The COVID-19 pandemic is a perfect example of how understanding the different types of grief, especially original grief, can be helpful to us when we experience current daily triggers, because our deep grief awareness can better inform the tools we implement to ground ourselves.
Tag: Grief and Loss
Grief can be an isolating experience and now, more than ever, it is important to have strategies to stay connected to family and friends. We can still be together while observing physical distance and small group limitations.
If we can see how grief might be driving our clients’ dysfunctions, then what we should be treating is grief rather than just depression, addiction or other symptoms of grief. We cannot change loss. Facing it and finding ways to cope are the keys to resolution.
Posttraumatic growth should never be pushed on clients, but having a counselor attuned to growth may be the missing piece that helps them become more resilient in the face of traumatic loss.
Grief journeys can be difficult enough without the additional layers that come with a suicide loss. Gaining additional expertise in counseling survivors of suicide loss through training, consultation and supervision can make all the difference in the care you provide to clients.
Although infertility is fairly common, the losses associated with it are less likely to be recognized, acknowledged, validated and supported, which often leaves women and couples to navigate the experience on their own.
Rather than feeling lucky to be alive, those left behind after large-scale traumatic events or the unexpected death of a loved one are often burdened with questions about what they could have done differently or why they survived while others perished.
Counselors help clients recognize that grief is not reserved solely for big life events such as the loss of a partner, child or other family member, but also for ‘ordinary’ and sometimes societally unacknowledged losses.
Counselors can help those who are shouldering end-of-life caregiving responsibilities to navigate sensitive issues such as burnout, guilt and family dynamics.
Nicolas was just under 3 years old when he attended his grandfather’s funeral. He wandered through the sea of adults, holding tight to his mommy and daddy’s hands as he made his way to the front of the line where his grandfather lay peacefully in the casket. His grandmother picked