Grief and Loss Counselling Services

Individuals that have experienced a loss and are finding it hard to cope will benefit from grief and loss counselling services. Most individuals that utilise this type of counselling have experienced the loss of a loved one; however, there are several other types of loss that may also impact a person's quality of life. Examples include losing a family pet, divorce, or losing a job. Grief is considered to be a natural reaction and/or response to a loss. Unfortunately, in some cases, grief can become complicated and impact our lives in a negative fashion. Feelings of anger, rage guilt, and overwhelming despair sometimes occur. Professionals trained in grief and loss counselling services have the capability to assist those suffering from these often crippling emotions.

Gaining an Understanding of Grief

As mentioned previously, grief may be defined as either the reaction or the response to a significant loss that occurs in a person's life. It is an emotional form of suffering that is considered to be perfectly natural. Sometimes however, people can experience what is called complicated grief, where the emotions and actions go beyond what is normal and negatively affect the person’s quality of life.  When an individual elects to go to grief and loss counselling, they will be educated on what grief is so that they can overcome the complications they are experiencing. The client will then be informed that what they are experiencing is a typical reaction. They will learn that if the loss is considered to be exceptionally significant, they will experience higher levels of grief than if the loss that they suffered was not very significant. While it is true that grief and loss counselling is not able to return the person, object or situation back into the individual's life, it is a productive measure in assisting the individual to achieve a balance that will permit them to recover some level of normalcy.

Stages of Grief

This isn’t accurate. Ross talks about what a dying person is experiencing, not what a family member is. This is another theory altogether, so these stages are irrelevant unless we counsel the dying.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a psychiatrist introduced the stages of grief in 1969. Originally, these stages were found in patients that were aware of the fact that they had a terminal type medical condition. However, as time progressed, other medical professionals started to realise that each of us experience these stages when faced with some type of significant loss. The following highlights the stages that will be covered during counselling sessions:

• • When an individual experiences a loss, they may initially deny the situation

• • Immediately after denial, the sufferer become angry.
• • As the emotions start to rise, it is common for the grief sufferer to start a bargaining process.
• • As the sufferer progresses through their grief, they may start to experience other psychological complications. The most common is depression.
• • Once the individual gets past the emotional stage where they experience complications such as depression, they reach a point of acceptance as far as their loss is concerned.

Grief and loss counselling services are highly beneficial and constructive to the individual that has encountered some sort of loss in their life. These services not only offer the support and understanding that grieving individuals require, but they also assist in providing clients with the ability to understand what they are experiencing, why they are experiencing the emotions that they are faced with and how they can reach a point where they feel productive and happy again.