Grief Therapy
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Loss and grief are powerful, and often overwhelming. They can take away our joy and leave us feeling desolate, and devastated. However, like death and sadness, grief is a natural and normal part of life. It’s normal to feel like a part of you has gone away with the person you loved and lost. Especially when it’s someone close to you.
At what point does loss and grief become pathological, something to cure or treat? That line is blurry and can be difficult to determine, even for mental health professionals.
In some cases, loss and grief can contribute to the development of a long-term mental health problem. Losing someone important to us and failing to recover from that loss can result in the onset of depressive symptoms, and a full-blown mood disorder. It’s normal to grieve a heavy loss, but at some point, we must return to the world of the living, and find the things in life that spark joy for us.
Failing to find joy in life after grief, at some point, may indicate the need for therapy or another form of mental health treatment. To understand this, it’s important to understand grief and mental wellness in general, and the concept of therapy not just as a response to illness, but as a form of self-care in everyday life.
Is Grief Healthy?
There is nothing wrong with grieving. It’s normal to feel a deep and endless pain after losing someone important in your life.
However, just as we try to manage physical pain, it’s also normal and healthy to look for ways to soothe and overcome emotional pain. Rather than distract or dissociate from someone’s death, most psychiatrists, counselors, and therapists help clients work through the so-called stages of grief.
Grief is a complicated human emotion, but categorizing each of the elements of the grieving process into its own respective stage might help some people cope with that emotion.
However, before we delve into the stages of grief, it’s important to reiterate that this is not a universal model. Again, grief is complex, and it’s organic. Feelings of grief can resurface, even years after death. And as widespread as the stages of
Denial –
the first stage of grief is the stage wherein we fight the realization of a loss. It’s a mechanism of self-preservation, wanting to deny what has happened to help shield us from the pain of loss. Not all grief is related to death – we can grieve relationships, marriages, or even job losses. Denial occurs when we try to hide the emotions that grief is causing.
Anger –
loss is pain, and anger is a normal reaction to many forms of pain. When a loved one dies, there’s a part of us that seeks to understand why. Many deaths occur with no rhyme or reason, with no one to blame. But finding someone or something to direct our energies towards can be cathartic, and can fuel the anger stage.
Bargaining –
it is at this point that the stages of grief often become fluid. People shift in and out between different emotions during the grieving process and may go from feeling angry over a loss to trying to understand what went wrong, and how you might have changed it. A lot of the regret and guilt experienced during loss comes from the bargaining stage. It comes from trying to cope with the loss of control that we experience when something ends, or someone dies.
Depression –
as grief continues to overwhelm us, we continue to feel sorrow. It’s harder to laugh, harder to feel optimistic about the future, harder to hope. Depression sets in. For a while, negative emotions may become the new baseline.
Acceptance –
acceptance isn’t always final and may come and go. We may come to accept our loss, only to feel another wave of anger over it in the coming weeks or months. But over time, eventually, it’s normal to accept and move past the finality of loss.
It’s entirely normal to grieve, but it’s also normal to be concerned about a loved one’s grieving process when it continues to leave them devastated for well over a year. While it’s callous to expect anyone to “move on” from the loss of a loved one at any given predetermined pace, it is also normal to continue to live and find happiness in life after someone close to us dies. Being “stuck” can result in serious mental health complications.
When Should You Consider Grief Therapy?
Now that we understand grief as a complicated, organic, and often erratic emotional experience, it’s also important to understand that seeking therapy does not mean accepting or recognizing that grief is wrong, bad, or pathological.
You don’t need to consciously decide that grief requires treatment to seek the help of a mental health professional.
Therapy can also be a tool for managing and living through and past one’s grief. “Treatment”, in this sense, isn’t about seeing grief as a disease, but recognizing that, just as it’s normal and human to grieve a loss, it’s normal and human to want someone to share that loss with, to work through those emotions with someone else, and to find meaning and joy in life again.
Grief therapy becomes an option once you accept that you might feel better after talking to a mental health professional about your feelings of regret, guilt, or sadness after the loss of a loved one, or the end of an important relationship.
If you’re worried about the mental wellbeing of a loved one after a heavy loss, then talking to them about seeing a counselor might also be a good idea. Even if they don’t want to right now, you can plant the seeds for pursuing grief counseling or seeking therapy later.
Grief Therapy at Coastwise
While it's normal to grieve and feel immense pain after losing someone, it's also healthy to seek ways to cope with and overcome that emotional pain.
Grief therapy can be a valuable tool in navigating the complexities of grief, helping individuals work through their emotions, find meaning in life after loss, and ultimately move forward with hope and resilience.
Seeking therapy doesn't mean that grieving is wrong; rather, it acknowledges the importance of processing emotions and finding support during difficult times. If you or a loved one is struggling with grief, considering grief therapy at Coastwise may help them better process the pain of loss.