Grief Counseling
Are You Struggling To Put Your Life Back Together After A Recent Loss?
Have you recently lost someone or some significant part of your life and are now overwhelmed by grief? Are you struggling to pick up the pieces of your life and move on? You might think the experience or person you lost was so definitive and important to you that you can’t imagine how you can overcome it and rebuild your life.
What you may not have considered is that experiencing grief can be transformative and that counseling can help you create a life that honors what you lost and find hope for your future.
Grieving Can Feel Like It Has Taken Over Your Life
Grief can feel acute and never ending at times, but also occur randomly. You may feel intense sorrow and pain, endlessly ruminating over the loss of your loved one and focusing on little else but their death. But you also might experience waves of grief long after the loss, which may feel jarring and debilitating.
Since you lost someone or something important to you, you may fear the same situation happening again. This can even include aspects of your life like your career or your health—not just losing people close to you.
Grief can also create numbness or detachment from your emotions and may make you feel like life holds no meaning or purpose. You may have trouble carrying out normal routines, isolate yourself from others, or experience depression, deep sadness, guilt, or self-blame.
As a grief counselor at Cambridge Compassion and Mindfulness Psychology, I understand that you just want to stop feeling the hopelessness and pain of your loss so greatly and make peace with the memory of your loved one or what you lost. Although your path might feel fractured right now, grief counseling can help you find that road forward again while honoring and respecting your loss.
Grief Can Become Complicated For Many People
Everyone experiences grief in life as it is a natural part of the human experience. We all have stages in life that come and go, and some of those transitions can be difficult to process. However, when sadness and hopelessness interfere with how we live and function, it can easily become prolonged, or complicated grief.
About 7 to 10 percent of people who have recently lost someone have symptoms persistent with prolonged grief disorder. Among children and adolescents who are grieving, about 5 to 10 percent of them will experience depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and/or prolonged grief disorder. (1)
Cultural Factors Can Make Grieving Difficult
Cultural practices that conflict with our own needs can prolong grief. For example, family traditions and expectations about how we should grieve and for how long can directly conflict with our own requirements.
After we experience a loss, we may need to complete familial or financial obligations right away, not getting the time or support we need for bereavement on our terms. Our culture considers self-sacrificial behavior as positive, but it tends to prolong the grief of the person who puts everyone else first but themselves.
Anxiety and grief are also gateways to self-indulgent behaviors that enable us to hide our feelings so we can just “move on” and keep working like normal. In a way, grief can hijack the mind, demanding attention whether we want to listen or not.
A lot of what people consider abnormal grief is actually quite normal, which is hard to figure out on our own. A counselor can help you learn to accept your grief for what it is and help you rebuild your life in a way that creates new opportunities that still honor the memories of your loss.
Take Time For Your Bereavement With Grief Counseling
Counseling can provide a safe place to experience and express your grief in a way that feels natural and safe from judgment with therapeutic approaches that make the process more manageable. It is difficult to have something or someone so important to you removed from your life, and a grief therapist can help you find a way to fill that space and build a path forward.
Sessions Will Permit You To Grieve Like You Need To
At Cambridge Compassion and Mindfulness Psychology, you can process your painful feelings as they emerge. You should give yourself the space to process your feelings as they arise but not feel obligated to experience the pain of grief all the time.
During sessions, we will identify your unique triggers for grief as well as work on skills that will support you and let you have these feelings without them overwhelming you.
The long-term goal of grief and loss counseling is to make peace with your experience in a way that grants you ease and meaning in your life. Counseling can give you the ability to move forward with insights and skills developed during the therapeutic process no matter what your grief journey looks like now and in the future.
My Approaches To Untangle Your Grief Experience
I will take into account what stage of grief you are in and not necessarily what stage you think you are in. Monitoring your own experience with grief and knowing what stage you're in can be very confusing, but I can help determine that, which will factor into what therapeutic approach we use.
Mindfulness techniques can help you identify and process feelings and thoughts that trigger your grief. While it may seem simple to sit with grief, it can bring up the most uncomfortable emotions you’ve had in your whole life. Mindfulness meditation for grief is one such tool that can help you endure these difficult emotions.
Self-Compassion helps you make sense of your feelings. Self-compassion is a powerful tool for ending the cycle of self-criticism that can help in your grieving experience. You can slowly integrate these efforts into an empowered sense of self that restores your sense of confidence, enthusiasm, and hope.
Uncovering the Marginalized Narrative considers the values and skills you gain through this process to help you shift from a pure loss perspective to one that honors this challenging experience. When you make an effort to find meaning in the grieving process, you make room for something else in your life that might be completely new and exciting that still honors what you lost.
Grief is not the sign of a person who is too weak to get over something, but rather someone strong enough to care so much. Therapy will help you to transform that strength from enduring grief into actions that bring you meaning, hope, and joy.
You May Still Have Concerns About Grief Counseling…
Grief is so intense, and I’m worried therapy won’t help me. [1]
Having a variety of emotions is perfectly normal during grieving. After the initial loss, most of us still need to get things done in our lives to survive. While we are busy and distracted from our feelings, it's typical to not experience intense emotions, but when we find a quiet moment to ourselves, we may experience a flood of overwhelming thoughts and feelings that don’t always make sense.
What is most important is that we work collaboratively in counseling to help you feel safe in your grieving process and to make some new meaning over what this loss means to you.
Sometimes I just feel angry, hopeless, frustrated, and scared and I don’t know why.
Therapy can really help you sort through the confusing emotions of grief, and suffering alone does nothing to help. Loss is different for everyone. Any form of grieving that neither harms you nor anyone else is usually the “correct” way for you to grieve, even if the experience feels disorienting and challenging.
I am still grieving a loss from a long time ago which I find embarrassing. Is therapy still a good fit for me?
There is no time limit on grieving. It tends to last a long time when we don't have the skills to process it, and when we don’t take time from work and responsibilities to give it the space it needs in our lives. Therapy can provide you with skills to help you with this process, and also show you the benefits of grief and how it can open up space and opportunities in your mind for personal growth.
Jeff, we tweaked the wording and the order of these concerns. Let me know if they work for you.
Reach Out For Help For The Pain Of The Grieving Process
Therapy can help you understand and process your experience with grief in a way that adds new meaning to your life. Reach out to my practice, Cambridge Compassion and Mindfulness Psychology, using my contact form for a free, 15-minute consultation to learn more about how grief and loss counseling can help empower you and find compassion for yourself no matter how difficult your grieving journey is.
1. https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/prolonged-grief-disorder
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