Grief and loss

Losing someone important is an enormously difficult experience. Grief can often feel like the world has been turned upside down and even simple things in life become overwhelming, complicated and difficult.

Grief relates to our experience of or response to loss. Bereavement is the process of adjusting to the loss we have experienced. Each of us will inevitably experience loss throughout our lives.

Grief is a broad experience and turns up in our lives when we lose loved ones, experience disappointments or big changes, reflect on missed opportunities and encounter the impermanent nature of life. Because we are all individuals, this process is different for each one of us.

The experience of grief can often feel painful, debilitating and disorientating. Many individuals move through loss and bereavement in a way that feels full of pain, depression and loneliness. Although grief itself is a normal experience, it can be experienced in a wide range of ways, from anger to depression to numbness. Often, it might feel shocking and incomprehensible to work with the grief we feel.

Over time, we aim to create enough safety and support to make this a more ‘manageable’ feeling. Counselling around loss and bereavement can offer support at each stage of this experience.

Grief work is the process of working with a trained professional to ‘move through’ grief and have this loss witnessed. This process is based on the understanding that we can digest and process loss in a way which allows us to return to health and happiness. Rather than pushing down feelings of grief and loss, we work with individuals to find a way of ‘living with loss’ and finding satisfaction in life once more.

You can read more about grief and bereavement here: https://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/issues/grief

Our therapists have a range of skills and specialities – please read each of our profiles to find out more.