Grief is a natural response to loss when something or someone you love is taken away from you. The grief from loss can be complicated where we will see a range of emotions from anger, denial, isolation, depression or self-reproach for feeling too much sadness or feeling guilty because there is relief that the burden to care for a sick loved one is over.
It is not just the loss due to passing of a love one that will cause grief, some other examples of loss includes:
- Death of a pet
- Loss of health
- Divorce or relationship breakup
- A miscarriage
- Retirement
- Loss of a friendship
In grief counselling we help clients to experience and work through the pain by verbalising their thoughts and feelings rather than to avoid it in order to heal. There is no set number of sessions for grief counselling as it depends on personalities, type of loss, coping abilities and available support systems. We must respect that the grief process is unique to everyone and there is no definite timeline to accept the reality or for the pain to subside.