Grief Therapy

Most people don’t know that Grief is a natural physiological process, involving our whole body/mind. After a major loss many people try to soldier on, keeping a “stiff upper lip”, and trying to submerge our feelings. But if we do this, grief simply changes form; instead of sadness, it might become anger, depression, anxiety, fatigue, physical aches and pains or even numbness . . .

Over the years, I have worked with many people who have become stuck in their lives. They cannot seem to move forward and appear to suffer from a low-grade depression. However, when I ask about their history, it sometimes emerges that their life became derailed after a catastrophic loss. If they just tried to carry on, without processing their grief, their lives end up stuck in a holding pattern from which they cannot emerge.

One of the reasons grief can be confusing is that people may not recognize when they have had a major loss. They don’t realize that grief can be induced by many things: life-threatening situations, or chronic illness, loss of a loved-one; marital breakdown, separation or divorce; loss of a job or career; loss of our physical capacities and changes in our appearance as we age. Unprocessed grief can hang on for years and prevent us from being able to move forward in our lives. Talking things out, and healing the trauma around our losses can help us to see where we are stuck.