Grief Counseling in Tempe, AZ

Grief counseling seeks to help individuals and families who have experienced the loss of a loved one to find a healthy way to process their feelings. Bereavement and grief can encompass a wide range of feelings including sadness, anger, despair, hopelessness, guilt and many other complicated emotions. Grief counseling helps identify what healthy grief looks like and gives them tools to process their emotions through this experience.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross identified that people experiencing grief go through five stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Dysphoria, & Acceptance.

In our experience, individuals do not always experience these feelings in isolated stages, but instead feel all of these complex emotions at once. This is what makes processing grief so complicated. People can feel hopelessness, relief that the suffering is over, anger for what has taken place, and anxiety about how to live with the future. 

There are many overlapping symptoms between grief and depression such as intense sadness, difficulty concentrating, changes in motivation, sleep and appetite. Grief is typically preceded by loss while depression can develop at any time.

Many of our clients will ask us if they are depressed when, in fact, they are experiencing very normal symptoms of grief. In this video we talk about what normal grief looks like, what to expect and how to process through this experience in a healthy way.

It is important to remember that grief is a healthy reaction to the loss of someone that we love. While the sadness, tears, frustration, anger, and confusion may feel very uncomfortable and may not be emotions that one is used to, it still is very normal. In grief therapy, a therapist will help each individual process through the loss in a way that feels supportive, healthy and grounded.

Grief Therapy may focus on what has been loss and how the needs that person has met can be found in another way.

It may focus on processing through complicated parts of the relationship that will never have the opportunity to heal or change now that the loved one is gone. Or, it may focus on how to honor that life of the loved one and how to find new meaning in life that allows that person to live on in us or the world around us. Approaches to grief therapy will be as individualized as there is no “right” way to grieve. Grief will not last forever, and it’s important to know that you do not have to grieve alone.

There is no right or wrong time to seek grief counseling. Society tends to think that grief is a short-term experience, usually resolved within a few months. In reality, grief is often a process that can take years to work through.

The circumstances surrounding the loss of your loved one can make the experience briefer or more complex. Grief counseling can be very helpful throughout the process – no matter what the circumstances are.

Our grief counselors feel honored to help people through their grief experience. Our therapists help people normalize their experience and find tools to help them process through the complex, painful experiences of grief. We’ve been seeing clients in the Tempe area for grief therapy since 2012. We apply professional expertise and understanding to provide the best holistic counseling services.