Why feelings come and go, contradict each other, or arrive out of nowhere

Grief rarely behaves the way people expect emotions to behave.

Feelings don’t move in a straight line.
They don’t stay consistent.
They don’t make sense.

You might feel okay in the morning and undone by afternoon.
Calm one day, furious the next.
Numb for weeks, then suddenly overwhelmed.

This doesn’t mean you’re unstable.
It means you’re grieving.

Grief doesn’t move in stages

You may have heard that grief comes in neat stages: shock, anger, denial, sadness, acceptance.

In real life, grief is messier than that.

Feelings overlap.
They repeat.
They retreat and return.

You can feel relief and devastation in the same hour.
Love and anger in the same breath.
Hope and despair in the same week.

Contradiction is not confusion.
It’s how grief actually works.

Why emotions arrive without warning

Grief sensitises the nervous system.

Your body and brain are constantly taking in information: sounds, smells, dates, places, memories - even when you’re not consciously thinking about them.

A feeling can be triggered by:

• a familiar song

• a random thought

• a quiet moment

• a smell or time of day

• something that reminds your body, not your mind

That’s why emotions can feel sudden and disproportionate.

They aren’t random.
They’re remembered.

Why feelings come and go

Grief is overwhelming.
No system can hold it all at once.

So your body regulates how much you feel, and when.

Sometimes it lets emotion through.
Sometimes it pulls the curtain back.

That ebb and flow isn’t avoidance.
It’s pacing.

Feeling less doesn’t mean you care less.
Feeling more doesn’t mean you’re going backwards.

It means your system is managing what it can.

When emotions contradict each other

You might notice:

• missing someone deeply and needing space from the pain

• loving someone and feeling angry at the same time

• wanting to remember and wanting to forget

• feeling grateful and resentful together

These aren’t moral failures.

They’re signs of complexity - and of love.

Grief doesn’t simplify feelings.
It multiplies them.

Why this can feel frightening

When emotions behave unpredictably, people often worry they’re losing control.

They ask:

• Why do I feel okay today?

• Why am I worse again?

• Why did that come out of nowhere?

What’s usually happening isn’t deterioration - it’s movement.

Grief shifts because it has to.
Staying in one emotional state forever would be unbearable.

A gentle reframe

You don’t need emotional consistency to be healing.

You don’t need to understand every feeling as it arrives.

And you don’t need to force yourself to stay in any emotion longer than your body allows.

Grief moves the way it does because it’s trying to carry something enormous without breaking you.

How to use this understanding

If emotions feel chaotic:

• you’re not failing

• you’re not regressing

• you’re not “doing grief wrong”

You’re responding to loss in a human way.

Some days will be heavier.
Some days will be lighter.
Neither cancels the other.

If your feelings don’t make sense today, that’s okay.
They don’t need to.

You’re allowed to feel what comes …
and to let it pass when it’s ready.