Counseling for Grief and Loss
“Grief, I've learned, is really just love. It's all the love you want to give, but cannot… Grief is just love with no place to go.” - Jamie Anderson
Losing someone can be one of the most challenging and stressful events in life.
Grief is both a universal and unique experience – almost all individuals will experience a significant loss but we all grieve differently.
How we experience grief can be influenced by our past experiences, how our family and friends and culture handle loss and bereavement, and what the loss means to us personally.
In American culture, grief can be especially hard – as a whole, we do not have a lot of language, tradition, and support around death. There is a great deal of avoidance and discomfort around loss, which can leave grieving individuals to feel ashamed, lost, and like the world moved on without them or expects them to heal on a socially acceptable timeline. It can leave individuals feeling completely alone in their pain.
Do you need grief counseling?
Bereavement therapy is counseling specifically focused on addressing grief, in which you are provided a space to explore and process feelings around the loss, mortality, and the implications of this experience for your life. I can provide a space to hold the pain and heartache, as you work to integrate this loss into your life and find ways to cope and mend in the way that is right for you. You are never alone in your grief.
If you are looking for support with your grief, please click below to get in touch with me.
Reasons clients come to see me.
Self-Esteem
If you struggle with feelings of self-worth or confidence, therapy can be a place to work on self-esteem. Self-esteem refers to your beliefs about yourself, how you believe others perceive you, your estimation of your abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. The combination of these variables can create your overall sense of self-worth. Self-esteem is not just liking yourself - it also impacts what you feel you deserve, whether you respect your own thoughts, feelings, goals, boundaries, and limits, and it can impact relationships and motivation.
Women’s Issues
Women can experience a number of gender-related sociocultural, psychological and biological challenges that can detrimentally impact mental health. Statistically, women are 20-40% more likely to develop a mental illness than men. According to several large-scale psychological studies conducted in the 1990s, “Women tend to view themselves more negatively than men and that is a vulnerability factor for many mental health problems.” Women are significantly more likely to develop depression and anxiety.
Life Transitions
Life involves a great deal of change, and change can cause a great deal psychological distress around fear of the unknown, change in role or identity, shifts in relationships. Maybe you ended a relationship, switched careers, graduated college, moved to a different state. Maybe you feel stuck and like you want to make a change but do not know what that might be or how to get started. Therapy can provide support, validation, and a place to problem-solve.
Stress and Burnout
Do you tend to feel like you cannot ever stop, or do you feel completely unmotivated? When faced with chronic stress, we tend to default to “over-functioning” and “under-functioning” - or a hybrid of the two, as we cycle through pushing extremely hard until we “crash.” Over-functioning looks like trying to reduce stress by doing everything yourself, but leads to burnout and resentment. Under-functioning involves freezing, avoiding responsibility, tasks piling up, feeling overwhelmed. American culture tends to promote individualism and over-functioning at the cost of necessary rest and life balance.