When Emotion Is Left Unworked

Roland Y. Kim, Ph.D.

About This Book

This book examines grief not simply as an emotion but as a developmental process. When painful feeling cannot be worked through, it may remain active in the body, relationships, family roles, and patterns passed from one generation to the next.

What You Will Explore

Explore grief as a developmental passage, the body’s expression of unworked emotion, relationships that unintentionally block mourning, unfinished parental grief, intergenerational transmission, and how mourning, repair, and integration can interrupt the cycle.

A Developmental Reframe

The question is not only whether grief is present, but whether the person, couple, or family has enough emotional safety and developmental capacity to experience grief without becoming overwhelmed or organized around avoiding it.