Grief Therapy
Whether you're struggling with the loss of a family member, friend, or pet, grief therapy can help you find healing and meaning in the aftermath of loss.
Grief is a normal experience to go through after losing someone or something you care about. However, you don’t have to experience it alone. Grief therapy helps you move through it in a meaningful way.
In this article, we’ll guide you through grief therapy by explaining
- What grief can mean
- The different types of grief therapy ad who they’re for
- What to expect during grief therapy and the grieving process
- How Sequoia Behavioral Health can help you through the grieving process
How We Feel Grief
Grief is the natural response people experience after loss. Losing a family member, friend, or pet usually causes emotional distress. However, the loss doesn’t have to include death. Loss of a job, break up, and big life changes can all cause grief.
The effects of grief are not exclusive to the emotional response to loss. Instead, it’s now understood that grief affects other areas of health including:
- Physical
- Cognitive
- Behavioral
- Spiritual
The emotions felt during grief are often overwhelming. Common emotions felt during the grief process include:
- Sadness
- Numbness
- Guilt
- Regret
- Anger
- Shock
- Anguish
This is not an extensive list. It’s possible to experience a spectrum of emotions while experiencing grief. It’s a difficult experience that almost everyone will have at some point and to varying degrees.
Grief is a common discussion point in therapy, but there are types of therapy that address the complexities of grief directly.
Related Article: Why is Grief so Exhausting?
What is Grief Therapy?
Grief therapy is a psychotherapy used to help people work through the emotional, physical, and spiritual responses to loss.
The goal of grief counseling and grief therapy is to help people find meaning in the aftermath of loss. It’s designed to give people coping mechanisms and tools they can use as they move through grief.
Types of Grief Therapy
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is the foundation of all kinds of grief therapy. All forms of therapy can help address grief in some measure. However, these kinds of grief therapy will help you address the effects of grief in a specific way.
The most common forms of grief counseling are:
- Bereavement counseling
- Complicated grief therapy
- Traumatic grief therapy
Each type of grief counseling is meant to address different losses, different forms of grief, and different levels of distress.
Related Article: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Bereavement Counseling
Losing a loved one is sadly accompanied by many responsibilities. You may have to plan the funeral, sort through their belongings, and manage their will.
Each of these responsibilities can hinder the grieving process by adding more things to think about. Many in this role feel they have to put on a brave face, or that they don’t have the bandwidth to properly grieve.
Bereavement counseling accounts for the additional challenges by walking you through these responsibilities in a meaningful way. You’ll also walk through your grief and work with your therapist to resolve any unresolved grief or trauma surrounding the loss.
Complicated Grief Therapy
Symptoms of grief usually decrease over time. But that’s not always the case. For some people, their experience with grief will persist long after the loss and develop into complicated grief.
Complicated grief, often called prolonged grief disorder, is a formal diagnosis in the DSM5. It covers cases of grief that are intense and cause painful responses for an extended time. This kind of grief disruptions life to a point that intervention is necessary to return to everyday function.
Complicated grief therapy uses ideas from interpersonal therapy (IPT) and CBT to address the needs of complicated grief. That includes exposure techniques like talking directly about the loss.
Traumatic Grief Therapy
The death of a loved one can be connected to traumatic memories. This adds more to consider during the grieving process and therapeutic intervention.
Trauma-informed grief therapy focuses on creating routines to help regulate the effects of trauma as well as the reprocessing phase when the time is right. Your therapist might implement eye movement desensitization and reprogramming (EMDR), the golden standard of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatment if it becomes necessary.
The entire team at Sequoia Behavioral Health is trained in trauma-focused counseling. We understand that traumatic losses can create ripples of effects and symptoms that can dramatically interfere with our lives and wellbeing.
To learn more about our approach to trauma and what we can do to help, we recommend the following articles:
Goals of Grief Therapy
The different forms of grief therapy are meant to help people reach two common goals—to find meaning in the aftermath of loss and teach coping strategies for long-term healing.
These goals can take on several different forms, all of which equate to finding peace after loss.
Acceptance
It’s natural to be in disbelief and feel numb after losing someone close to you. Grief therapy will help you open up about how you truly feel and work through those emotions healthily.
Address Trauma
Losing someone close can be traumatic. It doesn’t matter whether you witnessed it or got a phone call. Grief counseling will address any trauma you experienced surrounding the topic of your loss.
