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What to Expect in Grief Counseling (And Is It Right for You?)

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After losing a loved one, therapy can help you process your emotions. Read on to learn what to expect in grief counseling and whether it’s right for you.

Grief counseling is a specialized type of therapy that aims at helping people who have experienced the loss of a loved one. Sessions focus on assisting people with working through their sadness, dealing with lingering guilt, and learning the coping mechanisms that can help them move forward with their lives.

Keep reading to learn what to expect in grief counseling and whether it’s right for you.

How Long is the Process?

While grief counseling doesn’t follow the same timeline in every person, it’s not a usually a permanent therapy. Grief counseling is recommended for anyone who has lost a loved one. Young or old, this form of therapy works for anyone working through loss–whether that’s a parent, sibling, spouse, or friend.

Grief counseling is also called bereavement counseling, but the latter term refers to loss through death only. Grief can involve the loss of a person through a breakup or divorce or some other situation.

Learning About Grief

Part of counseling is learning about the grief process and what to expect as you cope with a major loss. During therapy, people are taught the normal grieving process, including familiar feelings and thoughts.

Patients learn how to distinguish what normal grieving looks like, as compared to other mental health conditions normal grieving and other conditions, such as depression, that can develop from grieving.

Many therapists go through the five stages of grief, which are there to help you identify the various forms your grief will take as you cope with the loss.

Normal feelings associated with grieving include fear, anxiety, disbelief, anger, and sadness. Additionally, some people feel physical pain during this period of grief.

What You Can Expect to Do in Grief Counseling

Whether you choose group therapy, individual, or both, here are some of the things you can expect to cover in grief therapy.

1. Work on Expressing Feelings

In grief counseling, people learn to express what they are feeling, no matter what that looks like. Sometimes, this step is difficult for those who have trouble expressing emotions, but learning to talk about grief is an important part of the process.

In therapy sessions, patients may be asked to talk to the deceased, as though they were sitting right there. Or, they may be asked to write letters that express thoughts and feelings left unsaid.

Other ways to get in touch with feelings include looking at photos or visiting a gravesite, or and remembering the lost loved one or object or visiting the grave of a loved one who has died.

2. Becoming Open to New Relationships

This part of the counseling process is there to help people move forward with their lives. This element of counseling helps people view their relationship to the deceased through a different lens.

While the memories of a loved one last a lifetime, talking to someone can help people learn to how to incorporate the past with the changes that come in the future. Part of bereavement counseling serves to help the patient keep their hearts open to new relationships–romantic or otherwise.

3. Find a New Identity

During the duration of therapy, the patient must also work through their identity. People view themselves through the relationships they have. A woman may identify as a wife, but when her husband passes away, that identity changes.

Or a person who has lost both of their parents may feel that they are no longer someone’s son or daughter. In any case–part of the grieving process is understanding how these losses can affect our identity.

Patients may find new purpose in focusing their energy on other existing relationships–strengthening friendships after losing a spouse. Other may find doing volunteer work to helps fill a need to care for others.

When it’s Not Just Grief

Grief is not a mental disorder. Though it looks like depression, the pain is usually temporary, and something everyone goes through at one point or another.

When someone you care about dies, you can expect to feel sad, angry, confused, but if these feeling do not go away, you may need some extra support.

It’s not as if we go through all these stages and then come out the other side all shiny and new and ready to get back on with life. Loss stays under the surface of our lives and continues to permeate long after it first happened. Sometimes all it takes is a specific date, a place, or a song, for all of that grief to come surging back.

Symptoms of depression include insomnia, sadness, changes in appetite, weight loss, and fatigue. If you think you may be depressed, ask your grief counselor for a referral.

Grieving? Call Foundations Counseling Today

Ultimately, grief counseling serves as a way to help patients transition from a dark period marked by loss, to a new, productive path forward. And, arguably the best way to honor someone you love, is to live your best life, rather than continuing the bereavement process.

Of course, getting better takes work, and in many cases, a major time investment. In therapy, patients will uncover the deep emotions they are experiencing during the process. From there, they’ll learn to cope with those emotions and live a normal life.

There is no need to grieve the loss of a loved one alone. If you need help getting through this difficult time, contact us today.

 

Am I depressed

Depression vs Sadness: How to Tell the Difference

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While it may seem that everyone throws around “The D Word” from time to time, specific depressive disorders affect less than 10% of Americans.

However, the combination of anxiety, trauma, and illnesses that can contribute to depression make depression much more common.

If symptoms are mild, you may want to understand whether you’re simply feeling sad or experiencing depression.

While you might think of sadness as temporary and depression as persistent, it can be hard to differentiate the two in the moment.

Your experience could feel like it may pass, but you could be experiencing the early feelings of a mild depressive bout. Alternately, you could be in the throes of one of the worst dark clouds you’ve experienced which you might not realize is connected to an event in your life.

