Grief and Loss in Therapy

Written by Amy Emmerson

"All therapy is about grief"...do you agree?

Grief is an uneasy topic and not readily talked about. This can leave people who are grieving in a really lonely place. A place that is just themselves and their loss. Some people can get stuck in their grief and this can happen for many reasons. Sometimes the circumstances of a death are intolerable, such as death by suicide or someone dying outside the natural order of death that we expect, for example a parent burying their child. Sometimes it is just too hard to contemplate living without the person that has died and not having anyone to talk to and share the pain with.

In recent years there has been an ‘opening up’ and normalising of conversations around death. Perhaps this is largely down to the Covid pandemic. During this time, we were confronted by death and dying every day, as we checked what the death figures were before teatime. At this time I attended the Good Grief Festival, this was really valuable to me. They had speakers on many aspects of grief, they held a “dead parent club” and panels on humanist funerals, racism and police violence. The people behind the project now run the “Grief channel” The Grief Channel - YouTube this is a fantastic resource I often return to for all things grief related. Another resource, for exploring grief, are so-called “death cafe’s” Death Cafe where people meet in public spaces all over the world to have real conversations and discussions about death. I find this really inspiring, that people are opening up spaces for these important conversations.

Grief is a very common theme in therapy sessions with my clients. Grief and loss are often thought of as losing someone we love, but in reality it is a much broader concept. As we go through life, we lose many things along the way: health, friendships, youth, dreams, careers, love and more. Losses all have an impact on us. I believe they need to be acknowledged and grieved for, so we don’t get stuck and weighed down by them. I truly believe that all therapy is a grieving process in some way or another.

There are many models of grief. Tonkin's idea of "growing around grief" is a model I often use with my clients . Tonkins believes that grief never goes away, it doesn't shrink nor disappear. However, what does happen, very gradually, is we grow and expand our world around our loss. In the picture above you can see a very old gravestone from Spring Bank Cemetery, that a tree has grown around, a nice illustration of this concept. For some this process happens naturally and for others they may need some more help with this. The resources I’ve talked about have been useful for many and may be a good starting point. .