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Processing loss and grief; gradually coming to terms with a loss such as the death of a loved, the end of a relationship, the loss of a job or decline in health.
Bereavement:
Bereavement is a natural part of life that we will all experience to some degree. Some losses impact us more than others, and are felt differently by different people.
For some, repeated losses can seem to cumulate. For others, loss can be experienced profoundly as a life changing event, as though they were a different person before and after the loss. It can lead us to feeling alone and isolated in our grief, overwhelmed by our emotions, or unable to connect with ourselves and others. It can also impact us physically as our emotional state is connected to our behaviours, thoughts and bodily processes.
Bereavement very rarely happens in a vacuum, where there is nothing else going on in life that needs our attention. This can cause us to feel pressure to to keep going with life as normal, and sometimes we fall into avoiding processing our grief fully.
This can lead to difficulty sleeping and eating, a feeling of shock or numbness, sadness, guilt and anger; the mix of feelings can be confusing and overwhelming. Ordinary activities can start to feel impossible and emotions can feel "out of control".
How Can Therapy Help?
There are many models that describe the stages of grief, but in our experience it is rarely a straightforward or linear process.
Each person's grief is unique and can stem from a variety of life events: ending of a relationship, the death of a loved one, miscarriage, change to your health or loss of identity and purpose. Therapy can enable you to come to terms with your loss, find freedom from overthinking and overwhelm and find space to think towards the future.
Therapy offers you a space to grieve in a way that feels natural to you, whilst feeling supported, heard and in connected. Working together, at a pace that suites your needs, we will explore and understand the nature of your loss and its impact upon you. The most important part of therapy is the relationship that we aim to nurture that can reduce the intensity of your feelings, so you feel better able to cope.
We believe that bereavement has the potential to be a life-long experience for many people, and there is no way of prescribing how long or how intensely we can experience the waves of grief. So we find therapy to be most helpful when attended weekly and when there is no limit to the number of sessions needed to respect the loss, and your need to process your experience. Through this warm and compassionate approach, clients have found great relief and have been able to gradually to come to terms with their loss and move forward with their life.
