Why “I Know How You Feel” Hurts in Grief

One of the most disrespectful things you can say to someone who is grieving is, “I know how you feel.” People say it because they want to connect.

They say it because they feel helpless.

They say it because silence feels awkward. 

But when your heart has been shattered, those words rarely comfort you.

They feel like your pain is being reduced. 

When Austin died, I felt that loss at 100 percent as his aunt and as someone who loved him deeply. Brittani felt that loss at 100 percent as his cousin, his caregiver, and his friend. Erica felt that loss at 100 percent as his mother, the one who carried him and knew him in a way no one else could. All of us were devastated. All of us were grieving the same person. And not one of us knew what the other was feeling. 

We could see each other’s tears. We could hear the sobbing. We could feel the shock in the room. But we did not know the private thoughts in each other’s heads. We did not know the weight of the memories each of us carried. It would have been wrong for any of us to say, “I know how you feel,” just because we were standing in the same space. 

I see people constantly say, “Grief is individual.” And they are right, but most people do not understand what that really means. It does not mean grief is random. It does not mean no one can teach you how to move through it. It does not mean you get to avoid it because yours looks different. It means your grief is built on your relationship. It is shaped by the history you had, the conversations you shared, the ones you did not share, the love, the tension, the hopes, and the disappointments. Your grief belongs to the story the two of you had together. 

Grief is experienced at 100 percent, but it is experienced at 100 percent inside your relationship. My grief was mine. Brittani’s was hers. Erica’s was hers. None of us could step inside the other’s heart and measure it. 

And here is the part we do not talk about enough. 

There is a real fear of letting people into your grief. There is a fear that someone who thinks they “know how you feel” will hijack your pain and make it about them. And that happens a lot. People walk into the room and take over. They start making decisions. They start telling you what you should do. They talk louder. They move faster. They assume you are too weak to handle it. So they control the situation. 

But no one has the right to control your grief. No one has the right to speak over it, define it, rush it, or take it from you. Your grief is not a community project. It is not public property. It belongs to you. 

There is also a fear that when someone like me stands up and teaches about grief, I am claiming to be the expert on your experience. Let me be clear. I am an expert on grief. I understand how it works in the body. I understand how it shows up in the nervous system. I understand the patterns of avoidance, resistance, and shutdown. But I am not the expert on your specific grief. And neither is anyone else. 

You are the expert on your relationship. You are the one who lived it. You are the one who carries the memories. No one can replace that. No one can override that. 

Yes, you need to protect your grief. You need boundaries. You need to guard it from people who minimize it or try to take control. But you also need to understand your grief. You need to learn how it moves. You need to learn what it is doing inside you. You need to know how to process it instead of letting it sit unspoken in your body. 

And this is where many people get stuck. They reject help because they are afraid of being robbed of their grieving experience. They think getting support means giving someone else authority over their pain. So they isolate. They shut down. They decide they will do it alone. 

But protecting your grief does not mean avoiding guidance. It means choosing the right guidance. It means working with someone who respects that your grief is yours while helping you understand how to move it in a healthy way. 

No one gets to hijack your grief. 
No one gets to compare it. 
No one gets to say they know exactly how you feel. 

Your grief is individual because your relationship was individual. It deserves protection. It deserves respect. And it deserves support that honors it, not steals it. 

There is no ranking system for grief. No gold medal for the worst loss. No scoreboard where someone else’s pain gets to outrank yours. Grief is not a competition. It is not measured by the type of loss, the title of the person, or how dramatic the story sounds. Every griever experiences their grief at 100 percent. One hundred percent of their loss. One hundred percent of their relationship. One hundred percent of what it meant to them. 

The depth of your grief is tied to the depth and meaning of your relationship. It is shaped by your history, your memories, your attachment, your unfinished conversations, your love. The moment we start saying one kind of grief is the “worst,” we automatically shrink someone else’s. If your loss is labeled worse than mine, does that mean my pain counts less? If someone else’s grief gets the spotlight, are my tears now too small? That thinking is toxic. It silences people. It makes them question their own heart. 

There is no hierarchy here. A mother losing a child is devastating. A woman losing her sister is devastating. A man losing his dog who carried him through epilepsy for fourteen years is devastating. Divorce can break someone. Betrayal can break someone. Miscarriage can break someone. The loss of health, identity, or a dream can break someone. Grief hits at 100 percent of whatever was lost. Always. 

And here is the part people do not love hearing. No one can work on your grief except you. Not your best friend. Not your pastor. Not the woman in your support group who has a similar story. They can sit with you. They can witness you. They can love you. But they cannot process your pain for you. They cannot lean into it for you. They cannot complete what feels unfinished in your heart. 

Even if someone had the same kind of loss, they did not have your exact relationship. They did not have your inside jokes, your regrets, your dynamics, your history. So stop comparing timelines. Stop comparing tears. Stop comparing who seems to be “doing better.” Comparison will keep you stuck because it pulls you out of your own process and throws you into someone else’s. 

Your grief is personal. Not random. Not dramatic. Not weak. Personal. And that means the work is yours too. You get to decide whether you will avoid it, react to it, pretend around it, or actually face it. No one else can do that part for you. 

If this hit something in you, then do not just nod and move on. Start learning what your grief is actually doing inside your body and your mind. Read the book. Download the eBook. Get in the room. Because understanding your grief is not optional if you want to heal. And no one is coming to do that work for you.