Grief Counseling

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Is Prolonged Grief Putting Your Life On Hold?

Have you suffered the loss of a loved one or experienced an unexpected life change you weren’t prepared for? Does living without your loved one feel like too much pain to bear? Does it seem like no one around you truly understands your loss, which further compounds your sense of isolation and loneliness?

Losing someone close to you can feel unimaginable. You may have expected to always have them in your life. Now they’re suddenly gone, you feel lonely and even hopeless. Perhaps life has lost its meaning, and without your loved one, you no longer feel like the same person. Overwhelming remorse for not getting to fulfill your dreams together may be causing you to continually ruminate over what could have been.

You Might Be Numbing Yourself From Emotional Pain

Living with grief can take you on an emotional roller coaster. One day you may feel relatively okay, the next you might cry uncontrollably and question your life’s direction and purpose. In addition to disruptions in your sleeping patterns and eating habits, you may have stopped taking care of yourself or doing the things you enjoy. To avoid your feelings, you may be using substances—such as alcohol or marijuana—or burying yourself in work.

Maybe your relationships have suffered because you feel misunderstood or are unwilling to confide in others about how you feel. You may worry that if you truly shared your sense of despair and hopelessness, you would overburden them. Or perhaps your emotions surrounding your loss are complicated, making them difficult to articulate.

Counseling offers you a judgment-free sounding board to talk about your grief. Receiving professional grief support gives you the tools you need to heal and find acceptance for your loss.

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Our Culture Doesn’t Like Talking About Death

Ironically, the only constant in life is death. Death affects everyone, no matter who we are or how we live. Yet death is seldom talked about. Somehow, it feels taboo. And so, we’re rarely taught how to feel our grief and mourn our losses. Oftentimes, when loss happens, we feel shock, dismay, and profound sadness. Even if we’ve experienced loss before, it can shake us to our core.

Grief can take many forms beyond losing a loved one. Whenever we have to reckon with the loss of a dream we had for the future—whether it was connected to a loved one, a career, or a beloved activity—we often experience grief. It can be difficult to express sadness, disappointment, and our sense of loss to those in our lives who haven’t experienced grief first-hand or already have a lot on their plate.

We Rarely Get The Support We Need

Unlike a broken leg, healing from grief comes with no definitive timeline. Often, our friends and loved ones allow us a finite grace period to grieve before expecting us to get back to normal. After all, death is a subject most people try to avoid thinking about. However, we usually aren’t ready to turn the page on our loss. We may put on a brave face while in public, but collapse as soon as we remove the mask.

Well-meaning friends may send flowers or bring us a casserole, but very few are willing to be emotionally available to us when we’re grieving. As a result, we are seldom provided a safe place to process our feelings and lay our grief down.

In grief therapy, you will have dedicated time with your counselor to discuss the thoughts you can’t share with anyone else.. In counseling, you can work through your grief freely and formulate a new path forward.

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Counseling Gives You Time And Space To Process Your Grief

Grief is overwhelming and life-changing. But if you’re like most people, you were never taught how to handle loss. Finding somewhere to work through the difficult emotions related to grief can be cathartic. Once you tap into these feelings, you can delve deeper, addressing other issues you may have struggled with throughout your life.

As a bereavement therapist, I will hold space for your loss with empathy and compassion. All of your feelings are valid, even the ones that are harder to share. Unloading what has been pent up inside allows you to breathe again. Together, we can work through your loss and help you narrate your next chapter.

What To Expect From Grief Therapy

Bereavement counseling offers a safe and supportive environment where you can share your story. You can talk about their significance in your life and how things may have been different if you had not lost them. Grief can be a transformative experience, and by exploring the reasons why not having them in your life is challenging, you can gradually learn to reconcile your past with your future aspirations.

It will be helpful to examine your current support system and determine if you can lean into those relationships and be vulnerable. If you are feeling isolated or depressed, we will collaborate on how you can find a path back to more purposeful and joyful living. This might be achieved by returning to a hobby you have set aside or finding a new activity that not only fills your cup but also helps knit you into a supportive community. While you cannot replace your loved one, you can improve your relationships to ensure you remain connected to a healthy support group.

Counseling Offers Helpful Modalities And Exercises To Process Grief

Depending on what resonates with you, we may employ different approaches to help you come to terms with what happened, gain new insights, and highlight your plan moving forward. This may include role-playing exercises, art projects, storytelling, utilizing metaphors, and keeping familiar connection points in place, such as music playlists or favorite meals, that remind you of your loved one. Additionally, modalities such as narrative therapy and Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) for grief and loss can help you reimagine your future and work through the trauma.

Although the grief journey can seem overwhelming, I am here to help guide and support you each step of the way. Therapy can help you honor your loved one while continuing to live a full life. Life may never feel the same after this experience, but we can work toward finding meaning in each new day.

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But Maybe You’re Not Sure If Grief Counseling Is Right For You…

Just because this loss is hitting you differently than other family members doesn’t mean you’re grieving incorrectly. Grief has no time limit—it's never too late to grieve the loss of someone. Counseling allows you to share and process your grief without fear of judgment or pressure to “get over it” sooner than you feel ready to.
While you may think you will need counseling for the rest of your life, therapy is never a one-size-fits-all approach. Although the grief journey is different for everyone, most people attend counseling for several months— or sometimes years—before adequately processing their grief. However, once your therapist helps you identify your goals for grief therapy and create a plan to address those issues, you can expect to make incremental changes.
Although the Five Stages of Grief model is commonly recognized—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—it is not a fully exhaustive list of the grieving process. What’s more, healing from loss rarely follows a linear progression through these stages. Bereavement counseling can help you explore and share whatever you’re experiencing. In therapy, you will learn coping skills you can use anytime you are feeling overwhelmed in your day-to-day life.

Allowing Yourself Space To Grieve Can Lighten Your Load

Allow me to walk alongside you on your path of healing. To find out more about grief counseling with Sage and Sunshine Therapy, please call or text 813-539-8990 or visit my contact page.

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