Counselling for Loss & Grief in Vancouver
After losing a loved one, there is often a period of grief, mourning or bereavement. These feelings are an entirely normal response to loss. Together with your counsellor, they will help you navigate what may seem like one of the most challenging times in your life.
What is Grief?
- Grief is the process of mourning after a loss. Grief can take many forms and manifest differently for each individual. It’s a very complicated emotion that is often accompanied by various complex feelings, including sadness, guilt, anger, yearning and regret.
Types of Grief
Instrumental Grieving → focuses primarily on cognitive or problem-solving tasks. Instrumental grievers may show less outward emotions and process grief through action.
Intuitive Grieving → expresses grief through affective reactions. Intuitive grievers may experience a heightened period of emotional feeling and expression.
Stages of Grief
- There is a commonly used 5-Stages Model, which outlines the stages of grief. Because each individual's experience is different, not everyone experiences each of these stages. In most scenarios, grieving is often not a linear process. An individual may move back and forth within each stage.
- Denial → avoidance, confusion, shock, disbelief
- Anger → frustration, irritability, recognition that things are different now
- Bargaining → desperation, feelings of helplessness
- Depression → sadness, isolation, depressed mood, lack of energy
- Acceptance → no longer resisting the reality of the loss, moving forward
Complicated Grief
- Grief is a person’s natural response to losing a loved one. Feelings of hurt, loss and sadness often accompany it. Complicated grief, also known as complicated bereavement disorder, is a condition that can occur in some people who have just lost a loved one or are experiencing grief for another reason. While the intensity of grief usually fades with time for most people, these feelings don’t improve for people with complicated grief. They might be so intense that they disrupt their day-to-day lives. Complicated grief occurs in approximately 7% of bereaved individuals.
Signs & Symptoms of Complicated Grief
- The signs and symptoms of complicated grief are similar to normal grief. In people with normal grief, symptoms tend to fade with time; however, people with complicated grief experience them more intensely and persistently as time goes on. Some signs to look out for include the following:
- Excessively avoiding reminders of their loss
- Obsessively thinking about their loss
- Intense longing for a person who has died
- Feeling a sense of loss of purpose in life
- Excessively seeking proximity to reminders of things that remind them of the person they’ve lost
- Suicidal thoughts
- Being unable to accept that the loss has occurred
- Experiencing persistent and intrusive thoughts about the person you’ve lost
Let's Talk
Through counselling, individuals can explore various topics, including grief reactions and coping mechanisms for complicated grief symptoms. Counsellors can help individuals process the loss, readjust their routines and redefine their life goals after losing a loved one. Counselling can be instrumental in the healing process for individuals experiencing grief.
