Grief Counseling
Has A Painful Loss Turned Your World Upside-Down?
Are you coping with the loss of a loved one, wondering if you will ever feel normal or whole again? Does their absence make it seem like you’re stuck in a well of grief, despair, and uncertainty that you don’t have the strength to climb out of alone? Is it easier to bury your emotions than confront or share them?
Alternatively, maybe you’ve longed to get married, have children, or achieve creative or professional success, but things just haven’t worked out yet. Or perhaps you experience deep, existential grief whose origins you can’t define or understand.
We Can Experience Grief And Loss For A Multitude Of Reasons
If you are coping with the loss of a loved one, whether it’s the death of a parent, a child, sibling, friend, or perhaps a beloved pet, grief is complicated. And it doesn’t just have to involve recent bereavement; grief can result from losses or disappointments in childhood that are only coming to the surface now.
It could also be that a medical diagnosis or injury has upended your life. Or maybe as you transition through your middle-age or later years, you have begun missing elements of your youth.
Perhaps you are processing past experiences in ways that are emotionally intense and complex. Or it may be that you are encountering new feelings of sadness and grief that you don’t entirely understand.
Loss Can Be A Deeply Isolating Experience
However, grief therapy—working with a kind and compassionate therapist who understands your pain and empathizes with your loss—can help you lighten that burden. Together, we will walk through your pain and support you in moving on with your life in peace.
Loss And Disappointment Are Unavoidable Parts Of The Human Condition
At times, these experiences come without warning, plunging us deep into sorrow. Other times, grief emerges more slowly as something we cannot fully recognize but rather something that we sense below the surface. Grief can even grow out of a lack of creative, relational, or professional fulfillment.
So there are many forms of grief and many ways to experience that pain.
Unfortunately, There’s Not A Lot Of Cultural Support For Grieving
Many people feel that fully expressing their grief will push others away, so they end up burying their pain and trying to pretend like everything is normal. We also suffer from the cultural bias that people should be capable of being optimistic and finding joy in life regardless of their circumstances. If a person can’t be happy or they need support making their way through grief, the cultural message can read like they are flawed for feeling sad or needing help, which is NOT the truth.
All of this leaves the grieving person feeling alone at a time when they most need company—when they most need someone who can support them and dwell with them in the truth of their experience.
As a grief therapist, my job is to be there for you through whatever you are experiencing, walking beside you and working to support you in easing your pain so that you can feel and move through your grief and sadness without falling apart. Whatever weight you bear, I want to help you find relief from the continuous burden of grief.
Grief Counseling Offers You Support That Doesn’t Waver
If you are grieving, you may admit to yourself that you’re having a hard time, but sharing the full magnitude of your inner experience may feel overwhelming. Working with a grief therapist provides you with a calm and caring environment that can contain your pain. Counseling creates a sense of safety and being held so that you can move in and out of difficult emotions without feeling overwhelmed.
Through therapy we can cultivate a better understanding of your grief, your experiences, and the potential paths for healing before you. As we move together through this process of empathic holding, exploration, and understanding, grief can start to feel like something you can handle, not something you have to run from.
Working together, we will support you in gaining greater emotional expansiveness, wherein you can experience and process the totality of your emotions. With time, it is possible to lessen your pain and move through life with an increased sense of inner calm, lightness, and spaciousness.
What Our Grief Counseling Sessions May Look Like
Grief and loss are unique for everyone, so counseling follows the thread wherever it takes us. At first, this may involve sharing your story and how it’s continuing to impact you. We may also look into deeper issues surrounding your grief, such as anxiety, depression, trauma, or any past experiences or feelings that the loss brings up for you. While we are working on those underlying experiences or wounds, therapy can also address more immediate concerns about how you are coping with grief.
For instance, we can figure out how to navigate anniversaries, birthdays, and other physical reminders in ways that honor your loved one’s legacy and also enable you to go on with your life feeling more peaceful. In this way, grief and loss counseling attends to both long-term healing and short-term relief.
Because the grieving process is different for each person, I work with numerous therapeutic tools to address each patient’s needs. These include a range of contemporary psychodynamic and psychoanalytic approaches, Control Mastery, relational theory, attachment theory, EMDR, and Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). All of these can be powerful tools in the healing process.
As with other forms of therapy, grief and loss counseling can’t always be predicted or defined. It’s an organic process that focuses on helping you feel comfortable experiencing your emotions and moving through your grief and sadness to the other side where there is hope and new life. And because grief and loss often entail a spiritual element, I’m always happy to explore with you how your spiritual beliefs or experiences can play a part in your healing.
Grief Is Often Very Responsive To Therapy
Therapy offers you the company of someone who can dwell with you in your suffering without wavering or pulling back—a professional who can help hold and contain your pain as you heal. As we work together, I believe that grief and loss counseling can help you get back in touch with the light, joyful, and spacious parts of life while still honoring your loved one.
Perhaps You Are Considering Grief Counseling, But You Still Have Concerns…
I worry that talking about my grief will be too overwhelming for me—or my therapist.
Many of us share this same belief—that grief is better left buried, not fully felt, because if we fully feel it, it will obliterate us and we’ll fall apart. It is common to worry that other people won't be able to handle, understand, or sit with us through our grief.
But it can be such a relief to work with a therapist—to feel your feelings and express your experience in ways that are manageable, supported, and safe. Once you start to talk about your pain, feel it, and understand it, you’ll begin to see it as something you can face without being overwhelmed.
Where would I even begin?
In my experience with therapy, all paths tend to be interwoven. So our organic conversations will eventually lead to self-discovery, growth, and healing, regardless of what we begin talking about. We can even embrace the silence when needed so you don’t feel like you always have to fill the room with words. Wherever we start—whatever we talk about—therapy is ultimately a collaborative experience that is guided by you and what you feel comfortable expressing.
I just feel so alone and hopeless, I can barely contain my pain.
I understand that the emotions you are experiencing are so exhausting and overwhelming that you probably feel like you don’t even have the energy to pick up the phone. However, grief therapy can be an incredible source of support that is worth the effort.
Navigating your pain with a professional can make it so you don’t feel as alone or have to work so hard to keep your feelings at bay. By taking this journey together, it is possible to become more emotionally integrated so that humor, joy, sadness, grief, and hope can all coexist in peace.
You Don’t Have To Be Alone In Your Grief Any Longer
If you are looking for someone who can help you bear the pain of your loss and navigate your grief, bereavement counseling can help. Please call 510-500-9722 for your free, 20-minute consultation to see how we can work together to help you find a sense of hope and wholeness once again.
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