Grief Counselling
The grieving process is challenging. Our grief counselling helps clients work through difficult emotions by following guiding each person’s unique process.
The grieving process is challenging. Grief counselling helps clients work through difficult emotions by guiding each person’s unique process.
How Should One Grieve? What Gets Us Back to Living in The Present?
Grief takes many forms and comes from many sources. For example, death is thought of as the most common source of grief, but we experience grief because of many different situations. When the coronavirus first hit in March of 2020 people’s lifestyles had to dramatically change. Many people found themselves unknowingly going through a grieving process for their changed lives and their plans. Other national tragedies can cause us to grieve as well. We can also experience grief after more personal tragedies, such as when a relationship ends (divorce), after a job loss or after a chronic disease diagnosis.
Grief is a very complicated and very human process. It’s a response that is hard-wired into our brains and body. In fact, primates that are closely related to humans universally experience grief and mourning. Just as a primate couldn’t stop grieving, you can’t just completely stop grieving, but you can talk with someone to better accompany your grieving process.
What to do when grieving:
- Self-care – seek counselling, engage in meditating, journaling and reach out to friends and family.
- Meaning-making – Using narratives and life stories to reconstruct meaning.
- Continuing bonds – Individuals who maintain healthy attachments with the deceased are more likely to accept reality and experience normal life again.
Points to remember:
- The death of a loved one shatters that illusion and brings us face to face with our own humanity.
- Often, we do not know how to talk about death, we also don’t know how to deal with it when the time comes.
- Other cultures tend to be more comfortable talking about death. In Japan talking about death is much more involved. It is a tradition for people who knew the deceased to offer condolences every year on the anniversary of the death to their surviving loved ones.
- We all grieve in different ways and oftentimes we don’t know how we should feel or act when a close loved one dies.
- It can bring out new feelings of existential dread or hopelessness.
The individuality of loss: Internal influences on grieving
- Age – Children and adults process loss differently
- Gender – men tend to be more instrumental grievers compared to women who tend to be intuitive.
- Culture – in every culture, ways of living and expressing emotions is already set and deviating from them would be considered abnormal.
- Coping behaviours – individuals engage in healthy behaviour such as rationalizing and seeking support. Alternatively, they could turn to addictive behaviours such as using drugs and alcohol for comfort.
- Spiritual/religious beliefs – religion can be used as a positive coping mechanism with elements such as forgiveness and the deceased being in a better place. Alternatively, people can also blame God for their loss, loose faith and become angry.
Previous mental health – cognitive capacity and complicated disabilities play a part in how a person grieves.
About Halcyon Counselling Clinic
Halcyon Counselling Clinic is offering pre-paid Counselling Packs as it’s important that we can provide long-term help as affordably as possible. Please click here to read more about the packages available.
Counsellors at Halcyon believe that many people find themselves bottling up their grief to extremes, finding themselves paralysed in their daily lives, or turning to poor coping mechanisms such as drugs or alcohol. Some people even consider themselves depressed, which is very possible as grief can certainly turn into a deep depression if it is not coped with well.
Some take more or less time to grieve and experience differing depths of grief, but no matter the case, grief counselling can help you better understand and cope with your grief on your terms. If you have recently experienced loss and are struggling to manage your emotions or if you believe you are experiencing complicated grief, reach out to the counsellors at Halcyon and start your journey to fulfillment today!
The textbook definition of when grieving becomes problematic is when it continues to dictate your life over 3 months after the death. However, after 3 months if someone tells you “you should be over this by now,” don’t listen. Everyone grieves at a different pace. If this is something that you need help with, do not hesitate and book a free consultation with a counsellor at halcyon.