Grief and loss change your world in many ways, leaving lasting impacts on physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being. These experiences can be nuanced, complex, and overwhelming to manage alone.
Therapy can offer a transformative experience for creating meaning around loss and healing the complicated range of emotions brought up by grief.
You may find yourself hesitating about working with a therapist. Some common thoughts may be:
- Everyone experiences loss. I should be able to get through this on my own.
- Talking about my feelings of grief won’t change anything.
- Therapy can’t bring back my loved one.
Even if you think you’re in too much pain for therapy to help, or that talking won’t make a difference, grief therapy can still be beneficial. Many bereaved individuals enter therapy uncertain, and find deep relief in simply being seen, supported, and guided.
While therapy cannot change the past, it can offer impactful support. It can help you:
- Process complex emotions related to grief and loss
- Create meaning and understanding
- Form rituals to stay connected to your loved one
- Develop coping skills to manage emotions
- Restore your ability to engage in your life
Grief support helps you learn to live with the pain and stay on track. Below, I’ll share types of grief therapy and the goals you may work toward on your healing journey.
goals for grief therapy
“Every time we make the decision to love someone, we open ourselves to great suffering, because those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. The greatest pain comes from leaving…the pain of leaving can tear us apart.
Still, if we want to avoid the suffering of leaving, we will never experience the joy of loving. And love is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking.”
– Henri Nouwen
Grief is a universal human experience. As much as connection fills our lives with joy, the death of a loved one fills us with pain. From an attachment theory perspective, this pain runs deep.
Humans are biologically wired to bond. When we lose someone we’re deeply attached to, it can feel like our very sense of safety and self is threatened. Evolutionarily, we survive in connection, so losing that bond signals danger to our nervous system.
Plus, the idea of losing someone you love deeply is inherently filled with emotional pain.
Each bereaved person handles grief differently. Coping mechanisms like distraction or substance use might offer short-term relief, but they often don’t lead to true healing.
Grief therapy helps you discern what helps and what keeps you stuck.
what is grief therapy?
Grief refers to deep sorrow, especially after the death of a loved one. Grief therapy supports your emotional response to this loss.
Mental health professionals are trained to help bereaved individuals manage the emotional, physical, and cognitive effects of loss.
Grief therapy can be tailored to individual or cultural preferences. Therapies may include emotionally-focused therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, narrative therapy, EMDR Therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, or person-centered work.
how does grief therapy work?
Of course, therapy cannot change your situation and the current reality. But it can change how you relate to that new reality and manage the pain you have to face.
The tasks you focus on will depend on the nature of your loss, how intense and long-lasting your grief is, and how much support you have outside of therapy.
Without support, it’s easy to get stuck. A therapist can help you process pain and move forward.
6 grief therapy goals
Overall, the goals of grief therapy are to support individuals, couples, or families managing grief and loss.
While the specific goals may be tailored to meet your individual needs, below are tasks that are generally included in the treatment plan for grief and loss.
manage the stages of grief
Typically, people experience 10 stages of grief. The stages include:
The stages are not always linear. Therapy will guide individuals to understand how their own experiences fit into the model and how to manage their own reactions.
Normalize the process of grief
Grief, loss, and death are part of life. The experience of facing difficult emotions in response to grief is normal and natural.
Yet, bereaved persons often feel isolated. Therapy reminds you that grief is a natural response to loss. You’ll learn that your emotions are valid and common. Your therapist may also connect you with helpful readings, support groups, or rituals.
Therapy will provide education about the grief process and can help clients see that they are not alone in what they face. Therapists can also offer support by connecting clients to resources such as social supports, support groups, or reading materials that will facilitate their healing journey.
process emotions
The pain associated with the grieving process can be very intense, experienced in waves over long periods of time.
People may also question the meaning of their life, or judge themselves for the way that they feel and their own grief reaction.
Acute grief often includes waves of sadness, anxiety, and overwhelm. You may feel numb or intensely emotional.
Therapy gives you space to name and explore the true feelings of loss you carry. Plus, therapy for anxiety and transitions, depression, and grief provides a supportive space to explore the true, raw emotional responses one has to loss without shame or judgment.
develop coping skills
While therapy sessions provide a place to begin exploring emotions and creating space to process them, a therapist will also help clients to develop coping skills to manage challenging emotions outside of the therapy session.
Some coping mechanisms could include relaxation techniques, self-care practices, emotional expression, grounding practices, and mindfulness. These skills help clients to reduce the intensity of challenging emotions over time.
In therapy, you’ll learn strategies like relaxation, self-care routines, grounding, and mindfulness. These tools help regulate emotions between sessions.
acceptance and reengagement
Ultimately, the goal of grief therapy is to help clients to understand their loss and heal their grief. Clients reach a place of acceptance for their experience and reintegration into their functioning in their daily life, while staying connected to the person they lost in a way that is meaningful to them.
Pain may never fully go away. However, a grief counselor supports clients in their ability to adapt to their new reality and move forward in a fulfilling life, even considering all they’ve lost.
Grief therapy helps you accept what happened and stay connected to your loved one in a meaningful way. You’ll learn how to keep living even when the pain remains.
Rebuild Your Identity
After loss, the world can feel unfamiliar. Therapy supports you in rediscovering purpose and rebuilding life with new routines, goals, and meaning. You’ll learn to adapt and move forward without forgetting who or what you’ve lost.
As you integrate the loss and try to get back to your “new normal”, therapy helps you reconnect with your values, relationships, and sense of self to allow space for both grief and growth.
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