A Comprehensive Guide to Grief Counseling at Repose Therapy

“The grief process seeks to help us adapt to a new normal”

What are Grief, Loss & Bereavement? 

You may have experienced a significant loss in your life, and feel like your world has been shattered. Like there is no life beyond this moment. Like time has stopped moving.

A harsh but honest reality of human existence is that almost all of us will experience some form of loss throughout the duration of our lives. Grief is our response to any kind of loss experienced. Whether that is the loss of a job, an identity, a home, or a dear pet. The triggers for grief are multifarious. Bereavement, on the other hand, is a type of grief that specifically involves the loss of a loved one. Grief and bereavement are both powerful emotional responses, each of which invokes a complex array of emotions that may vary from guilt, regret, sadness, anger, relief, to even happiness. The journey of adapting to loss also expresses itself differently for each person experiencing it. This adaptation process is contingent on various different factors such as our personal beliefs, emotional vulnerabilities, our relationship to the person or thing, and more. There is no one easy way to grieve. In fact, there is most definitely no “right way” to grieve. 

Grief & The Body: Why Does Grief Feel So Painful?

Grief hurts because it’s deeply personal, it can only be understood fully by the person living in it. Grief hurts because others don’t understand, or don’t understand enough, or our grief doesn’t feel “warranted” or “healthy”.  Most importantly,  grief hurts because your body is grieving too. When you’re grieving, a flood of neurochemicals and hormones are flooding through your brain. This disruption of hormones in results in disturbed sleep,  loss of appetite,  fatigue, and anx. Research studies found that the same brain regions that are affected in a traumatic bra are also activated by deep emotional pain such as the pain we experience when we are grieving. The pain you feel emotionally is triggering the same pain receptors as those that are lit up when you are physically injured. This is the far-reaching impact of traumatic loss on our bodies and brains.

What Does the Grief Process Look like?

A renowned grief expert Kubler Ross conceptualized a model the explain the “traditional” grieving process. However, it is important to state that the pain you experience, and your relationship to the thing or person you lost is entirely unique to you. Grief is not linear, it is often messy and takes several detours. Some folks may never go through these stages, some may skip some stages, some may go through each stage and then start over. These stages may blend together, and there is no fixed time frame for this process. However long it takes, whatever direction it takes, that is exactly where you need to be. 

Stage 1: Denial 

Denial may be the self-questioning of whether this is truly your reality at all. “This is not happening to me!” “Is any of this real?” “She will come back to me”.  Denial is a defense mechanism that helps you create a buffer for the immediate reaction to what you may be experiencing.

Stage 2: Anger

With anger, we may ask “why me?” “what did I do to deserve this? Couldn’t this have happened to someone that deserved it? How could she leave me?” It’s not rare to also feel anger toward the situation or the person you lost - this is normal. Your logical mind might understand the person isn’t to blame, that this blame is unwarranted. However, your emotional mind resents them for leaving you. 

Stage 3: Bargaining

This may be a way for us to hold on to hope when we are experiencing deep pain. We think to ourselves “what if I saw her that day, maybe she would’ve stayed” or “what if said the right thing, maybe he’d still be alive”. We are trying to bargain with death. 

Stage 4: Depression

Depression as with all the stages may be expressed in many different ways. DEPRESSION is a natural response to grief and may present as lethargy, restlessness, lack of motivation, anhedonia, fatigue, sleep disruption, low motivation, or loss of appetite.

Stage 5: Acceptance

This stage is about how we acknowledge our loss. It is how we learn to adapt and live with that loss not forget it. It is how we readjust our life after loss. This doesn’t mean painful emotions will never be felt again, just that you accept that these are natural emotions to experience and they are transitory.

Types of Grief We Address in Grief Counseling

• Anticipatory Grief: Anticipatory grief is when we are given the time and space to prepare ourselves for the loss of someone or something. The grieving process begins long before the loss actually happens The bereavement arc in anticipatory grief may be surprising to some, wherein they may struggle deeply prior to the loss, but feel no grief after. The extended anticipation often may result in the day of the loss not resulting in a sense of extreme overwhelm.

• Traumatic Grief: Traumatic grief is the type of grief that accompanies loss that is unexpected, sudden, and feels life-changing. Such a loss often triggers post-trauma survival mechanisms that live parallelly with the mourning process. 

• Delayed grief: Delayed Greif is when someone’s suppressed grief after the loss of a loved one appears at a time that one may least expect because of an unrelated or related trigger. 

• Masked grief: Masked Grief is when one’s grief may manifest as physical symptoms or other maladaptive behaviors that one may be unable to recognize as symptoms of grief.

• Complicated Grief: People who are living with complicated grief are unable to escape feeling lost, alone, and catastrophic at all times. Grief becomes a painful and constant companion. Such folks may need expert support to help them differentiate between dysfunctional and healthy bereavement.

• Distorted Grief: Distorted Grief might be extreme, intense, or atypical reactions to a loss – such as odd changes to one’s behavior and self-destructive actions.

• Click here to know more about other additional types of grief

Tips from Grief Counseling in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York for Managing Grief

Tend to your body

As mentioned above, when grieving we have a flood of stress hormones flooding through our bodies. Given the awareness of this, it is crucial that we maintain healthy eating, drinking, sleep, and exercising habits. Not only do these things make us feel better immediately, they equip us with the ability to help support those that we are sharing this grief with such as other family members. 

Use of a Journal

Journaling allows us to unburden ourselves of our raw emotions, since we are experiencing a flurry of thoughts, containing these thoughts in a journal allows us to make the choice to leave those feelings behind even momentarily. Journaling allows us to step back, and reflect on our perspectives, and possibly even challenge ourselves. 

Re-remembering

Re-remembering involves reconnection with ourselves, and with the one, we have lost. The difficulty isn’t in letting go of loved ones lost but finding ways to hold on to them. Celebrate their lives with others, memorialize them, reflect on moments you may have shared with them, call upon their laughter and zeal for life. 

Consider getting professional help!

Sometimes we may feel stuck in our grief, and when we do, a grief counselor or therapist can help gently make us feel unstuck. They will hold our hands through our pain, provide language for things that make us feel confused, and help us live with our loss, as opposed to living in it. Therapy is the one place where you are allowed to express your emotions without the pressures of managing the emotions of the person listening. It allows you to take the time to process your emotions better.

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