If you’re wondering whether you’re feeling sad or experiencing clinical symptoms of depression, you’re not alone. Ask yourself these 5 questions to shed a little light on your feelings.

1. If You’re Feeling Sad, Are Your Favorite Things Enjoyable?

Everyone has a handful of things that really make life worth living. Whether it’s traveling abroad, spending the day at your favorite bookshop, or just that chai latte you like, there are things that can take us out of any funk.

If you’re feeling sad, these are the things that can shake us out of our feelings or reassure us that we’ll move beyond the hurdle in front of us. Our brain might resist the good feelings, but in the end, positivity will prevail.

In the experience of depression, there’s an inability to enjoy the things that once were pleasurable.

This reaction is called an “anhedonic” reaction, as in the inverse of the hedonism we feel when on a beach with the perfect drink in hand. Depression inhibits those feelings of pleasure that could cut through the fog of our sad feelings.

When you can’t seem to enjoy the things that “should” make you happy, you could be feeling depressed.

2. Are Your Emotions Tied To One Specific Thing?

During moments of feeling sad, it’s hard to tell where that sadness comes from. You could wake up in the morning, stare at the clock knowing it’s time to get up, and just not be able to do it.

What makes this a symptom of sadness as opposed to depression is its connection to something specific.

If you’ve experienced a major change in your life, like a breakup, job loss, death of a loved one, or even a move to a new city, you could be experiencing sadness.

While this disconnection from something that you once identified closely with can feel traumatic, it may pass. In moments of sadness, we can usually say “I guess it started when…”

This is a tricky concept, however.

If we have deep trauma tied to loss that can trigger depression, that event might have just reopened that issue for you. Your depression may have started off in the way sadness does, but if it opens you up to a deeper negativity, that sadness may have paved the way for depression.

If you’ve had issues with depression in the past, you need to be especially aware when traumatic events happen or appear to be on the horizon. If you know that a loved one is going to pass soon and have dealt with depression due to loss, contact a trusted therapist in advance.

While depression can hit for “no reason at all”, the conditions of a sad event can make it easier for depression to take over your life.

3. Are You Sleeping And Eating Normally?

When you’re unhappy, it can be hard to follow your normal rules. Sometimes a little exercise and fresh air can help make things better and get you back on track.

If being more active doesn’t tire you out for a good night’s sleep and build up a little hunger, you might be experiencing depression. One of the major features of depression is insomnia and the inability to fix it with standard tactics.

For some people, food might seem “pointless” in the haze of sadness that comes with depression. You might feel like it’s not worthwhile to be healthy or in some cases to eat at all.

If you can’t seem to resolve your appetite or sleep schedule, contact a counselor who can help you find tactics to help combat your brain’s attempts to undermine you.

4. Does Your Mood Fluctuate?

When you’re feeling sad, it might seem like your mood fades in and out, like background music that takes over a movie scene. When there’s space for you to let go of your sadness and enjoy things, you’re likely not experiencing severe depression.

For people who experience even the most moderate symptoms of depression, it’s less like background music and more like a refrigerator hum.

Even in the quietest of times, it’s still there. And if you focus on it, it can be deeply upsetting or frustrating.

With the most severe forms of depression, any task can seem punishingly difficult. You can get upset talking to the person you’re ordering coffee from, irritated with the people on the train, and everyone at work can seem unbearable.

When the common denominator between unrelated people and events is your frustration, sadness, anxiety, or anger, talk to someone about dealing with depression.

5. Are You Self-Sabotaging?

While everyone has moments where they definitely screwed up or their performance at school or work stinks, they are often few and far between.

If these mistakes or missteps arise when you’re feeling sad, you can usually bet that you can avoid those mistakes the second time around.

During a bout of depression, your thoughts can become habitual or cyclical. You might feel like you failed, and you failed because you’re incapable, and you will never get any better. You might punish yourself with your negative thoughts.

If you blame yourself for things that are out of your control or you’re relentlessly critical of yourself, you may be experiencing depression. If you have a firm belief that it’s some critical flaw that you’re hardwired with that is keeping you from success, talk to someone about dealing with depression.

In all likelihood, your talent and skills have gotten you this far, but now depression has taken the wheel. Before it steers you into a ditch, set yourself up for success by contacting a counselor to help with depression.

There’s Nothing Abnormal About Feeling Sad or Experiencing Depression

There are millions of people who are feeling sad and millions more also experiencing depression. Thankfully there are many trained experts who know how to help us get back on track.

If you’ve thought about self-harm or violence, speak to a professional as soon as possible. Call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255 (1-800-273-TALK) 24/7. The Crisis Text Line is a way to get help anonymously through text.

There is always someone there to listen to you no matter what you’re going through. Cut through the fog and seek help today.