Grief Therapy

The COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences have caused significant loss, including lives, livelihoods, social/physical connections, our usual ways of life, and how we grapple with death and mourning. Grief is a series of intense physical and psychological responses that occur following a loss. It is also a normal, adaptive response to a loss. Although grief is a normal process, in some it becomes prolonged or complicated, requiring intervention. Aspects of COVID-19 have made the grieving process more difficult. This is exemplified by ambiguous loss that has no resolution or closure (social isolation during shelter-in-place), the need to isolate hospitalized patients, rendering families unable to visit or say goodbye, and disruptions in mourning rituals. Grief is often times experienced in stages. These stages include:

Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

Mourning is the period of time during which grief is expressed and possibly the resolution and integration of loss. Mourning is often in experienced in stages. These stages include:

Numbness
Yearning and searching
Disorganization and despair
Reorganization
Persistent and invasive thoughts of your loss that disrupt daily activities
Avoiding or feeling consumed by reminders/memories of your loved one
Unable to accept the finality of the death
Intense yearning for your lost loved one

In assessing grief, symptoms may be exhibited as the following:

Feeling angry about the death
Feeling numb or confused, developing a loss of trust in others
Isolating from others
Suffering physical symptoms similar to that experienced in the deceased’s final illness
Feeling that life is meaningless and hopeless without your
loved one

In Grief Therapy, the client works with the therapist to process and regulate the experienced emotions to loss. Together, the aim will be the process of reconstructing a world of meaning that has been challenged by loss. This may be accomplished by

Redefining the self
Redefining how one engages with the world