What Is Grief Counseling? How and Who Can it Help?

If you have lost a loved one recently, it can be all too easy to feel lost when it comes to finding help. You want to move past this, but you just don’t know-how.

This is where grief counseling and its healing potential comes in.

How Can it Help?

One of the most important steps to dealing with and healing from any trauma is simply talking about it to someone who cares. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which being that it helps get out thoughts and feelings that are better released and externalized in a controlled, caring fashion than left to fester.

Suffering a loss of the magnitude of yours can put an inordinate amount of emotional and mental pressure on you, and you don’t want to simply let that build up within you unchecked. Eventually, something has to give.

Grief counselors can help take away some of this pressure by allowing you to let off steam while processing this into positive emotions and steps forward toward healing.

There is no singular way to cope with grief, and grief counselors do not prescribe a singular method of dealing with grief that will suit all cases. Instead, they offer treatments that are tailored to the individual.

Maybe you’re feeling a lot of anger right now and need to find a healthier way of feeling that before you can fully rid yourself of that emotion and move on. Maybe you’re feeling as though you lack a sense of purpose without your partner and need someone to help you reconnect with people. Maybe you simply feel as though nobody understands, and you need to speak to someone who does, be it to a grief counselor or a support group recommended by them.

If you are suffering from a lack of sleep as a result of your grief, they can help provide you with treatments tailored to cure that. If you feel on edge, they can recommend meditation and mindfulness exercises and apps. Grief can leave you feeling lost, and these specialists can help find treatment options that are matched perfectly.

Who Can it Help?

One of the biggest objections people have to grief counseling is on the highly personal side – “Maybe it works, but it isn’t for me.” Maybe you think that’s all well and good, but not for you.

But if everyone who thought that grief counseling didn’t work for them and it wasn’t helped, it wouldn’t be one of the leading forms of therapy today. Feeling isolated and like no one can or does understand is perfectly understandable – but to move past these feelings you need to give yourself a chance to do so, and grief counselors can help you do just that.

In particular, grief counselors can be especially helpful for widowed spouses and family members in the aftermath of a loss. Bereavement is one of if not the most painful experience any of us can undergo in our lives, and it is always a good idea to get as much support as possible.

Grief counselors are an especially valuable resource during these vulnerable times precisely because they don’t lecture clients on what is “right” or “wrong,” or act as though they have “the answer” for everything.

In the wake of loss, no one wants to be lectured.

But everyone needs someone to listen to them. Someone who will empathize with their pain and help them work through it in their own way at their own pace, making suggestions that are tailored to their needs.

Grief is incredibly personal, and the best grief counselors work to provide their clients with the most personalized care possible to help them move through it – because you, personally, are worth it. 

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

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