About grief

Grief is the response to loss. Most people think of it as what happens after someone dies, and that's part of it. but grief turns up around many kinds of loss: relationships ending, illness, a job, a home, losing a pet, a future you'd planned, an identity, a sense of safety.

Grief isn't a problem to solve. It's a process the mind and body go through when something important has changed or is gone. It doesn't move in tidy stages, and it doesn't keep to a timeline.

Bereavement

The grief that follows the death of someone close. It can be sudden or expected, recent or decades old.

Anticipatory grief

Grief doesn't always wait for an ending. It can start while someone you love is still here, seriously unwell or moving into palliative care, or while you can feel a relationship or a chapter of your life closing before it's actually over.

Disenfranchised grief

Grief that others don't quite know how to acknowledge, the loss of a pet or livestock, an ex-partner, a friendship, a pregnancy, an estranged family member, an identity, a place, or the natural world as it changes around you. When it goes unacknowledged, the grief doesn't get smaller, it gets lonelier.

Ambiguous loss

Grief without closure. A person who is physically present but psychologically gone (dementia, addiction, estrangement), or physically gone but psychologically present (a missing person, an unresolved ending). You don't get a clear point to grieve from.

Cumulative grief

We don't always face one loss at a time. Several deaths close together, one ending after another, or a new loss that stirs up an older grief, even one you thought you'd already moved through. Sometimes it's grief on top of grief on top of grief, each one still there under the next.

Grief lives in the body as much as the mind. People often notice some of the following:

• Tiredness that sleep doesn't fix
• Tightness in the chest or throat, a heavy feeling in the body
• Aches and pains that don't have another explanation, heartache is more than a figure of speech
• Trouble concentrating, forgetting words, losing track mid-sentence
• Appetite changes, broken sleep, vivid dreams
• Waves of intense emotion like anxiety, sadness, anger, numbness, guilt, relief, all of it
• Feeling disconnected from people, or unusually raw around them
• Catching yourself looking for them, or going over the same conversation again and again
• Time losing its shape, hours vanishing, or dragging in a way that doesn't make sense

None of that means something is wrong with you. It means you're grieving.

Counselling won't take grief away, nothing can. What it can do is give grief somewhere to be spoken about honestly, at your pace, with someone whose job is to listen carefully and stay with you.

We might talk about:

• What's happened, and what you're carrying because of it
• The person, relationship or thing you've lost, including the complicated parts
• How grief is affecting your body, your sleep, your work, your relationships
• The people around you, who helps, who doesn't, and how you ask for what you need
• What you want to hold onto, and what you'd like to set down

You don't have to come with a plan or a goal. You can just come.

Where it's helpful, we might also look at practical things like grounding, things you can use day to day, not just talk about what's happening.

What we try is always collaborative and led by you. Everyone's grief is different, so there's no set approach.