Address Guilt
Not everyone leaves on good terms. You may have lingering regrets about how you could have done things differently. Seeking therapy can help you deal with the feelings of guilt and regret over the passing of a loved one
Find Support
Grief takes time to work through, but with a proper support group, it becomes easier to do. Your therapist will be able to connect you with support systems that will offer help and resources. They may also encourage you to tap into any family relations you have that could help the process.
Restructure Daily Life
After your loss, your life might be in disarray in more ways than one. Not only are you dealing with the emotions of grief, but you don’t know how to cook.
If you lost your spouse or partner, you may have to learn how to deal with the things they took care of. A therapist can help you restructure your daily life and make a plan to help you learn the ropes.
The different forms of grief therapy are meant to help people reach two common goals—to find meaning in the aftermath of loss and teach coping strategies for long-term healing.
Grief Therapy Techniques
The techniques used in grief therapy are used to help people process their loss and help them face and find meaning in their loss. Not all of these techniques will be used by every therapist, and they may design an approach that is specific to you.
Specific Language
After the loss of a loved one, it’s hard to face the reality of what life will be like without them. Your therapist may invite you to use specific language like:
- My mother is dead
- I’ve lost my spouse
Phrases like these can help you process the gravity of your loss. Submerging yourself into that reality is scary, but grief therapy gives you a safe space to process.
Sharing Memories
You may be encouraged to bring items of your loved one to sessions. These are natural starting places to share moments you had with your loved one. Sharing these memories is a great way to remember and honor them healthily.
It can also help bring some levity to sessions as you reminisce about who they were.
Reframing Cognitive Distortions
Cognitive distortions are fallacies that harm your ability to see events clearly. You may be unaware of these negative areas of thinking and how they affect your perception.
Your therapist can work with you to identify these incorrect thinking patterns and restructure them. This is a major component of CBT and it’s helpful in cases of grief.
Art
Art production is a helpful technique for many mental health conditions. Art has been particularly helpful in the application of PTSD.
It’s hard to put feelings into words, but creating a picture can be a way to communicate. Whether you’re a skilled drawer or never got past stick figures, it’s a way to glimpse how you’re feeling and what stage of the grieving process you’re in.
Related Article: Experiential Therapy
The 5 Stages of Grief
The five stages of grief were developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross as a way to describe what happens to someone when facing their own death. However, it can be a helpful guide to identify your emotions and reactions while you process loss.
Not everyone will experience these stages in this specific order, or even all of them, and the time each stage takes will be different for everyone.
Read more about the different models of the stages of grief here.
Denial
After the initial gravity of loss, it’s normal if you can’t fully understand that person is gone. Denial doesn’t have to look like flat-out saying the person is still alive, but you may feel like they’re coming back. This can even include sensing, heating, or seeing the person that has passed.
Denial is the beginning of the grieving process, and at the other end is acceptance.
Anger
This phase begins the process of dealing with emotions. It’s not the healthiest emotional reaction, but it may be a necessary step for some.
Anger is used to hide and bury the feelings of pain you’re experiencing. This anger can be directed at other people, the person who died, and even yourself.
Bargaining
Losing someone close to you often leads to feelings of helplessness. It’s not uncommon to try and regain control of the situation by bargaining. This could look like what-if statements or promises to a higher power in exchange for healing or relief.
Depression
The fourth stage of grief is depression. During this stage of the grieving process, you’ll feel tired from the range of emotions you’ve experienced. Depression is a hard thing to face. You may feel:
- Confused
- Lethargic
- Heavy
- Overwhelmed
This part of the process is often the most introspective and it can occur throughout the grieving process.
Acceptance
Acceptance does not mean you’ve moved past the pain of loss. Instead, acceptance is the understanding that the loss is real and how it will affect your life.
Acceptance may not be the moment of relief people are looking for at the end of the tunnel. It takes time to move past grief and it’s normal to return to other stages throughout your life.
When to Seek Grief Counseling
You can always seek help for mental health, and therapy is beneficial for everyone.
If you’ve recently experienced loss it’s a good idea to reach out to your local support groups. This could include friends and family, but finding a grief counselor can help you in the immediate throes of grief.
If you’re experiencing grief that impedes your ability to function daily, it’s time to seek professional help.
Grief Therapy as Sequoia Behavioral Health
At Sequoia Behavioral Health, we take a holistic approach to healing. You may have experienced loss in the past or are currently making funeral plans. Wherever you’re at, grief therapy can help you get the tools you need to cope with grief better.
You don’t have to process loss alone. Our inpatient and outpatient facilities located in Mesa, AZ are equipped to provide personalized care that fits your needs. Contact us to learn how we can help.