authentically in the face of uncertainty. This includes making choices in daily life that align with your values, what’s important to you, who you want to be, and what you want out of life.

2. Inner Child Work

Exploring your inner child’s grief allows you to recognize where meaning collapsed early on and begin to restore hope, playfulness, purpose, and self-trust. This process helps you integrate past and present grief, care for your inner child, and move towards wholeness.

4. Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Practices

Mindfulness helps you sit with existential uncertainty without rushing to “solve” it. These practices encourage you to acknowledge grief and the feelings that come up as a result. Self-compassion enables you to approach your grief with gentleness and care rather than self-criticism. Incorporating mindfulness and self-compassion are often important components of therapy that help you carry changes from therapy into your daily life.

Practical Ways to Work Through Existential Grief

Alongside therapy, there are tangible practices that can help you begin to reconnect with meaning:

Moving Forward with Existential Grief

Existential grief is not a sign that something is wrong with you; it’s a sign that you’re alive and evolving. It means you’re in touch with the deepest layers of being human: the longing for meaning, belonging, and authenticity.

The work of healing isn’t to erase grief but to listen to what it’s asking of you. With compassionate support, you can learn to hold both the sorrow of what’s been lost and the possibility of what’s still to come.

A woman at the therapist's office, working through existential grief with existential therapy.

Finding Support for Existential Grief

If you’re navigating existential grief, know that you don’t have to do it alone. Working with a therapist who specializes in existential therapy and grief support can help you heal and find meaning again.

Dr. David Zacharias at Existential Psychiatry offers compassionate, evidence-based care to help you explore grief, meaning, and the deeper questions of life. Dr. Zacharias has provided compassionate patient-centered care for over twenty years, supporting individuals through PTSD and trauma recovery, anxiety, depression, OCD, and loss. He provides therapy, diagnostic assessment, and medication management in-person in the Greater Seattle-Tacoma area and online across Washington state. To begin therapy or if you have any questions, please schedule a free consultation.

Written by Existential Psychiatry Staff

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