Grief Counselling
What you may be experiencing:
Grief has no one-size-fits-all approach, so everyone will have a different experience and a different way to deal with their loss. However, we find it important to provide a list of some commonly associated symptoms so that you don’t have to feel alone in your experience.
Some things you may be feeling include yearning, confusion, resentment, anger, guilt, despair, sadness, anxiety, hesitation about the future, suicidal thoughts, self-neglect, nausea, night sweats, low energy, changes in appetite, aches & pains, changes in weight, heart palpitations, and dwelling on the past. Keep in mind, this list is not exhaustive.
Grieving is often misunderstood in society. The people around you may make comments such as at least they lived a long life or at least you have other children or it was just a dog. Too often we’ve heard but it’s been a year already, you really should be over it by now. Thing is, grieving doesn’t work on society’s timeline; it has no time. And when people around you make those comments, they make you feel alone; you feel as if you’re doing this all wrong. Let us assure you, you’re not.
How we can help:
Grief is love. You will feel for as long as you will love. Your experience will become more manageable with time, as you learn to expand your life around this new form of love. During therapy, you can expect for all your feelings to be welcomed, timelines don’t matter. This will be your space where there is no judgement, where you are not rushed out of your feelings. Sadness, despair, anger, guilt, shame, resentment, or acceptance, it’s all welcome.
Our therapists can help identify and put words to the “stages” you may be experiencing. We say “stages” because they are not linear, and you do not experience them in any logical order. In fact, you may experience a few stages even at the same moment in time, for example anger and sadness all at once. You will cycle through the stages (anger, acceptance, guilt, depression, denial, shock, bargaining, & sadness) many times and in no particular order. Our therapists will be there to support you throughout this journey, and can offer tools to help express and process your experience. If you’d like support weekly in the early stages, or less frequently, we are here whatever your needs require.
After working with us:
Throughout therapy, your capacity to live with this new form of love expands. We find the ball in the box analogy particularly helpful in explaining this concept and what you can expect to happen.
Imagine grief as the ball, and your life as the box, inside the box there is a pain button. In the initial stages of following your loss, the ball takes up the majority of the life box, and hits that pain button almost repeatedly. Any movement the ball makes activates the pain button. With time, your life box expands to make room for the ball, and as the ball still moves around, it hits the pain button less often.
Eventually, as you life box has expanded even greater, the pain button gets hit less frequently. However, it’s also important to state that the intensity of the grief remains the same and at times (such as holidays, birthdays, death days etc.) your life box shrinks back to that original state where it is fully filled by the ball, and you feel that love with the same intensity as in the early stages. This is normal and to be expected. As we said, grief is love.
You are not alone on your journey:
Whether you’re in the early stages, or years down the line, your love is valid and we are here for you.
