Grief & Bereavement Counseling

We work together so you can integrate and carry your loss in life affirming ways over time. We are dignifying the pain, honoring the experiences and inviting your mind, body and heart to move through grief rather than assuming there is a “problem” that needs to be “fixed”.

Changes including difficulty maintaining mental focus, compromised emotional regulation, lethargy, unexpected waves of intense sadness or conflictual relationships may sometimes be related to unspoken grief.

Research confirms that unaddressed losses that may go back to early life experiences can have long lasting impact on physical and psychological health.

Engaging in a therapeutic process through which the brain and body can re-integrate the loss in life affirming ways can help with present or anticipated experiences including and not limited to: loss of loved humans, loved pets, place of origin (displacement), roles, physical ability, limb(s), occupations, relationships and communities.

With complicated grief that seems to be always present, sometimes faint and some other times, hitting your system like a tsunami no matter how much time have passed, therapy can help you uncover why your brain's and body's wisdom didn't allow time, avoidance or distractions to “take care of it”.

There is a lot to be said here. While research and clinical observations reveal specific factors that hinder the adaptive processing of loss leading to what's referred to as complicated grief, there are nuances that uniquely belong to each person.

What has been witnessed while working with complicated grief that has felt immovable for years, that it can become a collaborative and life affirming force if the messages it holds are finally understood and integrated. In practical terms this can involve reprocessing the trauma involved in the loss so that the grief can find a clear path towards constructing new meanings and gets integrated. Integration is meant to end the cycle of working hard to push the pain away, then feeling "ambushed" and defeated by intense disturbance without understanding why.

As long as the trauma that blocks grief integration isn't addressed, experiences of intense yearning, deep sorrow, rage, fatigue, compromised memory and cognitive functions may keep causing pain and loss of hope especially when there are assumptions from self or others that you "should be over it by now".

Counseling can offer space to metabolize past and anticipated losses that may otherwise remain unacknowledged, unvalidated or stigmatized by social norms.

Not all losses require professional support. Many resources including, social support can be enough in soma cases until healing takes its natural course. If none of what you consider as helpful resources or skills helped, or if trying to rely on what was historically helpful actually makes things feel worse, then consulting with a professional can be the next step.

If you are experiencing grief-related thoughts, behaviors, or feelings that are distressing, you are invited to trust that the "internal infrastructure" required for living after losses already exists, as loss is an inevitable part of real living and real love. The nature of the loss combined with elements from your history may make it harder for grief to find the healing pathway. Thankfully, there are workable therapeutic tools to support a graceful healing journey even if it feels like unshakable heaviness for now.

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