Grief and Loss (Bereavement) Counselling

Grieving is a natural and necessary process that people experience following a loss. Some people, however, lack the support needed to help them work through the pain of mourning and this is when problems can arise.

When someone close to us dies, we often experience feelings of confusion, sadness, anger, guilt, abandonment, loneliness and shock. Sometimes the loss of a loved one can be as psychologically traumatic as being wounded ourselves.

Other forms of grief may include the psychological effects of divorce, the loss of a pet, the loss of a job, or in a medical sense the loss of cognitive abilities and roles and relationships.

The intensity of the grief relates to how attached we were to the loss. For example, we don’t grieve for all lost relationships; it’s only those relationships that are really important to us, people such as family members, spouses, and close friends that we feel attached to.

Unfortunately there is no magical way to deal with life’s hurts. An important part of the healing process following a death, separation or divorce is having some knowledge about what is happening.

The work of J. William Worden is helpful here as he talks about grief in terms of four tasks.