Locked into Child Consciousness: How Trauma Freezes the Grief Process

At Hurihanga, I am often reminded that trauma does not only live in memory. It lives in how people respond to loss, to relationship rupture, and to the feeling of being unprotected in the world.

Recently, I noticed a pattern emerging across very different stories. Different circumstances, different relationships — yet the same emotional shape. Loss intertwined with trust.

Disappointment tangled with expectation. And a deep sense of being left to carry something alone. What sat beneath these stories was not simply anger or conflict. It was grief that had nowhere to land.

The way I understand this is not unlike how I see a garment.

When I look at a structured jacket, I don’t just see the outside. I see the pitch of the sleeve, the tension in the seams, where the interfacing has been fused too tightly, and where the fabric has been forced to hold a shape it was never meant to hold.

I can see how it was made.

And that is how I am beginning to see grief and trauma — not just as feelings, but as something that has been constructed under pressure.

Grief as a Human Process

In Western psychology, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described grief as moving through five stages:

• Denial – This cannot be happening.

• Anger – This should not be happening.

• Bargaining – If I do this, maybe it will change.

• Depression – This has happened and it hurts.

• Acceptance – This has happened and I can live with it.

These stages were never meant to be linear or prescriptive. They describe a movement of the psyche as it takes in loss and reorganises around a changed reality.

Later, David Kessler described a sixth stage: Meaning-Making.

Meaning-making is often misunderstood.

It is not about finding a silver lining. It is not about explaining why something happened. It is not about saying “everything happens for a reason.”

Meaning-making is about integration.

It sounds more like:

This loss mattered. It has shaped me. I carry it differently now.

Meaning does not remove pain. It allows pain to become part of a larger story.

Like a garment that has been altered after wear, grief reshapes the inner pattern of a person — but only if the fabric has been allowed to move.

Grief as Relationship

In te ao Māori, grief is not only an internal emotional process. It is relational, spiritual, and collective.

Grief (mamae, pōuri) is not something to be hidden or hurried. It is something to be held in relationship.

Through whakapapa, loss is never isolated to one person. It touches ancestors, descendants, whenua, and community. Tangihanga provides a place where grief is seen, spoken, and carried together.

Whanaungatanga ensures grief is not borne alone.Mana ensures the dignity of both the person and what has been lost is upheld.

In this way of seeing, grief does not become meaning in isolation.It becomes meaning through witnessing.

Just as fabric needs support to take a new shape, grief needs relationship in order to soften rather than stiffen.

Grief as Presence

In many Eastern traditions, grief is understood through impermanence and non-attachment.

Suffering arises not from loss itself, but from resisting the reality of change.

Grief is not something to solve.It is something to allow.

Here, grief is met through presence rather than narrative. The invitation is not to decide what the loss means, but to stay with what is, without turning it into identity.

Across these traditions, the same pattern appears:

Grief must be felt (Western), witnessed (Māori), allowed (Eastern)

Only then can it be integrated.

When Trauma Interrupts the Grief Process

Trauma disrupts this movement.

For someone who has grown up without reliable protection or relational safety, grief does not feel safe to enter fully. Sadness can feel like collapse. Vulnerability can feel dangerous. Dependence can feel humiliating.

So the nervous system adapts.

It does something intelligent: it becomes organised around Anger.

Anger provides structure. Anger provides energy. Anger keeps the person upright.

But anger is not the end of grief. It is a gateway into it.

When trauma is present, grief can become stuck in Anger, unable to move into sorrow, acceptance, and integration.

This is not a failure of character. It is a survival strategy.

In the language of tailoring, it is as if the garment has been stitched too tightly at a moment of strain. The seam holds — but it no longer allows movement.

When Meaning-Making Happens Too Soon

What I often see next is something subtle but powerful.

Instead of grief moving from anger into sadness and acceptance, the system jumps straight into a conclusion about the world:

The world is unsafe.

People cannot be trusted.

No one will protect me.

This can look like meaning-making. But it is not what Kessler describes.

This is not meaning arising from grief.

It is protection arising from fear.

It is the child’s attempt to make sense of an unsafe experience before the grief has been fully felt.

Instead of: I lost something precious, the system decides: The world is dangerous.

Loss becomes worldview.

In structural terms, the pattern has been fused too early. The fabric has not been allowed to drape; it has been locked into shape.

Locked into Child Consciousness

This is what I mean by being locked into child consciousness.

The nervous system remains organised around: waiting for rescue, hoping authority will make things right, and feeling powerless when it does not.

Anger keeps the child upright.

But it also keeps grief frozen.

The adult self — the part capable of discernment, agency, and grounded choice — is not fully present yet.

Not because the person is unwilling, but because something inside learned:

It is not safe to feel this fully.

It is not safe to decide alone.

The pattern was cut for survival, not freedom.

Why This Pattern Appears Across Different Stories

What has struck me recently is how often this pattern appears across very different situations:

the loss of a business relationship, the loss of a friendship, the loss of trust, the loss of what was hoped for.

Different events, but the same emotional architecture: relationship rupture + unfinished grief.

Each loss carries not only present pain, but echoes of earlier experiences of being unprotected, unseen, or unsupported.

What allows these moments to become healing rather than hardening is not problem-solving alone, but grief being honoured.

Not rushed.

Not explained away.

Not forced into belief.

But allowed to soften and move.

Healing: Letting Grief Complete Its Journey

Healing does not begin by removing anger.

Anger belongs in grief.

Healing begins when grief is allowed to continue its journey.

When grief is supported, anger can soften, sadness can be felt, and acceptance can arrive.

Only then can true meaning-making emerge:

Not: The world is unsafe.

But: This mattered. I was hurt. I was not protected when I needed to be. I can choose how I carry this now.

This is adult agency returning.

Not emotional hardness.

Not forced independence.

But inner authority.

Like unpicking a seam and reseating a sleeve so the garment can finally move, healing is not about rejecting what was made under pressure. It is about letting the structure change now that it no longer has to hold the same weight.

The Deeper Work

For many trauma survivors, the world truly was unsafe once.

Their nervous systems are not broken. They are loyal to what they learned.

Healing is not about convincing ourselves the world is safe. It is about restoring choice, self-trust, and relational grounding.

At Hurihanga, we see this work as helping grief complete its natural cycle — so it no longer has to live inside anger or turn into a story about the world being permanently unsafe.

When grief completes, it becomes wisdom. When relationship is restored, dignity returns.

And child consciousness slowly gives way to adult presence.