Grief Support Counselling Services Hill District
Grief isn’t just the feelings or emotions we experience.
People tend to think of grief in terms of bereavement such as death of a loved one. However, there are many types of grief. Grief can be expected when we experience a loss in life. For example, a marriage breakdown and/or divorce, a friendship ending or family challenges, or job loss can all result in us having feelings of grief.
Grieving can cause sadness, regret, anger, and other emotions that might cause us to struggle. There can be several types of grief such as pre-emptive grief where the diagnosis of something that is to come can bring on the tragic feeling of loss and sadness, traumatic grief associated with the sudden loss of a loved one, complicated grief which is a prolonged feeling of hopelessness and intense sadness.
Those experiencing complicated grief may fixate on the person they lost, or on the circumstances surrounding the death.
But grief isn’t just the feelings or emotions we experience. Rather, it’s a process we must go through in order to fully heal.
We can handle painful experiences in a healthy manner through grief counselling. To process loss there are many types of grief therapy techniques to provide supportive tools and guidance for processing loss.
In the process of grieving?
If you have gone through a tragic event and would like to speak to a professional, we suggest our grief support counselling sessions.
Grief Group Therapy & Techniques
In some cases, a combination of grief therapy tools and techniques might result in a more effective outcome. Some of the grief therapy interventions that are included in the sessions are:
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) which is a form of therapy that involves learning to identify negative thought patterns so you can work to change them. CBT has been proven in study after study to be one form of therapy that results in substantial improvement in quality of life.
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for grief works by helping you become aware of your negative thought patterns. Identifying these negative thought patterns can help you understand how they are affecting your behaviour.
- Cognitive Reframing or Restructuring: Cognitive reframing or restructuring helps you become aware of negative thought patterns or distortions. You work through sessions to first identify negative thought patterns, so you can begin to take healthy steps to change them.
- Targeting Behaviors: Targeting behaviors involves addressing unhelpful or harmful behaviors or habits and replacing them with helpful ones.
- Developing a New Narrative: This technique helps you come up with a new narrative about your loss. It eases negative thoughts and feelings, rather than dwelling on them.
In order to create healthy habits, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) teaches you to accept undesirable feelings and circumstances. It identifies your values and focuses on your capacity to improve psychological flexibility so that you can embrace your emotions rather than attempting to suppress them, feeling bad about them, or ignoring them completely. The capacity to be fully present and in the moment is known as psychological flexibility. This can be helpful for complicated grief.
Mindfulness is used in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) to assist with grieving and loss acceptance. For extended or complex mourning that persists for a year or longer following a loss, this kind of therapy may be utilized. ACT assists you in emotionally reprocessing a loss. It also assists you in starting to cope with whatever feelings you may have been avoiding. To promote acceptance and healing, ACT employs a number of grief therapy strategies.
These may consist of:
- Accepting negative feelings and emotions
- Distancing from negative feelings and emotions in order to understand them better
- Focusing on the here and now
- Observing self experience in different situations and circumstances
- Identify one’s own values
- Overcoming difficulties through past success or previous techniques
We cannot change the circumstances, but we can get through it together and find hope and healing in ourselves journeying with one another.